staminus.net domain down

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Posted by hostvirtual, 01-11-2012, 07:36 AM
To clarify - The staminus website is down, not their service - no response from dns and pointing to strange ns1.badwhoisshutdown.com records.

Has anyone ever seen this? Some kind of hack or a registrar issue?
Posted by hostvirtual, 01-11-2012, 07:40 AM
Ie,

Domain Name: STAMINUS.NET
Registrar: DOTSTER, INC.
Whois Server: whois.dotster.com
Name Server: NS1.BADWHOISSHUTDOWN.COM
Name Server: NS2.BADWHOISSHUTDOWN.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 10-jan-2012
Creation Date: 25-jul-2001
Expiration Date: 25-jul-2012
Posted by freethought, 01-11-2012, 07:50 AM
I believe that's what Dotster do when you don't respond to a complaint about inaccurate whois on a domain.
Posted by hostvirtual, 01-11-2012, 07:54 AM
Youch - news to me they would do that, but googling for the badwhoisshutdown domain does show various similar stories -- including some that have taken out fairly large sites.

I'd wonder if they ask for verification only via email or also via mail to the whois address. Complicating matters would be privacy protection/forwarding agents that don't forward things in time..

Bad stuff for Staminus though. I just ran across it because I regularly refer people to blacklotus & staminus for DDoS protection, and the person mentioned they couldn't get to the staminus site.
Posted by jenok, 01-11-2012, 08:52 AM
lol, badwhoisshutdown. It looks funny.
Posted by toro, 01-11-2012, 01:22 PM
Yes, I agree, it's funny, in an unprofessional and unreliable way. As it turns out, they did send us an email. They wanted to confirm that our contact information which has been on file for 12 years was correct. They wanted to confirm that our contact information which is on file with the Secretary of State of California is correct. As it turns out, our contact information is correct! Sadly, we did miss the email.

They shut down our domain and promptly left work, not to return until 8AM the next morning, leaving our website offline for the duration. A long phone call to their 24/7 support department yielded no results. Their support is severely limited after hours.

They pushed the burden of their responsibility to ICANN. That argument can be made. However, their method of handling shutdowns is unorthodox. They shut down and simply leave, with no method of recourse. That responsibility falls squarely on their shoulders.

Domain registrars are not very complicated so there isn't much we expect from them. We have been with them for some 12 years with registration contact details not having changed during that time. Their nonchalant and careless attitude towards domain management certainly makes me reconsider them as our choice for important domains.
Posted by hostvirtual, 01-11-2012, 01:34 PM
Crazy.

We regularly get a contact confirmation requests from enom for our domains, asking us to respond if there *are* changes to our info. It says something about ICANN compliance, but to tell you the truth since it says respond only if needed it is pretty much ignored.

At the very least we'll take a closer look at these.

I wonder if it was the same type of email you received, and dotster has some crazy policy requiring you to verify something, or if given the nature of your service it was a one off initiated by a malicious request. If so, it sounds like thanks to the level of service they provide the entire thing went from bad to worse.

Glad it's resolved and your site is back up. It's certainly put us on notice with respect to these notices!
Posted by FastServ, 01-11-2012, 01:42 PM
this concerns me because we use dotster for several domains (a couple important ones too) and never been required to respond to notices, which all are from a 'do-not-reply' address.

From: do-not-reply@notification.registerapi.com

Quote:

Dear Valued Customer,

This message is your annual reminder that the contact data associated with your
domain registration account must be accurate and up-to-date. Please review the
domain information below to ensure that it is correct. If you have any questions
regarding this notice please click on the following link for a set of frequently
asked questions.

http://www.icann.org/whois/wdrp-registrant-faq.htm

Our records include the following information:

Domain(s):
<snip>

Registrant:
<snip>

If any of the information above is inaccurate, you must correct it by visiting
our website. (If your review indicates that ALL of the domain information above
is accurate, you do NOT need to take any action.)

Please remember that under the terms of your registration agreement, the provision
of false Whois information can be grounds for cancellation of your domain name
registration.

Although we respect your privacy, and understand your concerns about listing
your domain contact information, our regulating authority, ICANN, requires that
this notice (http://www.icann.org/registrars/wdrp.htm) be sent annually and that
all domain contact information associated with your domain registrations be
up-to-date and accurate.

If you have any questions regarding this requirement, please refer to ICANN's
frequently asked questions for more information about the WDRP
http://www.icann.org/en/whois/wdrp-registrant-faq.htm.

For assistance or questions regarding your services, you may login to
your account and click on Manage Cases to contact our Customer CARE
team.

Posted by hostvirtual, 01-11-2012, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FastServ

this concerns me because we use dotster for several domains (a couple important ones too) and never been required to respond to notices, which all are from a 'do-not-reply' address.

From: do-not-reply@notification.registerapi.com

Right - this is basically verbatim what we get from enom, and what we ignore regularly for our own domains, since none of the information changes and is kept up to date. I can't ever remember getting anything else, but I could understand also overlooking a domain specific request if it's formatted in a similar way thinking it is one of the general notices.
Posted by Matt R, 01-11-2012, 02:14 PM
My best guess is that Dotster may have received a notice of a complaint against the Whois information on file. That happened to me recently, where some kid filed a complaint against my personal domain name (mrosenblatt.net) and Enom nearly revoked my domains status since it was assigned to an old managers@ address.

I'm glad I check that box periodically...
Posted by Patrick, 01-11-2012, 03:01 PM
Interesting.

You know that church from Kansas who protests soldiers funerals, who frankly in my opinion and I have zero problem saying this in public, should have their throats slashed and left to bleed out on the street, have incorrect WHOIS in some of their domains and I've reported it many times and nothing has ever happened...

Where is the consistency in enforcing invalid WHOIS?
Posted by sentabi, 01-11-2012, 03:04 PM
I can open their site :
host staminus.net

Quote:

Host staminus.net not found: 2(SERVFAIL)

host www.staminus.net

Quote:

www.staminus.net is an alias for staminus.net.
staminus.net has address 69.197.58.67
Host staminus.net not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
Host staminus.net not found: 2(SERVFAIL)

but with www. subdomain.
Posted by [x10]Corey, 01-11-2012, 04:36 PM
I can also confirm that this would be caused by someone initiating a complaint stating the whois info is incorrect.

I would switch away from any registrar that shut off my domain without making proper phone contact with me first, especially if my whois info was correct. While ICANN requires whois info to be accurate and a suspension is the penalty the registrar should have made a bit more effort in contacting you to verify before suspending the domain, especially for a customer of 12 years.
Posted by nibb, 01-11-2012, 05:19 PM
Works fine for me.
Posted by hostvirtual, 01-11-2012, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nibb

Works fine for me.

As mentioned by @toro of Staminus, they got it resolved first thing in the morning once the Dotster folks came into the office.

I'd say the moral here is to give any emails from your registrar a second look. At least personally, I've pretty much ignored them!