VeriSign Shutting Down Site Finder

00420 writes "VeriSign, the administrator of the .com and .net domains, made plans to shut down its new Site Finder service Friday, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ordered the company to undo controversial changes. Of course they're not taking it down because it affected the internet, they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community. (Seems a little late for that doesn't it?)" The shutdown is not complete yet, though: VeriSign hasn't changed their wildcard DNS entry (64.94.110.11).

Comments

Bout time

[pro-mpd]

I was wondering when this would happen

Re:Bout time

[Gwala]

It was inevitable, but. They did make a small fortune while it was running methinks.

-Gwala

Re:Bout time

[pro-mpd]

Not my first, but my first in a while...

just voicing my opinion

Re:Bout time

[ctour]

I'm sure that site has already been registered as a porn site, it seems the only people who would have had anything to lose in this case would be the porn sites, they take all the misspelled words and wrong domain names and take them as their own. Whitehouse.com? Homestarunner.com?

Re:Bout time

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, amzoan.com redirects to amazon.com.

Re:Bout time

[k12linux]

it seems the only people who would have had anything to lose in this case would be the porn sites, they take all the misspelled words and wrong domain names and take them as their own.

Actually they don't lose out at all. Requests to domains they hadn't purchased yet don't get to their site anyhow. If anything it might actually increase their traffic. If people get used to the idea that "if I misspell I get an automatic search to show me the right spelling", they might pay even less attention when typing in URLs. So there would be more typos that might go to a port site.

Starwars Moment

[Lord_Dweomer]

Anybody else having that giddy feeling right now? Like the first time you saw Luke blow up the Deathstar in A New Hope?

Re:Starwars Moment

[aardvarkjoe]

That means that we're going to have a bigger, badder SiteFinder pretty soon, right?

Re:Starwars Moment

[NTmatter]

I'm not getting a good feeling about it. Look to the bottom of the article, and you'll see:

"ICANN is using anecdotal and isolated issues to attempt to regulate nonregistry services, but in the interests of further working with the technical community, we will temporarily suspend Site Finder."

Perhaps they'll just rename to "site searcher" and declare that they've shut down the "Site Finder" service.

Re:Starwars Moment

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm not getting a good feeling about it. Look to the bottom of the article, and you'll see:

Going with the Star Wars theme, aren't you supposed to say, "I have a bad feeling about this?"

Re:Starwars Moment

[Kenja]

[Emperor Voice]I'm afraid the Site Finder will be quite operational by the time your friends arrive.[/Emperor Voice]

Re:Starwars Moment

[spektr]

That means that we're going to have a bigger, badder SiteFinder pretty soon, right?


We could find: "www.gnu.org"
There is a Web site at this address.

Are you sure? (*) No ( ) Yes [SUMBIT]

Did You Mean ?
We did find these similar Web addresses.

www.sun.com
www.microsoft.com
www.sco.com

Re:Starwars Moment

[Lord_Dweomer]

" That means that we're going to have a bigger, badder SiteFinder pretty soon, right?"

My friend read your reply, and said, "Don't worry, Lando will blow it up and save us all."

To which I replied, "Lando is a fictional character who doesn't exist."

He got a very hurt, very serious look on his face and replied in a very shakey voice, "Lando WILL save us all!"

I made my exit from the computer lab shortly after for fear he would go wookie on me and rip my arms off.

Re:Starwars Moment

[Theatetus]

Easy: the one way to guarantee us geeks will get our panties in a BIND (heh heh) is to have a Responsible Designated Party (tm) violate an RFC or standard. The standard says a DNS server does not return an IP address when no such host or domain exists, NOT that the DNS server resolves the request to some "default no such domain" domain.

I think it also irked a lot of people because it really shows how much the Web has been pushing out all other Internet protocols to the point that the rest don't seem to matter to the Powers That Be anymore. Quite a few Internet users, I imagine, access email and news (and even chat) through the Web. But the other protocols are still there, and still in use.

Personally, it pissed me off because I administer several nameservers and when I mistype a domain in a dig or nslookup I want to SEE IMMEDIATELY that no such domain exists rather than remembering "oh right that's the Sitefinder IP address". Some of the scripts I've written depend, in fact, on nslookup saying "server can't find yaoho.com" and I've had to instead look for the sitefinder IP address.

Anyways, short answer is: geeks hate it because we tend to believe in standards since adhering to standards is the only reason the Internet got off the ground in the first place and it's just as important nowadays that we keep them up.

Re:Starwars Moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for ruining the ending for me.

Re:Starwars Moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Ackbar: It's a TRAP!!!!!!!!!

Re:Starwars Moment

[Nimrangul]

The odds of Verisign being vanquished, or even punished for this are 232,313,521 to 1!

Re:Starwars Moment

[petabyte]

You forgot one important thing though: Verisign doesn't manage the .org TLD.

As such, I'm glad to have one. :)

Re:Starwars Moment

[NanoGator]

"I'm afraid the Site Finder will be quite operational by the time your friends arrive."

I'm endagering the mission, I shouldn't have posted.

Re:Starwars Moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, who cares about your script. Verisign's sitefinder was bringing extra traffic to my sites.

Re:Starwars Moment

[Anonymous Coward]

with an integrated browser environment, like konqueror, i type:

http://localhsot

a request that SHOULD NOT leave my network...now shows me ads from those fucking losers.

Re:Starwars Moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Verisign stinks.. if they want to keep in with the community, they'll have to fix their personal hygene problems, or the community will do it for them.

A nice little DoS enema on sitefinder should do the trick - time to turn those power tools to good use guys.

At least then nobody will be able to resolve those misspelled domain names, which is as it should be. Now that's a resolve worth making. hoho

Someone pass the rubber gloves...

Re:Starwars Moment

[Loconut1389]

That gets me thinking... What is Internet3 was web only and internet1/2 banned www access? That would solve all our problems! [sarcastic]

Too little too late

[Tack]

I won't be doing any future business with Verisign, and I plan to transfer my domains to another registrar.

I never much liked Verisign in the past, but since I already had an account there, using them to register new domains was simply the path of least resistance. But their SiteFinder is the straw that broke the camel's back.

Jason.

Re:Too little too late

[ApheX]

How long HAVE you been paying $35/yr for your domains?!

Re:Too little too late

[Elwood P Dowd]

Not only that, but from now on I won't be registering any .com or .net domains. It'll be .org every time.

Re:Too little too late

[Halvard]

It's actually $19 / yr on a transfer or a 5 year renewal. That and 1000 frequent flier miles. If you host a fair number of domains, that's a lot of miles to acrue if you do the registrations/transfers.

Re:Too little too late

[carpe_noctem]

Same here. But I only plan to register .cx domains. ;P

Re:Too little too late

[hendridm]

Find yourself an eNom reseller (there are lots). $10/year with DNS hosting and e-mail forwarding included, and their interface is pretty easy to use too. Gandi.net also has free DNS. Go Daddy is good, but their DNS hosting sucks (but they have private registrations, which is nice).

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I charge $1,000/year for domains and accept Discover Card. Think of all the cash-back you could be getting on your domains!

Re:Too little too late

[Professor Bluebird]

.cx has a wildcard also.

Re:Too little too late

[GomezAdams]

Me too. I've already made the move so that next year when my registration date is up I'll switch over to my hosting company's domain registration service. Versign lied to me last renewal period about why I had to re-up with them. So screw Verisign. And screw SCO while I'm venting. Gomez

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

try domain monger. They rock. No relation; I discovered them here on Slashdot via an Ask Slashdot forum.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait, if somebody posted a link to hoatse.cx, it would give you...

