Slashdot Mirror
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site
Several readers wrote in with a CNET report that raises novel free-speech questions. MySpace asked GoDaddy to pull the plug on Seclists.org, a site run by Fyodor Vaskovich, the father of nmap. The site hosts a quarter million pages of mailing-list archives and the like. MySpace did not obtain a court order or, apparently, compose a DMCA takedown notice: it simply asked GoDaddy to remove a site that happened to archive a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords, and GoDaddy complied. Fyodor says the takedown happened without prior notice. The site was unavailable for about seven hours until he found out what was happening and removed the offending posting. The CNET article concludes: "When asked if GoDaddy would remove the registration for a news site like CNET News.com, if a reader posted illegal information in a discussion forum and editors could not be immediately reached over a holiday, Jones replied: 'I don't know... It's a case-by-case basis.'"
in case it would be bad for our PR, then no, in case it would be good for our PR, then yes, we take the site down. /sarcasm?
stuff |
Let's see... one page out of 250,000 on a site turns out to have content that could compromise security at another site. So MySpace contacts the registrar, and gets the entire site shut down?
That's like using a hand grenade to swat a fly.
The logical way to go about this is as follows:
Myspace should not have even contacted GoDaddy until they took the first two steps. And once GoDaddy was contacted, they should have done more investigation, which would have made it clear that they were looking at one page out of a quarter million... at which point they should have either told MySpace to contact the host, or done it themselves.
Even if, after all these steps, GoDaddy still decided to suspend the registration, they should have contacted him first: remove this page or we'll have to disable your site. Failing that, they should have told him why it was being suspended (beyond the vague reference to TOS abuse) and how he could resolve it.
Disabling the entire site with (apparently) minimal investigation is overreaction, plain and simple. That quote from Jones, where they refused to rule out taking down an entire news site to block access to one story -- or even one comment -- is telling.
In other words, "We have no backbone. We obey power. You have none. MySpace does. Any questions?"
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
In the linked article Fyodor calls MySpace the "new AOL." I can see it. It certainly seems to encourage people to throw all caution to the wind.
As to what MySpace did, I'm honestly surprised how incredibly angry that makes me. I thought I was jaded by the petulance of businesses at this point. And Godaddy's response -- geez. I don't understand how a business can take your money and then refuse to talk to you.
Well, no -- I understand how they can do it. I understand it perfectly well. They do it because they figure they can get away with it, because even if they piss off one customer, how are the rest ever going to find out? Or care?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
....because Rupert Murdoch would have just bought them and fired the people who questioned whether NewsCorp has the right to restrict freedom of information.
And, by the way, I hope GoDaddy's reading this. I'm moving my domains away from you because of your lackadaisical approach to our constitutional rights.
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
Domain registrars should remain neutral in content disputes. Quis custodies ipsos custodes?
IANAL but wouldn't the site owner have some serious legal ammunition against both MySpace and GoDaddy?
This seems to me to be an issue for the courts, not an IT department.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I'm about to move my website from one host to another because my current shared hosting company (Netactuate, formerly VR Hosted) is falling down on their ass. I haven't even been able to load my cpanel this morning, and I tried two different connections - but their front page loads in a snap. I only jumped on them because of the gentoo hosting special but lunarpages is 2/3 the price of the discounted rate... I get 5GB and lunar gives 250GB, I get 200GB of transfer or something like that (I can't even load the cpanel to see what my quota is) and lunarpages gives 2.5 TB. I'll miss the shell access, but I can live without. Anyway, the moral of this story is that I think I'll take advantage of this moment to transfer my domain registration from godaddy to another registrar. Anyone have any recommendations?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The LAST thing in the world i would want to do as a registrar, or ANY web based business for that matter, is to piss off a bunch of hackers. I think karma might prevail on this one.
So, anyone have any recommendations for less-retarded registrars which might actually deserve my money?
You get what you pay for with GoDaddy. I certainly wouldn't expect them to take my side in a dispute with MySpace, News Corp, or, frankly, anyone with a significant number of lawyers on their side.
Providers, by and large, will cave to any request from a big company...Hell there was an article about it here a few days ago, that linked the BoF Experiment where they posted a public domain work on 10 different places, and then sent DMCA takedown notices to all 10 places, and had 7 remove it immediately even though it was clearly marked as public domain.
