On the 8th, it was serving an error page from centos.
On the 9th, it was serving the new content. https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup for zombo.com shows that it was updated on 2026-02-09 20:34:17 UTC
I believe that a more reasonable explanation would be that the domain name expired, someone saw that being the case, bought the domain name and hosted their own version of it.
I'm not sure that "stolen" is the proper verb to use, or that "hacker" is the appropriate attribution.
The current registration occurred in 1999. Typically, domain registrations are extended in yearly multiples, which can be seen by the fact that it expires on October 10th, the same day that it was registered.
If it expired in 2025, then that expiration would have occurred in October.
That said, you are probably correct that it wasn't a hacker as such. GoDaddy was indeed offering it for sale in February, according to a Reddit thread from that month[0]. That makes me wonder why...
That’s what the current page claims, legitimate registration by “New Management”.
> Welcome to… New Management. This domain was purchased openly via GoDaddy. We come in peace (and with a wallet): we’d love to also purchase the rights to the former site's content to help revive the infinite. Until then, everything here is new & unique. Old content rights owners, please reach out. Anything is possible.
And transferred it away? Registrars make it really hard to do that if you're not the actual person. I'm finding it hard to believe someone can do this anonymously.
Registration expires, someone snaps it up immediately. It happened to a customer of mine with a domain that was their name. It pointed at a page saying it was available for sale for $4000.
If your credit card is current. One of the "oh, this gets into trouble" is when you do a 10 year registration paid in advance and the credit card on file expires before the auto-renewal time.
The registrar will poke you, and put up warnings when you log into the server to check on your account that your auto renewal is coming up soon and the card on file has expired.
But if you're not paying attention to your domain registrations, or the renewal reminder emails get sent to the spam folder, or you've lost access to the original email address that you had to register it a decade ago, then godaddy is quite happy to put up a lander page with some inflated price on it and sell it to someone else.
The last week of January, the site was intermittently serving back a 429 response (too many requests) as recorded by the wayback machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/Zombo.com
In the first week of February, the site was down.
On the 8th, it was serving an error page from centos.
On the 9th, it was serving the new content. https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup for zombo.com shows that it was updated on 2026-02-09 20:34:17 UTC
I believe that a more reasonable explanation would be that the domain name expired, someone saw that being the case, bought the domain name and hosted their own version of it.
I'm not sure that "stolen" is the proper verb to use, or that "hacker" is the appropriate attribution.
> the domain name expired
It's possible to tell from an rdap call that this isn't the case:
The current registration occurred in 1999. Typically, domain registrations are extended in yearly multiples, which can be seen by the fact that it expires on October 10th, the same day that it was registered.If it expired in 2025, then that expiration would have occurred in October.
That said, you are probably correct that it wasn't a hacker as such. GoDaddy was indeed offering it for sale in February, according to a Reddit thread from that month[0]. That makes me wonder why...
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/oldinternet/comments/1qy566h/is_zom...
Thank you for the explanation!
That’s what the current page claims, legitimate registration by “New Management”.
> Welcome to… New Management. This domain was purchased openly via GoDaddy. We come in peace (and with a wallet): we’d love to also purchase the rights to the former site's content to help revive the infinite. Until then, everything here is new & unique. Old content rights owners, please reach out. Anything is possible.
html5 zombocom still exists, for your viewing pleasure. you can do anything at zombocom. anything at all. the only limit is yourself.
[1]: https://html5zombo.com/
It will never, ever, get old.
Ooh, I really want to change those svg paths to svg circles. :)
I knew anything was possible at ZomboCom, but damn. I never expected this. Guess that's ZomboCom for ya.
I didn't think I'd be the first person in this (or the reddit) thread to call this new site ZombieCom, but not gonna lie I'm pretty happy about it.
I never imagined this happening. I guess the limitation really was my mind.
That's like when the Library of Alexandria was burned
That's a shame. Now I can't do anything at ZomboCom.
The only limit is yourself!
*was
I guess the hacker could do anything… at zombocom
How does a hacker steal a website? So many questions.
You steal the domain name, not the website so to speak. Which would mean someone got their registrar credentials most likely.
And transferred it away? Registrars make it really hard to do that if you're not the actual person. I'm finding it hard to believe someone can do this anonymously.
Yeah that’s because it’s not what happened. It’s a common expiration snipe.
That's neither hacking nor stealing
Legally and technically no, but it borders on both...
Except the domain did not expire, if you check WHOIS.
Registration expires, someone snaps it up immediately. It happened to a customer of mine with a domain that was their name. It pointed at a page saying it was available for sale for $4000.
Don't domain registars auto-renew domains for you?
If your credit card is current. One of the "oh, this gets into trouble" is when you do a 10 year registration paid in advance and the credit card on file expires before the auto-renewal time.
The registrar will poke you, and put up warnings when you log into the server to check on your account that your auto renewal is coming up soon and the card on file has expired.
But if you're not paying attention to your domain registrations, or the renewal reminder emails get sent to the spam folder, or you've lost access to the original email address that you had to register it a decade ago, then godaddy is quite happy to put up a lander page with some inflated price on it and sell it to someone else.
if there is any consolation, this is still up
https://github.com/Jonty/zombocom/
https://welcometozombo.com
Another little corner of the internet is gone.
Had to check... but this is still here https://dack.com/web/bullshit.html
The thread is lacking any detail on how the site was stolen and sold. Perhaps the "OG owner" as the poster calls it sold it for money?
Yeah I'm not sure. I haven't found anything else yet about this. The reddit poster posted this screenshot of an email with the (apparently) original owner https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
A more direct source for the screenshot: https://old.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/1qz3it...
shoot i show that to people every once in a while
This is a real shame and I hope the original owners get it back... but that ai slop song is actually a banger
Right? I grabbed it! Noticed the text says they're willing to host the original content and they'll pay for it?
Crappy flash gets replaced by crappy ai gen. Truly the art of the previous generation surpassed by the art of the next.
I ... honestly have very limited grounds for complaint here.