Re:Too little too late

[oolon]

You can switch now, every hosting company I have seen honours the exisiting part of your paid up period.
So if you have 6 months left your your be charged one years renewal, but you won't need to worry about it for 18 months.

The 5 domains I have are not with Verislime.

James

Re:Too little too late

[queen of everything]

I gave up on them when they accidentally "leaked" my credit card number out and I got a call from my credit card company saying that I was over my limit, on a card I rarely used. They've been a little off for a while.

But is that all?

[WanderingGhost]

Call me paranoid, but... I wonder if they'll try to revert the situation, or come up with some other (equally hazardous) idea to replace this one. If they invested some money into the idea, I guess they won't give up that easily.

Re:But is that all?

[Anonymous Coward]

naaa....of course not. just because there is potential money to be made dosen't mean they will try something like this again.

Re:But is that all?

[Seraphim_72]

Sir,

The Reynolds people called your shipment of hats is in.

Re:But is that all?

[Pyromage]

I hope that they realize that they won't be allowed to do something like this again; given that, it follows logically that they won't throw good money after bad. They may look for an equally offensive idea that *doesn't* violate everything good in the world (and therefore wouldn't get them sued), but I don't think they'll try this one again.

what...?

[TedCheshireAcad]

So.....go....ICANN?

I thought we didn't like them?

Re:what...?

[xanthines-R-yummy]

ICANN, YouCANN, we all CANN for ICANN!

Re:what...?

[Kierthos]

We like them today, because they are hitting Verisign, who we hate more. Tomorrow they will do something stupid and we will hate ICANN again. Such is the way of things here on Slashdot.

Kierthos

Re:what...?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize you can like some things they do, but not others, right?

Try it. Say "As a whole, I dislike ICANN, but they are right on with this whole SiteFinder thing." It makes you look like you can form a rational opinion on something, not this childish "give me some candy or you aren't my friend anymore" attitude that is so popular.

Re:what...?

[Upphew]

Yes, you can go now.

Re:what...?

[CGP314]

Such is the way everywhere.

Re:what...?

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe.. must be new here.

Re:what...?

[riffer]

What do you mean "we", white man?

Seriously, ICANN has always been trying. Sure they've totally sucked at implementing, well, anything... And they're slow as owl shit. But darn it, they mean well!

Which doesn't count for as much as it should in today's world...

Re:what...?

[Anonymous Coward]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

That should explain it...

Re:what...?

[RedBear]

I thought we didn't like them?

The question is meaningless. We don't have to "like" ICANN just because they did something "right" today (sort of). Nor do we have to dislike an organization or person that is mostly good if they do one bad thing.

Maybe life isn't black and white. Maybe things aren't just "good" and "bad". Maybe a rational human mind can simultaneously hold two opposing ideas. Maybe an organizations historical competence and intent isn't changed by a single isolated action.

Don't know why I bother. Here, I'll just go for my guaranteed +5, Funny. "You like ICANN today because they're beating up on Verisign, who you don't like even more. Be sure to tune in tomorrow so we can tell you how you feel about Microsoft!"

Pfeh. Anyway, who's this "we" you all keep talking about?

Re:what...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonono, ICUNNT.

Awwww...

[Disco Stew]

I love how they play it off like: "Fine, ya big babies, we'll turn it off for a little bit; just to shut you up."

They're such a bunch of jackasses! It's like spitting in our faces for THEIR wrong-doing.

Re:Awwww...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, All Their Base Are Belong to ME!!!

You moron, at least be clever. In Soviet Russia, All of YOU Are Belong to the Bases!

So... nothing about those lawsuits?

[Gwala]

they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community.

So, it has nothing to do with the three lawsuits by godaddy, netster and their ilk?

Riight.

-Gwala

Re:So... nothing about those lawsuits?

[arodland]

Definitely not. The only thing it's about is pressure from ICANN -- who, in the long run, is not one whit better than Verisign.

Re:So... nothing about those lawsuits?

[omynous]

> they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community.

So, it has nothing to do with the three lawsuits by godaddy, netster and their ilk?

Actually, there is good legal sense to NOT stop doing something, because stopping can be seen as an admission of guilt.

Shannon Mann

How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[jbottero]

I have a very difficult time understanding how VeriSign stays in business at all considering there are much better options for both domain registration and secure certificates.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[op00to]

Where do you think the bulk of your domain registration fees go to?

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[godders]

They're trading off their name, and the fact that ICANN tasked them with managing the .com/.net tld's. Hopefully this will have produced enough bad press to make people think twice.. Unfortunately, as we all know, the chances of Big Business and the suits in the boardroom actually paying attention to the fact that every sysadmin on the planet was pissed off with them is pretty minimal. Unless of course we start presenting our point of view in a nice glossy brochure in a smarmy sales meeting...

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[mabu]

The answer is simple. Do your research. You'll find out that Verisign is owned by a bunch of very-well-connected people that seem to know their way around Langely all too well.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[Nykon]

for the same reson people use AOL when there are far better and cheaper ways of connecting to the internet. It's one of the most visable and easiest to use ways of getting certs and registering names.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[AKnightCowboy]

The answer is simple. Do your research. You'll find out that Verisign is owned by a bunch of very-well-connected people that seem to know their way around Langely all too well.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Verisign sounds like basically any other government contractor. It's probably comprised of a lot of ex-civil servants who retired from their old high-power jobs in the government to take big contractor jobs with Verisign for much higher pay. Since they're still known around the government circles they're worth far more than non-government contractors would have been.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[k12linux]

Based on my experience, visibility and FUD seem to be the biggest factors. When it came to getting a cert, I've seen otherwise very intelligent people "play it safe" and go with Verisign. The same thing goes for registering domains.

As long as Verisign can get people to believe their 128-bit certs are better than the next guy's 128-bit cert, they'll get the premium. The problem is usually the people who control the money and decide which vendor to use. They're often not the ones who can evaluate based on technical merits and often the ones more susceptible to marketing.

But hey, that's what marketing is for right? Selling something based on perception instead of it's own merits?

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[Halvard]

I believe you are confused. SAIC sold Netsol to Verisign. SAIC is the secretive, well connected bunch that knows their way around Langely. Fort Meade too I believe.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[mabu]

Verisign's connections with the government are MUCH more insideous than most people know.

I still believe the whole concept of charging for domains was technically illegal. They had a grant from the government to manage the TLDs and almost EXACTLY like what happened in the DNS redirection debacle, they decided to arbitrarily change the terms of their service in direct conflict with the agreement under which they were operating.

At the time of the domain charge scam, they got away with it in part, due to the inciteful activity of one big corporation that decided to register virtually every common name they could think of, from diarrhea.com to diapers.com. So the public turned the other way and didn't question the legality of the domain charge in the first place. Only later did someone challenge this and something like half the charges were ruled illegal. But who got their money back? Nobody to the best of my knowledge. NSI stole millions of dollars from the Internet community. What happened to this money?

Then there is the whole issue of the ridiculous terms of service Verisign/NSI employ which are arguably legal in the first place relative to managing domains. Up until recently, we had a domain that legally didn't require any renewal fee (because it was registered before NSI had the facist TOS agreement) but when we changed the nameserver, we couldn't do so without agreeing to the new terms and then were liable for renewal charges.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[mabu]

The connections are still there, but not as obvious as they once were... but how do you explain a company that has repeatedly violated its operating agreements continuing to get business? ICANN is a total joke. The whole management of TLDs is a joke. The community should not stand for Verisign/NSI having any control over the TLDs whatsoever... they have repeatedly exhibited total disregard for the rules and rights of the community they serve. But they still get away with that? That's totally messed up.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[karl.auerbach]

Verisign gets $6 each year for each and every registration in .com and .net no matter who you "buy" the name from.

