Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-19 Thread Simon Leinen
Yakov Shafranovich writes:
> Just to follow up on this - I just spoke to an engineer at Verisign
> and he informed me that the SMTP daemon is being replaced in a few
> hours with an RFC-compliant one. As for not giving a warning - this
> came from a higher policy level at Verisign and he is just an
> engineer.

They finally did, and the new version (1.5) of the "Snubby Mail
Rejector" does work better.  It handles multiple "RCPT TO:" commands
better - the previous version 1.3 would always reply 550 to the first,
but 250 to the next.  And the new version even does ESMTP with the
PIPELINING extension - this will save quite a few packets globally.

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... Connecting to dafladshflhfldkshflaasdf.com. 
via esmtp...
220 Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.5 ready
>>> EHLO babar.switch.ch
250-snubby
250-PIPELINING
250-SIZE 1024
250-ETRN
250-XVERP
250 8BITMIME
>>> MAIL From:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> SIZE=570
250 Ok
>>> RCPT To:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>> RCPT To:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>> DATA
550 : Client host rejected: The domain you are trying to send 
mail to does not exist.
550 : Client host rejected: The domain you are trying to send 
mail to does not exist.
554 Error: no valid recipients
>>> RSET
421 Error: too many errors
>>> QUIT
-- 
Simon.



RE: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-19 Thread bill
After all two wrongs don't make a right,
But two Wrights make an airplane

In honour of the 100 year aniversary

Bill

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul
Hoffman / IMC
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 9:22 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To
Us]


At 2:14 PM +0200 9/18/03, Francis Dupont wrote:
>=> IMHO it should reject SMTP connection from the beginning with the 
>521 greeting described in RFC 1846...

People are unhappy about VeriSign breaking the rules. But here you 
are proposing that they follow an *experimental* RFC whose rules were 
not accepted into the later revision of SMTP in RFC 2821. How will 
them breaking the rules twice make it better?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium





Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-19 Thread Dean Anderson
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:

> this breaks anything that assumes (quite reasonably)
> that query to a a nonexistent domain will return NXDOMAIN.

That an invalid assumption to make. It was not made "quite reasonably",
but rather was made quite irrationally. In many or most cases, it was made
willfully, knowing and having been warned that such assumptions were
invalid.

I have little sympathy for the claims that this was somehow disruptive.
The people making these assumptions have known about and had been told of
the invalidity of those assumptions for many years. They didn't just learn
of this on Monday.  They were warned well in advance. All that happened on
Monday was that the hammer finally fell making those assumptions
operationally untenable.

> this does point out something about our standards - they're written
> assuming that people want to interoperate and that they're acting in
> good faith. while they might try to prohibit harmful behavior that might
> occur by accident, they weren't written to dictate the actions of
> potentially hostile parties (and I do regard VeriSign as hostile)

This is also unreasonable. Verisign is not hostile.

--Dean




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-18 Thread Keith Moore
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 09:22:15 -0700
Paul Hoffman / IMC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> At 2:14 PM +0200 9/18/03, Francis Dupont wrote:
> >=> IMHO it should reject SMTP connection from the beginning with
> >the 521 greeting described in RFC 1846...
> 
> People are unhappy about VeriSign breaking the rules. But here you 
> are proposing that they follow an *experimental* RFC whose rules were 
> not accepted into the later revision of SMTP in RFC 2821. How will 
> them breaking the rules twice make it better?

it's sort of missing the point anyway.  mail and web aren't the only apps 
affected by this.  this breaks anything that assumes (quite reasonably)
that query to a a nonexistent domain will return NXDOMAIN.

this does point out something about our standards - they're written assuming
that people want to interoperate and that they're acting in good faith.
while they might try to prohibit harmful behavior that might occur by
accident, they weren't written to dictate the actions of potentially hostile
parties (and I do regard VeriSign as hostile)



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-18 Thread Paul Hoffman / IMC
At 2:14 PM +0200 9/18/03, Francis Dupont wrote:
=> IMHO it should reject SMTP connection from the beginning with
the 521 greeting described in RFC 1846...
People are unhappy about VeriSign breaking the rules. But here you 
are proposing that they follow an *experimental* RFC whose rules were 
not accepted into the later revision of SMTP in RFC 2821. How will 
them breaking the rules twice make it better?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium


Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-18 Thread Francis Dupont
 In your previous mail you wrote:

   People, have you been reading the posts? The stubby SMTP daemon is not 
   an SMTP server, it is simply a program that returns the following set of 
   responses TO ANYTHING THAT IS PASSED TO IT.
   
=> IMHO it should reject SMTP connection from the beginning with
the 521 greeting described in RFC 1846...

Regards

[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-17 Thread Masataka Ohta
Carl;

> http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/delegation-only.html

As I just post to DNSOP WG ML (detailed discussion should be done
there), it is not an effective protection against synthesised (from
wildcared NS, in this case) NS and synthesised (from scratch) child
zone contents.

A protection is to reject NS answers, if it is identical to wildcarded
one, though it has several side effects.

Masataka Ohta



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-17 Thread Florian Weimer
Paul Vixie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>> By the way, what about .museum?
>
> .museum does not delegate all of its subdomains.
>
> not all tld's are delegation-only.

