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BIND Strikes Back Against VeriSign's Site Finder

BrunoC writes "Following the story about VeriSign's new Site Finder, the Internet Software Consortium promises to release a patch to its (in)famous BIND that will block the controversial Site Finder. Wired News has full coverage of the ISC initiative against this name resolving atrocity."

31 of 582 comments (clear)

  1. the patch by colinleroy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Isn't it this one ?
    I'm asking because the wording is quite hard to understand as my main language isn't english ;)

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    blah
  2. Here is ISC's web page for delegation Only zones by doon · · Score: 5, Informative


    http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/delegation-only .h tml

    --
    To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
  3. Re:Yeah, only SPAM, sure. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Actually, you do not get anything at the moment. 64.94.110.11 is currently not responding, no doubt under a deluge of requests. While this isn't such a big deal for those who have mistyped a domain name in their browser, it will certainly cause a hell of a problem for mailers around the globe. Remember that Verisign have set up "dummy" mailer deamons on port 25 to ensure mis-directed mail got bounced immediatly, rather than sit in the mail queue? Well now the mailers can't contact that dummy deamon, and the mail is building up in the queues.

    I hope some large ISP's bring action against Verisign for breaking their email systems like that.

    In the meantime, if you want to help keep Verisigns SiteFinder off the internet, try this simple script in a while loop:
    #!/bin/sh
    function get_char(){ local GOOD=0;while [ $GOOD == 0 ];do RAND_C="$(dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=1 2>>/dev/null)";if [ $(echo "$RAND_C" | grep [0-9A-Za-z]) ];then GOOD=1;fi;done;};function get_string(){ local INDEX=0;while [ $INDEX != 32 ];do get_char;RAND_STR[$INDEX]=$RAND_C;let INDEX++;done;};get_string;URI=$(echo "${RAND_STR[@]}" | tr -d ' ');wget -O - $URI.com >>/dev/null 2>>/dev/null;exit 1
  4. Re:Bug your ISP by insomaniac · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, windows dns, maradns, powerdns... etc etc.

    Or they are like me and use djbdns, and won't go back.. ;)

    There is a patch for djbdns, but they're not official so I wouldn't reccomend blindly using them.

    --
    The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently
  5. Re:Bug your ISP by superpeach · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or if you get bored you could try dnsmasq and block the sitefinder yourself. As of yesterday dnsmasq has had the option to return NXDOMAIN when it recieved the 64.94.110.11 address (or any others you choose)

  6. Re:very cool.. dnscache? by Torne · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yep, the patch for dnscache by veteran Russ Nelson is here:
    tinydns.org/djbdns-1.05-ignoreip.patch

  7. Re:Bug your ISP by doon · · Score: 5, Informative
    We are a bind shop, But I know othesr that run Really depends on if you need a Recursive Caching server or just an Authoritive Server.
    --
    To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
  8. Patches by achurch · · Score: 4, Informative

    Patches for DJBDNS and lots of other daemons here.

  9. link to patch and example by jcurious · · Score: 5, Informative

    upgrade can be found here:
    http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/delegation -only.h tml

    There is no need to create a com or net data file. Just the
    entries to the named.conf file is enough
    zone "com" { type delegation-only; };
    zone "net" { type delegation-only; };

    Ofcourse, if you use views, this needs to be provided within the relevant
    view (the one performing recursive lookups).

    quote from:
    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=bind9-users &m=1063 79587928771&w=2

  10. Re:How will this work? by close_wait · · Score: 5, Informative
    I assume the patch will filter requests, which resolve to the site-finder IP, so what's to stop VeriSign simply changing IPs every so often?

    No, the patch doesn't do filtering in that sense. It just allows you to mark some zones in your BIND config file (such as .com and .net), that should only contain delegation information. So basically if your BIND server recieves back A record(s) rather than NS delegation records from a server authoritative for .com , BIND simply ignores it.

    Simple and elegant, and nothing Verislime can do about it. (I hope.)

  11. For TinyDNS / dnscache users by pgregg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Russell Nelson has a patch for tinydns which does the same thing.

    He also notes that several other TLD operators for the same thing and has another patch that allows you to do the same thing to several naughtly tld operators at once.

  12. The new versions of BIND are already available by Raphael · · Score: 5, Informative

    Although the news are not on the BIND page yet, patches for the current versions 9.2.2 and 9.1.3 are already available. Only 9.2.3rc2 is currently listed on the page (as of this writing).

    You can get the details from the bind-announce list archives:

    All versions were released a few hours ago. Here is the common paragraph at the top of these three messages:

    In response to high demand from our users, ISC is releasing a patch for BIND to support the declaration of "delegation-only" zones in caching/recursive name servers. Briefly, a zone which has been declared "delegation-only" will be effectively limited to containing NS RRs for subdomains, but no actual data outside its apex (for example, its SOA RR and apex NS RRset). This can be used to filter out "wildcard" or "synthesized" data from NAT boxes or from authoritative name servers whose undelegated (in-zone) data is of no interest.