This $6 amount was fixed into the contract under which ICANN (with the help of the US Dept of Commerce) gifted .com unto Verisign effectively in perpetuity (infinite renewals unless Versign does something very, very bad). There are no provisions in the contract to drive that amount to a lower amount. I voted against that contract.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[Fringe]

I have a very difficult time understanding how VeriSign stays in business at all

Ya know, at the risk of needing asbestos undies, most of my domains are through Verisign for several reasons. First off, the bulk existed a long time ago and it's easiest to simply not move them. $35/year doesn't equate to enough time to be worth the effort. Second, although Verisign (Network Solutions) used to really really suck, their customer service and admin stuff have really improved to the point where I consider them among the best. And lastly, it makes it real easy to move between pre-existing accounts and people.

My most recent registrations were with GoDaddy, partly due to Verisign's surreal concept of community, and this latest action didn't help their cause, but just because they cost the most doesn't mean switching from them is necessarily the best business decision.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. It's because no matter who you buy your domain from (If it's a .net or .com) Verisign gets a portion of the money. Six dollars per address, last I heard.

Verisign.... verispensive

[technopinion]

I stopped doing business with Verisign long ago (well, ok, with Network Solutions), when they continued charging outrageous rates for domain registration while prices plumetted everywhere else. Same with their certificates.

Re:Verisign.... verispensive

[mausmalone]

yeesh, I remember when it was free. Of course, I was too young to make my own website then. Now I pay like $15 a year just so people can find my site without remembering the IP address. It feels like a rip-off... it's like if the USPS wouldn't let people send to you unless you registerd your address with them (for a small fee).

Re:Verisign.... verispensive

[droleary]

it's like if the USPS wouldn't let people send to you unless you registerd your address with them

Not to sound like I'm on Verisign's side, but wouldn't that be worth a small fee: to address physical mail to just "foobar@example.com" (or whatever) and have the USPS route that to a registered physical address? I think it would be brilliant if they were to implement that now, either with their own registration system or via pointers using the current domain name administrative contact. My business would certainly pay $15/year for that.

Re:Verisign.... verispensive

[magores]

oh great.. So now we would get hard copy versions of spam (in addition to the regular junk mail already receiving) along with the digital copies?

Re:Verisign.... verispensive

[Anonymous Coward]

then you could use your spam as toilet paper -- cool beans!

Re:Verisign.... verispensive

[droleary]

oh great.. So now we would get hard copy versions of spam (in addition to the regular junk mail already receiving) along with the digital copies?

You're going to have to explain your logic because I'm not following. You get spam because it's cheap, not just because it's easy to find your address. I have a big white book sitting across the room that gives me hundreds of thousands of names and addresses, but that doesn't make sending a message to them all a cheap thing to do. If a spammer wanted to spend a dollar to contact you via post using a domain administrative contact, they already can. Making the domain a valid addressing format by the USPS changes nothing.

W00T!

[Lord_Dweomer]

Good news.....FINALLY! I swear to god...you read /. for a couple weeks.....and the news is so forboding sometimes that you think the headline tomorrow is going to be "APOCOLYPSE! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!". Then a story like this comes along and makes me cheer and gives me a glimmer of hope. Makes me feel like I'm manic depressive.

Damn the Goddess of Geekdom, she is a fickle mistriss!

Re:W00T!

[radoni]

so, if i punch you in the face and then give you a cookie, i will be making your day better, no ?

verisign did something nasty, and now it sounds like they are heros for going along with all these silly internet users who didn't want site finder. give us our bread and toilets, we don't need sleep.

Re:W00T!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news.....FINALLY! I swear to god...you read /. for a couple weeks.....and the news is so forboding sometimes that you think the headline tomorrow is going to be "APOCOLYPSE! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!". Then a story like this comes along and makes me cheer and gives me a glimmer of hope. Makes me feel like I'm manic depressive.

Damn the Goddess of Geekdom, she is a fickle mistriss!

So why, Sir, do you read Slashdot? Because you want to feel a little like a real geek?

Sir, may I remind you of the fact that the hype is over and it makes no longer sense to simulate technical knowledge. It rather makes you look like an idiot.

Re:W00T!

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Hey, don't worry about it - if slashdot DID run a "APOCOLYPSE! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" story, it'd be denounced as a corporate plot, we'd get a dupe and then it'd turn out that the story was actually exaggerated and it is really only going to be a problem for somewhere nobody cares much about, like Utah...

Re:W00T!

[Lord_Dweomer]

Listen you little troll, where do you get off accusing ME of not being a geek. You're the one trolling, jesus if anybody isn't a geek its you. And what about my post gave you the impression that I was attempting to "simulate technical knowledge"? There was nothing technical about my statement.

In fact, the whole thing was a humorous post, which apparently did not slip past your "uber-geek" brain filter.

Bloody trolls.

Re:W00T!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just reading Slashdot makes me a feel a little dumber everyday. Linux is great! Microsoft and SCO are the devil! Everyone is out to get Linux! DRM is everywhere! Its in my kitchen! Its eating my cat! blah

Re:W00T!

[k12linux]

Good news.....FINALLY!

Yeah, this is good news. It's like the good news of the gas companies lowering the price of gas by 20 cents/gal... two weeks after they raised it by 30. You remind me of the guy who's breakroom topic that day is, "Did see the price of gas this morning? It went WAY down!"

Re:W00T!

[Halvard]

Careful, now, or you will piss off Athena! She is the Goddess of Geekdom.

Re:W00T!

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus if anybody isn't a geek its you.

Man, I love this millenium! Where the name-calling works this way around!

Re:W00T!

[Anonymous Coward]

And you remind me of the guy in the breakroom who says "Boy, is my cornhole sore, I can barely walk from all those cocks in my ass last night."

So I guess it all evens out.

Re:W00T!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go fuckin' swear to your shit, you religishitty person...then go kill yourself

Re:W00T!

[Anonymous Coward]

Utah? Lots of fine, upstanding tech companies in Utah. Probably filled mostly with Mormons, but, hey...

Why not Redmond? That could drop off the face of the earth and there'd be much rejoicing from everywhere except the halls of their lacky, the B.S.A.

They'll be back...

[PSaltyDS]

From the article: "We will accede to the request while we explore all of our options." or, "All night lawyer party at the home of the VP for marketing!" Techs and engineers will not be invited.

Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.

What are some alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, seeing how much ass Verisign sucks, what are the best options out there for people wanting to jump ship?

Re:What are some alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

.org

Re:What are some alternatives?

[jonbryce]

Switch your site to .uk

Re:What are some alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

directnic.com. They started off as a little independent shop using opensrs as there back-end system.

I recommend them to everyone I can because they are :

Cheap.

Effecient

and

Reliable

All the things you want in a domain name registrar/service provider.

Cheap, Only $15/year for a domain name and high quality service that you have full control over,
unlike some registrars you can change every setting in your directnic account (such as nameserver information) with great ease.

Move from host to host with great ease, and manage your directnic account with great ease.

Effecient, when you instruct your directnic account management interface to do something,
it does it : instantly with no messing around.

If there is a charge for the extra service, they tell you about in an open, clear, concise and honest manor!
(something very rare these days : integrety).

