Verisign probes name collisions link to MH370

Verisign is investigating whether Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 went missing due to a DNS name collision.

The Boeing 777 disappeared on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, March 8. Despite extensive international searches of the Indian Ocean and beyond, no trace of the plane has yet been found.

Now Verisign is pondering aloud whether a new gTLD might be to blame.

The theory emerged during Verisign’s conference in London two weeks ago, at which the company offered a $50,000 prize to the researcher with the best suggestion about how to keep the collisions debate alive.

Chief propaganda officer Burt Kaslinksiki told DI that the decision to launch the investigation today was prompted by a continuing lack of serious interest in name collisions outside of Verisign HQ.

“We cannot discount the possibility that the plane went missing due to a new gTLD,” he said. “Probably something to do with .aero or .travel or something. That sounds plausible, right?”

“The .aero gTLD was delegated in 2001,” he said after a few minutes thought. “Is it any coincidence that just 13 years later MH370 should go missing? We intend to investigate a possible link.”

“Think about it,” Koslikiniski said. “When was the last time you saw a .aero domain? The entire gTLD has vanished without a trace.”

He pointed to a slide from a prize-winning Powerpoint presentation made at the London conference as evidence:

“We’re not saying new gTLDs cause planes to smash into the ocean and disappear without a trace, we’re just saying that it’s not not un-impossible that such a thing might conceivably, feasibly happen,” he said.

He added that it was also possible that name collisions were to blame that time Justin Bieber got photographed pissing in a bucket.

Verisign is proposing that ICANN add “modest” new registration restrictions to all new gTLDs as a precaution until the company’s investigation is concluded, which is expected to take four to six years.

Specifically, new gTLD registries would be banned from accepting any registrations for:

• Any domain name comprising a dictionary word, or a combination of dictionary words, in any UN language.
• Any domain name shorter than 60 characters.
• Any domain name containing fewer than six hyphens.
• Any domain name in which the second level is written in the same script as the TLD.
• Anything not written in Windings.

Kalenskiskiski denied that these restrictions would unreasonably interfere with competing gTLDs’ business prospects.

“Nobody seemed to care when we managed to get 10 million domains blocked based on speculation and fearmongering,” he said. “We’re fairly confident we can get away with this too.”

“If ICANN puts up a fight, we’ll just turn The Chulk loose on ‘em again to remind them who pays their fucking salaries,” he explained.

“In the rare instances where these very reasonable restrictions might prevent somebody from registering the new gTLD name they want, there’s still plenty of room left in .com,” he added.

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