Versign creates man-in-the-middle attack on DNS

[Tim May]

On Monday, September 15, 2003, at 07:24  PM, Neil Johnson wrote:

> Just a few hours ago Versign modified the Internet's root DNS servers 
> to
> respond to ANY DNS lookup that doesn't resolve in a real hostname to 
> return
> the IP address of one their servers where they claim to have a search 
> engine.
>
> For example, if you access http://www.thisisjunk55666.com , you will 
> get a
> Verisign page, not a "Host can not be found error".
>
> This means that many anti-spam checks will fail among other issues.
>
> They will also intercept mail to mistyped email hosts (They claim to 
> reject
> the mail, but not after having collected the From and To address).
>
> This really bites.

I didn't get a Verisign page...I go the usual error.

"Could not open the page http://www.thisisjunk55666.com/ because the 
server www.thisisjunk55666.com could not be found."

--Tim May


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