Verisign says new gTLDs put millions at risk

Verisign has revived its old name collisions security scare story, publishing this week a weighty research paper claiming millions are at risk of man-in-the-middle attacks.
It’s actually a study into how a well-known type of attack, first documented in the 1990s, might become easier due to the expansion of the DNS at the top level.
According to the paper there might be as many as 238,000 instances per day of query traffic intended for private networks leaking to the public DNS, where attackers could potentially exploit it to all manner of genuinely nasty things.
But Verisign has seen no evidence of the vulnerability being used by bad guys yet and it might not be as scary as it first appears.
You can read the paper here (pdf), but I’ll attempt to summarize.
The problem concerns a virtually ubiquitous protocol called WPAD, for Web Proxy Auto-Discovery.
It’s used by mostly by Windows clients to automatically download a web proxy configuration file that tells their browser how to connect to the web.
Organizations host these files on their local networks. The WPAD protocol tries to find the file using DHCP first, but fails over to DNS.
So, your browser might look for a wpad.dat file on wpad.example.com, depending on what domain your computer belongs to, using DNS.
The vulnerability arises because companies often use previously undelegated TLDs — such as .prod or .global — on their internal networks. Their PCs could belong to domains ending in .corp, even though .corp isn’t real TLD in the DNS root.
When these devices are roaming outside of their local network, they will still attempt to use the DNS to find their WPAD file. And if the TLD their company uses internally has actually been delegated by ICANN, their WPAD requests “leak” to registry or registrant.
A malicious attacker could register a domain name in a TLD that matches the domain the target company uses internally, allowing him to intercept and respond to the WPAD request and setting himself up as the roaming laptop’s web proxy.
That would basically allow the attacker to do pretty much whatever he wanted to the victim’s browsing experience.
Verisign says it saw 20 million WPAD leaks hit its two root servers every single day when it collected its data, and estimates that 6.6 million users are affected.
The paper says that of the 738 new gTLDs it looked at, 65.7% of them saw some degree of WPAD query leakage.
The ones with the most leaks, in order, were .global, .ads, .group, .network, .dev, .office, .prod, .hsbc, .win, .world, .one, .sap and .site.
It’s potentially quite scary, but there are some mitigating factors.
First, the problem is not limited to new gTLDs.
Yesterday I talked to Matt Larson, ICANN’s new vice president of research (who held the same post at Verisign’s until a few years ago).
He said ICANN has seen the same problem with .int, which was delegated in 1988. ICANN runs one of .int’s authoritative name servers.
“We did a really quick look at 24 hours of traffic and saw a million and a half queries for domain names of the form wpad.something.int, and that’s just one name server out of several in a 24-hour period,” he said.
“This is not a new problem, and it’s not a problem that’s specific to new gTLDs,” he said.
According to Verisign’s paper, only 2.3% of the WPAD query leaks hitting its root servers were related to new gTLDs. That’s about 238,000 queries every day.
With such a small percentage, you might wonder why new gTLDs are being highlighted as a problem.
I think it’s because organizations typically won’t own the new gTLD domain name that matches their internal domain, something that would eliminate the risk of an attacker exploiting a leak.
Verisign’s report also has limited visibility into the actual degree of risk organizations are experiencing today.
Its research methodology by necessity was limited to observing leaked WPAD queries hitting its two root servers before the new gTLDs in question were delegated.
The company only collected relevant NXDOMAIN traffic to its two root servers — DNS queries with answers typically get resolved closer to the user in the DNS hierarchy — so it has no visibility to whether the same level of leaks happen post-delegation.
Well aware of the name collisions problem, largely due to Verisign’s 11th-hour epiphany on the subject, ICANN forces all new gTLD registries to wildcard their zones for 90 days after they go live.
All collision names are pointed to 127.0.53.53, a reserved IP address picked in order to catch the attention of network administrators (DNS uses TCP/IP port 53).
Potentially, at-risk organizations could have fixed their collision problems shortly after the colliding gTLD was delegated, reducing the global impact of the vulnerability.
There’s no good data showing how many networks were reconfigured due to name collisions in the new gTLD program, but some anecdotal evidence of admins telling Google to go fuck itself when .prod got delegated.
A December 2015 report from JAS Advisors, which came up with the 127.0.53.53 idea, said the effects of name collisions have been rather limited.
ICANN’s Larson echoed the advice put out by security watchdog US-CERT this week, which among other things urges admins to use proper domain names that they actually control on their internal networks.