All the things that directnic.com claim they provide, they provide. Unlike some registrars who just use some lame link to a third party service directnic.com actually do what they say they do, and they do it well.

Reliable, the customer support directnic.com provides is nothing but first class. Whenever I have had a problem, it's been answered (usually within 24 hours, but I am in the UK so timezones are backwards compared to in the US).

I've tried Register.com, I've tried Verio, IMHO directnic.com are the best in the business because they actually do what they say they are going to do.

And it seems many people agree with me too ...

Superior customer support and reliability, is what turned directnic.com from a lowly opensrs.org based registrar into a fully fledged ICANN accreditted domain name registrar.

directnic.com simply rocks. They are the best. that's why I have 24 domain names registered with them. And will continue to register more with them now, and in the future.

NANOG Linkage

[The One KEA]

Here is the start of a thread on the NANOG mailinglist:

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg14917. html

Just goes to show how pissed people really are.....

Re:NANOG Linkage

[segment]

Many NANOG'ers are always pissy when it comes to anything that affects their systems. Sometimes when I read the list I find it amusing and often portray many of the guys there as lazy bastards. Don't get me wrong I know a lot of people there know a heck of a lot of shit, but if you go back and check some of the older posts, you see a pattern of "fuck now I gotta work" type responses.

Odd though considering when some hardcore networking stuff needs to be assessed you will often see many *NOT* configure it then bitch about it somewhere down the line. I take many of those post and /dev/null them since there are a lot of whiners there, but I do enjoy reading the hardcore technical stuff when they're not trolling around about something trivial.

Hrmm now I know this post is not related to the story in general, and more than likely will be troll -1'd or something... But had to speak my mind about trusting information from anyone other source than RTFM for yourself.

They've also got a huge antiWindows theme going at times, which is funny because when I wrote brat.c the same people who were bitching about Windows were going to read the write up and program in ... Windows... Talk about 'Egos Gone Wild"

Re:NANOG Linkage

[realdpk]

Heh, try being a systems admin or a network admin for a while, then you'll realize where that attitude comes from.

Basically, we're doing maintenance jobs, with an occasional upgrade. If we're doing our jobs right, the maintenance will be very minimal - and we'll look like we're lazy. If we have to work on something, it's either for a good reason (security patch), or because we got *too* lazy before and didn't do the maintenance right.

Re:NANOG Linkage

[segment]

apparently you must think you're the only sysadmin. FYI I've done Sr Sys Admin'ing/Network Engineering, Network Adminstration, Security Engineering, Sec. Administration. What do you call a massive patch update? I've seen people rant on about that. Configuring SNMP when it was broken? Oh my god the crying that went on. Listen, currently I work at a mid sized ISP, throw up a new router, welp there goes who knows how many clec updates throughout the lata's. Domain changes, welp there go some named changes, oh man user wants Apache to do what? There goes some module configurations. Fuck vuln in $MISCBINARY fuck gotta go update 600+ machines... Spare me the pseudo justification of the lazy admins.

FYI when I need to do something host specific that's going to take 16+ hours, I don't whine because it's my job. I spend a little time writing expect +python scripts to fix shit. Sol admin? jumpstart shit left and right... It's what I get paid for not to whine like some eleventeen YO juvenile.

Re:NANOG Linkage

[realdpk]

Heh, guess we live in different worlds. I do what I can (preventative maint, pre-built update packages, etc.) to make sure I don't have to do very many 16+ hour days, regardless of how many 600 machines we have (yep, us too). Then again I've always been salaried, I might work different if I got overtime for it. :-) :-)

Verisign vs. ICANN

[r_glen]

Good news! I can now go back to hating both companies equally.

huh?

[Neophytus]

Weren't they just "suspending" it? I anticipate a quiet revival sometime in the future.

Re:huh?

[Valar]

You can't really "quietly" revive it, because when you revive it, the effects will show as soon as the ISPs start updating their DNS caches. I mean, this time, we didn't notice it because of some big public announcement, we noticed it because all of the sudden these sitefinder sites started showing up when we typoed stuff.

It's still up and running.

[sakusha]

Note that "making plans to shut down" does not equal "shut down."

Re:It's still up and running.

[pjrc]

Only 2 hours later after your post, SiteFinder is down. Well, 2 hours plus perhaps 1-3 for unknown time zone diff.

paul@preston ~ > date
Sat Oct 4 17:09:28 PDT 2003
paul@preston ~ > host www.slkjewrw.com
Host www.slkjewrw.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

Email from Verisign

[gfilion]

From: owner-registrars@verisign-grs.com
[mailto:owner-r egistrars@verisign-grs.com]On Behalf Of VeriSign Customer
Service
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 6:08 PM
To: registrars@verisign-grs.com
Subject: [RegistrarsList] VeriSign NDS Response to Suspension of Site

To All Registrars,

I am writing to update you on VeriSigns Site Finder service. On Friday,
October 3rd, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) directed VeriSign, Inc., to temporarily suspend service no later
than 6PM PST, Saturday, October 4. VeriSign requested an extension from
ICANN for 3 additional days for the shut down in order to provide the
technical community time to make any necessary system changes.
Unfortunately, ICANN refused this request. Accordingly, in response to
this demand, VeriSign is temporarily suspending the Site Finder service
as of Saturday, October 4 at 6PM PST.

In suspending the service, VeriSign will remove the wildcard A records
from the .com and .net zones and revert to the former behavior for these
zones which is returning Name Error/RCODE=3 in response to queries for
nonexistent domain names.

VeriSign remains committed to improving the Internet user experience.
We look forward to providing the Site Finder service following this
suspension. Thank you for your business. We greatly value our
relationship with you.

Best Regards,

Chris Sheridan
Manager, Customer Service
VeriSign, Inc.
www.verisign.com

Re:Email from Verisign

[hey]

We look forward to providing the Site Finder service following this suspension.

Er, what?
Maybe they have plans to let ISPs wildcard to Sitefinder for a kick back.

Re:Email from Verisign

[Anonymous Coward]

VeriSign remains committed to improving the Internet user experience.

Darl McBride, Chris Sheridan. What's up there in U.S.A.? Everybody gone crazy? Or just a small demonstration that the even U.S. arrogant nitwit assholes?

Sorry, but we already knew it - we have seen how George W. Bush was non-elected.

Re:Email from Verisign

[GauteL]

This is truly insulting. They act as if the Site Finder service was some kind of favor done by them to the tech community.

This is a blatent insult to everybody's intelligence.

Re:Email from Verisign

[Halvard]

Sorry, but we already knew it - we have seen how George W. Bush was non-elected.

Not true. He was elected by a majority. Of 9.

Re:Email from Verisign

[oolon]

Note how ICANN gave them 36 hours to do it, time for the caches to clear etc yet verisign play it right up to the wire.

James

Re:Email from Verisign

[drinkypoo]

This letter is hilarious. "ICANN told us to stop being pricks. We said we would need three more days to pull our heads out of our collective asses, but they told us to fuck off, so we scrambled and did it in one day, which was easy since all we had to do is turn our complete bullshit off."

Re:Email from Verisign

[Anonymous Coward]

s/temporarily/permanently/g

Re:Email from Verisign

[tm2b]

Right - and managed to get 100% of the African American Vote.

Re:Email from Verisign

[cfuse]

VeriSign remains committed to improving the Internet user experience.

Yeah, well how 'bout you find the degenerate scumbags who thought up sitefinder and kick 'em in the nuts. That ought to do it.

