Slashdot Mirror
Police Lose National High-Tech Crime Unit Website
Barence writes "The UK police have embarrassingly lost control of the National High-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) website. PC Pro reports the police have sloppily let the domain registration lapse, and it has now been picked up by an opportunistic German owner. The NHTCU was disbanded two years ago, but sites such as the BBC were still linking to the website as recently as July, making it a prime target for malware writers or phishing attacks."
SOCA remains entirely unrepentant for the lapse. "SOCA is aware that registration of the domain www.nhtcu.org has lapsed and is taking the necessary steps to remind partners and stakeholders that the NHTCU became SOCA e-crime in April 2006
I guess admitting that they goofed by letting the domain accidentally lapse would be too much. Instead they have to pretend like the domain is worthless since they changed their name two years ago.
With that reasoning, I guess AT&T can just let "cingular.com" lapse even though I still type that in every time I go to pay my AT&T wireless bill.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I would have changed it to a site proving how crime can pay.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
3...2...1...
Obviously that Gary McKinnon again, up to his hackery deeds again.
If you are a business, it pays to keep control of names and phone numbers for 5 years after you stop using them.
In the case of web sites, a few months with a nice "this web site has changed" message followed by a few months of an automated redirect, followed by several years of no DNS entry.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
All your Domain are belong to us!
This is nothing new... watch your intellectual property or lose it to someone who is.
This illustrates why it's not always a good idea for every sub-organization, project and campaign to use its own top-level domain name. If the unit was part of the British government, surely a domain underneath .gov.uk would have been appropriate? Then you need not pay any fees to register it (except perhaps from one part of the government to another) and it can never be taken over by spammers.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Since it's my taxes that pay for it, I'm quite happy to see the registration lapse. This is a bit of a non-story and wouldn't be an issue if other people kept their links up-to-date.
Protect yourself from Phishing emails by visiting www.NHTCU.org and giving us all of your information. We're a High Tech Crime Unit! We would never misused your information, honest.
I guess I could sell it back to them for the 'right' price
The title's a bit misleading considering the organization is now defunct anyway.
Nuh-uh.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Why exactly is this their responsibility? It's not their fault that other Web sites are linking to a now-defunct organization. Do they have to keep and maintain the domain forever just because a bunch of other people might not revise their links?
The guy who owns it now is running a blog that looks like it was written by a cheap copywriter. I think I'm going to email him about acquiring the domain, the site could be used for some hilarious parodies. Its current use, or using it to commit crime, would be a waste of pure gold comedic content. Anyways, the risk looks minimal. I searched for sites linking to nhtcu.com and there aren't that many -- and BBC has already stripped most of its links.
the coppers are clueless... Maybe it's all in a name, since Graham has more than a gram of sense, and pounds of cents...
(Sorry, I'm not English, so I can't whip out one of those zany/apropos remarks for which they can be SMASHING FAMOUS...)
But, it seems one of the coppers may be caught flatfooted, and be feeling soooo.... busted...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Who cares?
I have always thought that our country needs more enterpreneurial esprit. But pissing off the brits is not what I was thinking off. Maybe he's hoping to sell it back to them for a tidy profit...
1. Wait (for gov to make mistake) ... (wait for gov to realize mistake. May be longer than 1.)
2. Buy
3.
4. Profit!
If they had used a .gov.uk domain, rather than a TLD, would this have happened?
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
Title should read "Crime Unit Domain", not "Crime Unit Website".
I don't see how some jokester grabbing up the domain to be funny should be taken as any kind of serious sign of incompetence, as the article implies, especially since the people that worked there, you know, don't work there anymore.
It's just slightly ironic.
I must admit it's to me surprising that a slashdot user would pay their bill on an old domain like that and trust that AT&T won't do something equally as stupid
I'm quite sure that AT&T is just that stupid. However, I'm too lazy to do anything about it.
I'm a big tall mofo.
No.
Don't they have the brain to renew it on a long-term basis and have alerts sent a few months before expiry?
A fool and his domain name are easily separated.
slashdot rocks
This is similar to what a blogger, Long Zheng at the I Started Something blog, did. He was reading a Microsoft security/phishing article which made mention to the fictional website "www.somebadsite.com". This was an unresolved domain name so he did what any ethical person would do - he purchased it and linked it to his own site.
That's some serious Google link juice right there. I wonder if the links were nofollowed.
P.s., looks like that link has been removed from Microsoft's article.
Here's how a genius like yourself could save plenty of money in a similarly creative way:
* Unmount seat belts and airbags in your car, and sell them at the flea market
* Forego those expensive vaccinations and malaria medications next time you go near the tropics
* Cancel all those useless insurance policies
Come to think of it, sounds a lot like Republican economic policies.
What a story.
Lazy bureaucrats failed to do what was required of them.. film at 11.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
in 3 - 2 - 1...
Ha - Ha!
Sig this!
Email addresses on this domain will be subscribed to newsletters, briefing reports, and will be cc'd on correspondance for years to come. I'm sure the webtraffic will be interesting to serve targetted ads to, but thats nothing to the interesting email traffic that the domain will attract.
I suspect someone didn't think through the implications of not protecting their domain portfolio.