Tag: verisign

Categories
Internet

GoDaddy DNS Outage

Via Wired:

Following a day-long Domain Name Service server outage, web hosting provider GoDaddy is letting its competitor, VeriSign, host its DNS servers.

Part of me wants to point out that GoDaddy’s relationship with VeriSign’s is not quite that of a competitor. GoDaddy’s primary business is domain registration. VeriSign sold Network Solutions back in 2003. VeriSign used to sell SSL certs, that’s now owned by Symantec. They however still sell hosting and DNS services which competes with GoDaddy, however I don’t think they are really competing as they seem to be targeting different markets. VeriSign is the authoritative registry for .com and .net, making them essential to the entire operation of domains. GoDaddy being the largest registrar suggests they’ve had a relationship for a long time.

What this demonstrates is that GoDaddy totally dropped the ball and realized they weren’t prepared for today’s events This was a very long outage, even with moving to VeriSign.

Categories
Internet Politics

US Authorities Seize Foreign Domain

Via easyDNS, The Domains reports on a foreign gambling domain being seized in the US:

The indictment focuses on the movement of funds from accounts outside the U.S., in Switzerland, England, Malta, and Canada, and the hiring of media resellers and advertisers to promote Internet gambling.

To make that clear: A federal warrant was issued and a foreign company dealing with a domain registrar in Canada was taken off the internet because the company violated the state law of Maryland.

DNS will eventually be succeeded. This is just pushing for it to happen sooner than later. The next system will not be so centralized, and certainly not be based in the US.

It’s also worth noting the Dept. of Justice yet again seems to violate federal law by ignoring Section 508 in this take-down. The blatant disregard for federal law by the Dept. of Justice is ironic. Sad considering the $0 cost to fix it. It’s safe to say it’s not an “oversight” as it’s got presence to the point of it’s own website.

Categories
Mozilla

EV SSL Support in Firefox 2.0

Many by now has heard about Extended Validation (EV) Certificates. This technology lets sites that meet a higher standard of verification appear differently in a browser (typically with a green background behind the url). IE 7 has supported this technology, and Firefox has been planning this for 3.0. VeriSign (the very expensive SSL Cert guys) created an extension to add UI support to Firefox.

Very interesting to see features like this added to Firefox by an extension. I haven’t seen many security related extensions before.

[Hat tip: InfoWorld]

Categories
Internet Networking

Anycast Saves The Web

Several weeks ago the root servers were attacked. CNet is running a story that says Anycast played a role in preventing larger problems.

It would be interesting to see if all the root servers switch to Anycast. Where would the new distributed servers go? Does Verisign etc. own that many data centers? Or would they be in data centers and colo’s all over the world?

There is an interesting slideshow (PDF link) that discusses the effects of switching k-root to Anycast. It doesn’t really go into foiling DoS attacks though.

Categories
Internet

Slashdot again

I made slashdot again with a news contribution.

Robert Accettura writes “Network Solutions has updated its whois interface, giving it an interesting new twist. On top of regular info provided, it shows data that appears to be from Alexa, including a screenshot of the homepage (though not terribly recent), as well as looks up your IP, and displays lots of information on it. It even shows the server type, if it supports SSL, DMOZ, Yahoo listing, traffic ranking, and lock status. This comes right after they announced rapid DNS updates. Perhaps they are trying to win over the geeks before they turn on sitefinder?”

Got to admit, I like the new whois. Lots of info nice and easy to use. Feels good. No complaints. But bring back sitefinder, and they can shove it. I’m sure I’m not alone with that feeling.

That’s all I really have to say.

Categories
Internet

Down with Site Finder

I’ve said it before. Site Finder sucks. It’s a violation of standards, and privacy. Not to mention business ethics (hijacking web traffic with a monopolistic position to increase revenue at a cost of user privacy).

It may come back.

Here’s to hoping Verisign goes out of business.

Categories
Internet

Owning the Internet

It’s becoming more and more common these days…

ISO Codes

Tim Berners-Lee wrote a nice little letter regarding a proposal for Licensing the use of ISO codes. I have to personally agree with Berners-Lee on this one. It’s getting a little rediculus what people claim ownership of.

Can It trademark the word “internet”? Please?

Verisign

According to slashdot ICANN posted an advisory.

IMHO, since Network Solutions (Verisign) is a company contracted to provide such services… they should act appropriately. I personally believe it’s time for the Department of Commerce to step in and take control of the situation. They allowed NetSol to get into this seat of power.

You need to look no further than at the Terms Of Service to see how they abuse their position:

My favorite is this:

Sole Remedy.

YOUR USE OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH ANY OF THE MATERIALS, RESULTS OR OTHER CONTENTS OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES OR WITH THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, OUR PRIVACY STATEMENT, OR OTHER POLICIES, YOUR SOLE REMEDY IS TO DISCONTINUE USE OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES OR OUR SITE.

So they are now telling us… if we don’t like their service… we should ditch the internet. Or resort to using IP addresses. How about request the Department of Commerce and ICANN to unplug them next time around? Put them out of business. Completely revoke their contract next time around leaving them to be nothing but a reseller.

COST OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES.
The Verisign Service(s) are provided to you free of charge.

At least they aren’t charging us for the right to allow them to make money off of our typo’s. Thank you for not requiring us to pay for it! Thank you Verisign for not charging us!

Seriously. Some companies are just plain sick. I really hope Verisign loses big on this. VeriSlime has been a big problem for years. Now they just pushed it to a whole new level.

Categories
Internet

Verisign Followup

There’s a petition now available for the VeriSign Scam:

Sign Now

Already got some hits. Sign and pass it on. NOW!

Categories
Internet

VeriSign can go to hell

I’m a bit angry.

From now on any bad URL will resolve to VeriSign. That’s sick. They make money on every typo on the Internet.

My real beef is that they could be selling ads for competition. For example, type appke.com instead of Apple.com, and you could be seeing ads for MS Windows. Or vice versa.

Bad things to come.