Forbes reports that, following Microsoft's heavy-handed seizure of 23 domains belonging to DDNS service No-IP in order to deal with the NJrat and NJw0rm botnets, the domains have been returned to the control of their original owner. Whether this was the original plan all along is unclear, but Microsoft has so far not made any explanation of the move or responded to the criticism leveled at it by No-IP service users, both free and paid, all over the Internet:
"Microsoft's move ... to cut off cybercriminal control of the Bladabindi (NJrat) and Jenxcus (NJw0rm) malware also saw millions of legitimate websites shuttered as they were using the same infrastructure as thousands of domains being used to manage the malicious software. The Redmond giant was subsequently told to cease "policing" the internet. At around 8pm BST today, No-IP started reporting a number of domains were back online, whilst records on the Domain Name System showed Microsoft had relinquished its control of many of the sites it wiped off the internet. One wonders if this was Microsoft giving up its anti-malware operation or if it's simply part of the process. There is another possibility, as suggested by a noted security researcher today: the court may have reversed its decision to allow Microsoft to take control of the 23 domains it seized."
No-IP said more than 1.8 million "legitimate customers" were taken out by Microsoft's seizure, affecting roughly 4 million hostnames. Though a digital issue there have been some potentially dangerous physical results from Microsoft's action, according to Goguen, as it may have stopped people receiving medicines or caring for their children. "We have received many calls from customers who use our service to monitor cameras for elderly relatives, small children and even pets," she added. "We have even had a customer from a medical dispatch company go down because of this. Over the past two days they have not been able to dispatch medics to elderly patients and it is very troubling to them."
Related Stories
AnonTechie, RhubarbSin, and others write in to tell us:
Millions of legitimate servers that rely on dynamic domain name services from No-IP.com suffered outages on Monday after Microsoft seized 22 domain names it said were being abused in malware-related crimes against Windows users. Thus proving once again that when you are the proverbial 800lb gorilla, you need to be damn careful where you sit.
Microsoft enforced a federal court order making the company the domain IP resolver for the No-IP domains. Microsoft said the objective of the seizure was to identify and reroute traffic associated with two malware families that abused No-IP services.
Referring back to when Microsoft seized No-IP domains (it did then reinstate them) boing boing brings us the tale of interpretive law - How Microsoft hacked trademark law to let it secretly seize whole businesses:
The company expanded the "ex parte temporary restraining order" so it could stage one-sided, sealed proceedings to take away rival businesses' domains, sometimes knocking thousands of legit servers offline.
Most famously, Microsoft used the power against No-IP, a company that provided dynamic DNS to thousands of customers
This is covered by Wired in: How Microsoft Appointed Itself Sheriff of the Internet.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:30PM
How many times does the US have to shout "you can't trust me not to overreach", before people actually stop using any infrastructure within their legal reach?
Are the Chinese done building their own DNS roots yet?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tynin on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:56PM
How many times should the internet as a whole be legally forced to stand on the sidelines while these black hats continue to shit in our toy box? Many people have talked about how to fight these underground malware/worm/botnet criminals, but because of the murky legal waters everyone that wants to help generally can do nothing. I applaud Microsoft's effort, and I hope they win the day on the incoming lawsuits.
The users of No-IP should take this as a wake up call, that their single point of failure, failed. They need to understand the technology they are using, and apparently depend on, and what its limitations are. If you need high availability DNS, you can have it! I think you could even get HA DNS working for free, but their is no single solution to that problem.