ICANN's power

[chrispyman]

I guess this goes to show that after all ICANN does indeed have some authority over Verisign. Maybe ICANN isn't the pointless and powerless body we though they were.

yeah.. well

[djhankb]

it was a bad move on their part to do this to begin with...
So good riddance.

I'm also done with them as well, I'll pass my domain registrations to someone else...

-H

This HUGE problem hasn't bothered me one bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I simply placed a entry in my HOSTS file and blocked out Verisign's DNS hi-jacking.

Re:This HUGE problem hasn't bothered me one bit

[glubbs]

what was the change you made?.......

Re:This HUGE problem hasn't bothered me one bit

[Anonymous Coward]

The HUGE problem does not have to do with affecting an individual in a big way. So just because you have blocked this problem, does not mean that your simple solutions solves a big problem.

The HUGE problem is that if affects everthing using the internet. The real solution is to fix it at the source.

Locking youself in a steel box to protect you from criminals does not solve the problem of crime.

Sometimes shielding yourself from the problem is useful, but it will end up affecting you indirectly sooner or later. Like when spam filters start failing or when DNS starts to fall apart.

Letting verisign do something like this will just open things up for them to do dumber and dumber things.

Re:This HUGE problem hasn't bothered me one bit

[curne]

Well it bothered me a lot. I had two excruciationg minutes the other day, while trying to figure out why a hostname had an A record but the domain had no NS entry. Then I remembered the DNS wildcard and damned Verisign to hell.

Do not fuck with the infrastructure of the internet. It is the life blood of successful networking.

Re:This HUGE problem hasn't bothered me one bit

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? HOSTS resolves names into IP addresses. HOSTS will have no effect on a typo - it still gets resolved to sitefinder's IP address. You can, of course, direct sitefinder.verisign.com to 0.0.0.0, but Verisign can still gather statistics on your typos, and the DNS is still hijacked. Only way to block them is at the firewall level.

Re:This HUGE problem hasn't bothered me one bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I also did it and sonn realised that http redirection was least of the trouble caused. After succesfully disabling the sitefinder i realised i have problems with sendmail filters. Which reject mail if the sender or reciever's domain does not exist.

Aren't you cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple solution. Everyone just has to manually edit their HOSTS file every time Verisign changes something.

Good thing people like you are around to tell us these things.

Re:Aren't you cool

[blibbleblobble]

Just put a wildcard in your HOSTS file, and nothing will go to Verisign ;-)

Whitehouse is a porn magazine

[DrSkwid]

has been for years

Welcome to Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth be told, noone gives a shit what we think.

Re:Welcome to Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey you, stop making noise.

We know why they are doing it . . .

[werdna]

Of course they're not taking it down because it affected the internet, they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community.

Nonsense. They have already demonstrated significant contempt for the technical community -- remember their original response to ICANN's advisory?

They are doing it because ICANN's last letter put their super-duper exclusive right to operate the DNS in play. Maybe ICANN could terminate, maybe not -- but who would put the entire business on the line for this opportunity -- particularly when there still is a chance to negotiate something like that in the future?

MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed that if you click on any of the mp3.com links, they all seem to point to click.mp3.com, that a verisign web page appears. Are these problems related?

Re:MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

In redneck russia, all problems are related!

Temporarily is the word that worries me

[thrill12]

In all the communication Verisign presented, they kept the word "temporarily" or made suggestions which imply that.

Something tells me Verisign still has some tricks up their sleeve, which includes reinstating the service after their laywers have come up with a "satisfactory answer" to ICANN's ultimatum.

Guess I shouldn't take away my wewantour404.(com|net) yet...

Re:Temporarily is the word that worries me

[iantri]

Er..

404 is returned by a server when it exists, but the page does not exist.

Don't you mean wewantournxdomain.com?

NXDOMAIN means that the domain could (as in would be possible to register for), but does not (yet) exist.

This is the same error the lawyers have made in the class-action suit (which I imagine won't be going anywhere now..)

Re:Temporarily is the word that worries me

[thrill12]

You're right, but a 404 is something that everyone have seen sometimes.
Seeing that most people use IE: if the domain doesn't resolve, they will get a MSN search page.

So actually I should have registered:
wedontwantourmsnsearchpages.(com|net) :=)

Isn't 404 much easier ?

Re:Temporarily is the word that worries me

[iantri]

The problem with calling it a 404 is that it is not. The two are completely different things and calling them the same will only help to confuse the matter.

Re:Temporarily is the word that worries me

[thrill12]

And because it confuses everyone, it is much better if Verisign keeps their "service" shutdown forever.
This, so no laywers and people who think 404 == nxdomain can confuse the two...

Re:Temporarily is the word that worries me

[Anonymous Coward]

Thrill: We want our 404s!
Iantri: 404 is an HTTP error. NXDOMAIN is the DNS error you're thinking of.
Thrill: Yes, but most people use IE -- therefore, what they REALLY want is their MSN search pages! Surely you're not suggesting that I register wewantourmsnsearchpages.com!?
Iantri: No, I'm suggesting that it's not a 404.
Thrill: Well, uhm... I BLAME VERISIGN! Curse them for ever putting me in the position where I could be mistaken!

A few things

[m0i]

I find interesting that Verisign requested 3 days before shutting down the service to give time for the tech community to adjust.. Did they do this when the service kicked in?
Also, a quick hint to all of you stuck with Verisign to renew because the domain is past due:
Verisign renewal
Pay 15USD instead of 35USD for the very same 1 year reneal service.. Ain't that great?

Re:A few things

[cyt0plas]

How about hostway? $6.95 per year for renewals, or new domains.

Re:A few things

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that it's for people who *can't transfer* because they're behind in payment.

Re:A few things

[SpectreGadget]

Forget that, transfer to GoDaddy.com for $7.75 and you get a one year extension. I've had no problem with them at all and have been only paying $9/year for my domains.

Re:A few things

[Anonymous Coward]

Verisign won't allow the transfer if you've past the expiration date, or in some cases, are close to it.

So you have to renew with them or wait the 4-12 months for the domain to be released by those assholes, unless of course they've 'back listed' it for someone else for a fee.

Re:A few things

[RazzleDazzle]

Yep, thats what I did and I emailed NetSol and Verisign as to why I moved my domain away from them. Of couse the NetSol customer service guy was quick to point out that NetSol is not Verisign, but I reminded him they are a subsidiary of Verisign.

I blocked all traffic on my network to their address. I think I may do like one ISP did and redirect port 80 to a website that displays a message about the user error and about Verisign's crookedness.

Re:A few things

[Phroggy]

$6 of that goes to Verisign; Hostway only makes $0.95.

Re:A few things

[Phroggy]

Verisign still gets your money - GoDaddy has to pay them $6/yr per domain. That's the wholesale fee Verisign charges to all registrars for .com/.net domains.

Re:A few things

[pjrc]

I find interesting that Verisign requested 3 days before shutting down.... Did they do this when the service kicked in?

YES, they did give some advance notice.

In fact, Slashdot had coverage 4 days before it went into effect.

The actual news coverage was at Computer Business Review 6 days before Verisign went live with SiteFinder on Sept 15.

Perhaps it was known before then, but there was certainly more than 3 days. That doesn't make Verisign any less slimey for doing this. But to say they did it without even a few days warning would clearly contradict the news coverage of their intentions at Computer Business Review and here at Slashdot (if you can stomache calling slashdot "news").

Re:A few things

[SpectreGadget]

Dang. Well, at least it's $6 instead of $35. I'll have to think about switching to .org... I wish I had known that earlier!

