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DENIC SETS OUT STALL ON EBAY DOMAIN ISSUE
DENIC, the German Domain Name Registry controlling the .de country code, has reported that online Internet auction provider eBay was the victim of a domain hijacking incident on 28th August.
The issue resulted in eBay's German domain name, ebay.de, changing provider, Internet settings, and eBay ceasing to be the registrant of the name for a temporary period. DENIC has concluded an initial investigation which has determined what exactly happened.
Every .de name is assigned to a DENIC provider or Mitglieder who can make changes by interacting with DENIC systems. A domain name registrant or 'holder' can move their domain name to a different provider by completing a provider change form. DENIC maintains two controls against unauthorised provider changes:- first, the requester must be the domain holder or a properly authorised person - this is checked by the new DENIC provider on receipt of the form before submission to DENIC's systems. Secondly, the original provider must reject the change unless they are aware that it is in accordance with the holder's wishes.
Some time before 28th August, both controls failed. eBay apparently had no
intention of changing provider but a change request was submitted earlier in
the week which was allegedly at their behest. The original provider did not
respond over a period of five working days and, because the DENIC rules treat
non-response as consent, control of the domain was handed over .
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The new provider then requested DENIC to change both ebay.de's domain holder and nameservers (the computers dictating which web and email services the domain is used for). This request was processed automatically by DENIC's systems. Nameserver changes typically take effect when the principal domain's details (in this case the details of every domain under the .de country code) are updated to the Internet as a whole in a 'zone file'. For .de, this happened early in the morning on 28th August.
eBay discovered the issues the same day and persuaded DENIC to reverse all changes and even to generate a whole new .de zone file with the corrected data. Unfortunately this did not return the original status of ebay.de immediately because of the way that the Internet works - it normally takes 24 to 48 hours for a nameserver change to be seen by all users.
While DENIC continues to investigate with the Mitglieders how an unauthorised change went through, and contemplates legal action against the person who submitted the provider and domain-holder change requests, domain name watchers will remember that this is not the first time eBay have been the victim of unfortunate domain name issues.
In December 2002 the domain ebay.co.uk was inadvertently 'detagged' (and thus deactivated) by eBay's then Nominet UK member (the British equivalent of a Mitglieder). In that case, Nominet were also persuaded to completely rebuild the UK zone file to alleviate the problem as far as possible.
Domain name hijacking of various kinds is becoming more common. While it may
be almost impossible to prevent all clever scams that anticipate the human error
of a domain name provider, the lesson for domain name holders must be to pick
their provider as carefully as possible.
Source: http://www.demys.net/
