Gadgets Connect

After announcing plans to open up the Internet past the 21 current top-level domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has suffered an embarrassing hack.

The hack also affected the Internet Assigned Names Authority (IANA) and was carried out by the Turkish group NetDevilz. Those visiting either site while the hack was active were redirected to an atspace.com hosted site. The message put there by the NetDevilz group read as follows:

# NeTDevilz #

You think that you control the domains but you don’t! Everybody knows wrong. We control the domains including ICANN!

Don’t you believe us?

haha
(Lovable Turkish hackers group)

©2008 NetDevilz Co.
We’re not first,But We’re the BEST!

At the time of writing neither ICANN or IANA had released a statement relating to the attacks.

Read more at Vnunet.com and Zone-h.org

Matthew’s Opinion
The timing and the nature of the attack are both embarrassing, especially for ICANN after their big announcement this week. I’m sure the web admins have had an earful from management and any individual that left the door open for the attack, if there is one, may also be suffering next week.

The one thing you need from the companies that control the Internet is integrity and a feeling of safety. This shows that they have been sloppy in the handling of their own website and this must taint their reputation, however temporarily. The site is back up now so the problem was dealt with quickly, which is something at least.

ICANN hope to cover the US$10 million they say it will cost for the new top-level domain management with very high fees, but they should probably funnel some of that money into their website backend and security.

Tags: PDA, speakers, cameras, gaming

Share This