Domain foo.bar points 127.0.53.53 — why?

Question

I just noticed today that domain foo.bar resolves to 127.0.53.53 (http://foo.bar, http://whois.domaintools.com/foo.bar)

In my case this ends up on the localhost Apache,

Answer 1

127.0.53.53 is a special IP addresses that is used by ICANN to prevent DNS name collisions with the new gTLDs.

In your case the .bar gTLD was delegated in February. So the 127.0.53.53 is a big hint for people using .bar in their internal setups that the .bar domain name will be used in the global DNS very soon.

If you look closer at the foo.bar record you see more information:

$ dig foo.bar A +short
127.0.53.53
$ dig foo.bar TXT +short
"Your DNS configuration needs immediate attention see https://icann.org/namecollision"
$ dig foo.bar MX +short
10 your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.bar.
$ dig foo.bar SRV +short
10 10 0 your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.bar.