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From the Silicon Alley Daily
http://www.siliconalleydaily.com/issues/sar09292000.html#Headline6314

feedback: xeni@siliconalleyreporter.com

Update: Yugoslavia TLD Hostmaster Says Threats and Blackmail Led to
Domain Takeovers of Kostunica's Democratic Party and Other Opposition
Websites

by Xeni Jardin

EXCLUSIVE. As mass protests and general strikes continue in
Yugoslavia, with demands that Slobodan Milosevic concede defeat in
Sunday's elections to opponent Vojislav Kostunica, one of Yugoslavia's
senior top level domain (TLD) administrators has issued a statement
alleging that a series of personal threats and blackmail from a
Milosevic government official compelled a member of the .yu TLD
administration team to temporarily take over and redirect the Internet
domains of Kostunica's Democratic Party and other opposition websites.

The orders to take over the opposition sites were reportedly issued
from a Yugoslavian Ministry of Science and Technology official, and
affected domains belonging to the Serbian Democratic Oposition
Alliance and popular opposition site www.freeserbia.org.

Serbian Democratic Party officials explained today that the content on
their sites--which are not hosted on servers in Yugoslavia--was not
altered during the takeover, but that the dos.org.yu and ds.org.yu DNS
records were changed for approximately 24 hours during and after the
presidential elections on Sunday. Site visitors hoping to obtain
election results were instead redirected to a porn site. E-mail
service was reportedly also redirected and intercepted.

But in a statement published on the popular Serbian-language Internet
community listserv Internodium on Wednesday, Sept. 27, .yu TLD
hostmaster and University of Belgrade professor Bozidar Radenkovic
claimed that a Milosevic government agent's threats of blackmail
compelled a .yu NIC administrator to alter the records.

"For years the whole team of YU TLD has ... tried to stay clear of
immediate politics," Radenkovic's e-mail stated. "But, in the course
of deterioration and defeat of the present regime, where even murders
and kidnapping are not uncommon, blackmail and pressure have stumbled
on the administrator of org.yu domain. I hope that is just one more of
the things that will go away forever together along with this current
regime."

Radenkovic's statement reported that on Election Day, Sept. 24, an
official from the Serbian Ministry contacted him, asking whether the
opposition domain names had been registered properly. The professor
says he replied affirmatively, warning the official that unauthorized
violations of the domains would be illegal. According to Radenkovic,
the official proceeded to contact Nenad Krajnovic, the org.yu
hostmaster, and threatened to blackmail him personally unless he
altered the DNS entries.

"On Monday, Sept. 25, in a direct telephone conversation, I warned the
person from the ministry about possible consequences," Radenkovic
stated. "I received the reply that this was no longer my concern, and
that I should mind my own business."

Members of the .yu TLD team, including .yu administrator and
University of Belgrade employee Mirjana Tasic, reportedly gathered on
Sept. 25 to issue a formal response, which was sent to the Ministry
for Science and Technology with a request for an immediate reply. When
24 hours passed with no government response, Radenkovic stated that on
Sept. 26 at 10 A.M. (CET), the domain registration team reverted the
domain records to their original, unaltered state.

Democratic Party representatives told the Daily that the DNS entries
seem to have remained unaltered since.

"I do hope that Serbia will be a civil society," Radenkovic's
statement continued, "and that [our] legal system will function in an
orderly fashion, to sanction these and other similar examples of ...
voluntary behavior."

In an interview today from Belgrade, Slobodan Markovic, co-founder of
the Serbian-language Internet community listserv Internodium on which
Radenkovic's statement was first posted, told the Daily that names of
the Milosevic government official and the .yu domain administrator
allegedly responsible for the DNS takeovers have not yet been
confirmed.

"But if Milosevic refuses to back off," Markovic said, "we can expect
additional similar occurrences to take place."

The exact nature of any threats issued to the TLD administrators could
not be verified by press time, and repeated requests for comment sent
to Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party and the Serbian Ministry of
Science and Technology were unanswered.

Reached by phone at the .yu NIC headquarters on the University of
Belgrade campus, Mirjana Tasic told the Daily that she "could not
comment on this situation at this time." Radenkovic and Krajnovic did
not respond to requests for further comment.

"This is the first time [the Yugoslavian] government has had such
influence on the Yugoslavian Internet," observed Marko Milivojevic,
former System Engineer for Yugoslavia's largest ISP Eunet and
now a systems engineer with the Icelandic ISP Margmiðlun Internet.
"The very same government reacted very aggressively when some of
its domains were taken over few months ago ... including kosovo.net,
and serbia-info.com. I was called to talk on national TV and
explain how this was [technically] possible ... and at that time
the [Milosevic government] made some pretty firm comments that
domains should be left out of politics. Now, they're doing the
same thing themselves. No technical difficulty or authorized
request to move could have caused this operation--it was
purely political."

Drazen Pantic, co-founder of Belgrade-based independent news service
RadioB92 and a director at New York's Location1 gallery, told the
Daily today he believes Radenkovic's statement is a significant first
for Yugoslavia's Internet community.

"This e-mail is very important, because despite the fact that other
domains--including B92.net--have been compromised or taken over
similarly in the past, this is the first time that the .yu NIC
administrators have actually admitted that they modified domains under
direct pressure or blackmail from this ministry of the Milosevic
government ... the same ministry which appointed them as .yu TLD
managers in the first place," he said.

"This statement is proof," Pantic said. "Now we have to figure out who
pulled the switch, and who ordered this to happen, but there is no
longer any doubt that the takeover was ordered by the [Milosevic
government's] Ministry [of Science and Technology] itself. This is, in
effect, explicit proof that the Milosevic regime takes the Internet
very seriously. It's also apparent that [the regime] must also be
attempting to gather information about its opposition by intercepting
and collecting e-mails of the opposition domains."

Members of Belgrade's Internet community are calling for legal action
and dismissal for those ultimately determined responsible. Pantic told
the Daily he believes law in Yugoslavia surrounding domain ownership
is still not comprehensive, but that the seriousness of the incident
would be considered equivalent to a felony.

"The Milosevic government wanted to fake the results of the election,
and they were trying to silence as many voices as possible with these
domain redirections ... this shows that someone within the regime is
sitting there watching those sites, and that they take the contents of
the opposition sites very seriously.

"And unfortunately, this makes it seem even more clear to us that
[Milosevic] does not appear to be planning to leave office voluntarily
tomorrow, or anytime soon."