How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
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How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
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Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#2The TL;DR: he registered one of the expired domains that manage the TLD namespace of Democratic Republic of Congo.
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#3It pisses me off that for something of this magnitude this guy will probably only be paid no more than a couple thousand dollars, if at all. He still has no response.
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#4Could this be leveraged to hijack additional TLDs? If any other TLD uses a ".cd" NS, like .cd used a ".com" NS...? (Are there any?)
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#5Shouldn't he have acted when he noticed the soonish expiration instead of hoping to be the only one watching for expiration?
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#6It pisses me off that for something of this magnitude this guy will probably only be paid no more than a couple thousand dollars, if at all. He still has no response.
This was good work.
The DRC has a lot of problems (to say the least) at the moment and has had for a while and this is pretty low priority in their scheme of things. Countries with weird residual TLDs for non-sovereign territory (e.g. .as or .ac) surely pay more attention to these trivial domains than anyone in the DRC can.
Which is all to say the amount of effort expended on any task, or the amount of knowledge brought to bear on a task, is only sometimes correlated with its value. Ever worked hard on a company that failed?
I felt I needed to put the first line in because my comment on your question could have been misinterpreted as criticism of the hacker.
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#7It pisses me off that for something of this magnitude this guy will probably only be paid no more than a couple thousand dollars, if at all. He still has no response.
DR Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world. GDP/cap is $457 a year. If he does get a few thousand that is more than one worker earns in 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#8It pisses me off that for something of this magnitude this guy will probably only be paid no more than a couple thousand dollars, if at all. He still has no response.
If rich countries and private charities were serious about foreign aid, they'd consider helping fund things like this.
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#9Interesting read and also the reaction from authorities in DRC is interesting - they changed the records with IANA. Probably good course of action because OP could hold them hostage and they shouldn't risk relying on his written confirmation in such a important matter.
Good decision making on the DRC in the end. Well Done.
Re: How I hijacked the top-level domain of a sovereign state
#10It pisses me off that for something of this magnitude this guy will probably only be paid no more than a couple thousand dollars, if at all. He still has no response.
DR Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world. GDP/cap is $457 a year. If he does get a few thousand that is more than one worker earns in 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Understandable stance, but the damage he was capable of causing was probably millions of dollars worth. So yeah, a few thousand bucks as a thank you is reasonable.