Site that tracks car prices has been hijacked.
An unknown person has stolen the domain name and website TabelaFipeBrasil.com according to a lawsuit (pdf).
João Almeida started and ran the popular website that tracks vehicle prices in Brazil. According to the lawsuit, the site received 2.5 million page views last month and over 93 million since it was launched in 2013.
But Almeida found out that the domain was stolen from his registrar account and transferred elsewhere. Almeida alleges that the thief is now generated revenue from the Adsense ads on the site. (I reviewed the current Google Adsense code on the website and compared it to the ad code captured in Archive.org and it has changed. Some security services now use Adsense publisher IDs to track bad actors and I wonder if they could connect this to other domains used by the alleged thief.)
Wiley Rein LLP is representing Almeida. It filed the case as an in rem action in Virginia, where .com registry Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) is located.
Shailendra Mishrara says
With a reverse adsense lookup (not 100% accurate) I found several websites which belong to someone “Sites Shark” in portugal mostly whois was private.
This looks as same person as the plaintiff.
Which means that either plaintiff has got his website back, or the hacker has not changed adsense code (or reversed the change).
If your found adsense code was different than 3144675853968749 kindly let me know.
Andrew Allemann says
I see 3060677358933399. It’s linked to sites like tabelafipe2022.com, which is a copy of the website at issue and is at the same registrar as the domain the lawsuit says is stolen.
Shailendra Mishra says
Looks like this website had both codes (hacker forgot to change adsense code in google searchbox) so I went in wrong direction from there.
Here are websites which are linked to new code :
Senaiabrecursosabertos.com
Vagasempregosconcursos.com
and few copies of tabelafipe (like 2020 , 2022 you mentioned, 2023)
I am not posting here but whois of these domains is public and links to someone from bahia, Brazil.