This morning, those of us at the blog got a nice press release you’ve just read about, from Chris Van Dyk and the “no” campaign. He claimed he logged into Sound Transit’s domain registrar and renewed their domain. This sounded really sketchy, so I called the number on the email – and a bit later, Chris Van Dyk called me back.
He told me that all he did was go to the registrar, guess a username, and guess the security question to reset the domain’s password (the answer was easy and obvious). Then he spent his $35 for renewal. I was floored – it can’t be that easy to get to the domain!
It turns out it’s not that easy. I went and tried this myself, and found that what he had guessed for the username wasn’t for soundtransit.org at all! It was for ratg.org, the old, and now unused, site of the regional accessible transit guide, now at findaride.org. He had even left evidence by changing the administrative email contact to his own email address. What’s amazing to me is that before shelling out money for a renewal, he didn’t even check to see what site he was renewing. I guess we can drain the ‘no’ campaign of money just through their own incompetence!
So, let’s see. The ‘no’ campaign admits to me that they hacked into the domain registration that they thought was for Sound Transit (and the Sound Transit IT crew seems to be on top of this, the site came back up this morning). They change the contact email for the domain to an email address of someone on their own staff, leaving evidence of their hack. And then they tell the media that they hacked into the domain registration for a government web site?
Not only is the ‘no’ campaign woefully uninformed (you should have heard the rant that got started once this guy figured out I was a transit supporter), but they’re crazy, as well…
This is like these guys tried to break into Sound Transit’s house, but ended up in the middle of the living room of the guy next door.
The following has been sent to Sound Transit–Ben or John or whomever you are does not understand domain name management and site pointers. We had ample reason to access the DNS system given that Sound Transit was not addressing the problem — you, however, did not — by the time you accessed it late Sunday, it had been functional since propagation early Sunday morning. Now that you have blocked access to Sound Transit itself, what exactly do you plan to do?
The full explanation is as follows:
Saturday morning, we became aware that the Sound Transit website domain name had expired, and that the Sound Transit site was accordingly dysfunctional. Unable to reach anyone to fix it at Sound Transit, we renewed the domain name for you; and the site became operational again as soon as the renewed domain name propagated across the web, which was early Sunday morning.
To ensure that we would receive confirmation of renewal, we changed the email address of notification for the domain name at Network Solutions to ours. We were planning to work with you Monday morning to establish long-term resolution of the problem, and suggest additional security measures that you might take. Security is critical with respect to this aspect of website hosting because someone malicious could access the address pointers for the website through Network Solutions—and literally redirect your traffic to a different website. By leaving the email address changed to us, we were able to monitor any activity subsequent to the domain name renewal, and prior to what was to be our presumed Monday contact with you for formal and permanent resolution of the problem.
You should be aware that late Sunday afternoon, the site was also accessed by an individual whose email address is bensch@gmail.com. There was no reason for this individual to access the site, as it was by that time functional. He changed the email address to his own, then back to mine, changed the password, and changed the answer to the “secret question” that enables password change. Accordingly, bensch@gmail.com has now blocked your access to your website. We do not know bensch@gmail.com; we urge you strongly to enhance security at this aspect of your website, and will assist you in that regard.
Again, our accessing Network Solutions on your behalf was simply to renew the domain, and minimize the impact of the website failure on the transit riding public.
On behalf of NoToProp1.Org, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Chris Van Dyk
Principal,
Bainbridge Media Group, Inc.
223 Ihland Way NW
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
cvandyk5@msn.com
206-854-6127
I don’t think you get it. You never got into soundtransit.org – you got into some old, defunct site called ratg.org, and you changed the administrative email address on that to cvandyk5@msn.com.
You never had any impact on soundtransit.org. You’re just confused – just like you’re confused about this year’s transit package.
On the contrary, you don’t get the difference between domains, sub-domains, and the means by which you can use pointers to redirect sites.
It took no small amount of work, with Network Solutions assisting, to untangle the mess—and get the site re-upped.
But you still have not answered the question—why were you on the site, after the system was made functional?
Mr. Van Dyk, I daresay I understand DNS quite well. All you did is hack into ratg.org, which happened to have a simple username, and has nothing to do with soundtransit.org. Neither is a subdomain of the other.
I’m sorry you’re trying to spin things, but you’re just looking like more of a moron. I actually do this kind of thing for a living.
