Dear RIPE: Please don't encourage phishing

Wed Feb 15 13:32:19 UTC 2012

In message <86mx8kqpy7.fsf at seastrom.com>, "Robert E. Seastrom" writes:
> 
> Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu writes:
> 
> > On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:44:38 +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer said:
> >
> >> Challenge taken.
> >>
> >> RFC 2277, "IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages", section 3.1,
> >> "Protocols MUST be able to use the UTF-8 charset [...] Protocols MAY
> >> specify, in addition, how to use other charsets [something DNS does
> >> not do, so it must be UTF-8]"
> >
> > (ooh.. an RFC lawyering fight. Goody goody, haven't had one in a while..  :)
> >
> > That requires overlooking the minor detail that the DNS RFC predates that by quite
> > some time, and there's no combination of RFCs 2119 and 2277 that mandates
> > retrofitting grandfathered protocols by fiat.
> >
> > It also requires overlooking the fact that 2277 is a BCP, not an Internet Standard, and
> > as such isn't itself binding, merely A Good Idea.
> >
> > Nice try though. ;)
> 
> Valdis, re-read the original assertion and challenge.
> 
> Your attempt at RFC lawyering appears to be "Experimental" <grin>

The Internationalised DNS uses IDNA suite of RFC's to encode UTF
into A-labels.  Before deciding to go the IDNA route, treating DNS
labels as UTF-8 was discussed, evaluated and rejected.

DNS labels are length tagged binary blobs with case folding of the
7 bit ascii values 'a'-'z' when performing lookups.  If a server
is fully compliant (and I don't think any is) answers should be
returned in a case preserving manner, including owner names.  The
intent of RFC 1035 was to be able to use the DNS to store and
retrieve binary data using binary keys.

Mark
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org