593303 - mixed top level registration - k12.il/town.k12.il in PSL

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Networking: Domain Lists, defect)

Description

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

While reading documents in order to understand the situation for IDN domains in Israel (bug 592810), come to my attention a possible security issue - the Israeli domain registration authority, ISOC-IL, require schools to register domains in the forth level, as name.town.k12.il, while it is possible to request the domain to be registered in the third level. 

Section 3.3.e in their domain registration terms[1] (v1.4, August 2010) is as follow - 

<blockquote>
e. .k12.il - for kindergartens and schools as classified by the Israeli Ministry of Education. Allocation under this SLD is made in the fourth level, in the following format:

<name of institution>.<town>.K12.IL.

Any deviation from this format is subject to prior approval of the Israeli Ministry of Education.
All provisions in these Rules which apply to Third Level Domain Names, will also apply to Fourth Level Domains registered under this SLD. 
</blockquote>


You may decide to change something in the public suffix list, because currently it is as follows - 

<blockquote>
// il : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.il
*.il
</blockquote>

In addition, it might be good idea to replace the link at the comment to [1], as it is more comprehensive than Wikipedia, and please note that some 2nd level TLDs act as domains in addition of being a TLD (gov.il, idf.il).


[1] http://isoc.org.il/domains/il-domain-rules.html

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

We could add a rule:

*.k12.il

which would make the schools show up correctly, but there is a risk it would break sites which didn't follow that format. Given that this search:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ak12.il&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
turns up a whole load of them, that wouldn't be wise. Either the Israeli Ministry of Education is liberally handing out permission, or this rule isn't being enforced in practice, or there was a time when it was not enforced.

So I suggest WONTFIX.

Gerv

Comment 2

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

The domain registration is being done by ISOC-IL. By looking on the about search term, I can see results from the two groups - 

*.k12.il
amalnet.k12.il
hotam-ovdim.k12.il
aviv.k12.il
snunit.k12.il

*.town.k12.il
gordon.holon.k12.il
kadoorie.galil.k12.il
hof.hasharon.k12.il
nitsanim.modiin.k12.il


ISOC-IL probably doesn't have a list of domains, but if we'll ask nicely, they may be able to compile a list for us.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Tomer: unless there are only a limited number of exceptions, and the rule is now hard-and-fast, keeping this updated would be an ongoing pain. The only "security issue" this might present is that one school in Holon could share cookies with another one. Which, as security issues in Israel go, isn't a big one :-)

Gerv