LSU’s domain registry account was illegally accessed from outside the country Nov. 25, causing visitors to the domains to be directed to the marketing page for available domains of GoDaddy.com, the University said Monday in a news release.
The LSU Athletic Department’s official website, LSUsports.net, was one of the University domains transferred to a third-party account and subsequently canceled, the release said.
“We’re still trying to determine how they hacked in,” said Brian Hommel, director of trademark licensing at LSU. “Essentially they hacked in, changed all the contact information and made changes to certain domain names.”
As of Monday night, the site appeared to be operating normally. Contrary to the GoDaddy.com page, LSUsports.net is not available for purchase.
Todd Politz, LSU Sports interactive manager, said Monday morning it could take one to two days for all users to see content correctly again, though the site appeared to be working Monday.
“The University is in the process with GoDaddy of undoing everything that was done Thursday,” Politz said. “It really didn’t propagate to the Internet until [Sunday] afternoon and early [Monday] morning. It’s not something that will affect all users immediately, but at the same time, it won’t resolve correctly for all users either. It will be a sporadic issue for the next 24-48 hours. It’s not like a flipping a switch where now you see it, now you don’t.”
A Whois.com search revealed the owner who took over the LSUsports.net domain through GoDaddy.com is an individual named Mohamed Irfan. Politz said Irfan lives in Jalisco, Mexico.
Politz quashed rumors that LSU forgot to renew the LSUsports.net domain, saying the domain is registered through May 19, 2015.
“Domain companies want you to renew, so they send you tons of reminders that you’re coming up,” Politz said. “Another rumor is that LSUsports.net had to switch to dot-com because of CBS’ multimedia rights. We’re their rights-holder for the website. We’re not switching to LSUsports.com, though we have owned it for years. We’re using it to direct traffic right now to allow people to access the website.”
Hommel said the University is working with the “Undo” department at GoDaddy.com to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible. Hommel estimated the number of domains affected is in the 20s, including LSUpix.net and LSUDining.com.
“We have 200-plus domain names in the account, so we had to manually go through each and every domain to determine which ones were affected,” Hommel said.
 
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Contact Rachel Whittaker at [email protected]