I know.  I have to admit that (as someone who grew up under .de) I
would never have thought of the delegation-only approach. 8-)



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-17 Thread Carl Malamud
Hi -

http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/delegation-only.html

Carl

> I've just got to ask... I am seeing news that BIND  WILL BE patched with
> this kind of support in it. 
> 
> Is this a sponsored patch, or is it just a random person posting a patch
> - that if applied would have this functionality
> 
> Bill
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul
> Vixie
> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 7:33 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To
> Us]
> 
> 
> > It is worth noting that if we are to "pass judgement against" Verisign
> 
> > there are at least half-dozen other TLDs that blazed the trail.  We 
> > just overlooked them because of their size as compared to .NET and 
> > .COM.
> 
> when people started beating on my phone ringer about wildcards yesterday
> evening, and screaming for patches to bind to somehow make it all
> better, i asked "but other tld's do this, what's the big deal?"  as near
> as i can figure it, the problem is one of expectation.  if someone signs
> up for .nu they know there'll be a wildcard there before they sign, and
> they can take appropriate precautions (like only using it for web or
> e-mail, and not naming hosts under that tld).  the expectations for .com
> and .net to not have wildcards were all set many years ago, and it's the
> violation of those expectations that's got people angry enough to
> publish patchware about it.
> -- 
> Paul Vixie
> 
> 



RE: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-17 Thread bill
I've just got to ask... I am seeing news that BIND  WILL BE patched with
this kind of support in it. 

Is this a sponsored patch, or is it just a random person posting a patch
- that if applied would have this functionality

Bill

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul
Vixie
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 7:33 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To
Us]


> It is worth noting that if we are to "pass judgement against" Verisign

> there are at least half-dozen other TLDs that blazed the trail.  We 
> just overlooked them because of their size as compared to .NET and 
> .COM.

when people started beating on my phone ringer about wildcards yesterday
evening, and screaming for patches to bind to somehow make it all
better, i asked "but other tld's do this, what's the big deal?"  as near
as i can figure it, the problem is one of expectation.  if someone signs
up for .nu they know there'll be a wildcard there before they sign, and
they can take appropriate precautions (like only using it for web or
e-mail, and not naming hosts under that tld).  the expectations for .com
and .net to not have wildcards were all set many years ago, and it's the
violation of those expectations that's got people angry enough to
publish patchware about it.
-- 
Paul Vixie




RE: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-17 Thread Gream, Matthew
Title: RE: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]






Those are application layer specific techniques that can be customised (i.e. I have a choice, if only by choosing another product), not a lower layer enforcement where I do not have a choice (or must rely on a `hack` workaround). Dare I say that this may raise competition / antitrust issues for Verisign as it could be an interpretation that their act has removed existing competition from the marketplace, and does not contain any mechanism to allow that competition to return ?

-Original Message-
From: Dean Anderson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 16 September 2003 14:05
To: Keith Moore
Cc: Yakov Shafranovich; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To
Us]



Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain doesn't
resolve?  Or worse than Mozilla taking you to Netscape, duplicating a
Google search, and opening a sidebar (and a netscape search) you didn't
want?


I think it isn't.


And people shouldn't be using Reverse DNS for spam checks, either. This
has been hashed out on both DNSOP and Namedroppers.  People have known not
to do this for a long time, but some still insist on it. For that reason
alone, this is a good idea.


        --Dean


On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:
> so now verisign is deliberately misrepresenting DNS results.
>
> why are these people allowed to live?
>
>





Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Paul Vixie
> % Blech.
> % 
> % If it's Tuesday, this must be .belgium?
> % 
> % A non-starter.  *MAYBE* if it were a different RR with different semantics.
> 
>   This may be exactly what we get w/ a patch from ISC.
>   If BIND is offically tweeked so that some zone cuts are 
>   allowed to exercise legal protocol options while others 
>   are not...  changes based on "mob" rule... not good.

as bill must surely know, we would never do that.

>   BIND begins to lose its reputation as a reference 
>   implementation of open standards.

i certainly hope not.



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Bill Manning
% On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 00:00:14 EDT, Keith Moore said:
% 
% > then again, do we really want different ways of reporting errors for 
% > different zones in the DNS?  would apps then want to special-case 
% > certain zones to interpret their results differently than the others?
% 
% Blech.
% 
% If it's Tuesday, this must be .belgium?
% 
% A non-starter.  *MAYBE* if it were a different RR with different semantics.
% 

This may be exactly what we get w/ a patch from ISC.
If BIND is offically tweeked so that some zone cuts are 
allowed to exercise legal protocol options while others 
are not...  changes based on "mob" rule... not good.

BIND begins to lose its reputation as a reference 
implementation of open standards.

Ick.

--bill
Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 00:00:14 EDT, Keith Moore said:

> then again, do we really want different ways of reporting errors for 
> different zones in the DNS?  would apps then want to special-case 
> certain zones to interpret their results differently than the others?

Blech.

If it's Tuesday, this must be .belgium?

A non-starter.  *MAYBE* if it were a different RR with different semantics.



pgp0.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Keith Moore
interesting point.  if we created a new gTLD and announced that it would be
wildcarded from day one, it wouldn't be used in the same way as the other
gTLDs.

then again, do we really want different ways of reporting errors for 
different zones in the DNS?  would apps then want to special-case 
certain zones to interpret their results differently than the others?

