The Problem of Interceptor Top Level Domains Revisited
Abstract
This paper is an extension of my earlier paper. It examines the continuing growth of this problem, and the likelihood that it will continue to get worse. Since the previous paper, the author was contacted by a lawyer involved in litigating a dispute related to TLDs. As noted in the previous paper, misdirected communication has obvious security and privacy ramifications and is an age old problem that predates the Internet. In recent years it has been exacerbated by the arrival of electronic communication and the multitude of ways that communication can be misdirected. A new chapter in this age old problem is being written with the proliferation of top level domains (TLDs). This paper examines this problem in more detail and provides a full analysis of the current set of TLDs. In particular, we are concerned with TLDs that have a nontrivial probability of intercepting traffic intended for another TLD. Intercepting TLDs have the potential of intercepting a lot of traffic since a TLD can support many domain names. This paper updates the results in the previous paper and also performs an auditory similarity measurement between domain names. The issue here is that sometimes TLDs are given orally, such as over the telephone. There are TLDs which, although spelled differently, sound similar to each other. Finally, we give the results of some experiments performed with purchased domain names to be deliberately confusing.
Recommended Citation
G. Markowsky, "The Problem of Interceptor Top Level Domains Revisited," Proceedings of the IEEE 9th International Conference on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications (2017, Bucharist, Romania), vol. 2, pp. 912 - 917, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Sep 2017.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1109/IDAACS.2017.8095219
Meeting Name
IEEE 9th International Conference on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications, IDAACS 2017 (2017: Sep. 21-23, Bucharest, Romania)
Department(s)
Computer Science
Keywords and Phrases
Auto-Completion; Demerau-Levenshtein Distance; Domain Interception; Prefix Chain; Restricted Prefix Order; Suffix Tree; TLD
International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
978-1-5386-0697-1
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2017 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., All rights reserved.
Publication Date
24 Sep 2017
Comments
This paper is an extension of an earlier paper, The Problem of Interceptor Top Level Domains, presented at the IEEE 8th International Conference on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications, IDAACS 2015 (2015: Sep. 24-26, Warsaw, Poland).