[ISN] Cybersquatter storms the Bastille (Linux)

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2007 - 23:18:41 PDT


http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/09/13/bastille_linux/

By John Leyden
13 Sep 2007

Bastille Linux was forced to switch domain this week after a 
cybersquatter took control of the Bastille-Linux.org website.

Downloads of Bastille Linux have always been offered through 
SourceForge, with Bastille-linux.org serving more as a store-front than 
as a primary download location. The change of ownership of the site came 
to light only after duty staff at the Internet Storm Centre followed up 
a tip [1] that something was amiss.

After getting in touch with Jay Beale, the leader of the Bastille Linux 
Project, it merged that the site had fallen into the clutches of an 
opportunist who had somehow purchased the domain and who sought $10,000 
for its return. It's unclear how exactly the new holder [2], Mykhaylo 
Perebiynis, came to acquire the domain.

Most of the images and navigation on Bastille-linux.org are currently 
broken. Nothing - benign or malign - is being offered for download 
through the site.

Beale is confident of regaining the domain via either legal action and 
the domain arbitration but his lawyers have warned him this may take 
some time even though the project trademarked the domain in 1999.

In one respect, the domain ambush is a blessing in disguise. Bastille 
Linux has run on two non-Linux platforms, Mac OSX and HP-UX, for years. 
So its name has become a bit misleading. The loss of the 
Bastille-linux.org website provides an opportunity to rebrand the 
software as Bastille Unix.

"We've purchased the Bastille-Unix.org domain and will set the 
Bastille-Linux.org website to transparently forward to the 
Bastille-Unix.org website once we get the domain back," Beale explains 
in a statement [3] on SourceForge.

He includes his PGP fingerprint in a posting on the incident. This 
cryptographic key will be used to sign any Bastille Unix downloads and 
critical email announcements, he adds.

[1] http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3378 
[2] http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=Bastille-linux.org 
[3] http://bastille-linux.sourceforge.net/press-release-newname.html


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