Keith

> when people started beating on my phone ringer about wildcards yesterday
> evening, and screaming for patches to bind to somehow make it all better,
> i asked "but other tld's do this, what's the big deal?"  as near as i can
> figure it, the problem is one of expectation.  if someone signs up for .nu
> they know there'll be a wildcard there before they sign, and they can take
> appropriate precautions (like only using it for web or e-mail, and not
> naming hosts under that tld).  the expectations for .com and .net to not
> have wildcards were all set many years ago, and it's the violation of those
> expectations that's got people angry enough to publish patchware about it.



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Paul Vixie
> It is worth noting that if we are to "pass judgement against" Verisign
> there are at least half-dozen other TLDs that blazed the trail.  We just
> overlooked them because of their size as compared to .NET and .COM.

when people started beating on my phone ringer about wildcards yesterday
evening, and screaming for patches to bind to somehow make it all better,
i asked "but other tld's do this, what's the big deal?"  as near as i can
figure it, the problem is one of expectation.  if someone signs up for .nu
they know there'll be a wildcard there before they sign, and they can take
appropriate precautions (like only using it for web or e-mail, and not
naming hosts under that tld).  the expectations for .com and .net to not
have wildcards were all set many years ago, and it's the violation of those
expectations that's got people angry enough to publish patchware about it.
-- 
Paul Vixie



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Jaap Akkerhuis


So the question boils down to: Are they owners of .com, or merely
caretakers?

An excellent question!  But that is a discussion that belongs with
ICANN, not the IETF.

Nearly my reaction as well. Note, using the concept of "ownership"
has/will get quite some lawyers debating.

Some (rhetoric) questions:
If there is a caretaker, who is the owner of what is taken
care of?  Under which law system?

jaap



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Rick Wesson

> An excellent question!  But that is a discussion that belongs with
> ICANN, not the IETF.
>
> Jim

Jim,

that would be true if the ICANN were functioning and this event is just
proof that the ICANN does not function.

the mission of ICANN (my paraphrase) is "Technical Administration of
Internet ?N?ames and Numbers"

It is ovious to anyone today, that there is no technical oversite of the
DNS today.


-rick






Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread David Morris


On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Vernon Schryver wrote:

> > From: James M Galvin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > ...
> > Correct me if I'm wrong, the principle disruption -- and I want to
> > emphasize disruption here -- I've seen is that a particular spam
> > indicator no longer works as expected.  Is there more to this than that?
> > ...
>
> The list I've seen is:

One more I've seen mentioned today ... an incorrect MX record which refers
to a non-existant domain will/may no longer properly fail over to an
alternate lower priority MX entry.

>
>  - failing to reject spam based on NXDOMAIN for the envelope sender.
>  (What you term "the principle disruption")
>
>  - rejecting legitimate mail because some long dead DNS-based
>  blacklists are suddenly resolving
>
>  - HTTP spiders will fetch Verisign's robots.txt a lot as they
> find bogus domains (e.g. typos in HREFs) resolving.
>
>  - HTTP users see a stalled screen instead of an error message as
> their browsers wait for Verisign's overloaded HTTP server to
> deliver its advertising.




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread James M Galvin

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> But what exactly is the "screw" here?

Verisign was (as far as I knew) given *stewardship* of the .com and
.net zones as a public trust.  I don't see anywhere they were given
the right to use their stewardship to try to make money selling typo
eyeballs.  (And note that unless you do something *really* ugly like
round-robin the wildcards, only one organization can do this per TLD
- so they're essentially abusing their monopoly).

So the question boils down to: Are they owners of .com, or merely
caretakers?

An excellent question!  But that is a discussion that belongs with
ICANN, not the IETF.

Jim



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Paul Vixie
> By the way, what about .museum?

.museum does not delegate all of its subdomains.

not all tld's are delegation-only.
-- 
Paul Vixie



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Keith Moore
> only the app (not the entire network) needs to know which port to
> use, and this doesn't require that every port be assigned to a
> specific app.
> 
> You can't have it both ways.  Either the app is so widespread that the
> port in use is at least a de facto standard or it is a "de jure"
> standard. 

False.  Many ports have neither a de factor nor a de jure assignment.

> Either way it is possible to respond appropriately. 

False.  As I pointed out earlier, there is no SMTP respose which is
equivalent to "this domain does not exist".  Furthermore there are
failure modes associated with the wildcard MX record that do not
exist if the server returns NXDOMAIN.  For instance, if their SMTP
server is down or unreachable (as it might be from time to time), the
sender will keep retrying to send the message when it should have failed
immediately with NXDOMAIN.

Frankly, your apologies for Verisign's abuse aren't very credible.
The only appropriate response to this situation is to punish Verisign.

> But I do agree that in the general case there are a lot of ports to
> worry about.  I just don't think the general case is a practical
> concern.  So perhaps we just disagree?

Perhaps.   I actually care about preserving the Internet's ability to
support a wide variety of applications.  So arguments of the form
"it works for the web and email, therefore the practical concerns
are taken care of" don't wash.  Particularly when it doesn't even 
do the right thing for either the web or email.  Hint: just because
the protocol is HTTP doesn't mean that the client has a human 
typing URLs in and looking at the output.


