This is outrageous, both in breaking DNS, and in abusing monopoly
power.
Other references:
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/msg00311.html
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/lynn-message-to-iab-06jan03.htm
http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/2003-01/msg00050.html
What can be done besides complaining to ICANN?
comments(_at_)icann(_dot_)org
Neal McBurnett http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged. GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60
On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 12:01:12AM -0400, Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
I am forwarding this message from the ASRG list. If you haven't heard it
yet, Verisign has activated their "typos" DNS service for .COM and .NET.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 03:10:52 +0200
From: Brad Knowles <brad(_dot_)knowles(_at_)skynet(_dot_)be>
To: IRTF ASRG <asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Folks,
This was just posted to the NANOG mailing list. There are
already people who are working on hacking BIND to return NXDOMAIN for
wildcard records in TLD zones, or perhaps for any reference to the
specific IP address(es) they are using (so far, we only know about
64.94.110.11). Meanwhile, many are already null-routing this IP
address.
This affects us, because now anyone can send spam with an address
like
"i(_at_)spam(_dot_)from(_dot_)verisign(_dot_)becausethisdomaindoesntreallyexist(_dot_)net",
and yet still have that pass standard anti-spam checks like "Does
this domain really exist in the DNS"?
Another one for the service provider BCP, I think.
Anyway, the full message announcing this "enhancement" is:
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 19:24:29 -0400
From: Matt Larson <mlarson(_at_)verisign(_dot_)com>
To: nanog(_at_)nanog(_dot_)org
Subject: Change to .com/.net behavior
Today VeriSign is adding a wildcard A record to the .com and .net
zones. The wildcard record in the .net zone was activated from
10:45AM EDT to 13:30PM EDT. The wildcard record in the .com zone is
being added now. We have prepared a white paper describing VeriSign's
wildcard implementation, which is available here:
http://www.verisign.com/resources/gd/sitefinder/implementation.pdf
By way of background, over the course of last year, VeriSign has been
engaged in various aspects of web navigation work and study. These
activities were prompted by analysis of the IAB's recommendations
regarding IDN navigation and discussions within the Council of
European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR) prompted by DNS
wildcard testing in the .biz and .us top-level domains. Understanding
that some registries have already implemented wildcards and that
others may in the future, we believe that it would be helpful to have
a set of guidelines for registries and would like to make them
publicly available for that purpose. Accordingly, we drafted a white
paper describing guidelines for the use of DNS wildcards in top-level
domain zones. This document, which may be of interest to the NANOG
community, is available here:
http://www.verisign.com/resources/gd/sitefinder/bestpractices.pdf
Matt
--
Matt Larson <mlarson(_at_)verisign(_dot_)com>
VeriSign Naming and Directory Services