8 ms·

Should major DNS servers just stop resolving TLDs that are not either the original six (com, net, org, edu, gov, mil) or a ccTLD? Most spam comes from domains

Should major DNS servers just stop resolving TLDs that are not either the original six (com, net, org, edu, gov, mil) or a ccTLD? Most spam comes from domains registered with these fake TLDs that ICANN has sponsored over the past decade, and apparently being an internationally recognized region isn't enough to stop a company named after the region from taking your quasi-ccTLD (if .eu exists, so can .amazon). The term "cultural appropriation" is massively overused nowadays, but naming the company this, then years later stealing their TLD (and thus adding an entry to the long list of abuse that fake TLDs have caused) would be an appropriate use IMO. https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/follow-the-money-lessons-from-jeff-bezos.html https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/follow-the-money-lessons-... Not kidding, he just named it Amazon because its the biggest river in the world, not even questioning if that was the right thing to do.

deleted 8y ago
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M2Ys4U 8y ago
.eu is a different case as two-letter TLDs are ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes and EU is exceptionally reserved.
zokier 8y ago
> Should major DNS servers just stop resolving TLDs that are not either the original six (com, net, org, edu, gov, mil) or a ccTLD? While we are at it, should we also deprecate the legacy tlds (.com etc). They should have been mostly moved to under .us when cctlds were introduced
- stephen_g 8y ago
  I think it’s fine to have generic .com, .org, .net and so on. These are useful given there are multinational companies, organisations, etc. so there’s no reason to mess with that. What I think is really inappropriate is that .gov, .edu and .mil are US-only. These should either be opened up to all countries, or phased out. I think for these particular ones, phasing out would be the best way - i.e, no new registrations, every domain owner gets matching (edu,mil,gov).us domains, and then requiring them to only serve redirects to the new domains and not content after a few months.
  - deleted 8y ago
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CydeWeys 8y ago
The short answer is no, this will never happen. Root nameservers don't get to pick and choose which parts of the Internet get resolved; if they did, they'd quickly be replaced. As for recursive resolvers, none of the main ones would knowingly default to a broken configuration.
walrus01 8y ago
I get your rhetorical point, but at this time the floodgates of shitty new gTLD domains have been open too long, there are hundreds of them now. Just a cash cow for ICANN.
ryanlol 8y ago
>Most spam comes from domains registered with these fake TLDs Domains don't send spam, servers do.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Technically accurate, but not useful. At work we block nearly all TLDs that aren't extremely common because a whole lot of phishing pages use them, more than enough to completely outweigh their legitimate uses except in a few cases like '.ms'. Oh, btw, if anyone reading this is one of the people making the decision to use a bunch of random domains in a TLD like that to host necessary chunks of your site or services required by your application, go to hell.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    > Oh, btw, if anyone reading this is one of the people making the decision to use a bunch of random domains in a TLD like that to host necessary chunks of your site or services required by your application, go to hell. Tone aside, why do you object so sharply to anyone using a perfectly valid domain?
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Because it makes using DNS filtering a pain. I may have whitelisted all of 'microsoft.com', for instance, and a bunch of '.ms' domains I've seen in the logs and know are microsoft's, but invariably they'll start using others and I won't know about it until a user complains and I have to go dig around in the logs and possibly the site code to figure out which bullshit domain needs to be whitelisted. It's even worse with everybody using '.io'. And why? to save a scant few bytes when referencing a 1MB block of JS?
      - int_19h 8y ago
        You chose to use domain filtering. That's fine, but why should other people be obligated to arrange their parts of the internet in such a way that makes it easier for you to do that?
octosphere 8y ago
> Most spam comes from domains registered with these fake TLDs From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cm > In a report published in December 2009 by McAfee, "Mapping the Mal Web - The world's riskiest domain", .cm was reportedly the riskiest domain in the world, with 36.7% of the sites posing a security risk to PCs From: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10407530-83.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10407530-83.html > The African nation of Cameroon (.cm) is deemed the most dangerous, and the popular .com domain comes in second place.
- missingmarshall 8y ago
  I'm inclined to think '.cm' is top because of its visual similarity to '.com' so it can be used to fool easier, rather than any reasons related to the country itself.
- extra88 8y ago
  I don't agree with the previous comment at all, I'm happy to have more TLDs, but a report from 2009, before creating new ones really opened up, isn't useful.
  - evgen 8y ago
    It would also be useful to know how many domains in the TLD or what the distribution of requests is over all TLDs. Yes, .com should have a large percentage because there are so many domains registered in that TLD, but if 20% of the .amazon domains are spam/malware/phishing then a savvy admin will block by default and just whitelist the small number of exceptions.
    - extra88 8y ago
      A savvy admin should outsource spam management and not spend time on crude techniques that inevitably cause false positives.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