> 
> > in fact, a 550 response in SMTP is a different condition
> > from NXDOMAIN, and sometimes the difference is important -
> > as the spam filter folks have discovered.
> >
> > Yes and this could be fixed with a new well-defined error code
> 
> NO Jim.  VERISIGN DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO IMPOSE DISRUPTIVE
> CHANGE ON THE INTERNET, not even with advance notice.
> 
> I'm not so sure.  Others on this list and other lists, some more
> qualified than I, have been asserting there are no rules -- technical
> or otherwise -- to prevent Verisign and others from doing what they've
> done.  

Nothing gives VeriSign the right to misrepresent the contents of the
registry.  If it's wrong for businesses to register individual
misspelled domain names in the hopes of getting misspelled queries
redirected to their sites, it is surely wrong for VeriSign to do the
same thing for ALL unregistered domains within COM and NET.

> Oh we can certainly debate philosophical positions like "do not
> harm,"  but what exactly is the disruption here?

Have you not been paying attention?  When you try to download a web page
that doesn't exist, you don't get a "host does not exist" error, you get
a redirect to a web page.  That's fraud.   When you try to verify that a
domain is valid, you don't get NXDOMAIN, you get an A record.  That's
also fraud.  When you try to talk to another port, you get connection
refused, so instead of getting the error that corresponds to "no such
host" you'll probably think it is a temporary error (say, the server is
down) and try again later.

It is a gross protocol violation to take an explicit error indication
that has a very specific meaning and instead map it to what in some
cases looks like valid output, and in other cases looks like a very
different kind of error.

> Correct me if I'm wrong, the principle disruption -- and I want to
> emphasize disruption here -- I've seen is that a particular spam
> indicator no longer works as expected. 

You are wrong.  

> Okay, yes, there may be technical DNS issues but it is still not
> disruptive to the Internet infrastructure in general as far as I can
> tell.

It's broken the ability to detect misspelled domains for every
application and every protocol, for every name under .COM or .NET.  


> Yes, let's focus on the issue.  But let's not ignore who is doing
> it either.
> 
> Ignore, no.  But let's not start Verisign bashing either.

It's not bashing them to speak the truth about what they are doing.

Keith



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Anthony Atkielski
Jim writes:

> Correct me if I'm wrong, the principle disruption -- and I want to
> emphasize disruption here -- I've seen is that a particular spam
> indicator no longer works as expected.  Is there more to this than that?

You could make many random DNS requests of a DNS server and flush the cache,
producing a partial denial of service (or at least a drop in performance).
If every single request for a domain produces an address, existent or not,
it takes up more continuing resources than a request that produces an error.
No?




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 15:19:47 EDT, James M Galvin said:

> But what exactly is the "screw" here?

Verisign was (as far as I knew) given *stewardship* of the .com and .net zones
as a public trust.  I don't see anywhere they were given the right to use their
stewardship to try to make money selling typo eyeballs.  (And note that unless
you do something *really* ugly like round-robin the wildcards, only one
organization can do this per TLD - so they're essentially abusing their
monopoly).

So the question boils down to:  Are they owners of .com, or merely caretakers?



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Description: PGP signature


Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Vernon Schryver
> From: James M Galvin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> ...
> Correct me if I'm wrong, the principle disruption -- and I want to
> emphasize disruption here -- I've seen is that a particular spam
> indicator no longer works as expected.  Is there more to this than that?
> ...

The list I've seen is:

 - failing to reject spam based on NXDOMAIN for the envelope sender.
 (What you term "the principle disruption")

 - rejecting legitimate mail because some long dead DNS-based
 blacklists are suddenly resolving  

 - HTTP spiders will fetch Verisign's robots.txt a lot as they
find bogus domains (e.g. typos in HREFs) resolving.

 - HTTP users see a stalled screen instead of an error message as
their browsers wait for Verisign's overloaded HTTP server to
deliver its advertising.


Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread James M Galvin

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:

> their mistake is in assuming that they can respond appropriately
> for all ports - particularly when the association of applications
> with known ports is only advisory, and many ports are open for
> arbitrary use.
>
> Agreed but this is overstating the issue since interoperability
> demands we know which port is doing what and when.

only the app (not the entire network) needs to know which port to use,
and this doesn't require that every port be assigned to a specific
app.

You can't have it both ways.  Either the app is so widespread that the
port in use is at least a de facto standard or it is a "de jure"
standard.  Either way it is possible to respond appropriately.  And
there aren't that many apps that fall into this category.

But I do agree that in the general case there are a lot of ports to
worry about.  I just don't think the general case is a practical
concern.  So perhaps we just disagree?

> in fact, a 550 response in SMTP is a different condition from
> NXDOMAIN, and sometimes the difference is important - as the spam
> filter folks have discovered.
>
> Yes and this could be fixed with a new well-defined error code

NO Jim.  VERISIGN DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO IMPOSE DISRUPTIVE CHANGE
ON THE INTERNET, not even with advance notice.

I'm not so sure.  Others on this list and other lists, some more
qualified than I, have been asserting there are no rules -- technical or
otherwise -- to prevent Verisign and others from doing what they've
done.  Oh we can certainly debate philosophical positions like "do not
harm,"  but what exactly is the disruption here?

Correct me if I'm wrong, the principle disruption -- and I want to
emphasize disruption here -- I've seen is that a particular spam
indicator no longer works as expected.  Is there more to this than that?
Okay, yes, there may be technical DNS issues but it is still not
disruptive to the Internet infrastructure in general as far as I can
tell.

There seems to be no shortage of reasons to dislike the behavior but
what exactly has been disrupted?

