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Quantifying SiteFinder Traffic
by gnulinux＠pacinfo.com 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=verisign.com [full post mirrored from Interesting People] Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 18:54:28 -0400 To: ip(a)v2.listbox.com From: Dave Farber <dfarber(a)cs.cmu.edu> Subject: [IP] Quantifying SiteFinder Traffic >Delivered-To: dfarber+(a)ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu >From: "Ben Edelman" <edelman(a)law.harvard.edu> >To: "'Dave Farber'" <dfarber(a)cs.cmu.edu> >Subject: Quantifying SiteFinder Traffic >Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 12:44:30 -0400 >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510 >Importance: Normal > >Dave, > >IP readers may be interested in a sense of just how much traffic VeriSign is >receiving from its SiteFinder service. Alexa, with its Alexa Toolbar and >associated traffic tracking services, makes it easy to find out: > ><http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=verisign.com> > >The highlights -- > >Over the past three months, taken as a whole, Verisign had traffic rank >1,559. But today its traffic rank is 19 -- meaning, at least among Alexa >users (who are generally representative of web users), the verisign.com >domain has suddenly become joined the top 20 sites, measured by page views. > >VeriSign's climb is even more notable when reckoned in "reach" -- proportion >of users who visit the site at least once. Measured in this way, >verisign.com is now in position 9 -- meaning there are only eight sites on >the web that more users visit in a given day. > >All that said, users don't tend to stay on verisign.com for long. Notice >page views rank of 45, far below the traffic rank, meaning that users tend >to stay on other sites for a longer duration (more page views) than on >verisign.com. > > >Ben Edelman >Berkman Center for Internet & Society >Harvard Law School >http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman

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Re: Verisign abusing .COM/.NET monopoly, BIND releases new (fwd)
by doug＠safeport.com 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

I have not tried this but After reading Paul Vixie's recent comments I intend to do so. _____ Douglas Denault doug(a)safeport.com Voice: 301-469-8766 Fax: 301-469-0601 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 18:19:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Damaged Industries <damaged(a)damaged.no-ip.com> To: bugtraq(a)securityfocus.com Subject: Re: Verisign abusing .COM/.NET monopoly, BIND releases new On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, SR wrote: > > This is simply amazing, Verisign has just turned the .COM and .NET TLD > > DNS servers up-side-down for their own economical gain and, in doing so, > > disrupted network traffic for most of the Internet. Mail administrators > > who use any non-existant DNSBL to mark email as spam suddenly has all > > their mails deleted, people using localhost.localdomain.com on their > > servers for administrative purposes are scrambling to find out the cause > > of their problems and DNS problems arise everywhere as neg caching is > > essentially disabled and all DNS caches have to cache each and every > > randomly typed DNS query. > > > > The BIND patch that prevents this should be released Wednesday. > > djbdns already has a patch (make that two patches). > > They are available from djbdns.org > Several patches have been out: Bind9 patch: http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/delegation-only.html Bind8 patch: http://achurch.org/bind-verisign-patch.html Djbdns patch: http://tinydns.org/djbdns-1.05-ignoreip.patch PowerDNS patch: http://www.imperialviolet.org/binary/powerdns.patch Userfriendly :) http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030917&mode=classic ---- -- damaged

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Re: Providers removing blocks on port 135?
by Mike Tancsa 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

Yes, this is all too familiar. Luckily it was not so acute for us. The porn company in question was using legit credit cards and we knew where they were located. We too got to the point where I had to contemplate blocking dialups with no ANI as I had already blocked all access from their phone numbers. However, once they started doing that I called up their office yelling and screaming law suits and I guess they figured there were other ISPs that didnt care as much and moved on to them. ---Mike At 10:39 PM 20/09/2003, jlewis(a)lewis.org wrote: >At one time, signing up for "throwaway dial-up accounts" was a common >spammer MO. We got hit a couple times, and they were like a plague of >vermin [the spammers]. They'd sign up giving us bogus contact info and a >freshly stolen (active) credit card. When the account was activated, >they'd dial in using half a dozen or so lines and pump out as much spam >(direct-to-MX) as they could. The really annoying bit is, we'd terminate >them, they'd call right back, and sign up again, giving different bogus >info and card numbers. We'd block them by ANI, and they'd block caller-ID >when calling us. I ended up being forced to block access to some of our >dial-up numbers both by ANI, and if there was no ANI, and then had to >setup exceptions for a few customers in those areas who we never got ANI >for. When I tried getting police in their areacode to investigate, they >had no interest/were too busy...even though I could give them phone >numbers the accounts were used from and stolen credit cards. > >To put a little operational spin in here...how many of you run dial-up >networks where you refuse logins unless you get ANI?...and if you do this, >do you also maintain an ANI blacklist? > >Anyway...they moved on to proxy abuse, then outright theft by creating >their own proxies on compromised MS Windows boxes. Both methods have the >advantage of totally hiding the spammer from the recipients and bandwidth >amplification. I imagine you could utilize multiple spam proxies on >broadband connections pumping out your spam while connected via dial-up >yourself. > >If you look at the numbers at http://njabl.org/stats, about 5% of the >hosts that have ever been checked are currently open relays (or nobody's >bothered to remove them). IIRC, at one point, this was nearly 20%. >13.6% are open proxies...and the disparity is definitely still growing, >with about 10x as many open proxies as relays being detected daily. >Unfortunately, the new breed of purpose-built spam proxies are generally >not remotely detectable, so the proxy percentage would be even higher if >it included the newer spam proxies. > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Jon Lewis *jlewis(a)lewis.org*| I route > Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are > Atlantic Net | >_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________

