Verisign's Threat to Infrastructure Stability

Sun Sep 21 14:30:27 UTC 2003

FWIW:

To: The Department of Homeland Security
Sent (via dhs.gov site form)
Dated: 21 Sep 2003 14:24:37 -0000

Category:
Security Threats

Message:
Threat to the stability and predictability of the Internet infrastructure:

Verisign is solely and exclusively responsible for the maintenance
(and therefore stability) of the root GTLD domain name servers for
.com and .net top level domains.

Verisign has recently "wildcarded" address records in such a way that
attempts to access nonexistant (ie unregistered or mistyped) domain
names results in a redirection to a Verisign site at
sitefinder.verisign.com.

This obviously profit-motive-driven act is not only in violation of
certain terms of its contract with ICANN, but has had a destabilizing
effect on the network operators community who expect the Internet name
service to operate in a designed and predictable way.

DHS would be well advised to consider the potential threat that
Internet unpredictability has on this country's cyber infrastructure
and to seriously consider the relocation of root server responsibility
to non-profit-motive-driven organizations.

We are all too busy maintaining stable environments to have to
consider reactions and countermeasures to Verisign's autonomous and
arrogant behavior.