SAN FRANCISCO, CA – This wasn’t part of the blueprint for Blueprint Ventures; over the weekend of December 9 – 10th, the company’s website was taken over by a hacker, who seized control of Blueprint’s domain and posted links to porn sites in place of the firm’s corporate website.According to reports on RedHerring.com and InsideBayArea.com, the domain was hijacked by way of taking over the company’s register.com account. While domains are frequently snatched up by third parties when the owner fails to renew their registration of the domain, a Blueprint executive said that wasn’t the case with their domain.
“It’s like identity fraud,” said Bart Schachter, Blueprint’s managing director, according to RedHerring.com. “Now we can’t even get into the register.com entry, because they changed all the passwords.”
“In the records, it looks like they own it now,” added Schachter, according to InsideBayArea.com. “Short of a duel in the street, you have to go to the organization that administers these things and say, ‘No, no, no, it’s ours.’”
The domain in question, blueprintventures.com, now yields a “page cannot be displayed” error when visited. For a brief period last week, however, the index page displayed a message reading “under construction,” along with an exhortation to visit “top quality” porn site links also displayed on the page.
According to RedHerring.com, the hacker in question is known for altering the domain name server pointer, then subsequently directing the domain to porn sites and demanding a ransom to undo the changes to the compromised domain.
Schachter would not comment on whether the hacker that took over his firm’s design has demanded any money, according to InsideBayArea.com. Schachter did say that the company likely won’t seek criminal charges, but Blueprint is considering taking action through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) arbitration process.
According to Schachter, the presence of the porn links on the website, while embarrassing, isn’t the primary problem; the interruption of the company’s email service is.
“If our phone system went down, it wouldn’t matter, but our e-mail system is our lifeline,” Schachter told InsideBayArea.com.
For the time being, Blueprint has set up a temporary domain, blueprintventure.com (singular “venture” as opposed to plural “ventures”), to house the firm’s website.
Schachter noted that the firm’s business associates have been very supportive of Blueprint, empathizing with the company’s technical difficulties.
“Everyone’s been around the block to know what it’s about,” said Schachter. “You don’t know why you get picked. I think it’s relatively random. What can you do?”
