Dan Halloran is, in term of longevity, the oldest employee of ICANN.org
Dan Halloran is mr. Does it all at ICANN.
On june 14th 2016, Chris Lahatte, ex-ombudsman at ICANN told me that Dan Halloran had some discussion with him about the subdomains. 10 days later, Chris Lahatte was fired for telling me.
The test were done by David Piscitello, vice-president security at ICANN.
ICANN had been washing their hands about it since.