Stephane Van Gelder - Registrars

Les dangers des registrars américains

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:46:45 +0200

En mars, ici même, je posais la question de savoir si les noms de domaine enregistrés par le biais de registrars américains sont en sécurité. Une question amenée notamment par un cas de reprise arbitraire de noms liés à Cuba sur ordre du gouvernement américain.

Cette question semble plus que jamais d'actualité, comme l'illustre une récente chronique publiée par Cnet et écrite par un iranien. Derrière le titre "le cyber Iran, le pays le plus incompris et calomnié du monde", Reza Hashemi livre des informations fascinantes sur le quotidien des iraniens sur Internet.

Au-delà des blocages dont les Internautes de ce pays font l'objet de la part d'un nombre impressionnant d'éditeurs de logiciels, qui ne permettent pas le téléchargement de mises à jour par exemple, on y apprend que les noms de domaine détenus par des iraniens sont susceptibles d'être repris à n'importe quel moment s'ils sont enregistrés auprès de registrars américains.

L'auteur cite notamment des cas de "reprises" de noms gérés par GoDaddy, eNom et Network Solutions.

Toujours ces histoires de "listes noires" de l'administration américaine, qui obligent les sociétés sous juridiction américaine à ne pas traiter avec certains pays. A ma connaissance, aucune action de reprise de ce type n'a jamais été constatée en Europe…

Confusion in the Dutch namespace

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:15:23 +0200

When you run a blog such as this one, where the author gives a personal view of the industry he's in, it's hard to decide whether you should talk about competitors or not.

I don't want to be second-guessing other people's professional decisions, but I do feel I can comment on them at times.

So it is with .CO.NL. The domain was bought by Eurodns and they've decided to market it as an extension in its own right. Now I can understand the allure for registrars in having and running their own extensions, but I must admit I don't get .CO.NL. There's already an official .NL and top level domains are always more desirable and usable than second level domains (i.e. I'd rather have INDOM.NL than INDOM.CO.NL).

The .CO.NL guys' pitch is that, because there's a local presence requirement for .NL, people will be able to project a Dutch image through CO.NL while bypassing the local presence rule.

The minute I saw that I thought: recipe for disaster!

Continue reading "Confusion in the Dutch namespace"

Just blame the registrar!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:24:29 +0200

Hackers recently took control of some of ICANN's domains and posted a "humorous" message.

The New York Times is apparently very interested in the story of the ICANN domains that were briefly redirected two weeks ago by a group of Turkish hackers. On Monday, the paper ran a second story on this as a follow-up to a piece it ran on June 27th.

Entitled "Icann Blames June Site Hijack on Registrar", the NYT article comes across to me as yet another example of the press taking a shortcut on the facts.

Anyone reading this title will be left in no doubt as to the fact that ICANN is blaming Register.com, the registrar that has the hijacked domains under management, for the incident. The article is based on an ICANN release published on July 3rd in which ICANN never actually blames Register.com.

What ICANN does say is : "The DNS redirect was a result of an attack on ICANN's registrar's systems (…) It would appear the attack was sophisticated, combining both social and technological techniques, but was also limited and focused."

There's no doubt that Register.com must accept responsibility for what happened. But until more is actually known about the attack (ICANN's release indicates that "A full, confidential, security report from that registrar has since been provided to ICANN with respect to this attack") and in particular, if it was facilitated by failures at the registrar, deciding that said registrar is the bad guy in this is a little too convenient in my book.

As everybody knows, nowadays hackers are so clever at exploiting loopholes in any system that anyone can become a victim. You never know, even the New York Times might be hit one day…

Free speech of basic survival instincts?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:19:59 +0100

I was initially only going to write about this story in French, mainly because I didn't really want to repeat in English the opinions I'd already voiced in a French-language post on the subject.

But an eCommerceTimes article I read since writing that post has infuriated me enough to get me going on this subject again…

Just for you non-French speakers out there, this is all about the new storm brewing around Network Solutions. This time, it's over Netsol's decision to suspend the website of controversial far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders. His site was used to promote an upcoming film about the man's obsession: showing that the Koran is a racist book and getting it banned in Holland.

Netsol suspended the website and put the message used as this post's illustration up instead. The company has explained that the domain name hasn't been locked and that Wilders can do what he wants with it. Netsol is apparently just not comfortable with hosting content which might possibly spark the similar kind of racial tensions seen around the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed

I've since read many articles critical of this decision to suspend the site, but none quite so one-sided as the eCommerceTimes. Under the heading "Domain Name Registrars: The Weakest Link in Online Free Speech", the writer of this piece argues that for people who want to take down offending content, the easiest way nowadays isn't to go after the site's publisher, but the registrar behind the website. These "usually anonymous Internet players will fold like a tent in the face of an impending storm" says ECT's Erika Morphy.

Continue reading "Free speech of basic survival instincts?"

Loch Ness monster found!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:24:35 +0100

Some weeks ago, ICANN published information about a practice called "Domain Name Front Running". We covered the subject in Domaines.Info.

What is DN Front Running? Simply put, it's the notion that when a prospective domain name registrant does an availability search on a domain name without actually registering it, a third party is able to somehow intercept the search and register the name for itself.

This has been the naming industry's Loch Ness monster for years. An urban legend that no-one's actually ever been able to prove.

Continue reading "Loch Ness monster found!"