ICANN: Meddling with DNS poses security problem

The interception of Internet traffic to snoop on phone calls or track surfers' behavior is a hot topic -- but what's keeping members of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee up at night is the interception of traffic to and from sites that don't even exist. They explained why in a session at ICANN's public meeting. There are still a few possible domain names out there that have not yet been registered, and if you accidentally type one of them into your browser's address bar, you ought to receive an error message from the Domain Name System (DNS) signalling that the domain does not exist. What happens to those error messages is of concern to SSAC's members, who advise on the security and integrity of the domain name systems that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates. Some ISPs (Internet service providers) and domain name registrars see the error messages as a missed opportunity to "help" their customers find the site they are looking for -- and to make a little money on the side. They do this by intercepting the error messages and modifying them to point to a Web site that they control, typically carrying advertisements related to the domain name typed.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/24/Meddling_with_DNS_poses_securi...