The Chinese or whoever, building there own DNS TLDs will only further fracture the internet and shouldn't be seen as a solution. No single group should have control of the TLDs, and while I'd love for them to be decentralized, we do not yet have enough support for that, yet.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday July 03 2014, @05:12PM
Sure, we should definitely be doing our best to shut down the black hats, but the best way would be to make the system as a whole more secure and reliable, not less. Seems to me like Microsoft is responsible for writing most of the sloppy code that allows these botnets to thrive. Should they be allowed to shut down the whole internet so their operating system can be safe and secure in the environment it was originally designed for?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tynin on Thursday July 03 2014, @05:29PM
That's a bit of a false dichotomy. Microsoft is a BIG company. I suspect it was their Digital Crimes Unit that got the court order. Any company (even from outside of the US) that was heavily invested into investigating and dismantling botnets could have gotten this very same court order. They went to the court, provided proof that crimes were happening within domain names that No-IP controlled, suggested that No-IP knew the crimes were occurring and did nothing, and had a path forward to correct the issue (which ultimately, without a doubt, could have been pulled off better). The fact it was Microsoft, doesn't really mean much aside from making it easy to pick on their OS, which I grant you is rather humourous.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:26PM
Crimes are being committed daily on domains that Microsoft controls. How many drug deals or hooker bookings take place on Hotmail every day?
Have you actually tried to register a complaint to Microsoft about anything? Its like poking jello.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:23PM
If any $DISTRO had Microsofts user base, they'd have potentially the same problems Microsoft has. Your comment on how many drug deals and whorings take place on Hotmail is comical. Find me a method of communication that isn't used in the same way, and you'll have found a solution that governments have looking to get the populace to use to stop it from occurring. If you have a support contract with Microsoft, you can actually register a complaint, and depending on what you are complaining about you might very well get excellent assistance. The same thing holds true the world over. I grant you that you can get better traction on getting problems fixed in the land of linux, but it isn't exactly like Microsoft is sitting on their laurels with regard to security for a number of years now.
All of this defending Microsoft is making me feel ill. I honestly think I'm going sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:44PM
If Linux had the Microsoft market share then they would have more problems. But it won't be of the same magnitude!
More like for every 10 problems Microsoft has, Linux or BSD has 1.
The important question is if a company should be allowed to secure their shit product by disabling infrastructure for other people. This time it's no-ip.com, next time perhaps BGP, NTP, whois, etc.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:50PM
We can only speculate on the magnitude, but I tend to agree with you. The more important question, should judges and courts be giving this level of control to anyone without the defendants being aware? I don't think they should.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday July 04 2014, @12:15AM
Sue MSFT for distributing and marketing on false pretense sub quality software. And demand that microsoft.com be seized to warn people? ;)
The courts should have the right to seize domains. But not for damage control to a company that had ample of time to clean up their mess. And if their customers suffer well they should have payed attention when selecting the operating system.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday July 04 2014, @12:15AM
Reading comprehension 101.
Nobody is defending microsoft. We are pointing out how ridiculous it is to claim the right to take over an entire domain just because there may be some one doing illegal things on that domain.
The example of illegal activity on hotmail was to show how silly it would be to have some company come in and take over the hotmail domain from microsoft just because there was some bad actors using the service.
Next time I will try to explain the analogy ahead of time.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Friday July 04 2014, @12:25AM
LOL. I'd appreciate that, thanks :)
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @08:18AM
"All of this defending Microsoft is making me feel ill."
I've seen a lot of it on a lot of blogs, people are cheering MS and calling all No-IP's customers freeloaders getting what they deserve for not paying for their services.
Feels like Team America have outsourced their cyber-security division.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:28PM
Yeah, it could have been pulled off better. But that's beside the point. The point is, no organization, not the government and certainly not some corporation, should ever be given the power to censor and silence innocent 3rd parties. They should never have had a chance to pull it off better, or to screw it up like they did. This is a clear violation of our 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable seizure.
The reason the Founding Fathers demanded such rights is because the powerful can't be trusted not to be careless and reckless with power. Don't apologize for Microsoft or excuse them with that weak justification that some of those domain names were being used to infect Windows. They did the equivalent of burning down an entire neighborhood because a few homes were being used as crack dens. Then some try to tell us that losing those homes was worth it to stop the drug dens. Not to the people living in those homes it wasn't! As if there weren't many, many better ways to handle a problem like that. No, such scorched earth tactics are lazy and cheap. They cost a lot of people a lot of money because they can't be bothered to be a little more discriminating.
