10 Mar
2017
10 Mar
'17
12:42 p.m.
On 09/03/2017 09:50, Christian Corti via cctalk wrote:
On Thu, 9 Mar 2017, Tor Arntsen wrote:
> I did an strace and I can confirm that the Linux 'whois' client that I
> used from those various sites sends '-T dn' (or actually -T dn,ace)
I did a little research on that:
The '-T' option is passed to the whois server, it's not a client option.
I don't think Tor has suggested it's a client option, and I certainly
did not. It's simply part of the string that one particular client
knows to send to DENIC, and which at least one other client can be
forced (manually) to send.
Intelligent or modern clients know what options to
pass to the
appropriate server, in this case '-T dn' to the DENIC whois server.
Well, for one value of modern :-) The RIPE client which DENIC
themselves recommend people to use, does not do that. It has to be
cajoled into sending the "-T dn" along with the query string.
This option is completely legal and was introduced at
DENIC in an
attempt to better protect the domain holder's privacy (you know,
different country, different rules). This was many years ago, but it's
still there.
Legal in what sense? It's not part of any RFC, and appears to be unique
to DENIC. I regularly use dozens of whois servers and not one other
honours, let alone requires, that option. Also not that RFC3912 gives a
single protocol example which does not require any such option, and
refers to RFC954 for normative references - ie, they way it should be
done. No -T there either.
RFC 3912 doesn't specify what output the whois
server is supposed to
send. Everybody "assumes" that it should be the complete domain
information, but that's simply not the case.
That's certainly true. Very few whois servers return all the
information; many won't disclose phone numbers, for example. In fact I
was surprised how much text /is/ returned by DENIC.
Imposing this assumption is what Mouse does, and that
is wrong.
I disagree; Mouse (and I) were simply using standard common whois
clients and getting either nothing or an error in return to queries.
--
Pete
Pete Turnbull