Curador, the online credit-card thief who has penetrated the security mechanisms of a number of leading e-commerce sites, is master of his own domain again.

The cracker, who has been posting thousands of stolen credit cards at a succession of personal web sites for the past six weeks, opened up shop Friday at a new location. Curador, who calls himself "the custodian of ecommerce," claims to have stolen over 23,000 credit cards from eight small sites over the past six weeks. After each hit, he_s posted several hundred additional card numbers and customer names and addresses online in what he calls his "Hall of Shame." And each time he pops up online with a new site, Web hosting firms and domain registrars have responded by shutting it down. Curador has said he uses stolen credit cards to pay for the domain registrations. Who-is records from Network Solutions_ WorldNic registration service reveal that Curador_s new site is registered to Fibres Solutions of Swansea, Wales. No valid phone or e-mail contact information was provided. Although Curador claims to have cracked some new sites, he has not yet published their names or posted any card numbers or other customer records obtained from them. Spokesperson Chris Clough said NSI is investigating the incident, but the registration firm has no way of preventing such occurrences. Clough added that the proposed acquisition of Network Solutions by digital certificate firm Verisign could result in new authentication services that could prevent such fraudulent registrations. According to a source close to the investigation, law enforcement officials are still gathering and analyzing evidence against Curador, including log files from his previous victims. While Curador registers personal sites to get attention for his exploits and to taunt law enforcement officials, that isn_t the modus operandi of a cracker who reportedly stole half a million credit cards from an online retailer last year.