Re:ICANN bans dotless domains
by bitexploder on Friday August 16, 2013 @09:19PM
(#6227802)
Hi. I am one of the authors of (http://www.icann.org/en/groups/ssac/documents/dotless-domain...) this report mentioned in there. Our study included a much broader scope than SAC 053 mentioned in the article. The idea was to take a very broad, holistic, view of the key infrastructure and systems on the Internet and determine the risks dotless names may pose. How would behavior be different with dotless names, etc. Our report basically answers your question, I think, so I won't answer it here :)
[ Parent
| on HN ]
How are you actually going to prevent someone from returning an A record? (possibly as part of a targeted attack)
I suspect ICANN are thinking about the long game - if, as a matter of policy, there are no valid dotless domains, then developers of user agent software are unlikely to attempt to resolve them (other than using a search list or hosts file) in the first place.
But current clients all handle single label names via normal DNS resolution.
This is how many office PCs find their file servers. People are not going to give up the habit of using single label names on the LAN just so ICANN can start collecting rent on that namespace.