quote:

---

VeriSign Inc is testing changes to its domain name system services, which could generate tens of millions in revenue a year for itself and partners, and which would impact the way almost every internet user surfs the web.

---

quote:

---

VeriSign's controversial "typo-squatting" Site Finder service is about to be bypassed by an emergency software patch to many of the Internet's backbone computers.

The Internet Software Consortium, a nonprofit that publishes BIND, the software that runs many of the Net's domain name servers, is about to release an emergency patch to block VeriSign's new Site Finder service.

VeriSign's Site Finder, launched on Monday, has drawn heated criticism for hijacking mistyped Web addresses. Instead of getting an error message, Web surfers who mistype ".com" and ".net" Web addresses are redirected to the Site Finder service, which then offers a list of likely alternatives, some of which are paid-placement links. Critics complain the new service gives VeriSign too much control over online traffic and allows it to profit from an essential monopoly over ".com" and ".net" names. VeriSign is charged by the U.S. government with running the ".com" and ".net" domains, and directs much of the traffic on the Internet.

However, the ISC is about to undercut the Site Finder service with a patch to its BIND software.

BIND runs on about 80 percent of the Internet's domain name servers -- the machines that translate human-readable Web addresses like www.wired.com into machine-readable Internet addresses used by the Internet's vast network of computers.

The patch will be released by the end of Tuesday, said Paul Vixie, ISC's president.

"The phone has been ringing off the hook with deeply unhappy customers," he said. "We don't have a political ax to grind. Whether VeriSign should or should not have done this is not for us to decide. But we have to respond to our customers who are demanding it."

Vixie said that ISC's customers -- typically ISPs and large enterprises -- needed a fix because VeriSign's Site Finder broke their spam filters.

Vixie said a lot of spam spoofs the "from" domain, and that many ISP-level spam filters check whether incoming e-mail is from a valid domain or not. Instead of generating errors, the spam filter checks are instead being rerouted to the Site Finder service, and therefore appear to originate from a legitimate domain.

Vixie said the ISC's customers aren't too concerned with advertising. "They don't want to help spammers. It's the lack of a viable spam-detection mechanism they're worried about. They are concerned about spam, not advertising," Vixie said.

VeriSign did not respond requests for comment.
»www.wired.com/news/technology/0,···,00.html

---