> None of this makes it right but let's focus on the issue not Verisign.

Yes, let's focus on the issue.  But let's not ignore who is doing it
either.

Ignore, no.  But let's not start Verisign bashing either.

What's wrong for VeriSign is wrong for the other TLD operators also.
But Verisign causes much more harm by screwing COM and NET than the
operators of ccTLDs do.

But what exactly is the "screw" here?

Jim



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Yakov Shafranovich
Just to follow up on this - I just spoke to an engineer at Verisign and 
he informed me that the SMTP daemon is being replaced in a few hours 
with an RFC-compliant one. As for not giving a warning - this came from 
a higher policy level at Verisign and he is just an engineer.

Yakov

Yakov Shafranovich wrote:

James M Galvin wrote:

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:

verisign is masking the difference between a valid domain and
NXDOMAIN for all protocols, all users, and all software.
If you read the Verisign documentation (which is quite excellent by the
way) on what they did and what they recommend you will see that they
thought about this.
In fact, the purpose of the Stubby SMTP daemon is to return a 550 for
non-existent recipient domains.
It is left as an exercise to the reader as to which is more efficient:
DNS NXDOMAIN or SMTP 550.


People, have you been reading the posts? The stubby SMTP daemon is not 
an SMTP server, it is simply a program that returns the following set of 
responses TO ANYTHING THAT IS PASSED TO IT.

--snip-
220 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
blah
250 OK
blah
250 OK
blah
550 User domain does not exist.
blh
250 OK
blah
221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission 
channel
--snip-

That means that if the SMTP sender issues a RSET command after HELO, 
they will not get a 550 error code for the RCPT TO command, but rather 
for the MAIL FROM command as follows:

--snip-
220 snubby4-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
EHLO someone.com
250 OK
RSET
250 OK
MAIL FROM:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
550 User domain does not exist.
RCPT TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
250 OK
DATA
221 snubby4-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission 
channel
--snip-






Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Keith Moore
> their mistake is in assuming that they can respond appropriately
> for all ports - particularly when the association of applications
> with known ports is only advisory, and many ports are open for
> arbitrary use.
> 
> Agreed but this is overstating the issue since interoperability
> demands we know which port is doing what and when. 

only the app (not the entire network) needs to know which port to use,
and this doesn't require that every port be assigned to a specific app.

> What we needed was time to
> either stop this before it happened or to deal with the implications.

what we need is a way to punish people who abuse the Internet.
personally I think drawing and quartering would be appropriate...

> in fact, a 550 response in SMTP is a different condition from
> NXDOMAIN, and sometimes the difference is important - as the spam
> filter folks have discovered.
> 
> Yes and this could be fixed with a new well-defined error code

NO Jim.  VERISIGN DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO IMPOSE DISRUPTIVE CHANGE
ON THE INTERNET, not even with advance notice. 

> None of this makes it right but let's focus on the issue not Verisign.

Yes, let's focus on the issue.  But let's not ignore who is doing it
either.

What's wrong for VeriSign is wrong for the other TLD operators also. 
But Verisign causes much more harm by screwing COM and NET than the
operators of ccTLDs do.



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Keith Moore
> IMHO it was irresponsible of them to do this without several months
> advance notice to allow authors of automated systems which depended on
> NXDOMAIN queries to notice this and without a stable documented way to
> reconstitute the NXDOMAIN they're suppressing.

IMHO it would be irresponsible to do this under any circumstances.



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Michael Richardson
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-


> "Dean" == Dean Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Dean> Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain
Dean> doesn't 
Dean> resolve?  Or worse than Mozilla taking you to Netscape, duplicating a
Dean> Google search, and opening a sidebar (and a netscape search) you
Dean> didn't 
Dean> want?

Dean> I think it isn't.

  I think that it is.
  I can:
a) replace IE
b) replace Netscape
c) not run them on my mail server.

  This change is unilateral.

  Personally, I am considering not renewing any .com or .net that I have.

]  Out and about in Ottawa.hmmm... beer.|  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON|net architect[
] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another Debian/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
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Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Yakov Shafranovich
James M Galvin wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:

verisign is masking the difference between a valid domain and
NXDOMAIN for all protocols, all users, and all software.
If you read the Verisign documentation (which is quite excellent by the
way) on what they did and what they recommend you will see that they
thought about this.
In fact, the purpose of the Stubby SMTP daemon is to return a 550 for
non-existent recipient domains.
It is left as an exercise to the reader as to which is more efficient:
DNS NXDOMAIN or SMTP 550.
People, have you been reading the posts? The stubby SMTP daemon is not 
an SMTP server, it is simply a program that returns the following set of 
responses TO ANYTHING THAT IS PASSED TO IT.

--snip-
220 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
blah
250 OK
blah
250 OK
blah
550 User domain does not exist.
blh
250 OK
blah
221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission 
channel
--snip-

That means that if the SMTP sender issues a RSET command after HELO, 
they will not get a 550 error code for the RCPT TO command, but rather 
for the MAIL FROM command as follows:

--snip-
220 snubby4-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
EHLO someone.com
250 OK
RSET
250 OK
MAIL FROM:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
550 User domain does not exist.
RCPT TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
250 OK
DATA
221 snubby4-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission 
channel
--snip-




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Bruce Campbell
On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Vernon Schryver wrote:

> If AOL and Microsoft don't immediately make releases of IE and Netscape
> that treat 64.94.110.11 the same as they treated an NXDOMAIN (and

Semantically, you'd want to treat 'arbitarynonexistentdomain.com' as
NXDOMAIN if the 'A' record matches the 'A' record on '*.com'.  Hardcoding
arbitary[1] IP addresses into programs is bad.