Also, you’re not talking to anyone at Sound Transit – you seem to be confused about that as well. We here at the blog are not Sound Transit employees.
That’s reassuring.
this is from the GoDaddy.com info request..
Domain ID:D2618365-LROR
Domain Name:SOUNDTRANSIT.ORG
Created On:30-Aug-1997 04:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:07-Sep-2008 12:24:49 UTC
Expiration Date:29-Aug-2013 04:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Network Solutions LLC (R63-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:RENEWPERIOD
Status:AUTORENEWPERIOD
Created on august 30th, 1997. Expires august 29th 2013. It wouldn’t expire 10 years + 6 days later, they don’t bill domain names in random increments…would make it seem like CVD DID hack in…
The Sound Transit staff took care of soundtransit.org on their own and renewed it. Van Dyk didn’t have a thing to do with it – although he did renew ratg.org for some time!
You can see the ratg.org record at pir.org/whois. The email address was recently fixed to point back to a sound transit employee.
Isn’t there a 30-day cooling off period anyway, where if your domain DOES expire, you can re-claim it within 30 days, even if someone is squatting on it?
If you buy an expired domain, it goes on hold until the 30 days is up.
That was my experience in the past anyway.
Yes, there is, but he guessed the username and the security question answer for a different domain entirely.
Probably unrelated, but I noticed early Saturday morning that soundtransit.org was working and http://www.soundtransit.org was not. Why would the one work and the other not?
Domain names point to actual servers (or IP addresses at least). Convention is to make the “www” domain name resolve to the same server (usually through a CNAME), but it doesn’t have to. For example, ischool.washington.edu does not have a website at all, you have to go to http://www.ischool.washington.edu instead. (Trivia: “www” didn’t used to be the only name used, for example we’ve had www9.biostr.washington.edu up since 1996.)
So, maybe they had a problem with the “www” domain name entry or the rules that make a particular server respond to that name. Or maybe DNS was feeling poorly that day, it happens.
[...] Chris Van Dyk Screws Up [...]
Err, this Chris Van Dyk guy is in his mid-fifties, and he’s acting like a child. He gets caught screwing up, with his hand in the (wrong) cookie jar – and then starts lying, and tries to blame everybody else for his ineptitude. Ah, the life of a hired gun political consultant.
This quote was particularly funny, and Rovian in its own special condescending way:
“Security is critical with respect to this aspect of website hosting because someone malicious could access the address pointers for the website”
Somebody malicious? You mean like the guy who pays most of Van Dyk’s bills, Mark Baerwaldt? This self-centered creep is a borderline psychopath. Malicious doesn’t even close to describing him.
And, you have got to respect Chris Van Dyk – spokesmodel for the ‘little guy’ – defending Kemper Freeman, and other fatcat right wing Republicans.
But Chris Van Eyman would work for anybody – for the right price (and the Libertarian Right pays quite well). It’s tough to tell which one of these two manchildren is worse: the ideologue with no moral compass, or the morally corrupt guy with no ideology.
Several years ago, when the state was asking for (literally) countless billions of regressively-raised dollars for highways with no regional transit and no tax sunset clause + lots of bonding, Chris Van Dyk enthusiastically got behind the no-on-912 bandwagon. He raised a bunch of dough for the campaign, and rallied his Bainbridge Island neighbors to fight for freeways.
Now, Chris Van Dyk is posing as a bus supporter, supposedly concerned that transit money isn’t being spent in the right place.
Can you get more fake than that? Is there any self-respect left in the political consulting field?
Chris Van Dyke showed up on the political scene in Seattle as the spokes/director of “Citizens for More Important Things” during the run-up to the building of SafeCo and Qwest Fields. Funding thes stadiums was controversial but they turn out to be civic gems. His campaign, though potentially populist (and thus popular in a place like King County), was mere buffoonery amid the work of authentic political professionals. Now it really appears, after all, that Chis is most likely a “Citizen for No Things” libertarian.
I don’t know why you guys are getting into a debate with a guy who seems as versed in web design as a f#cking caveman. Has anyone visited his ‘website’? What a joke! My friend’s daughter is taking web design as a 10-year-old and this guy makes her look like Larry Page. I’d normally laugh at someone this pathetic but I (unfortunately) feel bad for people this misguided.