Face it; a hosting site that will stick up for it's customers against a significant threat from a big company is hard as hell to find, and sure as hell GoDaddy isn't going to do it for 10 bucks a month.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"remove a site that happened to archive a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords"
Why where these posted on the site? Was this part of disclosure regarding a security issue that MySpace wasn't willing to address?
The problem is reasonable. The response is not. There's a post above that illustrates the point, but this is the point.
It should be downright bloody illegal to do what Godaddy did. Or if not illegal, it should have serious repecussions for them as a registrar up to the point of dropping their registrar status.
Besides, Myspace's effort was entirely useless. Those usernames/passwords were already compromised, Fjodor's site was just one that had it from the many places it can be found. The sensible thing would have been a forced password reset for the users involved not trying to coerce a registrar.
My position is that unless a legal, court ordered action is forced on the registrar, it should be forbidden to drop anything. And in the case there is content that shouldn't be public on the site, that is a _hosting_ issue not a domain issue. Go bugger the hosting company with legal documents.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
For instance if the propogation of a large scale worm depended on the a server at www.example.com. There are two effective ways to stop the worm in it's tracks. One is to shut down the server at www.example.com. And the other is to pull the domain record. In such a situation most of us would advocate yanking both. I can't say that a registrar should never take action like this without a court order. But I don't believe this instance was jusitified.
There was a list compiled by a bunch of phishers that made it into the open a few months ago...Lot of security guys were using it to do things like check for the average complexity of passwords among users and suchlike. The first link I found was on Google was the Tech Reads blog, dated 9/16/6 (mdy), so this is nothing new.
Ordering a takedown in pointless...I can't believe that those users weren't informed that they should change their passwords, and if they were, what's the problem?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The next few thousand registered usernames on myspace will strangely resemble something like:
...
';DROP database;select * from x where '=
';DROP database;--
\';\'\';DROP database;--
It is very strange indeed.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
GoDaddy was not hosting the site, they are the registrar for the domain name. As such they control DNS for seclists.org, and part of what they did was to change the nameserver from what it was supposed to be to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM, effectively preventing most people from accessing the site.
The IP in the A record for seclists.org is registered to "MEER NET," who is either hosting the site or reselling the hosting, and had nothing to do with what GoDaddy did.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
1. Unconscionable: How I feel about this whole matter. Completely unconscionable that GoDaddy could or WOULD do anything like this.
2. 142: The number of domains I have registered with GoDaddy.
3. $1500: Roughly the annual amount I pay for my domains to renew them each year.
4. 48: The number of hours I have allotted myself this weekend to transfer each and every one of them AWAY from GoDaddy to someplace like NameCheap.com or DomainMonitor. Haven't decided yet.
5. True: Boolean value for whether or not I am pissed-off.
6. Very Much: The level of item 5, above's, value.
I've sent email to GoDaddy's customer relations department asking for clarification of this, stating that I'm going to be pulling my personal sites (hosted there) and all domains (and my company's 350+ domains (no, we're not squatters..)). If this turns out to be true, and can't clarify their position on when they might arbitrarily pull sites based on nothing but a request other than "when we feel like it" EVERYONE should get the hell out of Dodge, as they obviously are responsible business partners. Waiting for my rely, which will probably never come.
GoDaddy can GoFuckThemselves
#!/
Sounds reasonable to me.
And me too, but we seem to have the minority opinion here. I love reading the justifications on why this is "evil" of GoDaddy to do this. Then again, what do you expect from Slashdot readers? Last week everyone was up in arms because the RIAA and a SWAT team arrested a guy for "making mix tapes" when in fact he was a bootlegger with over EIGHTY THOUSAND bootleg CDs that got confiscated and it had nothing to do with mix tapes.
Everyone who is asking "WTF why do they even have the list?!" needs to go back and read the seclists.org list. It is an archive of a mailing list post, one which tens or hundreds of sites probably also have archived.
I believe MySpace and GoDaddy are both to blame here for reasons that any sensical person can see. I think I'll be looking for a new registrar now.
I see a lot of slashdot readers pulling their domains to another registrar. I don't know if any are better, but at least there have to be some that haven't already taken these draconian messures.
