Court grants temporary restraining order against domain mimicking VerisignDNS.com.
Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN), the registry for .com domain names, has successfully taken down the domain name VerisignNNS.com, which it says was about to be used in a cyber attack on internet infrastructure.
A court granted a temporary restraining order against the unknown owner of the domain and granted Verisign the ability to put the domain in registry hold status, meaning it cannot be used.
The company said that the domain was created to deceive users who would otherwise visit or VerisignDNS.com or communicate via email, the domain name for Verisign managed DNS services that are currently being transitioned to Neustar.
Its court filing was originally made under seal and much of it is redacted. However, the unredacted portion references DNSpionage and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Verisign suspects Russian hackers are behind the domain name registration.
The lawsuit is here (pdf).
Using a Russian registrar (where you sign up with a phone number confirmation and pay with a bank card, payment also has an unavoidable sms confirmation) while it would be possible to register a domain somewhere abroad and pay with crypto, looks like either these “hackers” are too dumb or it may be a staged event for the purpose of popularizing the whole “Russian hackers” agenda.
Why wouldn’t they contact the Russian authorities? There is Interpol etc. Also I’m sure the registrar would be cooperative, they don’t want any bad publicity.