meridiantelekoms.com defaced? are smartbro subscribers safe?
is it just me or has meridiantelekoms.com been defaced by some malicious type search engine? 
i am fond of using firefox's address bar as my search bar. using it usually directs me to Google results or the site itself. it still works for multiple keyword queries, but i noticed when i use only one word, it redirects me to some search engine type page..
at first i freaked out since i thought i may have some spyware on my computer. i did complete scans with my zonealarm security suite, but found nothing.
i then had an idea. since it was loading pages like http://rayland/ i thought why not ping it? i did, and the result startled me. it was pinging rayland.meridiantelekoms.com . i had to look up the whois database on this. i used domaintools.com and searched for meridiantelekoms.com and 69.64.63.180. the thumbnail of meridiantelekoms sure is different from what the site looks now...
with all this said, i'm wondering is it safe for SmartBro subscribers to still be using the internet? as i recall, meridiantelekoms is the backend of the whole smartbro system. but for their site to be defaced like that? are they having issues with security? below are some screenshots.
i'm calling out to all smartbro subscribers out there.. are you also experiencing this?
March 24th, 2008 - 22:08
hi i have tagged you on my blog check it out ha
http://ice9web.blogspot.com
July 20th, 2008 - 21:57
alway no signal
August 13th, 2008 - 22:23
Na-eexperience ko din to. What’s “UP” SmartBRO? <_<
August 16th, 2008 - 02:48
Somebody just forgot to re-register the meridiantelekoms.com domain. Somebody hijacked/cybersquatted on it. And the DNS administrator of Smart Bro forgot to change their DNS settings and remove any remnants of the meridiantelekoms.com domain on their servers.
August 19th, 2008 - 09:14
I have the same problem, but so far only with my Ubuntu Firefox (have dual-boot – Windows XP and Ubuntu Hardy). I posted about my problem in the Ubuntu forums (you can click my name above to visit the thread) and they’ve been very helpful. I’m wondering, though, has someone tried to call up SmartBro about this? I would, if I only understood enough about the phenomenon.
Also, this post is dated March this year. Hmmm…how come I’m only experiencing this problem now?
August 19th, 2008 - 10:50
@dev
Yup i think that pretty much is the situation that happened. i guess they overlooked it or are just too lazy to fix it. i just opted to use opendns. only drawback is that opendns’ search engine (powered by yahoo) becomes the default when using Firefox’s address bar as a search bar. Google would’ve been preferred
@laurenipsum
Thanks for the link!
January 12th, 2009 - 17:50
thanks for the on.
January 12th, 2009 - 17:51
thanks..