PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR THE UPCOMING MEETING. WEB CASTING WILL BE
PROVIDED.
Announcement
30 September 2003
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Special Meeting of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee
Regarding VeriSign's Deployment of Wildcard
Marina del Rey, CA - 30 September 2003 - ICANN's Security and Stability
Advisory Committee (SECSAC) announced today that it will hold a special
meeting on 7 October 2003 to gather input regarding VeriSign's recent
change to the operation of the registry for the .com and .net Top Level
Domains.
SECSAC is an ICANN advisory committee comprised of Internet pioneers and
technical experts including operators of Internet root servers, registrars,
and TLD registries.
On 15 September 2003, VeriSign introduced a "wildcard" into the .com and
.net zones. The VeriSign wildcard redirects traffic that would otherwise
have resulted in a "no domain" response to a VeriSign-operated website with
search results and links to paid advertisements.
Since the introduction of the wildcard, the Internet Architecture Board
(IAB), SECSAC and other groups have issued separate statements expressing
concerns over this change to the operation of the Internet's core
infrastructure and its impact on the stability of the Internet.
Following this special meeting, SECSAC will issue a report intended to be
of use to ICANN, to the technical community, and to the community at large
who seek to understand the issues at hand and how the critical parts of the
Internet interact with each other.
The meeting will be held on Tuesday, 7 October 2003, from 10 AM to 4 PM at:
The Center for Strategic and International Studies
<www.csis.org>
1800 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
The meeting is free and open to the public. Please pre-register at <
http://register.icann.org>. ICANN also plans to webcast the meeting live.
Further details including an agenda, background materials and webcast
arrangements are available at <http://secsac.icann.org>.
In preparation for the meeting, ICANN and its SECSAC have issued a public
request for comments and reports to <secsac-comment@xxxxxxxxx> relating to
the effects of the .com and .net wildcards.
Additional information regarding SECSAC is available at <
http://www.icann.org/committees/security/>. An information page on the .com
and .net wildcards has been posted at <
http://www.icann.org/general/wildcard-history.htm>.