XYZ settles Verisign’s back-end switcheroo lawsuit

XYZ.com has settled a lawsuit filed against it against Verisign stemming from XYZ’s acquisition of .theatre, .security and .protection.
Verisign sued the new gTLD registry operator for “interfering” with its back-end contracts with the previous owners last August, as part of its campaign to compete against new gTLDs in the courtroom.
XYZ had acquired the .security and .protection ICANN contracts from security Symantec, and .theatre from a company called KBE Holdings.
As part of the transitions, all three applications were modified with ICANN to name CentralNic as the back-end registry services provider, replacing Verisign.
Verisign sued on the basis of tortious interference and business conspiracy. It was thrown out of court in November then amended and re-filed.
But the case appears to have now been settled.
Negari issued a grovelling not-quite-apology statement on his blog:

I am pleased to report that the recent case filed by Verisign against CentralNic, Ltd., XYZ and myself has been settled. After looking at the claims in dispute, we regret that as a result of our acquisition of the .theatre, .security and .protection extensions and our arrangement for CentralNic to serve as the backend service provider for these extensions, that Verisign was prevented from the opportunity to pursue monetization of those relationships. As ICANN’s new gTLD program continues to evolve, we would caution others who find themselves in similar situations to be mindful of the existing contracts extension owners may have with third parties.

Registries changing their minds about their back-end provider is not unheard of.
In this case, large portions of Verisign’s final amended complaint were redacted, suggesting some peculiarities to this particular switch.
If there was a monetary component to the settlement, it was not disclosed. The original Verisign complaint had demanded damages of over $2 million.

.security names priced at $3,000, .theatre at $750

XYZ.com may be best known for its budget .xyz gTLD, but its portfolio is increasingly leaning toward the super-premium end of the industry price range.
The company entered Early Access Period with its .security, .protection and .theatre gTLDs today, and they ain’t cheap.
.security and .protection are expected to carry retail prices of $3,000 a year, when they hit general availability a week from now.
Today, they’re $65,000 apiece, with the price reducing to $35,000, $15,000, $8,750 and $5,000 over the coming days.
Meanwhile, .theatre starts at $64,000, going down to $32,000, $14,000, $7,000 and $4,000 before finally settling at the GA RRP of $750.
All three gTLDs were acquired by XYZ.com from other applicants.
That was also the case for .cars, .car and .auto, which XYZ runs in a joint venture with Uniregistry, where retail prices are roughly $2,500.
In terms of competition, .security and .protection are probably up against .trust, while .theatre may well find itself in competition with .tickets, which has made inroads in Broadway.

Afilias $10 million court win slashed by judge

A US judge has dramatically reduced a $10 million ruling Afilias won against Architelos in a trade secrets case.
Architelos, which a jury decided had misappropriated trade secrets from Afilias in order to build its patented NameSentry domain security service, may even be thrown a lifeline enabling it to continue business.
A little over a week ago, the judge ordered (pdf) that the $10 million judgment originally imposed by the jury should be reduced to $2 million.
That won’t be finalized, however, until she’s ruled on an outstanding injunction demanded by Afilias.
The judge said in court that the original jury award had been based on inflated Architelos revenue projections.
The company has made only around $300,000 from NameSentry subscriptions since launch, and its sales pipeline dried up following the jury’s verdict in August.
The service enables TLD registries to track and remediate domain abuse. It was built in part by former Afilias employees.
Afilias has a similar in-house system, not available on the open market, used by clients of its registry back-end business.
Even a reduced $2 million judgment is a bit too rich for Architelos, which is desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy, according to court documents.
But the judge seems to be considering an injunction that would enable Architelos to continue to exist.
It may even be permitted to sell NameSentry, as long as it gives almost a third of the product’s revenue to Afilias for up to five years or until the $2 million is paid off.
The injunction might also grant joint ownership of the disputed patents to the two companies, allowing them to jointly profit from the technology.
This has all yet to be finalized, however, and Afilias can always appeal whatever injunction the judge comes up with.
It emerged in court earlier this month that Architelos offered to give full ownership of its patent, along with NameSentry itself, to Afilias in order to settle the suit, but that Afilias refused.
Afilias is also suing Architelos over the same matters in Canada, but that case is progressing much more slowly.

