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Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

krebsonsecurity.com

31–40 of 73 posts

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#31
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The no humans thing also just closes off any path for exceptions that occur outside of what is coded. I bought a domain for a blogger blog ages ago. At the time google had no domain registry so they partnered with some company. Years later and google starts hammering me with "hey your credit card is expired we're not going to renew your domain" ... Fine right? "Hey go update your payment information on admin.google.c…

Yep, similarly here. eNom successfully "extorted" $300 from me due to it. My fault ultimately in the end though. But it was a stressful couple days, and eNom and Google partnership soured my view of both of them. I no longer do business with eNom.

What happened, if I may ask? I use both enom and google...so, I am curious...

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#32
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The no humans thing also just closes off any path for exceptions that occur outside of what is coded. I bought a domain for a blogger blog ages ago. At the time google had no domain registry so they partnered with some company. Years later and google starts hammering me with "hey your credit card is expired we're not going to renew your domain" ... Fine right? "Hey go update your payment information on admin.google.c…

Yep, similarly here. eNom successfully "extorted" $300 from me due to it. My fault ultimately in the end though. But it was a stressful couple days, and eNom and Google partnership soured my view of both of them. I no longer do business with eNom.

That's a bummer, they just moved it to an enom account (understandable) and charged me the usual renewal fee.

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#33

PM at a large, retail domain registrar here. Registry Lock isn't something most retail registrars will offer, because generally, the vast majority of registrants don't really need it. It's not something you can just put into your domain management panel and roll out to everyone because of all the hoops required once enabled. That said, Brian Krebs does need it on his domain(s) for obvious reasons - his domain is a ma…

This does not seem like a sound philosophical security posture -- that only domains who are "massive targets for hacking" should use Registry Lock.

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, similarly here. eNom successfully "extorted" $300 from me due to it. My fault ultimately in the end though. But it was a stressful couple days, and eNom and Google partnership soured my view of both of them. I no longer do business with eNom.

What happened, if I may ask? I use both enom and google...so, I am curious...

Just guessing, but the "extortion" fee's are likely due to renewing the domain after it has 'expired', during one of the last chance renewal phases.

https://help.enom.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003360647-Renew-E...

https://www.enom.com/kb/kb/kb_1487-last-chance-renew.htm

There is a whole process via which domains expire, they do not simply become available to register upon their 'expiry' date.

Full process is outlined here: https://tee-solutions.com/index.php/our-blog/127-domain-name...

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#35

The usual "registrar lock" is the clientTransferProhibited status you see on domains... that's easily removed by social engineering the registrar. "Registry lock" is serverTransferProhibited, the kind where both your registrar and the main registry need to agree to transfer the domain to another registrar. For instance, you can buy a .ca domain from any registrar, but you need CIRA's compliance (the issuing body for…

So what actually makes the "registry lock" robust against social engineering. Reading CIRA's page it just says that to make changes the Registrar will talk to CIRA to have to lock removed on their behalf. Doesn't sound like there's any mandatory OOB check from CIRA back to the actual client.

[deleted]

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#36

Wow. Some random person was able to move a domain to their own account simply by whatsapp ing the registrar, telling them that they had bought the domain and were having trouble moving it. That's it. It makes me realize that Google's no humans policy -- is it a policy? -- is actually a strength here. My domains purchased through Google are safe from social engineering because, well, there are no humans to contact to…

> It makes me realize that Google's no humans policy -- is it a policy? -- is actually a strength here. My domains purchased through Google are safe from social engineering because, well, there are no humans to contact to ask them to manually move domains.

Except Google actually has a lot of humans in the loop for Google Domains. I was having an issue transferring a domain and I clicked a button to chat and was talking with a real person in about a minute.

Granted, they may have better security procedures but they're still humans.

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#37
post #27

For really important domains, there was MarkMonitor, the high-end registrar. But they've been acquired by an analytics company, so now it's necessary to wait a few years to see if they are still trustworthy. It's useful to trademark your domain name. That gives you a very likely win if things ever get to the ICANN dispute process.

Cloudflare has an Enterprise registry service. If I remember correctly, you can create the ruleset that must be followed before allowing a transfer.

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#38
post #27

For really important domains, there was MarkMonitor, the high-end registrar. But they've been acquired by an analytics company, so now it's necessary to wait a few years to see if they are still trustworthy. It's useful to trademark your domain name. That gives you a very likely win if things ever get to the ICANN dispute process.

MarkMonitor are really dull to listen to, hours of upselling from them for pointless services has been my experience.

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#39

Wow. Some random person was able to move a domain to their own account simply by whatsapp ing the registrar, telling them that they had bought the domain and were having trouble moving it. That's it. It makes me realize that Google's no humans policy -- is it a policy? -- is actually a strength here. My domains purchased through Google are safe from social engineering because, well, there are no humans to contact to…

"In the end, E-HAWK was able to wrest back its hijacked domain in less than 48 hours, but only because its owners are on a first-name basis with many of the companies that manage the Internet's global domain name system. Perhaps more importantly, they happened to know key people at PDR - the registrar to which the thieves moved the stolen domain.

Dijkxhoorn said without that industry access, E-HAWK probably would still be waiting to re-assume control over its domain."

A different read: It was "humans"-based customer support that saved E-HAWK. A "no-humans" customer suppport system might have left E-HAWK powerless, waiting, hoping.

Analogising to the parent's example, if parent had a serious problem, a "no-humans" customer support system might result in helplessness, waiting, hoping for some human at Google to discover and fix parent's problem, unless parent happened to know key people at Google.

Re: Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

#40

The usual "registrar lock" is the clientTransferProhibited status you see on domains... that's easily removed by social engineering the registrar. "Registry lock" is serverTransferProhibited, the kind where both your registrar and the main registry need to agree to transfer the domain to another registrar. For instance, you can buy a .ca domain from any registrar, but you need CIRA's compliance (the issuing body for…

> that's easily removed by social engineering the registrar.

I decided to eliminate that one by becoming my own registrar. And that's one less man in the middle siphoning money off of me.

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