Re:A few things

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that great? I hope were being sarcastic ..

because other companies such as directnic.com and godaddy have been providing full-service domain registrations for $15 or less per year for many *YEARS* now.

Re:A few things

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also, a quick hint to all of you stuck with Verisign to renew because the domain is past due:
Verisign renewal[stayoffer.com]"

Uh, your link is to a company owned by Verisign. Hardly the fiercest of competitors?

Re:A few things

[cyt0plas]

It still beats the $35.00 verisign renewal, as then all $35 goes straight to verisign's coffers.

STILL RUNNING

[whoever57]

They have not shut down the wildcard dns replies:
$ host versign-are-gutless-wankers-lkjaflja.com versign-are-gutless-wankers-lkjaflja.com has address 64.94.110.11

Not DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

DNS does not define wildcard redirections. VeriSign should lose the contract just because of that.

These are the same guys that were ordered by the FTC to stop falsely advertising renewal services, isn't it?

Lame crooks.

Re:Not DNS

[c1ay]

These are the same guys that were ordered by the FTC to stop falsely advertising renewal services, isn't it?

Yes, I'm one of the ones that complained to the Postal Service when I received my fraudulent renewal service from them via the U.S. Mail. I surely hope they lose their registrar service as well. They're almost as low as spammers Then again, I'm waiting for Darl McBride to announce that SCO owns BIND and that they intend to sue internet for using it.

Re:Not DNS

[mabu]

These are also the people that arbitrarily started charging for domain registrations, changing the terms of their arrangement with the government to manage domains. These are also the people that had their domain charges ruled an "illegal tax" and never returned any of the millions and millions of dollars they illegally stole.

The list of Verisign/NSI dishonorable activities is virtually endless.

Re:Not DNS

[aboyko]

Might want to check your RFCs on that claim. Section 4.3.3 "Wildcards" of RFC 1034 is a good place to start your reading.

Re:Not DNS

[argent]

These are the same guys who:

Sent out fake renewal notices after decrying that practice.

Took over a free service and started charging $50/year for it, and were only forced to reduce it to $35 after threats of lawsuits.

Have a policy of refusing to allow domain transfers within 30 days of expiry to "prevent hijacking", and at the same time run a domain hijacking service... and then cherry-pick domain names before letting them get in.

Have routinely lost or corrupted contact information so that people have been unable to renew or transfer domains, and yet they've had no problem letting people with official-looking letterheads steal live domains.

Yeh, there's lots of reasons they should lose the contract. Given their track record, I'm amazed IANA did anything about this one... I was fully expecting them to let it slide like they have everything else.

BIG FUGGIN DEAL

[Anonymous Coward]

And in response:

[Kierthos]

Mr. Sheridan,

Fuck you. We didn't want it. We're happy that ICANN handed you your ass.

Have a nice day.

Kierthos

Re:And in response:

[Anonymous Coward]

And people say the Slashdot community is immature.

MOD CLICHE UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

What a dumbass. I, for one WELCOME our CLICHE OVERLORDS DUUUUH!!!!!!!!!!

Behaviour all conform to DNS specs

[lbalbalba]

Maybe we should give VeriSign a little break here ? I mean, after all, what they did is in fact fully compliant with the DNS rfc's.

If you dont like the protocol specifications, then go beat up the specs, and NOT the implementors.

Now go away and write a rfc draft to update the DNS specs you demons ... jeez ...

I feel sorry...

[infolib]

...for the guy who some day down the line gets 64.94.110.11. All these null routes probably won't go away that easily. He'll have lots of mystified users...

Re:I feel sorry...

[iantri]

If Verisign is using that IP address, doesn't it mean they have that subnet? I'd find it unlikely the subnet would be reassigned to somebody else.

I'm sure that IP address will be used for something else Verisign-related, or will just sit unused for the rest of (IPv4) time.

Oh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever you do, don't go to xoogle.com to test to see if Sitefinder is down yet.

IT'S A TRAP!

But see? People are using it!

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

VeriSign stated that Internet users had visited the page more than 40 million times in the last three weeks.

As if 40 million typos vindicates the creation of Site Finder...

Trouble for VeriSign -- "non-registry service"

[GeorgeK]

What might get VeriSign into very big trouble is the admission, in the press release that "ICANN is using anecdotal and isolated issues to attempt to regulate non-registry services, but in the interests of further working with the technical community we will temporarily suspend Site Finder."

I think this is a brand new tactic on the part of VeriSign, to categorize it as a "non-registry service".

That seems to escalate things to a new level, in that it seems to be an admission of abusing their monopoly in the Registry for the provision of a NON-REGISTRY SERVICE.

It had been my understanding that previously their position would have been that it would have been categorized as a Registry service, but one that didn't need approval due to it being "free" (i.e. needs no contract amendment). However, giving advantage for the provision of a non-registry service seems to be MUCH WORSE. Suppose that NON-REGISTRY SERVICE was a REGISTRAR SERVICE, for example, and VeriSign abused its monopoly to advantage one of their partners in that space? Just like WLS.

Clearly, VeriSign's abusive and monopolistic business practises need to be examined at the highest levels of government and by regulators.

P.S. Keep up the pressure, by supporting the Stop VeriSign DNS Abuse petition -- 17,000 signatures and counting.

good news, but doesnt matter to me

[Indy1]

I gave verislime a big hearty fuck you two weeks ago by downloading the newest bind, turned on the delegation option, and then promptly null routed the sitefinder ip as additional insurance.

I'm surprised the rest of you guys didnt all do the same as well.

It will be back ....

[Leme]

Considering the massive amounts of money I'm sure they have spent on hardware, development and other neccesities on this silly project, I'm pretty confident to say that they just won't roll over and stop without a fight.

I'm sure the lawyers will drag this one out in court.

Re:It will be back ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardware and development? Bah. They're probably more worried about those advertising contracts with Overture et. al.

Re:It will be back ....

[Loosewire]

I doubt they put much expenditure into this - how much could it possibly cost to put an entry in making the root servers return sitefinder for unresolved queries. Then a big ass webserver for sitefinder. - i doubt they will have binding contracts as they must have known they would get trouble...

You are teh fucking MAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go, champ! That'll learn 'em! Now your PC is free to be like you and me!

What Sitefinder?

[cnvogel]

Blocking single IPs is soooo... pre-verisign-ish... I can only urge everyone to upgrade their nameservers!

Click here for info: ISC BIND delegation-only


zone "aero" { type delegation-only; };

zone "biz" { type delegation-only; };

zone "com" { type delegation-only; };

zone "coop" { type delegation-only; };
...

zone "zw" { type delegation-only; };

Re:What Sitefinder?

[Anonymous Coward]

But we don't need to anymore (for now).

Re:What Sitefinder?

[swmccracken]

Please pay better attention to isc.org. You have a rather messy syntax there full of needless typing. A better syntax is:

options {
root-delegation-only exclude { "de"; "lv"; "museum"; "us"; };
};

which applies the delegation-only to everything but "de", "lv", "museum" and "us". Personally, I would consider removing .museum from this list because it contains a wildcard. (.de contains valid, non-wildcard, non-delgate data, I think .us does too, and I don't know about .lv)

Re:What Sitefinder?

[cnvogel]

root-delegation-only is only supported in 9.2.3rc4. I still use 922 on our production machines...

Which valid, non-wildcard, non-delegated data is in .de?

The Enemy of my enemy...

[some1somewhere]

is my friend ;-)

Re:The Enemy of my enemy...

[platipusrc]

Since both Verisign and ICANN qualify as enemies, does that mean that they're both our friends??

