Chinese Hackers Hack Large American Internet Retailer ShadesDaddy.com Domain

My name is Pablo Palatnik, CEO & Founder of ShadesDaddy.com. On FEB 3, 2015, as we began to see traffic slowly disappear from our website and no signs of server issues — we knew something was really off. As we began to investigate all possible options as to why this was happening and calling everyone who supports our infrastructure — our worse nightmare that we never thought was possible was realized.

OUR DOMAIN NAME WAS HI-JACKED. Our domain name, a registered trademark, ShadesDaddy.com now belong to a person(s) in China and sitting in a chinese registry (ENAME.) This registry has no interest on transferring the domain back to us as they are in no legal obligation to do so.) The domain name now currently points to a website that sells fake / counterfeit name brand products like sunglasses and shoes from China.

I’ll start by saying that the first few hours were complete and utter shock. I never in a million years thought it was possible to hi-jack (steal,) a domain name from someones account, transfer it out without any notification of transfer, and thats when we lost our business of 8 years. 8 years of work is now gone — in the hands of Chinese hackers.

Some quick background on who ShadesDaddy.com is. We’re a large internet retailer of eyewear selling name brand products as well as a content driven business who drives thousands of daily visitors, drives significant revenues and employs a team of people.

SO, what exactly happened? As we began to quickly scramble to possibly find out how this happened the first line of attack and contact was to our registry, ENOM. How can this possibly happen? We’re still finding out more information and waiting on it.

Dealing with someone that’s never happened to us before, or even heard of happening to anyone else, it was very hard to see exactly what route to take, who to contact and how to get our domain back as soon as possible. The more we scrambled for information, the more we started to find out.

When I say we, I mean myself, a few of my team members and our champion attorney Rafael Recalde. Without an attorney, we would have been waiting for days to get an answer from anyone.

It’s incredible what you’ll learn about a topic you never thought much about. Domain names. The organizations that are involved and who has the authority to do what.

As for our registry, ENOM. they have no authority or power to get the transfer back to us. All they can do is set in motion a process to contact the chinese registry and push for the transfer back as this was an unauthorized domain transfer.

While this can take a few days, time is one thing WE DON’T HAVE. We began taking our own action and as of next week we are filing suit with ICANN and VERISIGN to take action. These are the only two organizations that can possibly get the transfer back to us, the domain name back to its rightful owner. If you start researching what these organizations do, you may not be too clear on exactly their role and what they have the power to do — but they do. They operate the domain world. They need to get involved.

As the story still unfolds, I needed to get this story out there as we’re seeking immediate attention and help in this matter from the parties with power to get involved and do something.

This story is much bigger than one domain name, one American company and a few American jobs. This story is about the danger that we all as Americans (or even internet users,) now face the threat of cybercrime affecting our lives and that of our businesses and personal lives. This is now the single largest threat to American security in my opinion and we all need to be aware and demand our government and companies with power to enforce regulations & much stronger cyber security measures.

I URGE MEDIA OUTLETS TO GET INVOLVED AND TELL THIS STORY TO ENSURE ALL BUSINESS OWNERS SECURE DOMAIN NAMES WITH MORE SECURITY MEASURES AND THAT THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN AND OUR BUSINESS ENDS UP IN THE HANDS OF CHINESE (OR ANY OTHER INTERNATIONAL GROUP) HACKER HANDS.

WE’RE SEEKING ACTION FROM THOSE WHO HAVE THE POWER TO DO SO.