(Score: 1) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @08:21AM
Mod this up lots plz!
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:24PM
There is nothing to suggest that No-IP knew about this, and everything to suggest that they were perfectly prepared to work with MS (as they have done with other companies in similar situations) to resolve this without resorting to confiscation of property and cutting off 3,982,000 innocent machines' DNS lookups. And what's so good about the courts in the US that makes them infallible on technical matters like this? Let's see you shrug it off when some foreign power gives a company you do no business with the power to take your perfectly innocent game server offline with no notice and no cause to suspect you for anything at all.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:32PM
Whoops, hit post prematurely there. From No-IP's formal statement on the matter: [noip.com]
"Microsoft never contacted us or asked us to block any subdomains, even though we have an open line of communication with Microsoft corporate executives."
"Microsoft ... claim that their intent is to only filter out the known bad hostnames in each seized domain, while continuing to allow the good hostnames to resolve. However, this is not happening."
"Our abuse team is constantly working to keep the No-ÂIP system domains free of spam and malicious activity. We use sophisticated filters and we scan our network daily for signs of malicious activity. Even with such precautions, our free dynamic DNS service does occasionally fall prey to cyber scammers, spammers, and malware distributors."
And one more thing - No-IP may provide DNS for malware operators, but Microsoft directly provides hosting for them! [malwarebytes.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:22PM
Taking over entire domains to get at a few rogue malware purveyors is like destroying the village in order to save it.
Microsoft has been very active in the area of botnet takedown. But the hammer was too big, and unnecessarily so. You don't need to burn the village to get at a few blackhats.
I blame the Judge that allowed this. We somehow in this country need to find a way to hold Judges accountable for issuing some of these warrants. When they start seeing their salary cut, their pensions trimmed, they will start asking better questions.
As for the "Medical Dispatch Company", anyone dealing with REAL medical dispatch can afford a real domain name, and a reverse mapping. Probably the Viagra and Pot pushers want to be fleet of foot, and a No-IP name works for them.
I use the services of a company similar to No-IP, but strictly for hobby purposes. I'd never run a business on it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:06PM
Indeed. They've done everything apart from creating a secure OS, a secure suite of userspace applications, and a well-educated userbase.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:35PM
Most malware these days rely on phishing to get people to install it.
Drive-by installs are pretty much a thing of the past (not totally gone, but rare).
I don't know how to fix the human side of things. You can't fix Stupid, and I'm not so sure its Microsoft's job to "create a well educated userbase". Isn't that the job of the Nanny State? ;-)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:11PM
Apple have pretty much fixed it with Gatekeeper on OSX.
Most secure: A curated app store, with restrictive sandbox for most apps.
Middle secure: An app signed with a certificate from a trusted body. This is the route for serious apps that need to do more than the sandbox allows.
Non-secure: Software without a certificate. Anything goes.
By default OSX ships so it only accepts the most secure category. But power users and developers with admin rights can use either of the two lesser security settings. Either from now on, or on one off basis.
You have to be pretty determined, and have some tech knowledge and have the admin password to install a drive by phishing app. And yet anything goes apps are possible when they are genuinely needed.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Friday July 04 2014, @02:09AM
We're definitely seeing different things. Most of what I see (although it's been about a year since I've been actively dealing with this sort of stuff) has been Adobe Flash or Oracle Java vulnerabilities.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:31PM
Yes, but the point was that this is another reminder that you can't trust IP addresses hosted in the US to be secure. I agree it should already have been obvious, and also that you can never be secure against actions by "your own" government. Those are sort of beside the point. This means that German companies should prefer to host all their sites on German servers, etc. That way at least you are only dependent on ONE government behaving legally and rationally.
