Comment by davchana | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davchana | Hacker News Reader

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> so they can give the domain to some other customer of theirs without doing any verification

Hosting company can not "give" the domain to anybody. If domain is still pointing to Hosting with NS records, anybody could make an account at Hosting, and add that domain. Now that scammer controls whats visible at Domain, but he is not yet the owner of domain.

Owner is who control and can change NS records. Scammer can change all other records, but not NS. NS is at original domain registrar. Original owner can very easily change the NS and cut the scammer out of everything (& should).

Gitlab used to be like this. You add a domain to Gitlab. You add an A record to your domain registrar or NS Manager. Now your domain shows your Gitlab Page. After few months, you don't want the pages anymore. You delete the project from Gitlab. You ignore to delete the A Record. Scammer adds that domain to his Gitlab, and shows his content at your domain.

Now Gitlab asks you to add a verification TXT record when adding any domain. Scammer's veri record is different. He can't prove that he owns the domain.

> Hosting company can not "give" the domain to anybody.

> Gitlab used to be like this

That's what I'm saying. Hosters can "give" a domain (i.e. control of that domain's records on their nameserver only) to someone else, because they're not registrars and aren't _required_ by some painful business contract with ICANN to have to take change of ownership seriously.

They should require a domain validation challenge to add a new domain, like your Gitlab example, but it doesn't seem like anyone can make them.

So therefore the onus is currently on the domain owner not to leave their domains' NS records pointing at nameservers they don't control!

> the onus is currently on the domain owner not to leave their domains' NS records pointing at nameservers they don't control!

That's exactly right. That is how this "attack" happens. Bad actor exploits registrant's abandoned yet still authoritative third-party nameservers assignment.

Discussion elsewhere in this thread[1] of how some of that responsibility/risk could be spread/shifted onto the DNS provider.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41126976

Hosting can't make the challenge. Only way to prove is to make a TXT or cname record. Anybody where tha NS is pointing to, can make any DNS records.

Its like you put a lock (NS) on your box (Domain). After few months you don't care about that box anymore and leave that key in the wild. Anybody can pick that key and use the box. The box holder (domain registrar) can't make you verify that you are the original owner 'by' asking you to open the box, because by default, anybody who has key, can open the box. The correct way & responsible way is to destroy the box (delete the domain) or at least destroy the key (unpoint the third party NS records).

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