Afilias seeks to freeze Architelos patent after $10m lawsuit win

Afilias seems bent on burying domain security software maker Architelos, after winning a $10 million lawsuit against it.
The registry on Friday filed a court motion to freeze the patent at the heart of the lawsuit, which Afilias says — and a jury agreed — was based on trade secrets misappropriated by former Afilias employees.
Afilias said it wants to make sure Architelos does not attempt to sell the so-called ‘801 patent, which covers domain abuse-monitoring software.
Its motion asks for a court order “prohibiting Architelos from taking any action that would dilute… or diminish Architelos’ rights or ownership interests” in the patent.
It notes that Architelos has stated that it does not have the means to pay the $10 million damages awarded by a jury in August, which might give it a reason to try to sell the patent.
Afilias said Architelos had “raised the prospect of bankruptcy” during post-trial negotiations.
The motion seems to have been filed now because the judge in the case is taking an unusually long time to render her final judgment.
Despite the case being heard on a so-called “rocket docket” in Virginia, the two companies haven’t heard a peep out of the court since late October.
According to Afilias’ motion, the judge has indicated that Afilias will wind up at least partially owning the ‘801 patent, but that the jury’s $10 million verdict may be “tweaked”.
Judging by a transcript of the August jury trial, the judge herself was not particularly impressed with Afilias’ case and did not expect the jury to crucify Architelos so badly.
Out of the jury’s earshot, she encouraged Afilias to attempt to settle the case and said “if the jury verdict comes in against what I think is the clear weight of the evidence, I will most likely adjust it.”
She also said: “I would have trouble believing that any reasonable jury would find even if they were to award damages to the plaintiff that there’s any significant amount here.”
She clearly misread the jury, which a few days later handed Afilias every penny of the $10 million it had asked for.
That’s much more money than Architelos is believed to have made in revenue since it launched four years ago.
Afilias’ latest motion is set to be heard in court in early January.

ICANN security advisor predicts “hundreds” of new gTLDs will “go dark”

A security company led by a member of ICANN’s top security committee reckons that “hundreds” of new gTLDs are set to fail, leading to web sites “going dark”.
Internet Identity, which provides threat data services, made the prediction in a press release this week.
IID’s CTO, quoted in the release, is Rod Rasmussen. He’s a leading member of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, as well as a member of ICANN’s influential Security and Stability Advisory Committee.
He has a dim view of new gTLDs:

Most new gTLDs have failed to take off and many have already been riddled with so many fraudulent and junk registrations that they are being blocked wholesale. This will eventually cause ripple effects on the entire domain registration ecosystem, including consolidation and mass consumer confusion as unprofitable TLDs are dropped by their sponsoring registries.

The press release acknowledges that ICANN has an Emergency Back-End Registry Operator (EBERO) program, which will keep failing gTLDs alive for up to three years after the original registry operator goes out of business.
But it continues:

questions abound as to who would risk an investment in poorly performing TLDs, especially as they start to number in the hundreds. “That’s why eventually some are going to just plain go dark,” added Rasmussen.

The prediction is for “2017 and beyond”. Given the existence of the EBERO, we’re probably looking at 2020 before IID’s claim can be tested.
It’s a bit of a strange prediction to come out of a security company.
The whole point of EBERO is to make sure domain names do not go dark, giving either the registry the chance to sell on the gTLD or the registrants a three-year heads-up that they need to migrate to a different TLD.
It would be a bit like being told that there’s a horrible bit of malware that is set to brick your computer, but that you’ll be fine if you change your anti-virus provider in the next three years.
I could live with that kind of security threat, personally.
But what are the chances of hundreds of live, non-dot-brand going fully post-EBERO dead in the next few years?
I’d say evidence to date shows the risk may be over-stated. It may happen to a small number of TLDs, but to “hundreds”?
We’ve already seen new gTLD registries essentially fail, and they’ve been taken over by others even when they’re by definition not profitable.
Notably, .hiv — which has a contractual agreement with ICANN to not turn a profit — failed and was nevertheless acquired by Uniregistry.
We also see registries including Afilias and Donuts actively searching for failing gTLDs to acquire.

It’s official: new gTLDs didn’t kill anyone

The introduction of new gTLDs posed no risk to human life.
That’s the conclusion of JAS Advisors, the consulting company that has been working with ICANN on the issue of DNS name collisions.
It is final report “Mitigating the Risk of DNS Namespace Collisions”, published last night, JAS described the response to the “controlled interruption” mechanism it designed as “annoyed but understanding and generally positive”.
New text added since the July first draft says: “ICANN has received fewer than 30 reports of disruptive collisions since the first delegation in October of 2013. None of these reports have reached the threshold of presenting a danger to human life.”
That’s a reference to Verisign’s June 2013 claim that name collisions could disrupt “life-supporting” systems such as those used by emergency response services.
Names collisions, you will recall, are scenarios in which a newly delegated TLD matches a string that it is already used widely on internal networks.
Such scenarios could (and have) led to problems such as system failure and DNS queries leaking on to the internet.
The applied-for gTLDs .corp and .home have been effectively banned, due to the vast numbers of organizations already using them.
All other gTLDs were obliged, following JAS recommendations, to redirect all non-existent domains to 127.0.53.53, an IP address chosen to put network administrators in mind of port 53, which is used by the DNS protocol.
As we reported a little over a year ago, many administrators responded swearily to some of the first collisions.
JAS says in its final report:

Over the past year, JAS has monitored technical support/discussion fora in search of posts related to controlled interruption and DNS namespace collisions. As expected, controlled interruption caused some instances of limited operational issues as collision circumstances were encountered with new gTLD delegations. While some system administrators expressed frustration at the difficulties, overall it appears that controlled interruption in many cases is having the hoped-for outcome. Additionally, in private communication with a number of firms impacted by controlled interruption, JAS would characterize the overall response as “annoyed but understanding and generally positive” – some even expressed appreciation as issues unknown to them were brought to their attention.

There are a number of other substantial additions to the report, largely focusing on types of use cases JAS believes are responsible for most name collision traffic.
Oftentimes, such as the random 10-character domains Google’s Chrome browser uses for configuration purposes, the collision has no ill effect. In other cases, the local system administrators were forced to remedy their software to avoid the collision.
The report also reveals that the domain name corp.com, which is owned by long-time ICANN volunteer Mikey O’Connor, receives a “staggering” 30 DNS queries every second.
That works out to almost a billion (946,728,000) queries per year, coming when a misconfigured system or inexperienced user attempts to visit a .corp domain name.

ICANN reveals 12 more data breaches

Twelve more new gTLD applicants have been found to have exploited a glitch in ICANN’s new gTLD portal to view fellow applicants’ data.
ICANN said last night that it has determined that all 12 access incidents were “inadvertent” and did not disclose personally identifiable information.
The revelation follows an investigation that started in April this year.
ICANN said in a statement:

in addition to the previous disclosures, 12 user credentials were used to access contact information from eight registry operators. Based on the information collected during the investigation it appears that contact information for registry operators was accessed inadvertently. ICANN also concluded that the exposed registry contact information does not appear to contain sensitive personally identifiable information. Each of the affected parties has been notified of the data exposure.

The glitch in question was a misconfiguration of a portal used by gTLD applicants to file and view their documents.
It was possible to use the portal’s search function to view attachments belonging to other applicants, including competing applicants for the same string.
Donuts said in June that the prices it was willing to pay at auction for gTLD string could have been inferred from the compromised data.
ICANN told compromised users in May that the only incidents of non-accidental data access could be traced to the account of Dirk Krischenowski, CEO of dotBerlin.
Krischenowski has denied any wrongdoing.
ICANN said last night that its investigation is now over.

XYZ says it won’t block censored Chinese domains

New gTLD registry XYZ.com has said it will not preemptively censor domain names based on the wishes of the Chinese government.
Over the last couple of days, CEO Daniel Negari has sought to “clarify” its plans to block and suspend domain names based on Chinese government requests.
It follows XYZ’s Registry Services Evaluation Request for a gateway service in the country, first reported by DI and subsequently picked up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Wall Street Journal columnist, Fortune magazine and others.
The clarifications offered up by XYZ probably did more to confuse matters.
A blog post on Wednesday said that XYZ will not reserve any .xyz domain names from being registered, except those ICANN makes all new gTLD registries reserve.
Subsequent comments from Negari stated that XYZ will, as the RSEP stated, prevent names that have been banned in China from being registered.
However, there’s one significant difference.
Now, the registry is saying that it will only put those bans in place for domain names that have been specifically banned by the Chinese government when the name had already been registered by a Chinese registrant.
So, if I understand correctly, it would not preemptively ban anyone anywhere from registering [banned term].xyz.
However, if [banned term].xyz was registered to a Chinese resident and the Chinese government told the registry to suspend it, it would be suspended and nobody would be able to re-register it anywhere in the world.
Negari said in a blog comment yesterday:

if we receive a Chinese legal order tomorrow (before the gateway has launched) which requires disabling a domain name registered in China and properly under Chinese jurisdiction, then it will be disabled at the registry level, and not by the gateway. When the gateway launches the name will continue to be unavailable, and the gateway will not implement the action on a localized basis only in China. The normal registry system would continue to be the only system used to resolve the name globally. Again — the specific stability concern ICANN had was that we would use the Chinese gateway to make .xyz names resolve differently, depending on what country you are in. I completely agree that our [RSEP] re-draft to address that concern came out in a way that can be read in a way that we sincerely did not intend.