You are right that this incident provides no new information. It's just a reminder.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @09:30AM
It would appear you are suggesting the balkanisation of the Internet as a solution to {$ENTITY_INTEREST}'s actions having legal consequences that cannot be pursued against by those affected outside the jurisdiction that allowed/authorised it. I fear this may come to pass before long.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 04 2014, @06:35PM
That seems to be the inevitable consequence of an unreliable steward. And the US is certainly proving unreliable.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:32PM
I blame the Judge that allowed this.
I'm with you 100% on that. My other opinions aside, this should have never been let out of the gate. Microsoft asked the court for permission, and it was granted. The granter bears the responsibility for this.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday July 04 2014, @12:09AM
MS stated to the court (see the order) that there would be zero effect on innocent third parties. They spectacularly failed to achieve that and there is some doubt, given the mistakes they apparently made, whether they were ever capable of achieving it.
MS bears the responsibility for misleading the court in this way - if they hadn't done so the order probably would not have been granted. If they had had the capability the claimed in the order, then there would have been no loss of service for the court to bear responsibility for.
MS has made the court look stupid, the court should now make MS poorer - unfortunately that is a very big job...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:30PM
That's not the problem. This is a DDNS issue, and adding DNS servers does not solve this problem. The entire reason for No-IP existing in the first place is that the firmware written for devices like security camera DVRs include it as an option.
What these people need help with is turning a dynamic IP into a static IP, and DDNS does that by registering hostnames against IP addresses dynamically. IPv6 can solve the problem on its first day, and additionally solve the firewall issues. Firewall is a bit of a misnomer too since we are really talking about NAT. So many IP addresses that ISPs could give out entire blocks to people. Everyone could have thousands of addresses assigned to them for their devices individually. At that point a regular DNS service would suffice, and as you said, it's not unreasonably difficult to find a HA DNS service out there.
Heck, once the NAT issue is gone and a device more or less can be directly accessed by the Internet I could see topology protocols being used to help you find your device without even needing the DNS system at all. It's a possibility.
Crap like this keeps happening and you will see major corporations start to support a decentralized DNS system. They will realize the risk of not having iron clad control and remediation capabilities against wrt domain ownership is far less than the risk of another corporation or government just shutting them off completely.
You should not be applauding their efforts. This was a clear abuse of the legal process by a large corporation that had power and influence. I don't care how big they are, they accomplished this by using the Microsoft name to bypass due process.
Where is any evidence that No-IP had executives knowingly allowing crime to occur, which accounts were doing it, and they were making profit from it? Profit other than any associated service fees, which was ZERO anyways.
Microsoft could have cooperated with No-IP and brought them into the investigation. That was never even tried since No-IP was never informed or even involved with the case and the judge.
Yes, we need to take much stronger steps against malware and large operators. No, that should not include bypass of due process. Microsoft is not granted that much credit and leeway by myself, and I am a US citizen. I never support bypassing of due process. Ever. Not even National Security should bypass due process unless it's the most extreme of circumstances and the President should have a memo on his desk. At the very least every single Senator on those committees should be signing off on it.
This was pure stupidity and doesn't deserve your support. The corporations best able to combat malware are NOT Microsoft and No-IP, but all the ISPs. If you want to support something, support a system where Microsoft (or others) can request that an IP address be taken offline with a warning sent to the user via the traditional methods and an intercepting proxy. It wouldn't be baseless either. A request would contain packet logs, descriptions, routes, botnet information, cleaning instructions, etc.
I have no problems whatsoever forcing a regular user to spend $99 at the Geek Squad to get his/her computer cleaned before they can get the lock released. We do that enough, and people will start getting seethingly pissed off at Microsoft for their shitty operating systems. Perhaps that's not fair. Shitty security. Enough people get mad, economics alone will force them to evaluate competitors like Apple, Google, and the Linux community.
