InterNIC "whois server <handle>" broke?

Sat Dec 19 01:22:07 UTC 1998

> The greatest difficulty I see in this is establishing authenticity for
> everyone.  Those with existing authenticity (CRYPT-PW or PGP) could
> be done.  The rest would be a problem, and could invite people trying
> to assign their own passwords to other people's contact records, and
> that would end up being a big mess.

Perhaps this is dumb, but how about authentication by ensuring the
TCP connection from the whois comes from the server in question. IE
you can whois FOO-HST to see which domains are served by FOO-HST
only from FOO-HST. Mildly inconvenient, but stops random people pulling
off everyones lists. I can't currently think of an OS that supports
DNS servers but not whois.

-- 
Alex Bligh
GX Networks (formerly Xara Networks)