Ask HN: Who runs News.YCombinator.net and hackerne.ws?

7 points by bowman 16 years ago | 6 comments

These sites seem to be exact mirrors of this site. I got distracted during a google search and logged onto one thinking it was this site. I quickly freaked out and changed my password but I would like to know their relationship with this site. A phishing scam, or something innocent?

http://news.ycombinator.net/ http://hackerne.ws/

staunch 16 years ago |

Nothing nefarious going on: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84039

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=524470

joshu 16 years ago |

It's still nefarious. Websites should not service any hostnames that aren't whitelisted. It's a good way to get linked to and traffic and so on.

profquail 16 years ago |

You can do a DNS lookup on the domains:

http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=dnsrec&host=ne...

http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=dnsrec&host=ha...

Compare it with the real HN domain (news.ycombinator.com): http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=dnsrec&host=ne...

I dunno about hackerne.ws, but the ycombinator.com and .net domains look like they've got the same information. Perhaps someone with more DNS experience can do a little more digging.

EDIT: Here's the WHOIS info for the contact email (dns@jomax.net) for hackerne.ws: http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=JOMAX.NET

stse 16 years ago |

Secondary domains should use 301 redirect.

bkrausz 16 years ago |

yc.net seems to be registered by PG and pointing to the same server, though hackerne.ws is a godaddy domain hosted on godaddy servers, which seems a lot sketchier.

PieSquared 16 years ago | |

I think it was a Christmas present to the HN community at some time.