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M2Ys4U 8y ago

.eu is a different case as two-letter TLDs are ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes and EU is exceptionally reserved.

zokier 8y ago

> Should major DNS servers just stop resolving TLDs that are not either the original six (com, net, org, edu, gov, mil) or a ccTLD? While we are at it, should we also deprecate the legacy tlds (.com etc). They should have been mostly moved to under .us when cctlds were introduced

stephen_g 8y ago
I think it’s fine to have generic .com, .org, .net and so on. These are useful given there are multinational companies, organisations, etc. so there’s no reason to mess with that. What I think is really inappropriate is that .gov, .edu and .mil are US-only. These should either be opened up to all countries, or phased out. I think for these particular ones, phasing out would be the best way - i.e, no new registrations, every domain owner gets matching (edu,mil,gov).us domains, and then requiring them to only serve redirects to the new domains and not content after a few months.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

CydeWeys 8y ago

The short answer is no, this will never happen. Root nameservers don't get to pick and choose which parts of the Internet get resolved; if they did, they'd quickly be replaced. As for recursive resolvers, none of the main ones would knowingly default to a broken configuration.

walrus01 8y ago

I get your rhetorical point, but at this time the floodgates of shitty new gTLD domains have been open too long, there are hundreds of them now. Just a cash cow for ICANN.

ryanlol 8y ago

>Most spam comes from domains registered with these fake TLDs Domains don't send spam, servers do.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Technically accurate, but not useful. At work we block nearly all TLDs that aren't extremely common because a whole lot of phishing pages use them, more than enough to completely outweigh their legitimate uses except in a few cases like '.ms'. Oh, btw, if anyone reading this is one of the people making the decision to use a bunch of random domains in a TLD like that to host necessary chunks of your site or services required by your application, go to hell.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  > Oh, btw, if anyone reading this is one of the people making the decision to use a bunch of random domains in a TLD like that to host necessary chunks of your site or services required by your application, go to hell. Tone aside, why do you object so sharply to anyone using a perfectly valid domain?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Because it makes using DNS filtering a pain. I may have whitelisted all of 'microsoft.com', for instance, and a bunch of '.ms' domains I've seen in the logs and know are microsoft's, but invariably they'll start using others and I won't know about it until a user complains and I have to go dig around in the logs and possibly the site code to figure out which bullshit domain needs to be whitelisted. It's even worse with everybody using '.io'. And why? to save a scant few bytes when referencing a 1MB block of JS?
    - int_19h 8y ago
      You chose to use domain filtering. That's fine, but why should other people be obligated to arrange their parts of the internet in such a way that makes it easier for you to do that?

octosphere 8y ago

> Most spam comes from domains registered with these fake TLDs From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cm > In a report published in December 2009 by McAfee, "Mapping the Mal Web - The world's riskiest domain", .cm was reportedly the riskiest domain in the world, with 36.7% of the sites posing a security risk to PCs From: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10407530-83.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10407530-83.html > The African nation of Cameroon (.cm) is deemed the most dangerous, and the popular .com domain comes in second place.

missingmarshall 8y ago
I'm inclined to think '.cm' is top because of its visual similarity to '.com' so it can be used to fool easier, rather than any reasons related to the country itself.
extra88 8y ago
I don't agree with the previous comment at all, I'm happy to have more TLDs, but a report from 2009, before creating new ones really opened up, isn't useful.
- evgen 8y ago
  It would also be useful to know how many domains in the TLD or what the distribution of requests is over all TLDs. Yes, .com should have a large percentage because there are so many domains registered in that TLD, but if 20% of the .amazon domains are spam/malware/phishing then a savvy admin will block by default and just whitelist the small number of exceptions.
  - extra88 8y ago
    A savvy admin should outsource spam management and not spend time on crude techniques that inevitably cause false positives.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago