Instagram service is trying to prevent the spreading of data got by hackers during the attack in the end of August in a very peculiar way. Back then cyber criminals managed to steal credentials of over 6 million Instagram users including their phone numbers and emails. Not only regular users, but also many stars suffered from the breach, for example, singer and actress Selena Gomez and football player Cristiano Ronaldo. Hackers decided to monetize this immediately: they registered a domain name Doxagram.com and created a webpage that allows searching the database of stolen data. Anyone can buy credentials for about $10 per each record.
Obviously, Doxagram.com was soon blocked for illegal activity. The same fate befell domain Doxagram.ws that cyber criminals used to revive the website. In relation to this Instagram and Facebook, which owns the service, decided to use preemptive approach. The Daily Beast reports that at least 280 names containing the word “Doxagram” have been registered already in different domain zones. What they want to achieve is to not let hackers register these names and therefore limit their capabilities of selling stolen data.
However, domain business experts find these actions quite questionable. First of all, they point out to the strange choice of domain zones. Along with obvious names such as doxagram.org, Instagram and Facebook have registered such domains as doxagram.christmas and doxagram.mom, however, left doxagram.store unregistered. In any case, there are over 1000 gTLDs active in the global network today and registration of the word “doxagram” in each of them is a waste of money. At least because according to latest data hackers revived the service on Dark Net already.
