[Tfug] Slightly OT regarding advanced "whois" searches...

[Bexley Hall]

--- On Tue, 9/4/12, Jim March <1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is about which websites are run by the
> same rogue host/designer company.

Yes, which is why I used the example:

   OTOH, if you have names of a few folks and are hoping to 
   issue a blind "tell me which web sites (in the universe of
   all potential web sites) these folks are associated with",
   then you're SoL.

"Which websites (domain names) is Jim March responsible for?"

"Which websites are hosted by SleazyWebSites, Inc?"

"Which websites does W.X.Y.Z serve up?"

Sorry, but you can't do that with the DNS registry and its existing
search tools.

What you're looking for is akin to using a conventional phone
book (whitepages) and trying to figure out the names and phone
numbers of everyone claiming "123 Main Street" as their address.

The only way to do this would be to issue repeated queries (i.e.,
lookup a sh*tload of "names" -- since names are the primary key in
a conventional phone book) and *build* your own database based
on the results that you obtain.  Then, you could index *that*
database however you wanted to satisfy your future queries.

In essence, you would exhaustively query the initial database
until you had extracted *every* record:

   Lookup Aaaaa
   Lookup Aaaab
   Lookup Aaaac
   ...
   Lookup Zzzzz

Trying to do the same to the name registry would use up all the
calendar time you have available to you in this lifetime!  :>

OTOH, if you have a list of websites, IP addresses, etc. "of interest",
then you can query *those* names, addresses, etc. and build a database
of just those results (a finite task).   Then, you can look for whatever
patterns are important to you.

>From my understanding of your goal, this is NOT what you want.
You, instead, have a handle on *some* "culprits" and want to be
able to expand that knowledge to incorporate sites that you
haven't yet "discovered"/encountered.  An analog for Joe Consumer:

"I bought a product that was defective.  I know that it was sold
by Bozonics, Inc.  After some investigation, I determined that it 
was made by Sleazituity, Inc.  I want to make sure I never buy
any other products sold by Bozonics or *made* by Sleazituity!!!
I need to know this BEFORE any purchase is made!"

If, OTOOH, you had an "in" at one of the registrars, you could
probably search their database using any sort of non-standard
key that you wanted!  "Give me a list of all registrations
where the first name of the responsible party is 'Enrico'..."
(of course, that only covers entries at *that* registrar!)

This is akin to having an in at the phone company (or whoever
it is that publishes phone books, nowadays) and being able to
issue the "who is at 123 Main Street" query directly to their
database.

--don