They may be the beacons of the domain name markets, but news that an array of ICANN and IANA websites were temporarily under the control of a group of hackers has shocked many in the industry. It seems that a group calling themselves the NetDevilz (thought to be based in Turkey) managed to change the DNS settings for the likes of icann.com, icann.net, iana.com and iana-servers.com redirecting the sites to a rogue webpage mocking the security of the internet.
While this was a major embarrassment to ICANN and IANA, it also came at a time when ICANN especially was very much in the public eye as the vote for expanding top-level domain names was reaching fever pitch. It seems as thought the would be hackers had been waiting for the opportune moment to make their strike and gain massive worldwide exposure.
Even though the sites in question only appear to have been under the control of the hackers for around 20 minutes, it does show how easy it is for professional hackers to gain access to even the most secure of internet sites. Those who had reservations about the overall security of the internet are now coming back to the fore, with renewed vigour. |
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