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Rogue domain owner holds CyanogenMod.com for $10,000 ransom, team finds alternate hosting

Rogue domain owner holds CyanogenMod.com for $10,000 ransom, team finds alternate hosting

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htc one x CM9_640
htc one x CM9_640

Following a tale of betrayal and threats, the team behind the popular Android ROM CyanogenMod is moving its online presence to a new .org domain. It was discovered that the owner of CyanogenMod.com and associated social network accounts had been impersonating Steve Kondik — aka Cyanogen himself — in an attempt to make money from referral deals with other sites.

When confronted over this by the non-profit Cyanogen team and asked to relinquish control, this person demanded $10,000 for the domain, according to CyanogenMod PR head Abhisek Devkota. After realizing that payment would not be forthcoming, the person deleted all of CyanogenMod's records and sent the domain offline. The team is in the process of relocating to a new server hosted at CyanogenMod.org and has lodged a dispute with ICANN to regain control of the original domain.

The CyanogenMod team says its .com domain was bought and donated back in 2009 when the project had little funding or online presence, and is "deeply hurt" at what it considers betrayal fueled by greed. However this situation gets untangled, it doesn't look like the best way to celebrate yesterday's official launch of CyanogenMod 10.

Update: A few minutes after this story was posted, Kondik announced via Twitter that the dispute has been resolved. Details of the resolution haven't been released, but are apparently forthcoming.