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Are Wildcards another Y2K?
by Kevin Loch 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

One thing that Y2K taught us was that programmers do some really stupid things with hard coded "this should never occur naturally" values. The year '99' was used to trigger all kinds of interesting things like erasing backup tapes, destroying inventory and worse. It is not implausible that someone has hard coded an "asdfjlkl.com" type domain somewhere important. The effects of such errors are not always immediately visible as they were with the spam filters. The problem is that the COM zone is part of the largest legacy software system the world has ever seen. Configuration changes to it affect virtually every application that uses DNS. How many lines of code is that? Hundreds of millions? Billions? Any configuration change to the legacy zones should be made only after careful consideration, with a strong prejudice to do nothing. Because V$ is downplaying the seriousness of this problem, many (most) won't audit their systems to see how it might be affected by this. I hope V$ is prepared to take responsibility for whatever breaks. I hope DOD/FBI/DHS aren't expecting a stable COM zone. I guess we'll find out the next time a terrorist buys a plane ticket or 1000 lbs of fertilizer using a bogus email address. KL

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If Verisign wants to cooperate
by E.B. Dreger 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

I realize this thread had gotten long, but thought I'd pitch the following idea: ; TLD $ORIGIN com. * IN NS ns.wildcard.invalid. $ORIGIN wildcard.invalid. ns IN A 1.2.3.4 ; NSI default Make no mistake, I'd much rather have the wildcard eradicated. Until that happens (who says I'm not a foolish optimist?), the above would allow NetSol to run SiteFinder _and_ make it easier for providers to override via a single zone. People have expressed concern over NetSol circumventing current resolver patches using glue. They could employ the same tactics to simplify the sifting. Eddy -- Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - EverQuick Internet Division Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 785 865 5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 316 794 8922 Wichita _________________________________________________________________ DO NOT send mail to the following addresses : blacklist(a)brics.com -or- alfra(a)intc.net -or- curbjmp(a)intc.net Sending mail to spambait addresses is a great way to get blocked.

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More .com/.net issues
by Steve Atkins 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

I'm seeing bulk access to .com and .net blocked at the moment. Other zones are available from Verisigns ftp server as usual, but .net and .com are empty (and the signature files are listing them as empty too). Anyone heard anything from Verisign about this? Cheers, Steve -- -- Steve Atkins -- steve(a)blighty.com

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Re: Worst design decisions?
by jlewis＠lewis.org 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

The off-topic nanog thread that won't die (where are the topic police?...never around when you need one)...and then just when you think it has died, some member's virus infected Microsoft Windows PC (hey is that redundant?) replies to you with the thread's subject and no body other than a virus attachment, even though you never replied (on-list) to the thread. Whoever you are, do everyone a favor and turn off your PC. Received: from speedbd.speedbd.net (212-165-128-186.reverse.newskies.net [212.165.128.186] (may be forged)) by sloth.lewis.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id h8L7A4P09167 for <jlewis(a)lewis.org>; Sun, 21 Sep 2003 03:10:19 -0400 My vote for worst design decision? Easy. Lookout Virus Express. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis *jlewis(a)lewis.org*| I route Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are Atlantic Net | _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________

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Re: ICANN - Formal Complaint re Verisign
by David Lesher 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

Geotrust is not Verislime, but they *are* Choicepoint. If you don't know who Choicepoint is; well, they vacuum up your personal data and resell it to all comers. Google on "Choicepoint FTC" for a rundown. Sort of John Poindexer's version of Halliburton......a private sector Big Brother. I regard Verislime vs Choicepoint as like Joey ("The gang that couldn't shoot straight..") Leonand's outfit vs. the Colombian mobs. Sigh, I'll be sticking with Verislime for buying certs, I guess. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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Re: Providers removing blocks on port 135?
by Miquel van Smoorenburg 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

In article <cistron.Pine.LNX.4.44.0309202021530.25380-100000(a)bubba.numbnuts.net>, Justin Shore <listuser(a)numbnuts.net> wrote: >Now I'm going to get even more off-topic. It occurs to me that major >changes to a protocol such as SMTP getting auth should justify utilizing a >different tcp/ip port. Think about it like this. If authenticated forms >of SMTP used a different TCP/IP port we netadms could justify leaving that >port open on these same dynamically assigned netblocks in the theory that >they are only able to connect to other authenticated SMTP services. >Doesn't that seem logical? That's not exactly a new idea. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2476.html (december 1998). Mike.

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Re: VeriSign SMTP reject server updated
by Paul Vixie 21 Sep '03

21 Sep '03

> Is it possible for the client resolver code to distinguish between a > wildcard answer and an explicit answer? no. > If this was available, it would mail clients and other things > interested in the specific domain name could get the answers they > want. While other stuff would get the wildcard answers. right.

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