LinkedIn not hacked, victim of human errors

According to Cisco security researcher, Jaeson Schultz, LinkedIn, the professional networking site which had been reported as hacked or hijacked yesterday, was in fact the victim of human error at the company's DNS provider, Network Solutions, an error which appears to have affected up to 5,000 domains in all. Network Solutions has said in a blog posting that while trying to resolve a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, it accidentally changed the DNS records of a "small number" of customers.

The 'hijacking' involved the domain's name servers being replaced with name servers at ztomy.com and nearly 5,000 domains may have been affected by the change, including usps.com. "The fact that so many domains were displaced in such a highly visible way supports Network Solutions’ claim that this was indeed a configuration error", says Schultz.

Suspicions that the redirection was malicious were high. So after observing the incoming traffic, Confluence Networks put out info about the problem on its web page, saying it had contacted affected parties in an attempt to identify the problem.

Meanwhile, Schultz recommends that anyone with a Network Solutions domain should check that their servers are pointed at the right servers, making sure that the connections ar to the 204.11.56.0/24 subnet. Schultz closes, saying, "Organizations need to carefully consider how they would swiftly identify unauthorized modifications to their DNS records and how they would react to such a situation."