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January 27, 2003 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Nominet UK, the official registry for .uk domains, was reportedly forced to suspend its WhoIs service late last week following a rogue attempt to copy its entire registry of .uk domains.
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Nominet suspects the attempts to copy the WhoIs database, which had been occurring since the previous week, are the work of spammers. The attack that began late Thursday night was so severe that Nominet was forced to suspend the service.
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The company has already begun attempts to stop further actions by those responsible for the act, which is though to have originated from outside the UK.
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Nominet said in a statement that the attacks appeared to be the work of a persistent organization or person attempting to create a detailed copy of the .uk registry. The attackers, who usually worked overnight, operated by systematically querying the WhoIs server using whatever proxies they could find, sometimes using hundreds of proxies at once.
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The company apologized for any inconvenience it caused by taking the directory offline, but said it hoped members would understand the importance of protecting the .uk registry.