I have a few domains up for renewal, and was considering GoDaddy. Not any more. I am sure slashot readers must control the registration of several million domains.
I hope this publicity shows as a giant drop on their revenue graph.
I have only 2 domains with GoDaddy, but if they will not provide explanation, I'll pull out too and will help spread the word. Just wouldn't be able trust them. What if they transfer ownership of my domain if someone ask them ? What if they charge my credit card for some insane amount of money just because they feel like it?
I was looking at GoDaddy's page last night and was considering doing business with them. Then I came across this story: GoDaddy, the domain registrar (not the webhost) pulls someone's domain registration (not the website) without notice, process, or warning to the customer just because some large company requested it. The real-life equivalent would be the sheriff coming and evicting you from your home because someone made a noise complaint.
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclos ure/2007-01/0282.html
now please shut down google?
oh I see, they are corporate and fydor is the little guy, I forgot!!!
The point is that Myspace, a large corp, asked Godaddy, another large corp, for the removal of a domain. The domain pointed to an ISP that hosted a site that had some passwords that are all over the internet. I am not saying Fyodor had a right to post those passwords (IANALetc but this sounds like a case of yelling fire in the cinema to me) but he didn't even have a chance to do anything about it. This all happened over his head, he wasn't notified. Myspace had no court order. Godaddy didn't have a legal or moral leg to stand on. Plus, the domain name itself has nothing to do with the content, which is hosted at the ISP, which is NOT Godaddy (AFAIK), so why didn't Myspace take it up with them? Or, omg, with Fyodor? The point is not that he shouldn't be punished (or not, it's for the court to decide) but that he was convicted and executed without so much as being told what for.
That's why Godaddy is "evil": they don't want what's best for its customers (Fyodor in this case), they want what's safest for them. The land of the brave (and the free, but that's another post) it is not.
Also: can you supply a URL for that bootleg story? I'd like to check it out.
Dear GoDaddy,
Please take down Myspace for poorly designed profiles and the constant server errors when I view girls pictures.
Thank you
Bryan
people -- if you dont like the DMCA or U.S registrars instead of whining about it simply switch to joker.com (it switzerland) or ghandi (in france) or any of the non-U.S. based registrars out there. They will take your credit cards and a currency coversion is handled automatically. if you dont like it -- SWITCH. vote with your wallet. eventually U.S. based registrars WILL GET IT. SALES depts will kick their asses until they do.
I have a dedicated server hosted by GoDaddy, and a few days before Christmas got an automated DMCA takedown request for something allegedly on the server.
/John Doe/
I got an email from GoDaddy saying "please take this down and respond that, under penalty of perjury, you did so."
I happened to be checking my email at this moment, 12:30 at night, so I looked into the issue and responded to the email that the issue was resolved.
The next morning, my server wasn't responding to pings. So I email again saying, "hey, I took care of the complaint before you unplugged my machine, can you, you know, plug it back in?"
Day goes by. Eventually I get a response:
"Thank you for your response to the Copyright Department. In order to reactivate the site in question we will need you to provide the following information in a single email response:
A. An electronic signature. (This can be a scanned copy of your physical signature, or as simple as typing your full name.)
B. Identification of the material in question.
C. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the material has either been removed or will promptly be removed."
So I write back again, explaining the details. Again.
Day goes by. I call the tech support number and explain the situation. The tech support guy (who was very nice) told me he couldn't help, and I should try emailing the address I already had, twice. Sigh. I do it again.
Day goes by. I get the following response:
"Thank you for contacting the Copyright Claims Department. Unfortunately your previous email did not include a statment under penalty of perjury. Please submit a complete content removal statement at your earliest convenience to have your services reactivated. For your reference an example of a complete copyright removal statement is listed below.
I, John Doe, under penalty of perjury, will remove the offending content at http://www.mydomainname.com/myfile/page.htm promptly after the reactivation of my services.
John Doe
(Please accept the above as an electronic signature.)"
Okay, great. I finally found the magic formula. I copy the template exactly and fill in my details, send it out.
Day goes by. I get this back:
"Thank you for your email. We appreciate your responsiveness and cooperation on this matter. We have re-activated the account and services associated with your site. As some services require some time for propagation to take full effect, please allow 1-2 hours for the changes to take effect."
Ok, progress, finally.
Day goes by.
Day goes by.