    Have fun downloading and installing!

    --
    -Raphaël
    1. Re:The new versions of BIND are already available by boojit · · Score: 5, Informative
      And here's a helpful posting on how to use the new patch.

      DaC

  13. Re:very cool.. dnscache? by richard-parker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Does anyone know how to do this with DJBDNS?
    A list of patches for various name servers can be found here.

    Unfortunately the djbdns patch at that URL is not as elegant as the official patch from ISC for BIND. Unlike the ISC BIND patch, the djbdns patch does not support the declaration of "delegation-only" zones. Instead, it adds support for the rather crude technique of converting an A record response containing an operator specified IP address (which you would currently set to 64.94.110.11) into a NXDOMAIN response.
  14. Re:Soundex into BIND! by joshv · · Score: 3, Informative

    BIND should be enhanced in several ways:

    The most important one, IMHO, is to compute a list of close matches and present these choices to the user. They may use the Soundex algorithm or some other tricks to see if characters are transposed, if one characters is wrong, if one is missing, etc. If well implemented, this would solve 60% of the problem.


    BIND (and other Domain Name Servers) are given the simple task of turning a string into set of 4 octets (aka an IP address), using a massively distributed lookup table that maps strings to IP address.

    The reason people are pissed off about Verisign's wildcard entry is that they have depended on their DNS saying "I can't find an IP address" when it can't find an IP address.

    In general BIND is a program that talks to other programs via a very stable and well understood interface. Now, how would enhance BIND to do a soundex and return multiple possible results to programs that have been written to expect either a response in the form of a single IP address, or a "domain not found" error?

    Sounds to me like this is something that should be handled in the application, if at all.

    -josh

  15. Re:Lot of fuss about nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    We're not talking about you and your little web browser, we're talking about a major network provider breaking an important network infastructure component in a way which has already started to cause havoc across the internet. At the moment, the server they are using as a catch all is not responding to connections, which means that there "clever" solution to handle mis-directed email doesn't work. As a consequence, mis-directed mail has already started to pill up in mail queues while mail servers waste their time trying to contact the Verisign server.

    Other services are also shit out of luck; Verisign only allowed for HTTP and SMTP. Anything else trying to connect to a non-existent domain is out of luck and will sit around until the connection timesout. Of course, if the server had just returned NXDOMAIN in the first place, as it should, you wouldn't have that problem.

  16. Re:What about the other 20%? by hkmwbz · · Score: 4, Informative
    --
    Clever signature text goes here.
  17. Re:Good for BIND by Insurgent2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, they don't dare do this.
    It's a federal offence to redirect a misspelling to a porn site as it's "illegal to deceive children into viewing harmful material". This is a provision of the "Amber Alert" legislation and will land you in jail for 4 years.
    Relevant Link

  18. Re:could NOT care less you idiot by tsvk · · Score: 3, Informative
    What irritates me more is when people refer to junk email as "SPAM" instead of "spam"
    actually, isn't that part of hormel's deal? we can continue to call UBE (insert full stops as required) SPAM as long as we capitalise it and they won't complain or try to sue anyone over dilution of trademark etc. (ie as spam is actually a product they sell).

    It's the other way around. Hormel has a trademark on 'SPAM' and would prefer UBE to be called 'spam'. See the SPAM website for more info.

  19. Re:Have your say by turg · · Score: 3, Informative

    Scroll down, there are multiple polls on the same page.

    --
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  20. Re:How will this work? by Paul+Jakma · · Score: 5, Informative

    That approach is fucking dangerous.

    Why? Glue records. You are _meant_ to receive certain As from the parent servers of a domain delegated to nameservers which live within its own namespace.


    However, you're missing a crucial part: when you ask the delegating server for the NS records, the glue A records are given out in the additional section, not in the answer section.

    The ISC patch disregards /authoritative/ non-apex data from zones configured as delegate only. however, it can still make use of additional data (ie glue). Glue records are never queried directly AFAIK when a DNS server is sending queries to determine the set of authoratitive servers for a zone, so the patch does not cause any problems.

    --
    I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
  21. Re:Lot of fuss about nothing by j7953 · · Score: 4, Informative
    MSIE has been doing this for ages, and I never found it to be a problem, but rather more helpful than the old "404 Not found" messages we used to see.

    You don't get to see a "404 No Found" response if the server doesn't even exist. You'd usually get an error message (generated by IE) that says something like "www.invaliddomain.com doesn't exist." (that's what Mozilla displays, I don't know IE's message).

    The 404 response is what you get when your browser could send a HTTP request to the web server, but the server couldn't find the page you were requesting. The response page is generated by the web server, so how helpful it is depends on what the web server admins have configured. Some pages will not simply return an error message but also include a search box, for example.

    You type junk into an URL and you expect a civilized answer?

    Well, yes, I expect a somewhat helpful error message. But that's not actually the point. The main problem with Verisign's move is that they are assuming (like you seem to do) that the purpose of the Domain Name System is to find the web server that a user is trying to contact when he types an URL into his browser. But DNS isn't used for the web only, it is used to associate names with IP addresses. You can then use the returned IP address for whatever protocol you want, DNS doesn't tell you whether or not the server with the returned IP supports that protocol.

