If you’re a user of the venerable, powerful and popular open source programming language Perl, you’ll almost certainly have visited its official website at some point, at: https://perl.org.
You may very well also have visited its sister site perl.com, which until very recently looked like this:
The About page of perl.com used to introduce the website as follows:
Well, be careful out there, folks!
It looks as though the perl.com domain has been taken over, though by whom is hard to say, given that the domain registration is now hidden behind a DNS privacy-guarding proxy.
The website is currently [2021-01-29] no longer accessible at all via HTTPS, and when visited via HTTP just sets a few tracking cookies, fetches some Javascript, and renders as a blank page:
The domain name registration was last updated two days ago, and is now valid for 10 more years from that date:
Domain Name: perl.com Registry Domain ID: 432086_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.rrpproxy.net Registrar URL: http://www.key-systems.net Updated Date: 2021-01-27T12:43:15Z Creation Date: 1994-08-16T04:00:00Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2031-01-26T15:26:42Z Registrar: Key-Systems GmbH [...] Registry Registrant ID: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Registrant Name: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Registrant Organization: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY [...] Registrant City: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Registrant State/Province: Chisinau Registrant Postal Code: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Registrant Country: MD [Moldova] [...] Admin Name: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Admin Organization: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY [...] Admin City: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Admin State/Province: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Admin Postal Code: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY Admin Country: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Our chums over at The Register examined the now-dysfunctional domain yesterday [2021-01-28], and noted that name service (DNS) lookup for perl.com was being handled by domain name brokers Afternic, whom El Reg spotted were themselves offering perl.com for sale for a lofty price of $190,000.
Today [2021-01-29], the name servers show up as follows:
$ dig @9.9.9.9 perl.com ns [...] ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;perl.com. IN NS ;; ANSWER SECTION: perl.com. 3600 IN NS ns2.namefind.com. perl.com. 3600 IN NS ns1.namefind.com. [...]
Right now, neither Namefind nor Afternic seems to be trying to sell off the perl.com name, though at either of those sites you can pick up perly for $9999, perlsite for $4999, or perlmagic for just $2499.
Quite what happened to the perl.com domain name we don’t yet know.
However, The Register insists, on what it says is good authority, that until just before this latest change, the domain’s contact details were listed publicly, with the admin of the domain given as well-known Perl luminary Tom Christiansen.
Whether the original registrants will be able to recover this domain remains to be seen (it certainly seems that they did not intend to dispose of it), but we do know that whoever currently controls it now has it registered for a further decade.
So, if you’re a Perl fan, we recommend you steer clear of the perl.com domain unless and until the All Clear is sounded on it.
Although it looks blank and mostly harmless today, and although the HTTPS version of the site is not working at all right now, who knows what content might show up there in the future?
Hugh Myers
Wasn’t due to be on the block until 2029 from what I heard.
Paul Ducklin
If anyone has the output from “whois perl.com” from a few days ago I would love to see it :-)
William Warren
perls domain got stolen. Probably due to low grade protections on the authentication on their former registrar’s account.
Paul Ducklin
Probably? Or just “possibly”? I think that if you want to say it’s a “probable” cause then you need to have some evidence…
Ronny Colon
Registry Data
perl.com
No whois information found. We are not the registrar of record for this domain name.
Paul Ducklin
Errrrr, the output in the article is what I got from doing “whois perl.com”. It looks as though you have used a specific registrar’s website to look it up, rather than a generic “whois” query.
Anonymous
Perl NOC (log DOT perl DOT org) says:
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
perl DOT com hijacked
The perl DOT com domain was hijacked this morning, and is currently pointing to a parking site. Work is ongoing to attempt to recover it.
Update 2021.01.28:
Work is underway to attempt to recover the domain. If you’re looking for the content, you can visit perldotcom DOT perl DOT org.
Paul Ducklin
Hahahaha, I like that workaround, although it is hard to say :-) Perldotcom (say it out in one breath) {short pause} dot-perl-dot-org.
Rino Mardo
I’ll have to get used to it for now.. Perldotcom dot Perl dot org