Validus Holdings States Former Contractor Used .Co Domains to Intercept Confidential Emails

Former contractor allegedly intercepted emails using .co domain names.

Validus Holdings, a publicly traded (NYSE: VR) reinsurance and insurance firm, has filed a lawsuit against the owner of a number of .co domain names.

The firm claims that the owner of some of the domains, Musa Kiana, previously was a third party contractor providing accounts services for Validus. In October of 2010 Validus discovered that Kiana had registered .co domain names counting Validus’ trademarks.

[Update: Kiana made a motion to be dismissed from the case for lack of personal jurisdiction. This motion was not objected to and was granted by the judge. The case continued against the domain names themselves, and the judge issued a default judgment against the domains in favor of Validus Holding.]

Validus states that Kiana then tried to extort it, attaching an invoice for £1,100,000 to correspondence counting (in part):

Please find attached an invoice for the procurement of all 12 domain names, you will naturally appreciate I have conducted market research into the valuations and this is reflected in the attached invoice and more importantly I feel this is a fair reflection.

Furthermore, Validus Holdings is listed with Fresh York Stock Exchange (NYSE) this attracts a premium over the rest of the domains. Talbotuw, Validure, undriskserv, validusurs and validusresearch domain names are actual trading names and also command a slight premium.

Kiana then sent a follow up email to Validus stating that £1,100,000 is a modest sum in comparison to the costs of a lengthy and embarrassing court case would cost the firm to obtain the websites from a third party,” as stated by the suit.

Kiana allegedly sent emails to Validus informing it of many emails it had intercepted with the .co domain names since of the common typo of .com. (A research group recently studied the interception of emails thanks to typos). One of the emails included confidential financial information. He also sent notices regarding the number of emails he received.

Validus also states another domain name named in the lawsuit was used for adult-oriented content.

You can read the lawsuit here (pdf).