On September 15 2003, Verisign, the company that control the .com and .net TLD servers, added a wildcard to both domains. The wildcard resolved to a Verisign IP address that was assigned to a system they called sitefinder. If the connection was on port 80 (http), sitefinder would return a web page that acted like a search engine. Since this was a change to the fundamental workings of DNS, ICANN felt it necessary to look into the issue (furthermore many members of the community were livid and there was a public outcry). I was recruited by ICANN's Security and Stability subcommittee to help sort through the feedback that ICANN was getting, and help compile it into reabable reports. Below is some background information and most of the reports to date.

From here on out Verisign begins to take a lot of flak from the community, including various network operator groups, technical forums, and others. The secsac comments box (which I am reading) begins to get a significant amount of email regarding the wildcard, almost all of it unfavorable.

ICANN decides that its Security and Stability committee will hold hearings on the effects of Verisign's wildcard on the security and stability of the internet.

Verisign was not happy with the first meeting. Even before it happened there were acusations of bias. It was decided that a second meeting would be held which would focus largely on the rsearch that Verisign had done and the data they had collected.

A call went out to the community in general for more hard data on the effects of the wildcard. Secsac committee mebers are also working on drafting an outline of a final proposal.