My question is, after this point, can Alice reclaim her ___domain? Is there any way to automate verification of ___domain name ownership outside without DNS?
She hasn't lost the ___domain, she's lost the ability to control its DNS at the provider she's currently using (the nameservers she set).
So as sibling says it's a case of changing the ns to some other provider, or else I suppose a support case to somehow prove you do own the ___domain, so please assign control back to your account.
Well, if the email address you use at the registrar is under the ___domain the attacker now controls, they can hijack it and potentially escalate to taking over your registrar account as well. Hopefully you have 2FA set up and your registrar enforces it properly.
Thinking back more I realize that when I first registered my ___domain there was no money involved. I remember when ethical discussions of charging for ___domain names. The justification is that buying the ___domain name proved ownership. I suppose it was also meant to discourage people piping dict into the registration process. There was a land rush for nouns such as pets.com.