Moreover, strong security can be obtained today just by blocking entire IP ranges. It's nice that you *could* talk to Rwanda, but do you *need* to talk to Rwanda? Any users from Rwanda? Planned trips to Rwanda by executives or employees? I have entire countries blocked out by default. It's not required. I just need my little portion of the world to be able to talk to me on certain protocols.
Basically, learn how to use a firewall. Since people can't do that very effectively, it should be more easily supported by routers capable of subscribing to various RBL lists.
There. You have some tools to fight it that don't involve Microsoft subverting the justice system like heavy handed morons.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:47PM
I appreciate the reply, but it is too long to reply to (at least right now), and it honestly seems like we agree on so much if I only had the time to spell out my position better. I feel like I'd be a cheering squad for you. I think perhaps its been so long since anyone had the balls to do something major, something brash, but at least something to combat this problem I got lost in my own desires to squash these bastards.
I've spent too many years working at a tier 1 backbone and having to deal with fallout from these same manner of criminals, I guess I cheer too much.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:18PM
The machines infected by the blackhats number 18,000. The total number of machines made unreachable was 4,000,000. That's a false positive rate of 99.55% and don't even try and pretend that's acceptable or even vaguely competent.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:06PM
You have a lot of butt hurt for losing access to your minecraft server. It was never a 100% outage, they just didn't have the capacity to answer the the DNS requests and I imagine the zone file renewals as peoples IPs changed. I agree, it was highly incompetent of them. Thankfully, I think we can all agree at least it wasn't the FBI serving the court order. They would have shut down and hauled out the entire rack, if not all of the racks in the datacenter that had the same internal route to anything touching those 2nd level domains, just to make sure. And they wouldn't have returned them to the customer for months if not years. At least Microsoft acknowledged, to a degree some fault, as they have per this article already returned ownership back to No-IP.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday July 04 2014, @12:03AM
NO, it was a 100% outage for anyone using (or using ISPs with) properly configured DNS servers - because MS ****ed up the configuration. They set up DNS servers for the no-ip top levels that were configured as recursive for the whole domain, black-holed the "bad" subdomains and forwarded other requests onto the real no-ip DNS servers (by overriding / hard coding the address lookup for those servers).
Spot the problem ? As top level DNS for the domain the MS servers are authoritative, but configured as a recursive DNS it will return a non-authoritative response. i.e. the MS server says:
"I am the authoritative server for this name"
"Here's the IP address I got it from somewhere else (the authoritative server)"
So the typical ISPs DNS server then tries to get the authoritative answer from the authoritative server... Lather, rinse, repeat until timeout and fail with error that the authoritative server for the domain is not responding.
Some full write-ups (not by me but make sense to me)
are here: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2231047 [theregister.co.uk]
and here: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2231350 [theregister.co.uk]
One result (at my guess) is that MS servers get several times the query load they bargained for because the other DNS servers will re-try several times to get authoritative answer to each query. So if they did collapse under load (or even if no-ips actual servers did) it is their own ****ing fault for configuring it wrong.
The bottom line is that MS told a judge they could take over the no-ip service in this way with zero impact on non-involved third parties, when it appears that they had nowhere near the technical competence to do that. I hope this comes out in the next stage of the court process and that the MS people who designed and set up this "solution" get quizzed by some (independent) real DNS experts about how on earth they expected this to work - but they probably won't.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @08:08AM
"You have a lot of butt hurt for losing access to your minecraft server."
Well, yeah. Wouldn't you be doing some WTF?!1! if a global megacorp whose products you avoid like the plague (although I must admit to being one of the Windows Phone-owning trio at the moment - beggars can't be choosers!) took you and a few million other people's perfectly legitimate services down for no reason what-so-ever? If the police walked into your office, turned all your heating off and cut power to the boiler because someone in your town was fiddling their gas bill, wouldn't you be a touch touchy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:21PM
So when you going to stop using the Internet?
