[db-wg] mntner with misleading primary key

Hi Tom,

On Wed, 1 Jul 2020 at 18:16, Tom Hill via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
> Would it actually be difficult to retrofit a "MUST NOT match
> '^as*|^AS*'" rule on creation?

1,375 maintainers (including ours) are named ASxxx-MNT (1,330) or
MNT-ASxxx (45), so it is not only acceptable but common practice.
Those same social engineering risks apply to those.

Prohibiting "^AS.*" entirely would make 1,563 total maintainers illegal.

What you are looking for here is not a regexp to tell them their
standard is wrong, but some business rule that prevents someone from
creating an maintainer with a name that is potentially confusing
(according to some narrowly defined rules that will all of a sudden
start imparting meaning to an previously effectively freetext field)
unless you have [some other authorisation] that entitles you to use
that [other object reference]. Sounds far too complicated a rule to
implement, or determine whether someone has the authority for.

I think enforcing -MNT on *new* creations going forward is not a bad
idea, as it solves the original problem of them showing up in other
searches due to identical primary keys. There is after all precedent
for enforcing a naming convention (role, person).

I don't know about the feasibility of then taking it a step further
and ensuring authority for creation of ASxxx-MNT, nor do I know where
that ends. Should I be concerned about someone creating
DC5052-RIPE-MNT?

Regards,
David