HSC.com domain name stolen
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013
Technology company lost its domain name in the middle of December.
Someone at communication technology company Hughes Systique Corporation must have had a rough holiday.
The company, which is part of satellite company Hughes Communications, says its HSC.com domain name was stolen from its Go Daddy account around December 14.
It has so far been unsuccessful in getting the domain name returned.
Hughes filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against the domain name on December 27. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, which is the jurisdiction for the .com registry Verisign.
According to the suit, the company has not been able to communicate with the person who stole the domain name. It also says that Chinese domain registrar eName, where the domain name was transferred to, has refused to return the domain name to its Go Daddy account.
While it’s unclear how the domain name was stolen from Hughes’ account, many cases of domain theft can be prevented by using two-factor account authentication. In this case it appears the domain name was managed by an employee in Hughes’ India office. Go Daddy does not yet support two-factor authentication in India.
Tags: domain name theft, stolen domain
i always use the password: PASSWORD to make all my accounts almost completely unhackable.
Since the registration was transferred to a company in China, what is the road map for recovery here, meaning does ICAAN or someone else oversee the process of registrars not responding or get involved, seems like this is going be quite expensive for international litigation, any insight here Andrew..thx
@ don – in this case, with the new registrar not being cooperative, the in rem lawsuit is probably the best approach.
For this reason TEAC was adopted.
Not sure if this procedure was followed, if this is the case then ICANN has the means todo something.
http://www.icann.org/en/resources/registrars/transfers/policy-01jun12.htm
Section 4, registrar coordination.
The losing registrar will report failures to respond to a TEAC communication to ICANN Compliance and the registry operator. Failure to respond to a TEAC communication may result in a transfer-undo in accordance with Section 6 of this policy and may also result in further action by ICANN, up to and including non-renewal or termination of accreditation,
“Since the registration was transferred to a company in China, what is the road map for recovery here”
The .com registry is in Virginia, which is where this suit was filed.
Good to see there is a lawsuit. This will strong-arm whoever is dragging their feet in the reclaiming process. Don’t assume it’s ename’s fault, however. If the account info was changed while at GoDaddy, they won’t move willingly to reclaim the domain, regardless of info provided.
Domain name cannot be transferred 60 days after change or registrant, correct? If that applies, then it looks like registrant has been changed after domain transfer…
On web.archive.org you could see this belonged to Hughes Systique Corporation