Friday, June 20, 2008

Register.com investigating Photobucket DNS hijack

When you think about , what do you think of first? Which aspects of are important, which are essential, and which ones can you take or leave? You be the judge.

Register.com is looking into the hijack of Photobucket's DNS records that redirected customers to an unrelated Web page this week.

"The Photobucket site was down for a very short time and was restored immediately when we became aware of the issue." Roni Jacobson, general counsel of Register.com, said in a statement on Thursday. "We are currently investigating the source of the problem."

On Tuesday afternoon, some Photobucket customers trying to access the site were temporarily redirected to a page that appeared to have been hacked by a Turkish group calling itself "NetDevilz."


If you find yourself confused by what you've read to this point, don't despair. Everything should be crystal clear by the time you finish.

Photobucket discovered the problem within about an hour of when it started and soon thereafter began rolling out a fix. Some customers were able to access the site within a few hours, but for others it took as long as two days, according to the site.

The company is urging customers to do a DNS Flush on their computer, as well as reboot the modem and/or the router if they are still having trouble reaching the site.

"If this does not resolve the issue, please try again later, as the redirect may still be cached in your ISP's DNS files. Depending on the ISP, it may take up to 72 hours (or longer) for their DNS cache to be cleared (or for it to expire), so you should consider contacting them to see if anything can be expedited," the company said in a blog post.

In May, Comcast's DNS records and site were hijacked.

That's how things stand right now. Keep in mind that any subject can change over time, so be sure you keep up with the latest news.

Many customers of Photobucket were unable to reach the site for anywhere from hours to days this week after the site's DNS records were hijacked.

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