Server still isn't responding. I email tech support to see if there's a problem. They tell me to try using the automatic reboot request form on the web panel. Sure enough, the system responds within minutes.
So basically, they were really on top of that from every angle. In the week my server was unavailable, I arranged for hosting at one of their competitors, Dreamhost.com, who rocks quite a bit. Specifically because of this incident, I probably won't renew the GoDaddy contract when it expires, but I also wonder if I'm really safer at any other ISP in America.
It's partially a shame because I really was perfectly satisfied with GoDaddy's hosting before this incident, and they just flat out botched it. The server provides bandwidth offloading for my main site, so I could survive without it for a week, but I couldn't imagine someone trusting their business to GoDaddy if they can callously cut your oxygen for a week.
It's also a shame because the DMCA required GoDaddy to have a knee-jerk reaction in the first place. I was basically accused, tried, and convicted by my service provider without any evidence or chance to defend myself. They should be looking at this as bad for business in even well-handled situations, and recognize that the best thing to do is take
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
In this case, why couldn't Myspace send Fyodor a letter asking for the content to be removed? Why didn't GoDaddy ask Myspace that question?
I don't think sending a letter to Fyodor was the answer. They had 250,000 compromised accounts. It wasn't the time to fire off a letter and sit and wait to see what happens. If you had a company and 250,000 accounts were compromised, I hope you would have been as assertive. It's not just important for your customers, it's important for your business as a whole.
Remember, Fyodor had done nothing wrong.
I don't recall anyone saying Fyodor did anything wrong. All I remember is a lot of people saying it was wrong to try and block propagation of private customer information. Which is why I brought up SS#, credit card information, etc. It's private information that isn't supposed to be on public display. It's not an issue with people until it's their information that on public display.
How exactly do you as the hosting provider handle such a thing? I believe GoDaddy did the right thing to a point.
GoDaddy was the domain registrar, not the hosting provider. There is a big difference. I would never use GoDaddy or any other domain registrar that would alter a registration without a court order.
Personally, I use directNIC and Domain Contender.
If someone sold you a stereo, then broke into your house and took it back, you'd call them a criminal. You wouldn't say they "did the right thing to the point", so besides the fact that GoDaddy sold virtual property, then broke into your virtual house and stole virtual property, how is this so different, it requires a completely different attitude? It's not up to me. It's not up to you either. It's up to a court of law so that rational and impartial minds find justice. Godaddy decided they were the judge and jury, and decided that they still are. I will never do business with Godaddy and I'd never do business with such a treacherous antiamerican hatemonger like yourself either.
Or to put it a way your simple little mind might grasp: My friend got his car reposessed so he couldn't get to work, so he lost his job, so he couldn't pay his rent, so he got kicked out of his house all because his bank decided that regular automatic payment that had been going on for every month for a full year suddenly looked very suspicious, and rather than pay it, or contact anyone, they decided it must be fraudulent and locked his account.
I think that Myspace could've fixed their bug, and turned their site off if Myspace had the bug. Asking Godaddy as they did was stupid and idiotic, but Godaddy actually doing it was downright criminal.
You might trust Godaddy with your house, your car, your job, and your family, but I don't.
I hope Fyodor sues Godaddy for all they're worth.
I got those questions too from large and smaller sites, first line didn't know what to do. My response to those things:
Dear,
Please contact the owner of the domain for such matters. If you have any problems finding this, the information can be queried through the whois database. We do not comply with any request for take down unless signed by a judge in our LOCAL district court (the exact information for such procedures can be found in our legal notices on our website).
If you have any further questions, please contact your legal counsel or a legal counsel in our district to proceed.
Sincerely,
MyName
Usually I didn't get any further communication on this. We had a few times the police come in to 'take down' the server. We denied access to our datacenters and told them to take a hike. We also had a few times the police (detectives) to get an 'IP address' for a website (they heard you needed that somehow). We just wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to them, they must have thought it was like a package or device they were going to get to disable a site because they asked: What is that? An IP address. Is that it? Yes. Is the site down then? No. But we want it down! No, sorry, gotta get a court order AND a search warrant for our premises AND a search warrant for our clients premises (since the server is their premises).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Let's post some usernames and passwords on MySpace and ask for their domain to be taken down. It only sounds fair.
