VeriSign Continues To Make Internet Its Bitch As reported on slashdot and elsewhere, VeriSign has followed through on plans to set up a wildcard for…
VeriSign Continues To Make Internet Its Bitch
As reported on slashdot and elsewhere, VeriSign has followed through on plans to set up a wildcard for all nonexistent .com and .net addresses. This wildcard will point back to VeriSign; web browsers pointed at invalid domain names will presumably see some kind of of self-referential advertising (“Buy This Domain!”), and e-mail messages sent to invalid domain names will be accepted by VeriSign (where they may be read or simply deleted. who knows?).
This sucks for all Internet software because essentially, all possible .com and .net domains now exist. If they aren’t registered explicitly, they default to VeriSign. Software which checks to see if a domain exists will now fail 100% of the time (always answering, “yes it does”, for these two toplevel domain namespaces).
This is out of joint with the DNS spec, and certainly with the intent of the domain name system. Thanks, VeriSign!