DNS ‘Seizure’ Takes Out MegaUpload

[beer]

For the past 24 hours the hugely popular MegaUpload file-hosting service has been rendered inaccessible across many countries around the world. With the United States government ‘Cyber Monday’ domain seizures fresh in everyone’s mind, fingerpointing has been directed at the U.S. authorities. The problems, however, seem to be rooted with the site’s domain registrar since they appear to have ‘seized’ MegaUpload’s DNS records following a dispute.

Make no mistake, the biggest entertainment companies in the world do not like file-hosting site MegaUpload.

Currently the huge cyberlocker resides on the destroy-them-all SOPA-directed “rogue site” list of the MPAA alongside The Pirate Bay. The site hasn’t gone unnoticed by the RIAA either. MegaUpload is on their list too, sandwiched between the leading torrent sites and warez forums.

So given this background, particularly when viewed through the prism of the ‘Cyber Monday’ domain seizures, it’s hardly surprising that panic set in yesterday when MegaUpload suddenly failed to load for many people all around the world, not just for a few minutes but for hours on end and into today. The site is reported to be back up for some, but Twitter and other networks are awash with complaints that the problems are continuing.

Speculation on the downtime is rife, but it appears that MegaUpload has problems with its domain registrar. At the time of writing, MegaUpload’s current DNS records as reported by Network Tools are listed as ns1.badwhoisshutdown.com and ns2.badwhoisshutdown.com. It’s unclear why the IP address listed (216.239.35.100) belongs to Google.

One of the common causes of this kind of DNS diversion is when domain registrars doubt that the provided WHOIS details for a domain are correct, so they ‘hijack’ the DNS records to prevent the domain resolving to the correct site. In 2009, MegaUpload sister site MegaVideo suffered similar problems but eventually returned after downtime.

TorrentFreak has put a request into MegaUpload for comment, but while we wait for the official response it seems clear that the problems have been massive. Right across the United States into Europe, from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, Japan, Australia, Canada, Brazil and UK, no area seems to have been unaffected.

For many the site remains down even now, providing an interesting taster of what SOPA has in store should it pass. Some reports suggest that switching to Google’s DNS provides a solution to the problem, others that using one of the site’s many IP addresses (http://174.140.154.23/ for example) is a better option.

In the meantime the conspiracy theories will continue. Did MegaUpload’s registrar hijack the DNS over a simple WHOIS detail error? Or perhaps the “trolls” warned about here laid some poison down for the site, or maybe there’s another more simple explanation?

When we get official word from MegaUpload we’ll report back – the AMA request on Reddit would be fun, but we doubt it will go answered.

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source)

Noooo not MU... :nono:

[myidisbb]

pss if in the usa stop votingn for rinos and democrats.

[beer]

Megaupload tested working here in the US. If Megaupload is inaccessible in your area due to DNS errors try this fix:

Fix Megaupload

Megaupload.com, the file repository website has been down for some since November 28 at 4:50PM EST for some. Megaupload is one of the largest upload sites on the internet and the source of content for dozens of online video link indexers like Icefilms.info and Ceuvana video.

November 29 1:40PM EST

Some parts of the world are still experiencing DNS problems and Megaupload down times this morning. There has been no official announcement about the service outages from the company.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the Megaupload domain being seized by various American governmental units and that it has something to do with this initiative. This doesn’t sound correct as the ICE initiative is targeting counterfeit consumer goods and also Megaupload is still available from its domain name in many countries.

Still, there is definitely something strange going on. The domain name server were switched to IPs owned by Google and the server names read n1.badwhoisshutdown.com and n2.badwhoisshutdown.com.This suggests that the domain name server was pointed away from megaupload by the domain name registrar for insufficient or false Who Is information. That is, the information associated with the domain megaupload.net was incorrect or missing. It could just be that the DNS switch is taking a while to propagate but the new domain name server adresses suggests the pointing was dont by a third party. Hopefully everything is ironed out soon. For now, follow the steps below (changing to Google’s public DNS) and it should resolve the issue for you no matter your geographic location

If you are running Windows 7 follow these steps to connect to the Google public DNS and fix Megaupload (thanks 360baller):

Start -> Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Change adapter settings -> Find the connection for which you are using (eg. Ethernet, Wireless) and right click it -> Select properties -> Might be prompted to type your admin password -> Select the Networking tab -> Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) or Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) -> Properties -> Click Advanced and select the DNS tab

Enter preferred:8.8.4.4 --- alternative:8.8.8.8

Megaupload Fix for XP (thanks Alpro101):

control panel ->network connections ->local area connection>properties ->click internet protocol then click properties then enter this dns:

preferred: 208.67.222.222 --- alternate: 208.67.220.220 (open DNS)

or

preferred: 8.8.4.4 --- alternate: 8.8.8.8 (Google Public DNS)

Megaupload fix for Mac OS:

System Prefrences -> Network -> Advanced (close to bottom right of the window) -> DNS

Enter 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8 in the left column

November 28 7:50PM EST

So the quickfix below will only get you as far as the download countdown screen as download link will try to reference it’s domain name. To get around this you have to add megavideo.com to your etc hosts file and point it to any of 174.140.154.20, 174.140.154.21, 174.140.154.22, 174.140.154.23, 174.140.154.24

November 28 6:40PM EST

This looks to be a localized domain name server problem as the site is accesible on American proxies. If you’re outside of the US you can still visit the site by going directly to it’s IP 174.140.154.12 although the site is delivering extremely high latency and connection timeouts when it tries to load resources. Again, if you are outside of the United States go directly to the site’s ip or use an American proxy to access your urls. You can also point the site to any of these ip’s 174.140.154.20, 174.140.154.21, 174.140.154.22, 174.140.154.23, 174.140.154.24 in your etc hosts it should work fine.

A quick fix if you have the string link to the file you’d like, for instance:

Site: http://megaupload.com

Sharecode: /?d=1P8RZQC1 ^[?]

You can simply append all URL after the root domain (megaupload.com) to the ip adress to access the file. Like this:

Site: http://174.140.154.21

Sharecode: /?d=1P8RZQC1 ^[?]

It looks like it’s sister site, Megavideo, is unaffected.

(source)

[Nemesis]

thanks for the tip beer

[beer]

thanks for the tip beer

np ^_^ :cheers: