Security nerds have launched a Gofundme to buy back securityfocus.com, a domain that hosted the Bugtraq site and more than 120,000 links from the National Vulnerability Database that are now dead.

BrianKrebs

Security nerds have launched a Gofundme to buy back securityfocus.com, a domain that hosted the Bugtraq site and more than 120,000 links from the National Vulnerability Database that are now dead. Whoops.

"Symantec killed Bugtraq in 2020 and let the domain lapse. Now it's squatted for $175k," writes Jonathan Brossard. "The NVD has 120,000+ broken links pointing there. The security community's memory is being held hostage."

https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-securityfocus-bugtraq?attribution_id=sl:81e68f4d-14c5-46b5-9543-0d66980203e8&lang=en_AU&ts=1771062583&utm_campaign=man_ss_icons&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link

Not sure if this matters, but DomainTools says the domain was transferred to Accenture.com, Accenture Global Services Limited in Ireland.

fancysandwiches

@briankrebs publicly declaring a campaign to buy the domain back seems like a great way to make the price go up.

Matt Palmer

@briankrebs why reward the lowlifes who are squatting the name? It's not entirely dissimilar to paying ransomware. Instead, put up the site on a new domain and do a search and replace in the NVD. It doesn't fix all the other dead links out there, but it's better than paying a rentier.

Matt Palmer

@HopelessDemigod domain squatting is against the rules. Speculation, on the other hand, is perfectly fair and reasonable.

Matt Palmer

@the_moep bad people squat domains, savvy businesspeople speculate.

ohir

@briankrebs It would be way better for "security nerds" to register securityfocus.is or whatever.eu and supply the non nerd community with `s/securityfocus.com/whatever.eu/` solution.

Were times better the ACPA and pro bono lawyers would be enough.