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US .gov WHOIS Info Restricted Over Attacker Fears
An anonymous reader writes "VeriSign Inc has stopped providing access to information about the .gov internet domain, which is restricted to US government bodies, over concerns the data could be used in planning internet attacks."
There shouldn't even be a .gov TLD.
.gov.us
It should be
...hide the contents of the websites too?
Not much point hiding the whois information of a domain if its accompanying website tells the whole world who and where they are...
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Yes - but this move just means they're getting paranoid - it's ineffective anyway. Either someone wants to reassure the general public that they'd doing something (however ineffectual) or Versign wants some press coverage on a slow news day.
Video Game cheats, hints a
It had to be a matter of public record anyway, right? I don't see what this solves. I think the old term "Security throught obscurity" applies here. That term has also been trampled on time and again because it just doesn't work. Hide information via one source, get all confident that you're safe, and then get surprised when you're actually not.
Is there anyone out there who can explain what this accomplishes really? I'm seriously asking because I might be missing something.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
While I think the intent is admirable, the net effect might be somewhat frustrating. For example, how are we supposed to get contact info if say a governement group's DNS goes south? Or maybe just a portions of it? what about entities that have been misapportioned? (Good example is the City of Albuquerque, NM.)
The quote that I found interesting is: "Also removed from the FTP site was the zone file for in-addr.arpa, which is used for reverse-DNS lookups (when somebody wants to find out what domain is associated with an IP address, rather than the other way around)." So is this a prelude for them to stop supporting rev. DNS? If it does stop, are they really aware of the potential consequences? (Stopped email, blocked access, etc.) What about who to contact and how to contact them about possible network outages?
Things like this might seem like a good idea at the time, but can (and do) lead to other problems. I am in favor of security as much as the next guy, but half though-out moves like this don't help.
-D.
P.S. I wonder if they are going to stop publishing things like the white pages (online or even the print edition)? Hey they do have government entity addresses and phone numbers?
I'd be more glad if they were doing something that had some hope of being effective.
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Frankly, yes. It is an instance of the government taking away information that should be available to the public under the guise of "national security."
And in the current climate, this is exactly the kind of thing we should be fighting against, with Ashcroft in power.
Granted that this is a relatively minor instance, but it is one that is part of a much greater whole.
The interests of "security" cannot supercede the interests of liberty.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
If you want to participare in a public network then they shouldn't be hiding whois information. Nobody is saying they can't run their own top secret nework (as I'm sure they already do to some degree) but participation in this giant public network involves some amount of conformance to standards.
Any information that is so critical to national security shouldn't be on the internet in the first place.
- Toby