SolidHost .COM domain hijacked

[SH-Andre]

Dear Customer,

As announced by email and at www.solidhost-noc.com, our main domain (solidhost.com) was hijacked on Monday the 4th of August 2008, early in the afternoon.

This domain hijack was the result of an error at the end of our domain registrar (eNom). We suspect they had a security breach on their end, resulting in the fact that the hijacker was able to move our domain away from eNom to another registrar without our authorization. More in-depth information on this subject will be posted shortly.

Right now the problem is that due to lots of official (legal) procedures, it isn't all that easy to get the domain name back. We will absolutely get the domain name back, but this is taking quite a lot of time (more than two full days so far) due to all the procedures that are involved (and the fact that eNom is incredibly slow at handling this specific issue - this will be elaborated later on too).

Our helpdesk departments are fully operational as normally - you can only just not reach them through the normal email contacts. For this purpose the www.solidhost-noc.com domain name was set up.

Right now we are working to get everything up and running on the www.solidhost.nl domain name, so normal operations can continue through this domain while we are working to get solidhost.com back. Right now we have already come a long way (it is a huge amount of work due to all the scripting that needs to be changed), but we aren't 100% done yet. The normal helpdesk system and billing system are not operational yet through this domain, however we expect this will also be ready again today.

In the meanwhile, you may still contact us non-stop through http://www.solidhost-noc.com and the support@solidhost-noc.com email address. Once the solidhost.nl website is completely ready later today, things will be switched over (no action will be required for customers, both the solidhost-noc.com and solidhost.nl domains will remain active simultaniously).

More information on this matter will be provided as soon as possible, right now we just have to focus on getting the rest of the website operational first.

Our apologies for the inconvenience, and a big thank you to everyone for all your support and patience. We appreciate it a lot!

[SH-Andre]

As of today we have recovered our domain solidhost.com - it now belongs to us again and is completely under our own control.

The lawsuit against the registrars and hijacker is not over yet, however through a premilary injunction the court has decided that we have provided more than enough evidence that the domainname is our property. The hijacker has a few more days to respond to the lawsuit in order to object this decision, but we do not expect him to respond at all (as he would then also have to identify himself).

Until the case is over, I'm afraid I cannot share any information about the claims for recovery of our damages (resulting from the hijack). Needless to say - as soon as we are able to - more information about this will be posted later.

If you are not able to reach our website yet through www.solidhost.com - that might mean your ISP (or your computer/router) has still cached the old DNS, however this will change once the cache updates. As such - for now - we are forwarding the traffic from www.solidhost.com to the www.solidhost.nl domain (as otherwise some people might not be able to reach the website). We will switch everything back to the www.solidhost.com domain once we are sure that the DNS has propagated for everyone.

Although we were not able to use the solidhost.com domain for 3 weeks, in legal terms, the court has acted upon this matter very promptly, for which we are thankful. For now this is a good step in the right direction.

An update will be posted here again as soon as we switch back the website back to www.solidhost.com. Once we do that, you will not have to do anything, as all traffic from the solidhost.nl will then simply be forwarded to solidhost.com.

Should you have any questions or concerns, then please contact our support department.