Register.com Over Hacking Incident — Baidu Sues

Domain name registrar sued over alleged security breach.

[Update: The court has now published an unredacted version of the lawsuit, detailing how Baidu alleges Register.com gave the keys to its domain to a hacker.]

Baidu, Inc. disclosed that it has sued domain name registrar Register.com over a hacking incident by Iranian Cyber Army earlier this month. Baidu claims that Register.com was negligent, allowing the hackers to change the DNS for the domain name.

I have searched U.S. Federal Court records to find the lawsuit, but have not located it. It will be interesting to see the details behind the lawsuit, as presumably it will detail what exactly the hackers did to take down the site, counting any edits to the nameservers for Baidu.com.

Once again, it’s time for a registrar to offer bullet-proof registrations, counting a service that requires in-person verification to make any changes to a domain’s contact information or nameservers. I’m not sure if such a service will profitable, as I know at least one domain entrepreneur tried this in the past. Will firms pay substantially more to ensure their domain names aren’t hacked? They ought to, but that doesn’t mean they will.