[registrars] An NXDOMAIN nibble (frontrunning or typosquatting, take your pick)

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

Several weeks ago I asked if anyone on the NANOG list had any experience 
with NXDOMAIN purchase sufficient to support the claim made by one 
registrar that NXDOMAIN leakage was a causal factor in frontrunning.
Today this was posted to NANOG:

> We are looking to purchase NXDOMAIN data for an internet survey.
>
> We prefer to receive the data on an hourly basis so it is as fresh as 
> possible. Our system receives the data from you via ftp that you 
> provide. Its hard to value the data until we have taken a look at it. 
> As one example, we pay a current partner $4000 per month for 100,000 
> records per day. If you would like to setup a test so we can determine 
> the value of your data please contact me at raydemain@xxxxxxxxx 
> <mailto:raydemain@xxxxxxxxx>.
> Please note that if you can also bring in other partners we will pay a 
> 10% recurring finders fee.
> Ray
From my perspective, this is the first evidence of offer that meets the 
temporal requirements for NXDOMAIN data being sufficient for 
frontrunning, and of course it is obvious that it also meets the 
requirements for typosquatting as well, which may be driven by 
keyboarding models off of zonefile data, or from stale(r) NXDOMAIN data 
than data on average only 30minutes old.
Cheers,
Eric