ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs

Sat Jun 28 02:22:52 UTC 2008

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 4:32 PM, Roger Marquis <marquis at roble.com> wrote:
> Phil Regnauld wrote:
> apply even cursory tests for domain name validity. Phishers and spammers
> will have a field day with the inevitable namespace collisions. It is,
> however, unfortunately consistent with ICANN's inability to address other
> security issues such as fast flush DNS, domain tasting (botnets), and
> requiring valid domain contacts.
>

Please do not conflate:

1) Fast flux
2) Botnets
3) Domain tasting
4) valid contact info

These are separate and distinct issues... I'd point out that FastFlux
is actually sort of how Akamai does it's job (inconsistent dns
responses), Double-Flux (at least the traditional DF) isn't though
certainly Akamai COULD do something similar to Double-Flux (and
arguably does with some bits their services. The particular form
'Double-Flux' is certainly troublesome, but arguably TOS/AUP info at
Registrars already deals with most of this because #4 in your list
would apply... That or use of the domain for clearly illicit ends.
Also, perhaps just not having Registrar's that solely deal in criminal
activities would make this harder to accomplish...

Botnets clearly are bad... I'm not sure they are related to ICANN in
any real way though, so that seems like a red herring in the
discussion.

Domain tasting has solutions on the table (thanks drc for linkages)
but was a side effect of some customer-satisfaction/buyers-remorse
loopholes placed in the regs... the fact that someone figured out that
computers could be used to take advantage of that loophole on a
massive scale isn't super surprising. In the end though, it's getting
fixed, perhaps slower than we'd all prefer, but still.

> I have to conclude that ICANN has failed, simply failed, and should be
> returned to the US government.  Perhaps the DHL would at least solicit for
> RFCs from the security community.

I'm not sure a shipping company really is the best place to solicit...
or did you mean DHS? and why on gods green earth would you want them
involved with this?

-chris