--==--
Bruce.

[1] Yes yes, lots of people have hard-coded RFC-mentioned addresses into
code.




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread James M Galvin

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Bill Sommerfeld wrote:

IMHO it was irresponsible of them to do this without several months
advance notice to allow authors of automated systems which depended
on NXDOMAIN queries to notice this and without a stable documented
way to reconstitute the NXDOMAIN they're suppressing.

Agreed although some might argue we had several months notice, albeit
quietly.  Verisign was far from being first at this.  It's just that
their size/scope made us all notice.

Jim



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread James M Galvin

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:

their mistake is in assuming that they can respond appropriately for
all ports - particularly when the association of applications with
known ports is only advisory, and many ports are open for arbitrary
use.

Agreed but this is overstating the issue since interoperability demands
we know which port is doing what and when.  What we needed was time to
either stop this before it happened or to deal with the implications.

in fact, a 550 response in SMTP is a different condition from NXDOMAIN,
and sometimes the difference is important - as the spam filter folks
have discovered.

Yes and this could be fixed with a new well-defined error code, which
brings us back to needing time to make an adjustment (or to have stopped
it from ever happening).

> Would have been nice to get
> some advance notice even if there are other TLDs that have been doing
> this for some time.

"nice" is not a word that seems to apply to forcing the entire net
to have to patch its applications and libraries just because
verisign decided to make inappropriate assertions about unregistered
domains.  that's like calling a mugger "nice" because he talks to
you politely while he takes your wallet at gunpoint.

Agreed but let's be fair.  Verisign was not first.  In fact, they are
almost 10th in the process.  Someone earlier (just today, sorry for not
looking back for the name) asked about .museum, which I've seen
references elsewhere to suggest it has in its contract with ICANN to
have this wildcard.  I have not confirmed this but undoubtedly someone
out there will know and provide a reference.

And there is the matter of the other TLDs that are already doing this
and have been doing it for some time.

None of this makes it right but let's focus on the issue not Verisign.
And the issue is with ICANN and convincing it that this is bad behavior
for all registries.  Verisign just made us all notice.

> It is worth noting that if we are to "pass judgement against" Verisign
> there are at least half-dozen other TLDs that blazed the trail.  We just
> overlooked them because of their size as compared to .NET and .COM.

not only their size, but their scope also.

What's the difference?  Their scope matters because of their size, or
vice versa.

Jim



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Vernon Schryver
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

> Out of curiosity, where did Verisign get the right to have the advertising monopoly
> for all the eyeballs they'll attract with this?

What eyeballs?  I doubt I'm among the first 1,000,000 people to adjust
junk pop-op or other defenses to treat sitefinder.verisign.com and
64.94.110.0/24 like any other noxious web site.  If AOL and a lot of
other outfits haven't adjusted their proxies within a few hours, I'll
be surprised.

If AOL and Microsoft don't immediately make releases of IE and Netscape
that treat 64.94.110.11 the same as they treated an NXDOMAIN (and
included an update mechanism), it will only be because Verisign has
given up or they're gettting piece of Verisign's action.


Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Anthony Atkielski
Valdis writes:

> Out of curiosity, where did Verisign get the right
> to have the advertising monopoly for all the eyeballs
> they'll attract with this?

They didn't.

And there's even a way for individuals to stop it:  Type an incorrect
spelling for a famous trademark.  When Verisign puts up its own page for the
nonexistent domain, copy it and send it to the trademark owner, asking if he
intends to defend his trademark, or if he is releasing it to the public
domain.  In the former case, he'll have to take action against Verisign.
The latter case is unlikely unless he truly doesn't want the trademark,
because undefended trademarks are easily diluted and slip rapidly into the
public domain.  After Verisign has a few thousand lawsuits on its hands, it
will change its policy.




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Anthony Atkielski
Andrew writes:

> What Verisign has done pre-empts that choice for everyone.

There's a simple way to stop Verisign:  Type a domain name corresponding to
a registered trademark (or a near spelling of a registered trademark), for a
domain that isn't registered.  When Verisign comes up with its own page, sue
Verisign for misuse of the trademark.  In no time, Verisign will have
restored things back the way they were, since that would be cheaper than
trying to ensure that every single non-existent domain name typed is not a
registered trademark or something that resembles a registered trademark.




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 09:24:27 EDT, Keith Moore said:

> verisign is masking the difference between a valid domain and NXDOMAIN for
> all protocols, all users, and all software.

Out of curiosity, where did Verisign get the right to have the advertising monopoly
for all the eyeballs they'll attract with this?


pgp0.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Bill Sommerfeld
> If you read the Verisign documentation (which is quite excellent by the
> way) on what they did and what they recommend you will see that they
> thought about this.

I stopped reading the PDF when I saw the "Verisign Proprietary"
labels.

> It is left as an exercise to the reader as to which is more efficient:
> DNS NXDOMAIN or SMTP 550.

Semantically they're not equivalent, particularly for the targets of
an MX. 