Eh, they use Network Solutions as their registrar - good luck getting anything done there.
Good concept, though.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The French registrar is Gandi, as opposed to Ghandi. This is meant to assist people in finding them and is not intended as a spelling flame.
I am Ben Butler, the Director of Network Abuse at Go Daddy and I want to personally address your posts regarding SecLists.org. As we have said to our customers - Go Daddy is committed to keeping the Internet a safe place. If there is material online that is jeopardizing Internet safety, we will take necessary action. In this case, Go Daddy attempted to contact the customer with regard to a large list of MySpace user names and passwords which appeared on his Web site. The registrant was not available at the time. In order to protect users of MySpace from the risk of having private data revealed, we removed the site until we could make contact with our customer. Once we were able to discuss the issue with the registrant, he assured us he would remove the offending material and we re-enabled his site while he was on the phone. The site was back up within one hour. In each case like this, my department follows a set of operating procedures evaluating whether to remove hosting content or to redirect domain names. The decision is carefully made on a case-by-case basis. Most times, the site is left as is. An important issue I would ask you to consider is one that is a top priority for us at Go Daddy - child exploitation or even the potential for it. I don't know of any parent who wouldn't want their child's username and password protected. Ben Butler Director of Network Abuse The Go Daddy Group, Inc Abuse@GoDaddy.com
I asked GoDaddy what their side of it was. This is what they sent me:
I am Ben Butler, the Director of Network Abuse at Go Daddy and I want to personally address your posts regarding SecLists.org.
As we have said to our customers - Go Daddy is committed to keeping the Internet a safe place. If there is material online that is jeopardizing Internet safety, we will take necessary action.
In this case, Go Daddy attempted to contact the customer with regard to a large list of MySpace user names and passwords which appeared on his Web site. The registrant was not available at the time.
In order to protect users of MySpace from the risk of having private data revealed, we removed the site until we could make contact with our customer. Once we were able to discuss the issue with the registrant, he assured us he would remove the offending material and we re-enabled his site while he was on the phone. The site was back up within one hour.
In each case like this, my department follows a set of operating procedures evaluating whether to remove hosting content or to redirect domain names. The decision is carefully made on a case-by-case basis. Most times, the site is left as is.
An important issue I would ask you to consider is one that is a top priority for us at Go Daddy - child exploitation or even the potential for it.
I don't know of any parent who wouldn't want their child's username and password protected.
Ben Butler
Director of Network Abuse
The Go Daddy Group, Inc
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
Certainly, it was wrong.
GoDaddy did nothing right in this.
Specifically:
To clarify: even in the event there possibly did turn out to be an actual, legitimate, legal basis for the complaint, no process was followed to actually attempt to asses what that might be, nor to determine what a proper response -- other than taking down the entire domain -- might have actually been.
This, in the simplest of terms, is entirely a case of thoughtless censorship without even the most basic attempt at fact-finding.
How should they have handled it?
They should have:
This should have been the end of GoDaddy's involvement.
In the event the site's Responsible Party and MySpace did not come to an understanding, and they were again approached by MySpace, GoDaddy should then have:
if they were only the registrar, and not the hosting provider:
if they were also the hosting provider, they should then have:
Only in the event that GoDaddy's preliminary review did lead them to believe the claim was founded, they should have either (in general, so bear with me):
if the material fell under DMCA,
or, if not covered by DMCA,
It's time that those in power, whether governments or large corporations, stopped using this argument (along with the "If we don't curtail some of your rights, the terrorists have already won.") to justify their abuses.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I am a Godaddy customer and I'm not happy with this. Not one bit. It isn't *your* job to enforce Internet safety. It's your job to look after the domain names of your customers. Get that straight: I pay *your* salary. You and Bob Parsons work for *me and all your other customers*. I really resent the idea that some corporation can say right words to you, and shut down my web site. You're my domain shop. You are not my Priest, Lawyer or Moral Guardian. If MySpace want to shut something down, make them go to the courts and get an order like everyone else. Your behavior on this matter is abysmal. It worries me so much that if anyone here suggests a similarly priced service, I'll go there. Quite frankly, I don't trust with my domain names.
MySpace would than have contacted their customers and let them change their passwords.
Once the passwords were published, they have to be changed anyways, haven't they?
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.