ICANN Denies Hack, Loss of gTLD Applicant Data

MARINA DEL REY, Calif.—In the aftermath of an announcement by ICANN Thursday that it had to take its TLD Application System (TAS) offline temporarily because of "a technical issue with the TAS system software," the company has said that the issue was not the result of a hack, as has been speculated upon in the media. Yesterday's initial statement by ICANN read: ICANN constantly monitors the performance of the TLD Application System (TAS). Recently, we received a report of unusual behavior with the operation of the TAS system. We then identified a technical issue with the TAS system software. ICANN is taking the most conservative approach possible to protect all applicants and allow adequate time to resolve the issue. Therefore, TAS will be shut down until Tuesday at 23:59 UTC - unless otherwise notified before that time. In order to ensure all applicants have sufficient time to complete their applications during the disruption, the application window will remain open until 23:59 UTC on Friday, 20 April 2012. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. If you have any questions, please contact the gTLD Customer Service Center (CSC) via the CSC portal. A subsequent post by ICANN COO Akram Atallah added: We have learned of a possible glitch in the TLD application system software that has allowed a limited number of users to view some other users' file names and user names in certain scenarios. Out of an abundance of caution, we took the system offline to protect applicant data. We are examining how this issue occurred and considering appropriate steps forward. We apologize for any concern this may have caused and will communicate on a regular basis on our website, which can be found at http://newgtlds.icann.org. DomainIncite.com reported later in the day, "Speculation as to the cause has already started on social media, with some pointing to the possibility of hacking, but according to ICANN we can rule out foul play." ICANN also provided the site with an updated comment that read, "No application data has been lost from those who have already submitted applications, so it should not pose problems for existing applicants.”