Re:The Enemy of my enemy...

[Anonymous Coward]

the enema of my enemy is my friend

Verisign is breaking their contractural agreement

[krappie]

"If VeriSign does not comply with this demand by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003, ICANN will be forced to take the steps necessary to enforce VeriSign's contractual obligations."

Heres one violation that I found.

As noted in the Message from Security and Stability Advisory Committee to ICANN Board:

Previously, such queries returned RCODE 3 ("name error"), the negative response defined in the official DNS protocol specification, RFC1035 [4]. VeriSign now returns an IP address for a special server, thereby creating the appearance the requested domain name exists. The special server handles the subsequent requests for application level services, e.g. web, email, etc.

Now take a look at verisign's .com and .net contractural agreement in section C4:

4. Nameserver functional specifications

Nameserver operations for the Registry TLD shall comply with RFC 1034, 1035, and 2182

Of course, Im no lawyer. Any comments on this would be appreciated. It looks pretty clear to me that Verisign isnt meeting their contractural agreements.

I like how Verisign is trying to act like ICANN is acting so rash and irresponsible:

"Without so much as a hearing, ICANN today formally asked us to shut down the Site Finder service."

This is what ICANN is for. This is excellent news! It doesnt matter how many moronic web users are clicking on things when verisign's page comes up or how useful Verisign's market research shows it is. Its important to adhere to standards. Verisign's excuses are hilarious. "Users find it useful. It has nothing to do with the loads of advertising money we get. I swear!".
Its always about money.

Attack!!!

[albino eatpod]

I wonder if this had anything to do with the defacement of their headquarters...

That's not really the point IMHO

[thrill12]

The time it took for all the people, who rely on a lookup to an invalid dns name to return an error, to rework their software to 'catch' this problem IS the point.

Verisign never asked themselves the question how many programs rely on that 'feature', and simply saw it as a "byproduct" of DNS names.
The protest that started after they implemented their 'service' gives a clear hint to what Verisign saw as a "byproduct" is perhaps a very important thing.

Compare these statistics, albeit they are not completely correct... :
# Number of domain names total available in the .com-domain, counting 38 possible characters (A-z,0-9,-_) and 60 characters max: 6,12373E+94
# Number of .com-domains registered to date, according to icann: 24420000
# Percentage of webpages that are *not* being 'serviced' by Verisign: 3,987767803227140000000000000000E-86 %
# Verisign thus holds and "services": 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999(etc..) % of all .com-domains

So, 99.999% of all .com-domains are invalid, meaning that a programmer could much more easily do a "if (!valid)" than an "if (valid)", providing that DNS names look up correctly...

Not complete yet?

[kasperd]

The shutdown is not complete yet, though: Verisign hasn't changed their wildcard DNS entry

Actually that means the shutdown has not started yet. Removing the DNS entry is the only thing that matters. The actual webserver can stay for as long as they want, but the IP address 64.94.110.11 will of course never be usable again. We will have switched to IPv6 before the last filtering of that address is removed.

Re:Verisign is breaking their contractural agreeme

[Armchair Dissident]

"Without so much as a hearing, ICANN today formally asked us to shut down the Site Finder service"

Which as The Register has pointed out is somewhat ironic. All those who were consulted by Veri$ign before they introduced their "service" raise their hands.

Am I the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who read that as "Verisign shutting down" ?

I got all excited for nothing :P

Re:Apparently not...

[Anonymous Coward]

The service is still going strong, Saturday afternoon...

Why don't the ISPs just wildcard to themselves?

[tugrul]

You bring up an interesting possibility. If Verisign does manage to bring this back and pass it off as acceptable practice, what is to prevent ISPs from putting in wildcards to their own branded advertising search pages? Most people aren't savvy enough to change the DNS servers, let alone know what DNS is.

This is just a horrible path to go down, although it would be funny to see everyone else take the profits from Verisign's quick buck stunt.

Distribution Point

[Scoria]

Many installations of several Web browsers are susceptible to exploitation. If SiteFinder were somehow compromised externally or internally, one could hypothetically distribute malicious software to a prodigious group of individuals. According to the relevant Yahoo! article, approximately 1.5 million clients were redirected to the "service" daily. Imagine the possibilities!

mp3.com sites

[wud]

looks like mp3.com musician sites are affected by this... mp3.com must have let mp3s.com lapse, so now everything takes you to frikin sitefinder..

Sun are less evil than MS & IBM.

[spinlocked]

Err, funny except that Sun is not part of the axis of evil. I've worked for two of them, and have a friend at the third, so I know what I'm talking about. It's hard to find a more open (as in standards and millions of lines of code) bunch of guys. Definately light side of the force.

Re:Sun are less evil than MS & IBM.

[Anonymous Coward]

except the siding with SCO thing.....

Re:Sun are less evil than MS & IBM.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Have you seen their bullshit "nobody's suing us for using someone else's ip" solaris posters? They hate Linux! They hate the fact it's a fuckton better than Solaris on non-sparc hardware.

the REAL verisign press release

[taped2thedesk]

Dear Internet User, In an effort to comply with ICANN's request, we have shut down site finder. Instead, the wildcard dns entry will now point to goatse.cx. We hope you find our new "non-registry" service useful, and look forward to your comments, which can also be submitted at goatse.cx. With Love, Verisign

verisign

[penis enlargement]

just another example of the the man keeping us down. ?

Losing DNS connection

[duvel]

Lately (the last two weeks) I've been noticing that my computer (Win XP) has a tendency to lose it's ability to resolve DNS-adresses if I've quit browsing for more than 15 minutes.
I was thinking that XP had developed an allergic reaction towards my broadband modem. However, now that I read this story, I'm starting to wonder if Verisign's actions have anything to do with this.
Anybody got a clue?

Re:Losing DNS connection

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm, try shutting down the dns client service in services menu.

Connection Refused

[wampus]

Am I the only one not able to connect to SiteFinder anymore? It is refusing my connections. Could it be they shut it down early, or is it just DOS'ed into the stone age?

Forbes CEO approval ratings

[Anonymous Coward]

The precipitous decline in the approval rating of Stratton Sclavos was breathtaking.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/05/01/cx_ceointernetpol l.html

Baha!

Well received?

[typobox43]

VeriSign stated that Internet users had visited the page more than 40 million times in the last three weeks.

"The service has been well received by millions of Internet users who appreciate getting navigation tools as opposed to the 'dead end' of an error message," VeriSign's Lewis said in the statement.

Of course, it's considered "well received" because of its 40 million hits... that 99% of which were not intentional. (Of course, the only ones who would actually go somewhere like that intentionally would be us Slashdotters... have to see what all the buzz is about :) Is telemarketing "well received" because 40 million people actually pick up the phone? (regardless of whether they hang up or not)

Re:I liked SiteFinder

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked it too - I had never thought about someone elses spelling mistakes helping to promote my site before.

Of course, the idea of VeriSign stealing my surfers wasn't such a great idea - but stealing VeriSign's customers... much better!

So I registered http://sitefinder.veri-sign.com !!

DON'T GET MAD, GET EVEN!

Deadline passed, still active

[sakusha]

They lied. Sitefinder is still active, and it's past the promised disconnection time of 6PM EST.

Re:Deadline passed, still active

[sakusha]

Ooops, I'm an idiot, the deadline is 6PM Pacific time. 3 more hours to go.

Re:Deadline passed, still active

[typobox43]

Looks dead to me, now. I haven't blocked it... and something tells me that my ISP (RoadRunner) wouldn't have, especially this late in the game.

