Comment on Operator Skills and Testing - name servers

["Mark Samson" <Mark_Samson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Comment on Operator Skills and Testing - name servers
=====================================================

The proposal to amend the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) to require
operator skills training and testing for all ICANN-accredited Registrars
would be helpful to anti-spam efforts.

There has been particular difficulty with Registrars properly shutting down
name servers registered by spammers to serve multiple spam domains. Support
staff used to removing normal domains often don't understand the extra steps
that need to be taken for a name server domain. It is particularly difficult
as each Registrar may have its own backend software and support staff may be
non-English speaking making it harder to understand instructions that are
often reported in English. Training in this area would be appreciated.

A registrar will often put a spam name server on hold, but leave the name
server's address records ("glue records"), so the hundreds of spam domains
can still resolve using the name server. If the registrar sets the glue
records correctly to 0.0.0.0 they may not set Registrant status correctly so
that the spammer just resets the glue records and other information set by
the Registrar. Correct closure of a name server can stop hundreds or
thousands of spam domains resolving, until the spammer can reset these
individually to a new name server and changes can propagate, by which time
the spam domains in emails may no longer be so likely to be read.

The following links have been written to help Registrars with shutting down
name servers, but may need to be looked at further.

http://www.spamtrackers.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Registrar_Advice

For .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, .INFO, and .NAME Extensible Provisioning
Protocol (EPP) Status domains
http://www.spamtrackers.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Suspending_an_EPP_name_serve
r_domain

In short this usually means:

To suspend a name server domain

1. Change the name server's address record to 0.0.0.0 or 61.61.61.61.
Example
ns0 IN A 61.61.61.61

2. Immediately set the status of the domain to
ClientUpdateProhibited
ClientDeleteProhibited
ClientTransferProhibited
ClientHold