Re: Underscores in host names

[Paul Vixie <vixie () vix com>]

(why are we talking about this on NANOG rather than NAMEDROPPERS?)

> The whole reason for check-names was because of very seriously broken  
> software that would allow shell meta-characters in in-addr.arpa  
> labels to do bad things.

yes.  mea cupla, i let CERT twist my arm into paving over a hole with
BIND that should have been patched in Sendmail.

> I have come to the opinion that if such software still exists, then the
> people who run that software deserve what they get.

me too.

> Check-names was a bad idea that might have been justified at the time,
> but pretending it remains justified by 952/1123 has got to stop sometime.
>
> However, that rant was mostly irrelevant.  Can you point to _ANY_
> application, operating system, or anything else that has any issues
> whatsoever with an "_" of all characters?

at the time of check-names, i outlawed _ as a side effect of punting.  in
order to strip/prevent newline characters in PTR targets, i had to be able
to refer to an RFC (lest people come to me with many individual sob stories
about this or that special character that either should or should not be
stripped/prevented in gethostbyaddr().)  the only RFC i found that had any
remote chance of getting me off this hook was #952.  ergo, _ had to die in
order that my inbox might live.

but it was wrong, and the need for it is past, and it's time for redress.
-- 
Paul Vixie