Update: CyanogenMod says owner hijacked domain, demanded $10,000
Android enthusiasts trying to reach CyanogenMod.com, the website for the popular community-maintained firmware of the same name, will find themselves staring at a blank filler site as of today. As has been detailed in a blog post up on the new CyanogenMod.org, the owner of the original domain (one Ahmet Deveci) name shut the site down after he was discovered impersonating CyanogenMod founder Steve "Cyanogen" Kondik for the purpose of cutting referral deals with other sites.
When confronted and asked to surrender the keys amicably, Deveci responded by demanding $10,000 for the domain, an amount that the team "won't (and can't) pay." CyanogenMod team members were able to reclaim ownership of the project's Twitter and Facebook accounts, but upon being locked out of the system Deveci promptly deleted the domain's DNS records, rendering the site unreachable.
"We don’t like how this played out, and we are deeply hurt," the team said in its statement. "Likewise, we are deeply saddened at the confusion this may have caused the community. We will continue to be open about the what, when, [and] how, but unfortunately, we may never know the ‘why’—though greed comes to mind. The team itself has not made a profit off of CM and that is not our goal. But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension."
