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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."

30 of 582 comments (clear)

  1. Good for BIND by Empiric · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good... Verisign's actions here are a particularly heinous form of "embrace-and-extend". Here, they're "embracing" an entire technology freely provided to them, and "extending" it in a blatantly proprietary manner, with no significant work at all on their part. Taking the whole DNS stack and turning it into a profit center by redirecting it at your whim across the entire internet, is outrageous.

    --
    ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
    1. Re:Good for BIND by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      At least they could have directed us to some decent pr0n instead.

    2. Re:Good for BIND by aborchers · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And the BIND solution is an excellent response in the spirit of the network's self-healing nature. I'd rather see it solved this way than through a bunch of law suits that benefit none but the attorneys.

      I can't help but think of the contraversy over deep linking and how all those stupid suits could have been avoided if server operators would have just detected the referer header and bounced deep links back to the home page...

      --
      Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
    3. Re:Good for BIND by Joe+U · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Then start running the new BIND and also contact your local Attorney General. I did.

      Explain how they are in violation of the Anti-Cybersquatting laws, and have broken their contract with the Department of Commerce regarding the whois database. Mention how it's abuse of a monopoly power.

      Make the states get involved, not the private attorneys.

    4. Re:Good for BIND by aborchers · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As UU7 just pointed out, the idea is to redirect requests with foreign headers to the front door. The vast majority of modern clients will send the header, and if it is blank, you can either elect to let them have the page, or force them to the front door and set a cookie.

      If someone is so gung ho about privacy that they disable the referer header and refuse cookies, then they must accept that sites with policies that require them to come through the front door and accept a token will be unavailable to them. Publishers are under no obligation to provide their material without at least a nominal quid pro quo from the user.

      --
      Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
  2. Re:Sqatting by richie2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Oh well, it was bound to happen at some point...

    The .nu domain registry has been doing this for years.

    --
    Money for nothing, pix for free
  3. 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 @
  4. Internet standards humor alert by mwise · · Score: 5, Funny

    "VeriSign did not respond requests for comment."

    Isn't that what caused the problem in the first place?

    Thanks, I'll be here all week!

    1. Re:Internet standards humor alert by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny

      "VeriSign did not respond requests for comment." Strange that requests for comment didn't end up at 64.94.110.11.

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  5. 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
  6. Is a Technology solution ALWAYS better than law? by henley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK, I'm in favour of working-around the problem in classic

    The internet interprets {badthing} as damage and routes around it
    ..fashion, and I'll be installing a patched bind whenever I can.

    But I'm really concerned that this effectively lets VeriSign get away with it. They've bust everyone's trust folks, doesn't anyone care? This sort of activity in a social context (umm... let's see if we can construct a tortured metaphor: ...uhhh..: Your friend asks for your cousins's phone number and you instead give them the phone number of your shop. Reasonable?) would result in the perpetrator being ostracised fairly quickly, if not actually slapped about by a clue-by-four. It's flat out antisocial behaviour, never mind any legalities.

    Here, since these buggers appear to hold us all over a barrel with the root domains, we can't just ignore them, and invoking legal recourses is at best slow and expensive. But what about appeal to the authorities that granted them those rights?

    Um, the more I rant about this the closer I get to thinking a better solution is switching to an alternate root... Best head off to google again then, I know there's a way around this...

    --

    --
    I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
  7. 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

  8. 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 @
  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. MX Problems by tinla · · Score: 5, Insightful


    So you have 2 mail servers with mx priorities as follows:

    mail.someplace.com 10
    mail.otherplace.com 20

    if your someplace.com domain expires (hey, it happens) all your mail bounces thanks to verisigns ace "Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3". The backup mx record, which is there to cover failures like domains expiring, is never tried. In the 'real' world.. where lookups on dead domains fail... the backup server would be used.

    Thats a bigger problem than all this spam checking people are getting worked up about. If they both had priority 10 (a simple load balancing arrangement) then half your mail would bounce and half would be ok.

    Some improvement! Patches to BIND aren't the answer. Verisign need to be made to stop breaking the internet.

    --
    0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
  14. ISPs Will Soon Send You To Their Own Site by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ISPs running DNS will certainly disallow this redirection to VeriSuck.

    But soon thereafter, if not immediately, they'll start directing their customers to their own search site, or whatever search site they're paid to send them to. Or maybe some ISPs already do this?!

    We need an RFC stating that this is not permissable.

    Heh, maybe as a byproduct we'll see public DNS servers pop up. "Use us for free, but occasionally we will send you where /we/ want you to go."

  15. Re:Soundex into BIND! by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! DNS is a directory service for god's sake, not a god damn search engine. If you want a search engine then go to Google like everyone else does. If people are too stupid to assume typing in "www.whitehouse.com" will take them to the White House's homepage then they deserve to get tits in the face. Type in White House in Google, hit feeling lucky and you'll get the right page right off. DNS maps domain names to IP addresses and vice versa, nothing more. Don't pervert it into some god damn spell checking search engine.

  16. Re:Yeah, only SPAM, sure. by dm(Hannu) · · Score: 5, Funny
    Transposing letters is not (and never has been) the 'Slashdot effect'.

    Exactly. The correct term for this is Sldahost efcfet

  17. It's a trick... by mseeger · · Score: 5, Funny
    Hi,

    this is just a trick. They just want to get rid of all those obsolete BIND-versions out in the internet.

    So they did this to goat all admins into patching their bind.

    Tricky they are...

    Regards, Martin

  18. Sign the online petition to get ICANN into action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ICANN might be able to force VeriSign to get this off the net
    http://www.petitiononline.com/icanndns/

  19. 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.

  20. use their T&C against them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    as suggested by Abby Patel at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32872.html

    However, it seems that the T&C's might help us to stop this abuse. If you do not agree to the T&C's the only option they have is to not redirect your netblock to their site. So, give them a call on 0800-032-2101, select 2 to speak to their support department and once you get a human, tell them that you don't agree to their T&C's and can they remove your netblocks!

    So lets /. them and see how many netblocks they end up excluding.

  21. 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.
  22. Re:Is a Technology solution ALWAYS better than law by Neil+Watson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I think the anology you are looking for is:

    You dial a wrong number on your phone and a local telephone carrier answers and begins to try and sell you long distance and local services.

  23. Re:Yeah, only SPAM, sure. by platypus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Interesting that it rejects the first recipient, but accepts the second, then bomb on the DATA stage.

    You are thinking too complex for verisign standards ;)

    $ telnet spam.aasfgsdafgsdf.com 25
    Trying 64.94.110.11...
    Connected to spam.aasfgsdafgsdf.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 snubby4-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
    gfsdfg
    250 OK
    sdfgsdgf
    250 OK
    sdfgsdgf
    550 User domain does not exist.
    sdfgsdgf
    250 OK
    sdgfdsg
    221 snubby4-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission channel

    Connection closed by foreign host.

  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.