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:06PM
When SoylentNews establishes a dial-up BBS.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:52PM
I personally think that Microsoft shouldn't have had been given the power to take down any sites regardless.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:36PM
I second that. What is troubling is that, according to what I read, Microsoft obtained the court order without those affected even having a chance to object (or present their case) in the said court. That is not justice by any stretch of the imagination. These are the kind of things banana republics were famous for !!
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:40PM
What ever happened to people who lived by this quote (code):
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jcross on Thursday July 03 2014, @05:19PM
In some ways, Microsoft is to malware as Afghanistan or Syria has been to terrorists. They've created a massive distributed breeding ground for all kinds of foul play, and now they want to reach outside their jurisdiction to do damage control. It's like giving the Afghan government global police powers to stop their homegrown terrorists. And then they're like, "hey, we're going to cut off phone service in your country because some terrorists from here seem to be placing calls. But hey, it's just for a couple days."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:28PM
Homegrown? The Taliban was trained and funded by the US. WE put Osama bin Laden in power and trained his guys. That mess that finally tried to clean up in 2001 (though I don't think we've taken full responsibility for it yet) was entirely ours because we just had to have our proxy wars with the Soviet Union. Some of the mujihadeen were just the same as the people we call our "Founding Fathers", and Afghanistan would've been a lot better off had we not poked our nose in, giving weapons, money, and training to sociopathic religious extremist just because we had a common enemy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @05:22PM
If someone's going to seize domains in the USA shouldn't it be the FBI or similar? Has the court somehow appointed Microsoft to enforce law and order?
Can someone seize Microsoft's domains too if many people start hosting malicious or related stuff on Windows Azure?
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:42PM
"Can someone seize Microsoft's domains too if many people start hosting malicious or related stuff on Windows Azure?"
How much money do you have?
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday July 04 2014, @12:17AM
Is there any list of lawsuits heading the way towards MSFT because of this no-ip.com attack? It would be especially interesting whether say UK residents could sue or not.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday July 04 2014, @08:19AM
Suing in the US from the UK will be too expensive, not sure if you could join a US class action (if one happens) from here or not. However, MS have presence in the UK, so I guess affected UK residents / businesses could sue in UK small claims. If nothing else you could cost MS some lawyer time.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @09:55AM
IANAL so I don't know if violating the 2006 Police and Justice Act's provisions for criminalising DoS attacks would be a matter for a private suit for compensation or a criminal justice case for fines and jail time.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @09:59AM
Just to clarify, by DoS I'm referring to M$ nuking all the domains, not the DoS launched separately against No-IP after the fact as vaguely talked about here [arstechnica.com].
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday July 04 2014, @12:39PM
It might fly - 2006 act includes "acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing".
You can do private criminal actions in the UK (and the Crown can then take them over, and close them down if it decides not in public interest etc.).
Not sure if you can prosecute corporation, or if it has to be individuals. Attempting to extradite MS execs from the US might be a little tricky - but if you can get them afraid of landing in the UK (or EU?) that might cramp their lifestyle a bit.
Beware thought that standard of proof is a lot higher than in civil action, and you might be better off just going for civil action and damages.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @04:12PM
I wonder how the extradition process would go if I could find a few thousand other people affected by this to join the case? It probably wouldn't matter - the US extradites people from other countries, not the other way around - certainly not when Microsoft's slush^H^H^H^H^Hpolitical influence* is involved.
Standard of proof could be a problem. The original paperwork they filed with the US court stated they were going to work around the problem of innocent folk getting their DNS screwed. It would boil down to an argument over whether or not their failure to do so correctly renders their actions criminal or incompetent. Considering that No-IP would have helped them do the whole thing transparently if they'd communicated with them at any point, that may push opinion towards the criminal end of the spectrum.
(*Funny how one of those is acceptable and the other isn't, but they both boil down to the same thing...)
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday July 04 2014, @10:19AM
A friend just clued me in to an email he got from the EFF in response to an enquiry about this malarky, they are not planning to sue MS at this time.