Name.com and eNom play hot potato with domain name.
Name.com got hit with a massive distributed denial of service attack at the end of last week, and it appears this is because a site covering the downfall of Chinese Communist Party official Bo Xilai was registered with its service.
The domain registrar had received an anonymous email saying it needed to drop Boxun.com, reports The Washington Post. Shortly thereafter it was hit with a DDoS.
Name.com then received a message that the attack would continue “unless we handed over the domain to the attackers and told the original owner that it was stolen.”
As far as I can tell Name.com was not hosting the site; it was just the domain registrar. I have reached out to Name.com for comment. (Update: Name.com said it was also hosting the site. Update 2: Turns out they were just the registrar. Never mind.)
Name.com quickly dumped the problem on eNom by helping Buxon.com’s owner transfer the name there. eNom didn’t want to have anything to do with it an fobbed it off on German domain registrar 1&1. That’s where the domain is at the time of writing.
[Update 4/24: Name.com has posted about the DDos and how it responded.]
ComeOn says
Classless act by Name.com attempting to dump off their problem on someone else and then acting like they were doing something. Take a look at their tweets, they make themselves out to be “freedom fighters” and then go hide behind a rock.
Andrew Allemann says
Name.com blogs about attack
http://blog.name.com/2012/04/ddos-attack-post-analysis-and-introspection/
Adam says
Name.com seems very dishonest registrar.
We back ordered expiring domain name with Name.com.
Name.com offers only one back order per domain name. If you back order particular domain name, e.g. abcd.co no one else can do it after you. The domain was originally registered with Name.com and expired there.
After expiry the domain remained with Name.com (someone set domain privacy) but somehow we did not get it.
The honest explanation of this could be only one that domain`s owner
renewed it.
It happens to be that we know the person who was an owner at that time and we have a proof that he did not renew the domain.
We emailed Name.com and asked for explanation of the situation (of course
not mentioning that we know who was the owner).
Name.com said the domain was not dropped.
So simply speaking Name.com lies unless by saying “domain was not
dropped” they meant that they seized it.
It seems that they play against you when you make a back order with them.
Adam says
Also,what`s interesting that Mr Scott McBreen from Name.com is offering this domain for sale.
Adam says
Just visit schoolloans.co and click Sedo link `More details` it will redirect you to name.com brokerage service.
Danny Pryor says
Interesting comments, but the more glaring issue is the DDoS and its source. Does this mean we’re that much at risk of a foreign-based online attack, in the event we register a domain, own a domain or publish content that is at odds with an authoritarian regime?
Let’s face it, I don’t know what resources one has, but staying offline to make a political point is not necessarily demonstrating any measure of class; it does demonstrate martyrdom.
For the record, most of my registrations are with Name.com, and I’ve not had a problem with their backorder service, when I’ve used it. I neither work for the company nor am part of any company affiliate program. I do believe it’s very easy to call someone or some institution a liar, even though many facts are missing.
John says
What else do you expect Name.com to do? It’s easy to point fingers when you are not the actual victim. Name.com has the right to protect the interests of their other clients. I am not affiliated with Name.com or works for them. We have been a client of theirs for many years and they always have been more than kind to us. Mr. Scott McBrean always went above and beyond the call of duty to take care of us. He’s one of the nicest and helpful people I have ever known. No other registrars even come close.
Let’s dig into the subject of hosting. I had my site hosted with BlueHost.com. One day they turned off my account and told me I have 14 days to move the data. It turned out as a DDOS attacks. BlueHost didn’t even give a reason or notice, they just turned off my site. Their support told me that I can’t host with them any more because of the DDOS. Then I tried my luck with GoDaddy. All is well until about 4 months later, same thing happened. GoDaddy told me the exact same thing. I can’t host with them any more. They disabled my site without any notice. Their tech told me to read their TOS policy. Needless to say, I didn’t want to bother. Mind you, my site was parked. It has no special contents. I just don’t understand it get DDOS.
I moved my site to Name.com, not too long afterward, the same thing happened. Mr. Scott McBrean actually called us and advised there was an influx of traffics from China that hit a subdomain. He worked around the problem by pointing that sub domain to a null value. Problem solved!
BlueHost=Failed. GoDaddy=Failed. Name.com A+. Those two other hosts didn’t bother to tell me that was the issue. Those idiots just turned off my site because they were too freaking busy to trouble shoot the problem and narrow it down.
If the same thing that happened to you as a hosting provider, what would you do? Let say you have tons of customers that rely on you. Would you do any differently than what Name.com has done? Let’s be honest here. What would you do to protect your customers? It’s easy to point fingers when your livelihood is not at stake? I bet that you are more likely to do whatever it take to protect the rest of your clients, but not the site that is having problem. Tell me there’s a hero in town that will stand up to these attacks on their own dime and I will believe you. Go ahead and move your sites elsewhere away from Name.com, you are not going to get protected either way by the major hosting providers. If you call Name.com chicken, then the rest are no different.
Once again, I am not affiliated with Name.com. What’s fair is fair. There’s always two sides to every coin. I urge you to carefully consider before jumping to conclusion. Bottom line, the folks at Name.com have always been great. They are second to none. For this reason, we have close to 50,000 of our domains with them. You can imagine the research process we have gone through just to make this decision. Thank you for reading. My 2 cents.