As someone else pointed out, there are currently about two dozen TLDs with
A or MX records at the apex. Some of them have been like that for many
years, and as best I can tell, the Internet has not thereby collapsed.
How many label our hosts with two letter domain names?
Beats me, but since there are several hundred TLDs, it seems to me that
the chances are pretty low that everyone in the world has managed to avoid
using them as host names.
Do you have any evidence that they have not caused problems?
Hey, you're the one claiming that there's a global disaster in progress of
which nobody seems to be aware. If there's evidence, tell us about it.
I suspect that other sites that used the names just put up
with the pain of renamimg hosts along with the resultant
risk of email being misdirected.
Perhaps you could start by asking people at ai.mit.edu how long their mail
has been unusable.
The problem is that user(_at_)ai is not globally unique.
MIT users will have problems talk to user(_at_)ai when "ai" means
Anguilla. The is a current security issue.
If / when MIT stop using ai.mit.edu, "user(_at_)ai" will not longer
mean user(_at_)ai(_dot_)mit(_dot_)edu(_dot_) This will mean that any
configuration file
that has "user(_at_)ai" will now, suddenly, get a different meaning.
This is a latent security issue.
Look, we all know there's an unlimited number of ways one can screw up
mail and web configuration. If you put an underscore in the name of a web
server, as often as not it sort of works even though it's flatly forbidden
by RFCs. Or if you put an @ or % character in the local part of your
e-mail address, it'll fail all over the place even though the RFCs say
that's fine.
I don't condone those actions.
If I see someone using underscore in a hostname I tell them
that they have made a error.
As for the % hack. That should only be processed by the
machines handling the domain to the right of the @ sign.
If I saw a machine mishandling it I would complain to the
owner of the broken machine.
Similarly if "foo(_at_)bar"@domain failed I'd complain to owner
of the machine that is broken.
Why is this particular configuration issue so uniquely awful that the IETF
and ICANN need to tie themselves up in knots about it? ICANN has plenty
of real problems on its plate, like registrars who steal people's names
and won't give them back. This isn't one of them.
This is worse.
The owner of a domain name that has been stolen can go to
the courts to get it back. The have a remedy path outside
of ICANN.
This is a fundemental attack on the communication infrastruction
of the Internet which is predicated on there being globally
unique names. It needs to be nipped in the bud before it
gets too bad.
Mark
Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)iecc(_dot_)com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet
for Dummies
",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
--
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: Mark_Andrews(_at_)isc(_dot_)org
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