Validus Holdings Says Former Contractor Used .Co Domains to Intercept Confidential Emails
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Former contractor allegedly intercepted emails using .co domain names.
Validus Holdings, a publicly traded (NYSE: VR) reinsurance and insurance company, has filed a lawsuit against the owner of several .co domain names.
The company claims that the owner of some of the domains, Musa Kiana, previously was a third party contractor providing accounts services for Validus. In October of 2010 Validus discovered that Kiana had registered .co domain names including Validus’ trademarks.
Validus says that Kiana then tried to extort it, attaching an invoice for £1,100,000 to correspondence including (in part):
Please find attached an invoice for the procurement of all 12 domain names, you will naturally appreciate I have conducted market research into the valuations and this is reflected in the attached invoice and more importantly I feel this is a fair reflection.
Furthermore, Validus Holdings is listed with New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) this attracts a premium over the rest of the domains. Talbotuw, Validure, undriskserv, validusurs and validusresearch domain names are actual trading names and
also command a slight premium.
Kiana then sent a follow up email to Validus stating that £1,100,000 is “a small sum in comparison to the costs of a lengthy and embarrassing court case would cost the company to obtain the websites from a third party,” according to the suit.
Kiana allegedly sent emails to Validus informing it of many emails it had intercepted with the .co domain names because of the common typo of .com. (A research group recently studied the interception of emails thanks to typos). One of the emails included confidential financial information. He also sent notices about the number of emails he received.
Validus also says another domain name named in the lawsuit was used for adult-oriented content.
You can read the lawsuit here (pdf).
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but isn’t having a mistype of a dotcom domain good. even if chavez seizes all the .CO domains before he dies… i am glad icaan is protecting the internets rather than trying to just make money for themselves.
Hope the domain names will be given to their rightful owner soon. Criminals like this need to be prosecuted as severely as possible.
Interesting read.
This is the danger of confusion with .COM
I doubt .CO will be promoting this on their homepage.
Brad
Yes, very interesting read, especially when the case was thrown out /dismissed against all defendants by Honorable Judge Susan R Bolton, Arizona Federal District Courthouse on the 22nd November 2012.
This case has highlighted the inhumane tactics used by arrogant US Attorneys against the Defendants.
These large Foreign Billion Dollar Insurance Companies based in Bermuda, listed with NYSE and never have paid a Dime in taxes to the US IRS, the Board of Directors sit in the Bermuda offices with their multi-million dollar paycheck whilst ordinary americans suffer.
Please go to http://www.validusre.ltd.uk for further information on the outcome Lawsuit.