> Would have been nice to get
> some advance notice 

"would have been nice" doesn't even get close.

IMHO it was irresponsible of them to do this without several months
advance notice to allow authors of automated systems which depended on
NXDOMAIN queries to notice this and without a stable documented way to
reconstitute the NXDOMAIN they're suppressing.

- Bill



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Keith Moore
> verisign is masking the difference between a valid domain and
> NXDOMAIN for all protocols, all users, and all software.
> 
> If you read the Verisign documentation (which is quite excellent by the
> way) on what they did and what they recommend you will see that they
> thought about this.

their mistake is in assuming that they can respond appropriately for
all ports - particularly when the association of applications with
known ports is only advisory, and many ports are open for arbitrary use.

in fact, a 550 response in SMTP is a different condition from NXDOMAIN,
and sometimes the difference is important - as the spam filter folks
have discovered.

> Although taking note of the returned IP address and reacting accordingly
> is roughly equivalent to DNS NXDOMAIN.  It just requires an extra step
> and more importantly a patched application.  Would have been nice to get
> some advance notice even if there are other TLDs that have been doing
> this for some time.  

"nice" is not a word that seems to apply to forcing the entire net to have to
patch its applications and libraries just because verisign decided to make
inappropriate assertions about unregistered domains.   that's like calling
a mugger "nice" because he talks to you politely while he takes your wallet
at gunpoint.

> It is worth noting that if we are to "pass judgement against" Verisign
> there are at least half-dozen other TLDs that blazed the trail.  We just
> overlooked them because of their size as compared to .NET and .COM.

not only their size, but their scope also.




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread James M Galvin

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:

verisign is masking the difference between a valid domain and
NXDOMAIN for all protocols, all users, and all software.

If you read the Verisign documentation (which is quite excellent by the
way) on what they did and what they recommend you will see that they
thought about this.

In fact, the purpose of the Stubby SMTP daemon is to return a 550 for
non-existent recipient domains.

It is left as an exercise to the reader as to which is more efficient:
DNS NXDOMAIN or SMTP 550.

Although taking note of the returned IP address and reacting accordingly
is roughly equivalent to DNS NXDOMAIN.  It just requires an extra step
and more importantly a patched application.  Would have been nice to get
some advance notice even if there are other TLDs that have been doing
this for some time.  By the way, they do mention the other TLDs in their
documentation.

It is worth noting that if we are to "pass judgement against" Verisign
there are at least half-dozen other TLDs that blazed the trail.  We just
overlooked them because of their size as compared to .NET and .COM.

Jim



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread grenville armitage

Dean Anderson wrote:
> 
> Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain doesn't
> resolve?

Look on the bright side - everything now resolves.

cheers,
gja



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Spencer Dawkins
I agree with Zefram here, for at least a couple of reasons:

- there's a difference between doing this in infrastructure and
   doing this in a client program

- there's a difference between doing this in a scenario where
  there probably really IS a human in the loop (IE) and a
  scenario where there's no reason to think that a human is
  involved (trivially, an FTP running from cron on a Unix box)

- there's a difference between doing this in a component that
  can be replaced (IE) and one that is very difficult to replace
   in a meaningful way (DNS)

Not that I think IE's redirection is a GREAT example of the
Internet at its finest...

Spencer

- Original Message - 
From: "Zefram" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Dean Anderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Keith Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Yakov Shafranovich"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To
Us]


> Dean Anderson wrote:
> >Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain
doesn't
> >resolve?  Or worse than Mozilla taking you to Netscape, duplicating
a
> >Google search, and opening a sidebar (and a netscape search) you
didn't
> >want?
>
> Yes, it is worse.  Much worse.  There is a fundamental difference
between
> this defaulting happening in the DNS and happening in a client
program.
> It is necessary that the wire protocols distinguish between
existence and
> non-existence of resources in a standard manner (NXDOMAIN in this
case)
> in order to give the client the choice of how to handle
non-existence.
> If IE wishes to default to doing a web search under those
circumstances,
> that is silly but harms no one else.  What Verisign has done
pre-empts
> that choice for everyone.
>
> -zefram
> -- 
> Andrew Main (Zefram) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> ___
> This message was passed through [EMAIL PROTECTED],
which is a sublist of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Not all messages are passed.
Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Raffaele D'Albenzio.




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Keith Moore
> Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain doesn't
> resolve? 

yes.  if an app that interfaces to humans masks the difference between an
invalid domain and a valid one, it only affects people who use that particluar
app.  however for other apps the difference between an invalid domain and a
valid one is significant.

verisign is masking the difference between a valid domain and NXDOMAIN for
all protocols, all users, and all software.





Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Zefram
Dean Anderson wrote:
>Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain doesn't
>resolve?  Or worse than Mozilla taking you to Netscape, duplicating a
>Google search, and opening a sidebar (and a netscape search) you didn't
>want?

Yes, it is worse.  Much worse.  There is a fundamental difference between
this defaulting happening in the DNS and happening in a client program.
It is necessary that the wire protocols distinguish between existence and
non-existence of resources in a standard manner (NXDOMAIN in this case)
in order to give the client the choice of how to handle non-existence.
If IE wishes to default to doing a web search under those circumstances,
that is silly but harms no one else.  What Verisign has done pre-empts
that choice for everyone.

