Ben Edelman: New.net Installed through Security Holes

["Fergie (Paul Ferguson)" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

An interesting read.

Ben Edelman writes in his blog:

[snip]

My last few posts have all covered spyware revenue sources (e.g. major advertisers, pay-per-click ads, and affiliate 
networks). But I always come back to poor installation practices as the core of the spyware problem. And nonconsensual 
installations continue to benefit surprisingly large vendors. Today's focus: New.net.

New.net provides a proprietary domain name system that allows it to sell nonstandard domain names to advertisers. These 
proprietary domains are resolved through New.net's own servers, so these domains are accessible only to users whose 
ISPs have chosen to support New.net (few have), or to users with New.net's client software installed on their PCs.

Despite major funding from Idealab, New.net hasn't made a lot of friends. When New.net first announced its navigation 
DNS experts criticized New.net for breaking the namespace: In a New.net world, not all computers can reach all domain 
names. Internetnews called New.net an "end-run around ICANN," and Internet Society staff worried of New.net causing 
"address collisions" by creating new domains that already exist elsewhere.

[snip]

http://www.benedelman.org/news/100505-1.html

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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