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ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

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Re: ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

#11

Post by shagie »

The last week of January, the site was intermittently serving back a 429 response (too many requests) as recorded by the wayback machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/Zombo.com

In the first week of February, the site was down.

On the 8th, it was serving an error page from centos.

On the 9th, it was serving the new content. https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup for zombo.com shows that it was updated on 2026-02-09 20:34:17 UTC

I believe that a more reasonable explanation would be that the domain name expired, someone saw that being the case, bought the domain name and hosted their own version of it.

I'm not sure that "stolen" is the proper verb to use, or that "hacker" is the appropriate attribution.

Re: ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

#12

Post by samplatt »

tengbretson wrote: post #2

I knew anything was possible at ZomboCom, but damn. I never expected this. Guess that's ZomboCom for ya.

I didn't think I'd be the first person in this (or the reddit) thread to call this new site ZombieCom, but not gonna lie I'm pretty happy about it.

Re: ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

#13

Post by bananaboy »

shagie wrote: post #11

The last week of January, the site was intermittently serving back a 429 response (too many requests) as recorded by the wayback machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/Zombo.com In the first week of February, the site was down. On the 8th, it was serving an error page from centos. On the 9th, it was serving the new content. https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup for zombo.com shows that it was updated on 20…

Thank you for the explanation!

Re: ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

#15

Post by iwontberude »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #10
silisili wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You steal the domain name, not the website so to speak. Which would mean someone got their registrar credentials most likely.

And transferred it away? Registrars make it really hard to do that if you're not the actual person. I'm finding it hard to believe someone can do this anonymously.

Yeah that’s because it’s not what happened. It’s a common expiration snipe.

Re: ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

#19

Post by Retr0id »

bananaboy wrote: post #7
fred_is_fred wrote: post #3

The thread is lacking any detail on how the site was stolen and sold. Perhaps the "OG owner" as the poster calls it sold it for money?

Yeah I'm not sure. I haven't found anything else yet about this. The reddit poster posted this screenshot of an email with the (apparently) original owner https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

A more direct source for the screenshot: https://old.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/1qz3it...

Re: ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

#20

Post by RevEng »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #4

How does a hacker steal a website? So many questions.

Registration expires, someone snaps it up immediately. It happened to a customer of mine with a domain that was their name. It pointed at a page saying it was available for sale for $4000.
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