    For all protocols that run non-interactively (i.e. without a human sitting in front of the computer and interactively deciding what server should be contacted next, and interpreting the responses), Verisign's action means that if contacting a remote system fails, the computer can now no longer find out if it's due to a misconfiguration and will likely never work (if the other computer doesn't exist), or if it's just a temporary problem (if the other computer does exist but does not respond).

    --
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  22. Re:Good for BIND by Insurgent2 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Gee, so the basis for the charges against the man in the article were just made up?
    Read this amendment to H.R. 1104:
    Rep. Pence offered an amendment on Thursday, March 27, 2003; it was agreed to by voice vote. The amendment makes it a criminal act to knowingly use a misleading domain name with the intent to deceive a person into viewing obscenity on the Internet. Also makes it a criminal act to knowingly use a misleading domain name with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material on the Internet that is harmful to minors. A domain name that includes a word or words to indicate the sexual content of the site is not considered misleading.
  23. Petition Verisign to change by digitalgimpus · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.petitiononline.com/verisign/

  24. I called their number and got this... by mdamaged · · Score: 5, Informative

    I got a rep on the line and he seems oblivious of what was going on, after a bit I got a superviser and she gave me this email telling me that this is where the complaints are going to:

    sitefinder@verisign-grs.com

    --
    Someone asked me the difference between ignorance and apathy, I told them I don't know and I don't care.
  25. Re:It bears repeating by DavidTC · · Score: 4, Informative
    Posting with a +1 bonus to attempt to get people to see this.

    It's amazing how many super cool random people are running around suggesting using OpenNIC, which, of course, won't do a DAMN FUCKING THING. Anyone who suggests an alternate root has demonstrated they have no knowledge of how DNS works at the topmost level.

    Please, someone go around and find all the posts that mention this and moderate them up! I've posted at least three posts pointing this out, and other people have also.

    I'm starting to think everyone should have a few emergency -1: Wrong mod points to get rid of information that is just flatout incorrect.

    --
    If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
  26. Re:Bug your ISP by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 3, Informative

    The bruteforce method:

    include "named.delegation-only";

  27. Re:Yeah, only SPAM, sure. by ncc74656 · · Score: 4, Informative
    everybody, click after me Do not attempt to own us

    Doesn't work for me...then again, I've already fixed djbdns here to return NXDOMAIN when a lookup resolves to Verisign's squatter page. (A copy of the patch is here (the patch isn't mine, but the only place I've seen it is buried in bugs.gentoo.org) and an ebuild for your local Portage tree is here. To use the ebuild, you'll also need to copy Manifest and files/1.05-errno.patch from /usr/portage/net-dns/djbdns.)

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  28. Re:Yeah, only SPAM, sure. by devilspgd · · Score: 3, Informative
    Naa, it's dumber then that, it doesn't even look at RCPT or commands at all...

    220 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
    I am
    250 OK
    Evil
    250 OK
    Homer
    550 User domain does not exist.
    da da dada
    250 OK
    DA!
    221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission channel

    Connection to host lost.

    It doesn't care WHAT you type, you get the same garbage no matter what.
    --
    Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
  29. offtopic? i think not. by joe_bruin · · Score: 4, Informative

    i didn't write this the post above, but it is definitely not offtopic. here's a brief rundown of what it does:

    generates a random string of characters.
    performs a "wget" to look up that string as a domain name, and fetch the url returned and dump contents to /dev/null. obviously, this string (with appended .com) resolves to verisign's search page.

    this accomplishes two things. first, or course, is wasting verisign bandwidth. more interestingly, however, it causes dns servers upstream from you to cache the address of all these garbage domains. when their dns cache fills up, they start discarding older entries they have had in there. basically, this is forcing dns servers to constantly flush their caches of any useful data. this, in turn, makes every valid dns query have to cascade all the way down to the root servers. that is, "slashdot.org" is no longer cached in your isp's dns cache, so every user on you isp trying to get to slashdot is contributing to a DDOS of verisign's root servers.

    well done.

  30. Patched BIND is an elegant solution by ayafm · · Score: 4, Informative
    I just installed the patched BIND 9.2.x for NodeWorks so it could keep finding dead links for customer sites. Without this kind of technical solution, I would have had to check for redirects to the sitefinder site, and added specific logic to mark the response as invalid since it would otherwise return a valid 200 HTTP response code.

    The new feature just needed this bit added to named.conf to get it working:

    zone "com" {
    type delegation-only;
    };
    zone "net" {
    type delegation-only;
    };
    When its running, it will put message like this to /var/log/messages so you can see it working!
    Sep 17 12:58:15 proxy named[1130]: enforced delegation-only for 'com' (www.asdfsdafs.com)
    Its really amazing that the open source community can turn around a patch like this within hours of the initial problem being reported! Not only that, but the implementation is clean and technically elegant.