Group claims to hack leading brand management registrar and change Facebook’s whois, but Registry Lock thwarts its attempt to hijack Facebook.com nameservers.
The Syrian Electronic Army claims it has hacked into the systems of MarkMonitor, the domain name registrar for many of the world’s biggest brands.
It has a screenshot to prove it, too:
A twitter account purporting to be that of the SEA also posted a link to a Facebook.com whois record showing the the Syrian Electronic Army was able to change some of the contact information for Facebook.com. However, it was unable to hijack the nameservers for the domain name. That’s because Facebook uses registry lock, which would have required manual intervention by .com registry Verisign.
I repeat: according to SEA’s twitter account, it tried to change the nameservers. But Registry Lock saved the day:
The New York Times could have prevented a similar attack last year had it implemented Registry Lock at the time.
According to the twitter feed, MarkMonitor shut down its online account manage console in wake of the attack.
MarkMonitor has not yet responded to Domain Name Wire’s request for comment.
Ouchy for Mark Monitor. Good news for Verisign stock as more brands go out and get registry lock.