[thelist] Verisign "registers" every domain

[aardvark]

For those who haven't read slashdot since last night, and since I 
didn't see it mentioned yet today:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/16/0034210

Essentially, Verisign has inserted a wildcard A record to the .com 
and .net TLD DNS zones, meaning an IP of 64.94.110.11 is 
returned for any domain name that has not yet been registered.

If you type the address into your browser (or any random 
unregistered .com or .net address), you will end up at 
http://sitefinder.verisign.com/. If you ping a fake .com/.net address, 
it will time out, but still point to the IP address above when it 
should return an unknown host error (ping a fake .org to see what it 
should look like).

Keep this in mind when expecting error messages from things like 
FTP clients (which may report an inability to log in instead of 
"hostname unknown," which could result in confusion), some spam 
filtering packages that rely on look-ups, tracerts and pings, and 
anything else where you rely on getting appropriate errors. This 
also means people who mis-type an address of a site will get the 
Verisign 'search' page noted above (for example, type in a 
misspelling of your own .com).

Read slashdot for further notes and commentary (some of it useful).


--
my latest book project:
  Web Graphics for Non-Designers
  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590591712/evoltorg02-20
  ISBN: 1590591712