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Craigslist website taken down by cyber attack

Posted at 11:45 AM, Nov 24, 2014
and last updated 2014-11-24 14:04:21-05

If you had trouble with the Craigslist website Sunday night and Monday morning, you weren't the only one.

The site was taken offline by hackers.

The Next Web first reported the issue Sunday night.

"Users visiting the site yesterday evening were redirected to a site called Digital Gangster as a result of what looks like a DNS hijack," wrote Mic Wright. "The Digital Gangster forum was the source of a well-publicised Twitter hack in 2009 and the theft of Miley Cyrus photos from her Gmail account in 2008."

"Craigslist’s domain record was modified yesterday, with the new domain name registrant listed as 'steven wynhoff @LulzClerk.'" Wright stated. "Wynhoff’s name has been attached to the hijacking of YouTube accounts dedicated to Call of Duty."

Craigslist chief executive Jim Buckmaster posted a blog confirming there had been a DNS attack:

"At approximately 5pm PST Sunday evening the craigslist domain name service (DNS) records maintained at one of our domain registrars were compromised, diverting users to various non-craigslist sites," he wrote. "This issue has been corrected at the source, but many internet service providers (ISPs) cached the false DNS information for several hours, and some may still have incorrect information."

According to Mike Lennon with Security Week, DNS hijacking is "a favored attack method used by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), who managed to hijack domain names belonging to the New York Times and Twitter last year."