Sonoma Valley Hospital in Sonoma, a city north of San Francisco, California, was forced to urgently change its website URL after its domain name, SVH.com, was hijacked, according to local media. The hospital is a relatively small healthcare facility with 75 beds; however, it owned its own domain name. Three-letter .COM domains are quite valuable and can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Apparently, the thieves were motivated by the hefty price tag.
WHOIS records show that the owner and registrar of SVH.com changed in early August. This often happens due to owners’ carelessness, as they simply forget to extend their registration. But in this case, the domain was transferred to Chinese BizCN with more than a year left on its registration with Network Solutions. Observers believe that the transfer was the result of a phishing attack and that the owner’s or the registrar’s account was hacked. It is unknown though whether hackers targeted the hospital itself or Network Solutions.
Due to the incident, Sonoma Valley Hospital had to move its website to a new domain, sonomavalleyhospital.org. The transition required changing the email addresses of the entire staff, which took several days. In its article about the incident, Domain Incite predicts that SVH.com may soon be listed for sale and warns domain investors against the purchase because the domain name is very likely to be subject to litigation. And that is to say nothing about the moral side of the deal. Buying something that was stolen from doctors and patients is definitely not a great idea.
