Microsoft Takes Down No-IP.com Domains 495
An anonymous reader writes For some reason that escapes me, a Judge has granted Microsoft permission to hijack NoIP's DNS. This is necessary according to Microsoft to thwart a "global cybercrime epidemic" being perpetrated by infected machines running Microsoft software.
No-IP is a provider of dynamic DNS services (among other things). Many legitimate users were affected by the takedown: "This morning, Microsoft served a federal court order and seized 22 of our most commonly used domains because they claimed that some of the subdomains have been abused by creators of malware. We were very surprised by this. We have a long history of proactively working with other companies when cases of alleged malicious activity have been reported to us. Unfortunately, Microsoft never contacted us or asked us to block any subdomains, even though we have an open line of communication with Microsoft corporate executives. ... We have been in contact with Microsoft today. They claim that their intent is to only filter out the known bad hostnames in each seized domain, while continuing to allow the good hostnames to resolve. However, this is not happening."
Re:Sue them for all they're worth (Score:3, Informative)
Lawsuits should be flying in all directions.
Are you suggesting they sue the court? Good luck with that. ISTM the fundamental problem is that the US courts have become the corporations bitches. Who are you going to sue and where are you going to sue them?
The book Econned [ineteconomics.org] explains how people with a far right economic agenda have been stacking the US courts for years. The result is what you see, basically a feudal systems where corporations are treated like lords and everyone else is a serf.
Re:Legal Precedent? (Score:5, Informative)
property used to engage in criminal activity is subject to seizure and/or forfeiture. Domains have been seized in the past due to criminal activity but this has usually accompanied a criminal complaint by a law enforcement agency.
In this case, despite what the article may imply, Microsoft hasn't seized ownership of the domains. Rather, they used an ex parte temporary restraining order to seize control of the domains so that they may neutralize the source of the maliciousness. The ex-parte aspect is why no-ip wasn't notified. Microsoft managed to convince a judge to grant the order without informing the other party (most likely to prevent no-ip from notifying the malicious users). This will be followed up by a formal hearing, and full control of the domains will be restored to no-ip eventually.
If Microsoft abuses this, judges won't be so inclined to grant such requests in the future.
Affected me (Score:4, Informative)
I don't serve anything important... but I usually post images through my local server and upload to imgur "through the web" - it took several retries when I tried to do this a short while ago, and now I know why.
Thanks, Microsoft.... you can't just take over no-ip and then run it through crap servers that can't handle the loads.
Re:Legal Precedent? (Score:5, Informative)
property used to engage in criminal activity is subject to seizure and/or forfeiture. Domains have been seized in the past due to criminal activity but this has usually accompanied a criminal complaint by a law enforcement agency.
In this case, despite what the article may imply, Microsoft hasn't seized ownership of the domains. Rather, they used an ex parte temporary restraining order to seize control of the domains so that they may neutralize the source of the maliciousness. The ex-parte aspect is why no-ip wasn't notified. Microsoft managed to convince a judge to grant the order without informing the other party (most likely to prevent no-ip from notifying the malicious users). This will be followed up by a formal hearing, and full control of the domains will be restored to no-ip eventually.
If Microsoft abuses this, judges won't be so inclined to grant such requests in the future.
Most people I know that use no-ip are people setting up their own minecraft servers its not a hotbed of criminal activivty like MS claims. I use it for my ssh server/freeciv/cloud storage/retroshare and it has been inaccessibly today thanks to microsofts fuckery. claiming that they are a tool of criminal activity is like saying that the internet is a tool of criminal acivity because criminals use it, which is to say anything may be taken away and given to another with this same logic.
I wonder seeings as Microsoft has fucked with my servers traffic today thanks to this could I go after in court them for maliciously hijacking my sub domain and traffic and have their DNS entries redirect to me with no warning to microsoft.
Re:Legal Precedent? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm one of those Minecraft servers. Goddammit I ony found out why this was happening thanks to slashdot.
I know my own IP, but none of my users do.
Malice? more like incompetence... (Score:5, Informative)
A quick skim of the motion for the court order gave me the "boilerplate" and "cut & paste" feeling. There is a lot of sloppy line blurring between actions and complaints directed at the Malware authors and the no-ip folks. Sometimes they refer to the "Malware Defendants" and other times the generic "Defendants" when they meant the former. Really sloppy legal work.
There are some real gems in there:
From section 7:
"There is good cause to believe that immediate and irreparable damage to this Court’s ability to grant effective final relief will result from the sale, transfer, or other disposition or concealment by Defendants of the Internet domains at issue"
Say what? How is that related anything? Its not like the TRO will actually prevent people from being able to hit 'delete' via the control panel. Given that everything's busted by their own doing, the bad guys got a huge head start.
From section 8: ..." ...
"... and the interest of justice require that this Order be Granted without prior notice to Defendants
Wow
The full motion text: http://www.noticeoflawsuit.com... [noticeoflawsuit.com]
It seems to me that regardless of what good intentions that Microsoft may have had, they've really fouled up the execution. They'll be remembered more for taking out millions of legitimate users than the malware they *might* be able to take down.
Re:Sue them for all they're worth (Score:5, Informative)
Not showing up should not result in a suspension of justice and free reign to dispense outrageous judgements.
Uhh, that's exactly what happens. It's called a default judgment. What exactly do you think the court should do if a party fails to appear in a civil case?
Re:Sue them for all they're worth (Score:2, Informative)
I bet it's nothing to do with malware.
It's because there are instructions like this on Facebook, as well as other places.....
**Activate Windows 8 without using crack or patch*** /upk /ipk XXXXX-11111-XXXXX-11111-XXXXX /skms lunar21.no-ip.org:80
1) Open your command prompt as administrator
2) Type exactly what you see below (Press enter after each line)
slmgr
slmgr
slmgr
slmgr.vbs -ato
3) Restart your system and enjoy your activated windows 8.
Note: This trick was tested on Windows 8 Professional Retail. Enjoy!!!
Once again, content providers and piracy take precedence over all other interests, business or otherwise.