Perl-clutching hijackers appear to have seized control of 33-year-old programming language's .com domain
- Reference: 1611858154
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/28/perl_hijacking/
- Source link:
A warning went up on the perl.org infrastructure weblog overnight notifying users that perl.com now directed to a parking site and advised against visiting "as there are some signals that it may be related to sites that have distributed malware in the past."
[1]
Seems a bit of a harsh description of Perl. We at El Reg are [2]big fans after all.
The site later returned an ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED error message.
[3]
Snark aside, the hijack appears to have followed the age-old path of an attacker pouncing on a compromised account and swiping the domain rather than a simple expiration.
Wake me up before you go Go: Devs say they'll learn Google-backed lang next. Plus: Perl pays best, Java still in demand [4]READ MORE
Posting [5]on Reddit , Brian Foy, an editor on the site and author of several books on Perl, said: "It looks like there was an account hack. I don't know how long that would take to rewind. We're looking for people who have actual experience dealing with that situation so we can dispute the transfer."
Perl.org is unaffected by the swipe.
A glance at the [6]domain records show the contact information is now "REDACTED FOR PRIVACY". Gordon Lawrie – a self-proclaimed cyberlaw, trademark, and domain nerd – told us that prior to the change Tom Christiansen was listed as the domain administrative contact.
While the Perl team has yet to respond to our request for a comment, a hijacking of Christiansen's account seems a possibility. The expiry also appears to have been extended to 26 January 2031.
Shortly after the hijacking, the domain perl.com turned up as available to buy for $190k on afternic.com, now listed as a name server in the domain record at time of writing.
[7]
Perl.com for sale at $190,000 (credit: Gordon Lawrie)
The listing included other pricey domains, including piracy.com for a mere $125k, from user drawmaster. Afternic is part of the GoDaddy organisation and, shortly after we approached it for comment, the perl.com listing had been pulled. Piracy.com appears [8]to still be available if you're so inclined (and endowed in the wallet department).
[9]
All had recently been transferred to a mystery owner allegedly based in Chisinau, Moldova. All also had the full details of their original owners in plain text prior to the ownership change, including email addresses. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_devops/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YBNCCIoFCqb4DNdAdbTUYAAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/about/company/website/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_devops/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YBNCCIoFCqb4DNdAdbTUYAAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/06/developers_pay_review/
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/l6d8ws/perlcom_unfriendly_domain_take_over/gl2tghw
[6] https://www.whois.com/whois/perl.com
[7] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/01/28/afternic.jpg
[8] https://www.afternic.com/search?k=piracy&tld=com
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_devops/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YBNCCIoFCqb4DNdAdbTUYAAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I remember when "whitehouse.com" was nicely changed to a pr0n site
If memory serves, whitehouse.gov was the official domain, and some smarties bought up the .com. A friend who then worked in an elementary school library was showing her charges how to use the internet (this would have been 1999 or so) when she discovered the TLD confusion.
Sometimes older is better
I'm a rather enthusiastic perl user myself, even on things like CGIs running in Raspberry Pis.
Since I don't use the bleeding edge stuff - just the version that comes with whatever distro....not a problem for me yet.
Updates to "distro perl" are pretty rare...
Now, if the baddies get metacpan, we're all in he soup.
I used to dislike Perl
I used to dislike Perl.
Then I learned PHP in order to maintain a pile of somebody else's code.
And my feelings for Perl faded into insignificance.
Then I met begger who had no feet.
And thought to myself, "at least he doesn't have to maintain PHP code".
Re: I used to dislike Perl
That is truly beautiful poetry.
The punishment is obvious, once they catch the perp
Make him maintain old Perl code.
I loved Perl so much...
...I singled handedly ported 36,000 lines of Perl to Python, while it was still being actively developed. I was at it day and night for 3 months, everyone thought I was mad, myself included at times. But they thanked me for it in the end, as the development rate increased by at least 50%, and the number of migraines halved.
I remember when "whitehouse.com" was nicely changed to a pr0n site
Definitely a lot easier on this guys eyes than the old White House web pages from back in the naughty nineties.
Do new domain owners now need to spring for every conceivable TLD combination of their moniker? Way back then I grabbed .com, .net, and .org just to be safe. Now there must be several hundreds. Good business for them that sell that stuff.