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Dell Lost Control of Key Customer Support Domain for a Month in 2017 (krebsonsecurity.com)
Brian Krebs reports: A web site set up by PC maker Dell to help customers recover from malicious software and other computer maladies may have been hijacked for a few weeks this summer by people who specialize in deploying said malware, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. There is a program installed on virtually all Dell computers called "Dell Backup and Recovery Application." It's designed to help customers restore their data and computers to their pristine, factory default state should a problem occur with the device. That backup and recovery program periodically checks a rather catchy domain name -- DellBackupandRecoveryCloudStorage.com -- which until recently was central to PC maker Dell's customer data backup, recovery and cloud storage solutions. Sometime this summer, DellBackupandRecoveryCloudStorage.com was suddenly snatched away from a longtime Dell contractor for a month and exposed to some questionable content. More worryingly, there are signs the domain may have been pushing malware before Dell's contractor regained control over it.
In large corporations itâ(TM)s often easier to register a new domain than go through the hoops of getting a subdomain approved.
Where I work, it takes me $8 and a half hour work to get a domain but it can easily take me 6 work hours across 2-4 weeks to get a subdomain.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I've got to wonder if the Internet has caused a *lot* more problems than it's solved.
Let me put your mind at ease. The internet has caused new problems to be sure but it has resolved even more old ones. I'm old enough that I pre-date the internet in anything remotely resembling its current form and I pre-date the world wide web by multiple decades. I can assure you that the Good Old Days weren't all that good and that the the internet has solved substantially more problems than it has caused. Nothing is perfect and people are still just as incompetent as they ever were but that doesn't mean the technology is a bad thing.