Subject: Claim-based DNS ...

From: Francois Menard <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 13:28:38 -0500

Let me illustrate the idea with a very practical problem that I have right
now.  Some hacker registered mediatrix.net (we're mediatrix.com) and is
asking money to stop lying to the Internic.  I'd like to be able to 1) claim
that I am the authoratitative answer on *.mediatrix.net wihout having to
ever bother dealing with the hacker (with changing the root dns) and 2) for
people to be able to reach me until I can resolve beoming the single owner
(through possibly lengthy legal battles). The simple fact that I could
induce a trust relationship based on the one of mediatrix.com to people that
trust mediatrix.com and that are querying mediatrix.net would discourage the
hacker, as he would have to compete with my trust buildup capability.

-=Francois=-
Francois D. Menard
Product Specialist
Mediatrix Telecom Inc.
[email-masked]
Office: +1 819 829 8749 x 227
Office: (APA-II) +1 819 829 1491 x 555-0301 
Home: (APA-II) +1 819 829 1491 x 555-0306
Mobile / Pager: +1 819 348-6080
Email to Pager: [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 13:51:53 -0500

> hacker, as he would have to compete with my trust buildup capability.

OK. How would you resolve ISS.COM and ISS.NET?   Note that ISS.NET
is actually a company that sells the ISS security package, but ISS.COM
was apaprently already taken by a company founded in 1984 to produce
scientific instruments.

And be careful what you ask for, you might get it.  What's to stop
your hacker friend from using HIS "trust buildup capability" to
do the exact same thing to YOU that YOU want to do it HIM?

The US and Soviet Union called it Mutually Assured Destruction.
Keep it out of the DNS.

-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 13:51:53 -0500

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From: "Michael H. Warfield" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 14:20:58 -0500 (EST)

> hacker, as he would have to compete with my trust buildup capability.

	Not a good idea.  NOT a good idea AT ALL.  It may work in your
case, but I work at Internet Security Systems (iss.net).  There is another
company who owns and controls iss.com.  Both are equally valid.  What if
THEY decided THEY wanted to dispute our claim to iss.net?  Some people would
believe them and some would believe us.  (How would you decide who to believe
and reach them through the dispute?)  You can argue that the lawyers would
slug it out but, ITMT our business could be serious disrupted and put in
jeopardy.  That, since we are a publicly traded company, can affect a variety
of financials.  What a wonderful tool this would create for industrial
sabotoge!  It's one thing to talk about the annoying ankle bitters and
squatter who grubstake domains seeking to bleed or extorte money from
legitimate domain holders, like you are describing.  It rapidly becomes a
horse of a different color when competition and industrial dirty tricks
gets involved.  One of the reasons the Internic instituted the Guardian
program was due to a whole series of "domain wars" where ISPs where attacking
and altering each others registrations.  This would add a whole new dimension
to cyber-terrorism...

> Email to Pager: [email-masked]

	Mike
-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  [email-masked]
  (The Mad Wizard)      |  (770) 925-8248   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
  NIC whois:  MHW9      |  An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471    |  possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!

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From: "Michael H. Warfield" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 14:20:58 -0500 (EST)

Mike

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 15:27:01 -0500

> and altering each others registrations.  This would add a whole new dimension

As once again we are reminded of the painful lack of a deployed
directory-search protocol for this stuff.  As is painfully obvious
to anybody who's tried to use AltaVista lately, once you *find* a URL
with a DNS name in it, things are usually pretty smooth (modulo the
usual 404'ing because the page has departed).  It's trying to go from
"find me 4AM pizza in Marin County" to http://www.late-night-pizza-marin.com
that's fraught with hits for late night pizza in NYC, Paris, and Rome,
late night Chinese food in Marin, and the occasional late night
excersize equipment infomercial. ;)

Cyberterrorism hell.  Try finding the *most recent* version of a
software program amidst all the Linux mirror sites that left version N-5
out on ftp://someplace...

Will the appropriate AD please followup with the WG name/etc if there
is an active group in this area?  We need to redirect this to their
archives ;)

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 15:27:01 -0500

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 17:46:53 -0500

>asking money to stop lying to the Internic.  

What makes you think he's lying?  It may be that he has absolutely as
much right to use "mediatrix.net" as you have to use "mediatrix.com".
Who are you to say otherwise, and why should anyone believe you?

This is not a technical problem, it's a legal/judicial one.
Fundamentally, such issues require human judgement (and often,
threats-of-harm from governments or other sufficiently powerful
entities) to resolve.  Once such issues are resolved, the technical 
and other mechanisms necessary to implement the fix are already in place.

Keith

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 17:46:53 -0500

Keith