Wildcard Entry Gone

[Valen0]

As of 6:28 PM CDT (23:28 UTC), the wildcard entries in both .NET and .COM appear to be gone. All my dnstracer queries to the GTLD servers indicate that all GTLD servers are reporting NXDOMAIN for invalid domains.

Verisign launches ICANN hate site

[digitalgimpus]

http://www.internetprivacyadvocate.org/

PR Here:
http://verisign.com/corporate/news/2003/pr_ 2003093 0.html

Ironic the date.

The site's purpose is to critique ICANN for making the whois info available and public.

If NetSol would have implemented methods to prevent harvesters from accessing the information years ago, rather than months ago... no problems.

These guys are just rediculus.

Was Verisign bought by SCO?

Hmmm...

[Solokron]

I am curious how much they ended up running off with having all those overture ppc links in it.

Verisign Discards Wildcards...

[MadEyeMoody]

As of about 8:00 PM EST the wildcard A records pointing to 64.94.110.11 appear to be gone. I'm now getting normal NXDOMAIN responses to queries for nonexistent names.

As for the Web site, I suppose they must have taken that down, too. If you try explicitly going to http://64.94.110.11 (sitefinder-idn.verisign.com) you get a keen little page that says

We didn't find: "64.94.110.11"
There is no Web site at this address.

and I'm sure VeriSign wouldn't fib about a thing like that....

Re:Verisign Discards Wildcards...

[vacuum_tuber]

Uh, where do you think the "keen little page" came from, thin air, hmmm? That is the Web site. Sitefinder is still there, but ineffectual without DNS wildcarding sending traffic to it.

Re:Verisign Discards Wildcards...

[MadEyeMoody]

That is the Web site. Sitefinder is still there...

No...really? ;-)

Re:Verisign Discards Wildcards...

[Anonymous Coward]

I laugh at people like you at parties.

They don't have to shut sitefinder down

[semanticgap]

All they are asked to do is to remove the wildcard from the second level DNS for .com and .net.

It's dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

As of just now, their wildcard appears to be gone! Hallelujah!

(waits to blow up 2nd Death Star, later...)

I approve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah!!! :)

Times are bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when you hear about a story on TechTV *before* /.

well SH*T I'll bitch, nobody will see this anyway.

[dnotj]

I got rejected yesterday.... on this: * 2003-10-03 21:17:02 Verisign Shuts down SiteFinder (articles,software) (rejected) Guess We can expect this story tomorrow: * 2003-10-03 21:11:51 Do Not Call List Operations Suspended (yro,privacy) (rejected)

New Verisign "service"?

[Jaelyn]

Now that Verisign knows how the sitefinder "service" was initially received, perhaps its next venture will be to offer ISPs a "No Sitefinder" service for a "small yearly fee." Verisign's servers will return a proper NXDOMAIN response to "registered" nameservers, and anyone that hasn't paid just gets the sitefinder IP. I'm sure everyone would be lining up to pay for that service.

Imagine if our phones worked the same way...

[Anonymous Coward]

You dialed 555-1333 which is not in service. Would you like to be redirected to 1-900-VERISIGN? We will automatically connect you in three seconds...

Makes Micro$ofts monopoly seem trivial. I'm not a fan of de-privatizing things, but managing DNS is not rocket science and should not be run by a for-profit company.

Re:Imagine if our phones worked the same way...

[o-D'oh]

You have definitely another Great Idea for a Helpful New Service, according to Verisign's logic.

The phone company, for example Verizon, OWNS all of the phone numbers in all of its area codes, right? So naturally Verizon has the right to answer every single wrong-number call! Never again will Inexperienced Users get that awful "dead end" error message telling them that they dialed a number that is "not in service". You'll have the "benefit" that every phone number will be "in service"!! You'll always get through, even if you don't want to. You'll have no way of turning it off -- why would you want to? FCC approval - why even ask? Verizon owns the circuits. Every phone number answers with a recorded announcement, or even a "Hello" and tries to "help" you, by trying to guess who you might have wanted to call, or who among their competition you might want to call. Think of all the business they could get. They could quickly rise to number one in plumbing, illegal drug dealing, any business they want to enter.

The Post Office could get in on this approach too. The Post Office OWNS every postal address, right? So any mail that is addressed to an "unregistered" postal address, is thus really addressed to the Post Office. So, they can open it and do with it anything they want. They can sort it by categories and sell it to the highest bidder. Why get a boring returned letter "undeliverable as addressed", when instead you can get "help" from a competitor of the company you wanted to reach, a psychiatrist or psychic or psychopath to help you with your relationships, or a subscription offer related to the content of your letter! They'd laugh at UPS and FedEx for not offering similar "services". And naturally they'd make fun of a "vocal minority" who companied about the free service.

Think of the money they could raise with these "services" and just how much we'd all appreciate it!

Domain names are an addressing scheme. SiteFinder is an abuse of that scheme. Everyone who understands what Verizon has done (us vocal minority) knows that SiteFinder is a violation of a trust.

Ok so erm, it's down right?

[thrill12]

I, in my 'just got out of bed' mood, think about trying the reinstating of the non-existent domains out. So I decide to quickly tap in some keys to check it:

http://dsfsdfsdf.com/

Omg... it's still active ! Now only it's ... Spanish ? What ????

...

Only to find out it must've been a random name some isp registered to sell later on.

I'll go to bed again.....

If you still want to ""enjoy"" the sitefinder...

[thrill12]

Try entering a non-existing host in your "/etc/hosts", and browsing to it...

Voila, you get that ""great feature"" again !

...

repetitive comment that'll be modded down, but...

[Knights who say 'INT]

We have won!

(The "we" being a huge group of which I'm just a tiny, insignificant part).

This gives space for hope, you know.

I was thinking more along the lines of

[rock_climbing_guy]

Obi-wan: You can't win, slashdot. If I strike you, you shall vanish; but if you strike me, I shall become more annoying than you can possible imagine.

Hose em down boys!

[Anonymous Coward]

Verisign stinks.. if they want to keep in with the community, they'll have to fix their personal hygene problems, or the community will do it for them. A nice little DoS enema on sitefinder should do the trick - time to turn those power tools to good use guys. At least then nobody will be able to resolve those misspelled domain names, which is as it should be. Now that's a resolve worth making. hoho Someone pass the rubber gloves...

Re:Verisign is breaking their contractural agreeme

[MacFreek]

According to the Internet Architecture Board (IAB):

"We must emphasize that, technically, this was a legitimate use of wildcard records that did not in any way violate the DNS specifications themselves. One of our main points here is that simply complying with the letter of the protocol specification is not sufficient to ensure the operational stability of the applications which depend on the DNS: there are protocol features which simply are not safe to use in some circumstances."

IAB Commentary: Architectural Concerns on the use of DNS Wildcards

Not just VeriSign

[MacFreek]

Though I applaud ICANN this time for forcing VeriSign to it's knees, I'm surprised that they do not tacle all top-level wildcards: Though the .com and .net wildcards have much more impact, there were and still are wildcards at: .cc, .cx, .museum, .nu, .ph, .td, .tk, and .ws. Why are these not removed? This seems like unfair ruling by ICANN.

The ariticle summary is not accurate

[strobert]

As mentioned in other forums, the article's summary is not accurate. sitefinder is NOT being shut down. and it spite of VeriSlime's press releases to the contrary they were not asked to.

what they WERE asked to do (and have now done) is to drop the .net and .com wildcards. aka they have (for now at least) release .com and .net from being hostages.