-zefram
-- 
Andrew Main (Zefram) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Dean Anderson
Is it any worse than IE taking you to msn search when a domain doesn't
resolve?  Or worse than Mozilla taking you to Netscape, duplicating a
Google search, and opening a sidebar (and a netscape search) you didn't
want?

I think it isn't.

And people shouldn't be using Reverse DNS for spam checks, either. This
has been hashed out on both DNSOP and Namedroppers.  People have known not
to do this for a long time, but some still insist on it. For that reason
alone, this is a good idea.

--Dean

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:
> so now verisign is deliberately misrepresenting DNS results.
>
> why are these people allowed to live?
>
>




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Kurt Erik Lindqvist
By-the-way, Neulevel (.us and .biz) did an "experiment" along these 
lines
back in May of this year.  It was short lived.  At the time I thought 
it
was a bad thing, and I still do.  And at the time I wrote and sent to 
the
ICANN board an evaluation of the risks of that "experiment."

.nu have been doing this for a long time AFAIK.

- kurtis -




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Iljitsch van Beijnum
On dinsdag, sep 16, 2003, at 12:25 Europe/Amsterdam, Karl Auerbach 
wrote:

1. Via ICANN, instruct Verisign to remove the wildcard.

It isn't clear that this power is vested in ICANN.  There is a 
complicated
arrangement of Cooperative Agreements, MOUs, CRADAs, and Purchase 
Orders
that exist between various agencies of the US Department of Commerce
(including NTIA, NIST, and others) and ICANN and Verisign/NSI.

This web of agreements is sufficiently complicated that often really 
isn't
exactly clear who can compel Verisign/NSI on any particular point.  In
fact it may well be that the power may not exist.  Or it may take a 
lot of
legal dollars and time to press the issue.
I think the ICANN has no choice and has to show its teeth here, or just 
roll over and die because there no longer is a reason for its existence.

On a related note: so far I have never bothered to move my domains to a 
competing registrar before, but now seems a good time to do it. Can 
anyone recommend a procedure for select a good quality registrar? 
(Off-list if this is more appropriate.)




Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Karl Auerbach

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Zefram wrote:

> ...  I suggest the following courses of action, to be taken
> in parallel and immediately:

> 1. Via ICANN, instruct Verisign to remove the wildcard.

It isn't clear that this power is vested in ICANN.  There is a complicated
arrangement of Cooperative Agreements, MOUs, CRADAs, and Purchase Orders
that exist between various agencies of the US Department of Commerce
(including NTIA, NIST, and others) and ICANN and Verisign/NSI.

This web of agreements is sufficiently complicated that often really isn't
exactly clear who can compel Verisign/NSI on any particular point.  In
fact it may well be that the power may not exist.  Or it may take a lot of
legal dollars and time to press the issue.

To make the situation even less clear, there is, I believe, no statement
in the relevant Internet Standards docucuments that clearly rules out this
kind of wildcarding. (Yes, I think we can all agree that this particular
use of wildcarding *is* a bad thing, I'm simply pointing out that to those
who are not technically grounded in DNS matters, that without a clear
prohibition in the Internet Standards, the matter isn't so obvious.)

By-the-way, Neulevel (.us and .biz) did an "experiment" along these lines
back in May of this year.  It was short lived.  At the time I thought it
was a bad thing, and I still do.  And at the time I wrote and sent to the
ICANN board an evaluation of the risks of that "experiment."

--karl--





Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Florian Weimer
Zefram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> 1. Via ICANN, instruct Verisign to remove the wildcard.

By the way, what about .museum?



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-16 Thread Zefram
>>Today VeriSign is adding a wildcard A record to the .com and .net
>>zones.

This is, as already noted, very dangerous.  We in the IETF must work to
put a stop to this attempt to turn the DNS into a directory service,
and quickly.  I suggest the following courses of action, to be taken
in parallel and immediately:

0. Urgently publish an RFC ("Wildcards in GTLDs Considered Harmful", or
   "DNS Is Not A Directory") to provide a clear statement of the problem
   and to unambiguously prohibit the practice.

1. Via ICANN, instruct Verisign to remove the wildcard.

2. Some of us with sufficiently studly facilities should mirror the COM
   and NET zones, filtering out the wildcards.  Then the root zone can
   be modified to point at these filtered COM and NET nameservers.

3. Instruct ICANN to seek another organisation to permanently take over
   COM and NET registry services, in the event that Verisign do not
   comply with instructions to remove the wildcard.

I believe that the direct action I suggest in point 2 is necessary,
because we have previously seen the failure of the proper channels in
this matter, when Verisign added a wildcard for non-ASCII domain names.
Verisign have shown a disregard for the technical requirements of their
job, as well as displaying gross technical incompetence (particularly
in the wildcard SMTP server).  I believe Verisign have forfeit any moral
right to a grace period in which to rectify the situation.

-zefram
-- 
Andrew Main (Zefram) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-15 Thread Tim Chown
Because noone can stop them doing it, apparently...

On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 12:43:35AM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> so now verisign is deliberately misrepresenting DNS results.
> 
> why are these people allowed to live?



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-15 Thread Keith Moore
so now verisign is deliberately misrepresenting DNS results.

why are these people allowed to live?



Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your Misspelling Are Belong To Us]

2003-09-15 Thread Neal McBurnett
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?
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: IRTF ASRG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> 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 "[EMAIL PROTECTED]",
> 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >VeriSign Naming and Directory Services