Say I register a domain with Namecheap. Namecheap will ask me who I want to resolve the domain (or offer to do it themselves).
I go and look up the details for DigitalOcean or Amazon or whatever and I put them in, but I either don't tell the hosting provider I've done this, or I later delete the domain in DO/AWS, someone else can come along and tell DigitalOcean that they own it (AWS as well, though it's harder since they have a bigger pool of name servers).
Once DigitalOcean believes that the new user owns it they allow them to edit the DNS records. The attacker can then point the domain at whatever server they like and "takeover" the domain.
The original owner can get it back by changing the details in their registrar. But in the mean time a bunch of traffic might have been intercepted by the attacker (all kinds of bad).
NB: this was the case in 2016 when the article was written, I have not checked if it is still the case.
vertis|5 years ago
I go and look up the details for DigitalOcean or Amazon or whatever and I put them in, but I either don't tell the hosting provider I've done this, or I later delete the domain in DO/AWS, someone else can come along and tell DigitalOcean that they own it (AWS as well, though it's harder since they have a bigger pool of name servers).
Once DigitalOcean believes that the new user owns it they allow them to edit the DNS records. The attacker can then point the domain at whatever server they like and "takeover" the domain.
The original owner can get it back by changing the details in their registrar. But in the mean time a bunch of traffic might have been intercepted by the attacker (all kinds of bad).
NB: this was the case in 2016 when the article was written, I have not checked if it is still the case.