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

Re:Bout time

[Gwala]

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

-Gwala

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]

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]

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

[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

[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

[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?

[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...?

[CGP314]

Such is the way everywhere.

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...?

[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?

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.

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.

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!

[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!

[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.

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?

[jonbryce]

Switch your site to .uk

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.....

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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

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.

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

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?

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...

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

[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

[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

[cyt0plas]

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

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.

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.

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!

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 ....

[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...

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?

[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??

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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)

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.

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?

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? ;-)

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.

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.

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 !

...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.