Domain name squatting (or cybersquatting) sounds pretty shady, right? But sometimes, it leads to the weirdest corners of the internet. Today, I want to dive into a wild example involving the mining giant South32.

To begin with, I think it would be great to talk about South32 and BHP, South32 is a global mining and metals company that produces commodities like aluminum, coal, manganese, nickel, and silver. It was spun off from BHP in 2015 to focus on non-core assets, particularly in regions like Australia, South Africa, and South America

Now, let’s talk about the South32 domain. If you take a closer look, typing https://south32.net on your browser will actually take you, as expected, to the South32 website, but what about https://south32.com? Things are getting kinda… weird now.

Let’s take a closer look at https://south32.com

I first wanna clarify that this website gets updated A LOT. At the time writting this, exactly 2024/10/22, it does look like this.

Let’s take a look at the website and analyze what’s going on here. By just taking a look at the HTML file, it looks like this does not contain any JavaScript embedded code (<script></script> tags), it also doesn’t contain any elements referring other JavaScript files. Taking this in consideration, there is probably a script running on their server generating this garbage and just placing it in a HTML file

You can literally see CSS code right there which means that there is some sort of script or algorithm generating this files after a certain period of time and just dumping it on a HTML file, along some random images that looks like… whatever you’re seeing right now.

But, why does it say that the South32 CEO says that the film production is crashing? And why does it claim that the South32 CEO is dead?

That is easy to explain.

It’s All About Domain Name Squatting

What you’re seeing here is an example of domain name squatting or cybersquatting. This is the practice of registering, buying, or using domain names to profit from someone else’s trademark or reputation. Squatters typically target well-known brands and try to sell the domains back to the companies for a hefty price, or use them to confuse visitors.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but in this case, the plot thickens. It’s not just about south32.com.

Try opening south6.com, south36.com, or even south99.com. You’ll notice they all redirect to the same video.

It seems like the person behind this has registered dozens of similar domains, all targeting South32. The goal appears to be defaming the company or pressuring them into buying back these domains. It’s a pretty aggressive form of cybersquatting.

This isn’t just bad for South32’s reputation—it could be considered defamation.

This south32.com operation has been made with the purpose of making the company look terrible, or just to try and get them to buy the actual south32.com domain from them. There are other domains such as londonpost.com, killmyself.com or even piza.com that are used with the same purpose, trying to make the company look bad

Here’s a sample of the kind of video you might come across while browsing these domains:

The video repeats the same claims over and over, often with strange sound effects and unrelated imagery in the background.

Who’s Behind the South32 Domain Situation?

Apparently, the person behind this whole South32 mess is someone named Luigi Bian—and from what I can gather, there’s a lot to unpack here. In my opinion, Luigi seems… unhinged. I even suspect he might be involved in some sort of mafia, given how he controls so many domains just to pull off this South32 stunt. He’s likely schizophrenic, based on his behavior.

Interestingly, there was a movie released in 2016 called South32, which isn’t related to the mining company at all. However, Luigi Bian decided to promote this movie on the south32.com domains, mixing in bizarre and scary content, like jumpscares, in what looks like an attempt to pressure the company into buying the domains from him to end the nonsense.

Flooding Social Media with “BHP 1 Cent Stock” Videos

Another strange aspect of this whole ordeal is the flood of videos on platforms like YouTube and TikTok that keep pushing the same bizarre message: “BHP 1 Cent Stock.” These videos aren’t explaining anything about the case or offering any real insight. Instead, it seems like bot accounts and automated users are being used to upload the same repetitive content over and over again, making it harder to ignore.

The videos often contain random sound effects and poorly made visuals, much like the ones you encounter when visiting the various squatted domains. This coordinated flood of spam makes the entire situation feel even more suspicious and unhinged.

The sheer volume of these uploads suggests that whoever is behind it (probably Luigi Bian or his associates) is trying to spread this nonsense far and wide, creating noise and confusion around the South32 and BHP names.

Here’s a screenshot of what I’m talking about:

What’s Next?

We’ll dive deeper into who’s behind this and what their ultimate goal might be. But for now, one thing’s clear: someone is going all out to mess with South32’s online presence.

TL;DR

Luigi Bian, the person behind the bizarre content on south32.com, seems to be using domain name squatting to defame South32. He has registered numerous similar domains (around 6K domains) and even promoted a 2016 movie called South32.

If you want a further and better explanation about the case, I really suggest you taking a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfqvni2gkgM

(10/23/24) Something extremely weird just happened and this needs to be addressed

Yesterday, at exactly 10/22/2024 I’ve written all of this and decided to publish it

This blog post, contains the words “Rabbit Hole”, “Luigi Bian” and “Videos”. Looking back, yesterday (10/22/2024), the website https://south32.com had exactly the following on their title:

South32 CEO says Film production is crashing Dead Dead Dead South32 CEO Dead Dead Dead.

Literally just today, this got changed to the following:

South32 CEO the Most Disturbing BHP Billiton Rabbit Hole luigi bian south32 videos.

I am afraid South32.com has some sort of Internet scrapper, in which, it’ll look for any results that talk about South32 itself. I suppose there is some sort of algorithm that will read the webpage, scrape some words from it and dump it in a HTML file. It’s either that, or there is someone doing this manually.