So there is a list of preemptively banned .xyz, .college, .rent, .security and .protection domains, compiled by XYZ from individual Chinese government requests targeting names registered to Chinese registrants.
Negari said in an email to DI yesterday:

To clarify the statement “XYZ will reserve domains,” we meant that XYZ will takedown domains in order to comply with “applicable law.” Unfortunately, the inaccuracies in your post caused people to believe that we were allowing the Chinese government to control what names could be registered or how they could be used by people outside of China. The idea that XYZ is going to impose Chinese law and prevent people outside of China from registering certain domain names is simply incorrect and not true. To be 100% clear, there is no “banned list.”

That was the first time anyone connected with XYZ had complained about the October 12 post, other than since-deleted tweets that corrected the size of the list from 40,000 domains to 12,000.
The RSEP (pdf) that causes all this kerfuffle has not been amended. It still says:

XYZ will reserve names prohibited for registration by the Chinese government at the registry level internationally, so the Gateway itself will not need to be used to block the registration of of any names. Therefore, a registrant in China will be able to register the same domain names as anyone else in the world.

This fairly unambiguous statement is what XYZ says was “misinterpreted” by DI (and everyone else who read it).
However, it’s not just a couple of sentences taken out of context. The context also suggests preemptive banning of domains.
The very next sentence states:

When the Gateway is initially implemented we will not run into a problem whereby a Chinese registrant has already registered a name prohibited for registration by the Chinese government because Chinese registrars are already enforcing a prohibition on the registration of names that are in violation of Chinese law.

This states that Chinese residents are already being preemptively banned, by Chinese registrars, from registering domains deemed illegal in China.
The next few paragraphs of the RSEP deal with post-registration scenarios of domains being banned, clearly delineated from the paragraph dealing with pre-registration scenarios.
In his blog post, Negari said the RSEP “addressed the proactive abuse mitigation we will take to shut down phishing, pharming, malware, and other abuse in China”.
I can’t believe this is true. The consequence would be that if China sent XYZ a take-down notice about a malware or phishing site registered to a non-Chinese registrant, XYZ would simply ignore it.
Regardless, the takeaway today is that XYZ is now saying that it will not ban a domain before it has been registered, unless that domain has previously been registered by a Chinese resident and subsequently specifically banned by the Chinese government.
The registry says this is no different to how it would treat take-down notices issued by, for example, a US court. It’s part of its contractual obligation to abide by “applicable law”, it says.
Whether this is a policy U-turn or a case of an erroneous RSEP being submitted… frankly I don’t want to get into that debate.
Disclosure: during the course of researching this story, I registered .xyz domains matching (as far as this monoglot can tell) the Chinese words for “democracy”, “human rights”, “porn” and possibly “Tiananmen Square”. I have no idea if they have value and have no plans to develop them into web sites.

Credit card hack cost Web.com millions

Web.com is taking a $1 million per-quarter hit to its revenue as a result of August’s hacking attack.
It also incurred $400,000 in consulting, legal and credit monitoring fees in the third quarter as a result of the breach, CEO David Brown told analysts last night.
Some 93,000 credit card numbers were stolen during the attack, a small portion of its 3.3 million customers.
A number of customers jumped ship as a result of the attack, moving their domains elsewhere, which increased Web.com’s churn rate.
“Due to the subscription nature of our business, in the fourth and subsequent quarters we expect the breach will have about a $1 million negative impact on revenue per quarter due to the shortfall from Q3,” Brown said.
It added 15,000 customers in the quarter, lower than the 21,000 it added in Q2.
Net income for the quarter was $6.1 million, reversing a $3.4 million loss in the year-ago period, on revenue that was basically flat at $136.8 million, compared to $137.4 million a year ago.
In response to an analyst question, Brown also commented on the success, or lack thereof, of the company’s new gTLD business. He said:

That continues to be positive, but we’re not doing back-flips here. It’s not that positive. We think it’s good for the market, good for consumers and businesses to have more choices. But they’re not flying off the table. .com and .net and the original extensions still are the force in the marketplace. But as we see more gTLDs and as the market understands them and see the opportunity, we continue to believe that this will be a positive trend. But at this point, it’s not moving the needle in our business or likely in anyone’s business.

Web.com owns registrars including Network Solutions and Register.com.