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Verisign screws with the net
Sep. 18th, 2003 09:31 amHow fucked up! Verisign has decided to screw up the net, and put a wildcard entry in the .com and .net TLD DNS ZONES. What does this mean to you? It depends.
Say you make a typo while typing misterx.com and instead type mistorx.com. Verisign has decided that this represents a commercial opportunity, and directs you to their little search engine website, for which they are getting undisclosed $ for your traffic.
Now, the fucked up part is that for all intensive purposes, **ALL** .com and .net addresses now exist. quyqouiqhfeljkhflfvnxcmnclvkjafyjnvnvcvafad.com resolves to 64.94.110.11, as does mistorx.com, as does any other non-registered .com or .net you can type. All requests for .com and .net return a webpage.
This breaks many, many things. Because root nameservers no longer return Name Error/NXDOMAIN for non-existent .com and .net domains, all the software out there that uses the NXDOMAIN error response to separate valid from invalid hosts will no longer work. Think about mailing list servers... such programs weed out bad email addresses by doing DNS lookups, but can't do that anymore, because all .com and .net domains exist. Spam filtering software can no longer mark items as spam if sent from an non-existant domain. Heck, even sending an email to a bad address now uses double the network resources. Not to mention caching DNS servers, which now have to cache EVERY request, because all return a response.
While this action is technically within the realm of their control, it is IMHO obscenely bad stewardship, and it reeks of profiteering. DNS software providers, such as BIND, PowerDNS, etc, are scrambling to write patches, and discussion boards are lighting up like you wouldn't believe. Meanwhile, millions of lines of code have suddenly become broken, and admins everywhere are scratching their heads, trying to figure what has happened.
$#%@#$%@#$%@!!!
$#%@#$%@#$%@!!!.com :
Say you make a typo while typing misterx.com and instead type mistorx.com. Verisign has decided that this represents a commercial opportunity, and directs you to their little search engine website, for which they are getting undisclosed $ for your traffic.
Now, the fucked up part is that for all intensive purposes, **ALL** .com and .net addresses now exist. quyqouiqhfeljkhflfvnxcmnclvkjafyjnvnvcvafad.com resolves to 64.94.110.11, as does mistorx.com, as does any other non-registered .com or .net you can type. All requests for .com and .net return a webpage.
This breaks many, many things. Because root nameservers no longer return Name Error/NXDOMAIN for non-existent .com and .net domains, all the software out there that uses the NXDOMAIN error response to separate valid from invalid hosts will no longer work. Think about mailing list servers... such programs weed out bad email addresses by doing DNS lookups, but can't do that anymore, because all .com and .net domains exist. Spam filtering software can no longer mark items as spam if sent from an non-existant domain. Heck, even sending an email to a bad address now uses double the network resources. Not to mention caching DNS servers, which now have to cache EVERY request, because all return a response.
While this action is technically within the realm of their control, it is IMHO obscenely bad stewardship, and it reeks of profiteering. DNS software providers, such as BIND, PowerDNS, etc, are scrambling to write patches, and discussion boards are lighting up like you wouldn't believe. Meanwhile, millions of lines of code have suddenly become broken, and admins everywhere are scratching their heads, trying to figure what has happened.
$#%@#$%@#$%@!!!
$#%@#$%@#$%@!!!.com :
