Lib Dem hijack is coming from inside the building…
The National Union of Students is rightly celebrated this morning for hijacking the www.liberaldemocrats.org.uk domain name and pointing it to their video documenting Nick Clegg’s betrayal over tuition fees.
But there’s a twist to this seemingly simple tale of cyber-squatting. Eagle-eyed Kris Keane points out that far from being overlooked by the party, allowing the NUS to snap it up, the URL in question still belongs to the Lib Dems:
Clearly it’s not only Liberal Youth that are furious with their party for selling out on education, but Cowley Street staff too.
Surely they just hacked into the FTP of the site and redirected it?
Though the supprt is also internal coz they haven’t taken it down. But, I guess that’s your point Gary…
no, sorry, I’m wrong. It’s not even the liberal democrats main web address and the main site is still running. Someone might have changed the web forwarding for the domain name. Either way all of this can be done by anyone, anywhere.
Yeah. I reckon someone got hold of the ftp details for the site, logged in, uploaded some of their own content then possibly deleted the site.
I think the GreenPary.org.uk web estate went down for a while today too! Maybe just coincidence.
Alternatively:
Someone hacked the hosting account.
Sorry to rain on your parade but I don’t think it matters whether the domain name is still registered to the LibDem HQ. It’s just the domain name registration, not the hosting. It’s the hosting that is affected not the domain name.
Absolutely right Jim – have amended teh first URL to get rid of that confusion but as you say the above story is true for *both* liberaldemocrats.org.uk *and* liberaldemocrats.co.uk.
G
They seem to have hijacked .co.uk and .org.uk atho that’s sligthly unclear from the post above (link from .org.uk and whois from .co.uk)
Both are hijacked and both are registered to Cowley Street, in case you go fishing.