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New(?) Anti-Fraud DNS service
knownsense writes "A new DNS system to foil spammers, abusers, and other ills of the Internet is around the corner, reports Wired. It claims to be more user-friendly than your ISP's DNS. Among its claimed advantages . . . Faster myspace(!?), coordination with spamhaus, and typo-squatter squashing. The actual service is called OpenDNS."
Anti-fraud or not, someone's getting lied to there.
"Currently, web surfers simple(sic) get an error message when they attempt to navigate to an unused domain. OpenDNS users will instead be routed to a company server that will present a list of search engine results and paid advertisements."
No thanks.
Argh.
Since when were DNS lookup failures responded to with HTTP error codes?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
But it has to be better, it has "Open" in its name.
The main advantage appears to be that they will prevent you from opening known phising sites. In terms of being faster, I'm not sure how they would be faster than my ISP since my ISP's DNS servers are presumably much closer to my machine than theirs. Any idea how they could make claims like that? Also, though the summary mentions foiling spammers, I saw nothing about that in the article. From the sound of the post, I thought this was something like SPF even though that doesnt seem to be the case at all.
Your ISP probably does the same thing already. These guys claim to have a much bigger cache, so they're more likely to have cache hits than misses.
They also offer ads & search results for non-existent domains, and they claim they will filter out phishing sites.
Not really a big deal though even on a cache miss, a DNS query doesn't take that long.
A broken, non standards compliant DNS isnt a better DNS, it's a crippled DNS. The phishing and scamming is more of a social problem than a technical problem. The last thing i want is for some DNS host to filter my queries. The open part of open_dns is a farce. This is a commercial venture trying to make a profit by skirting around well defined standards. OpenDNS will be plagued with problems like people who run the dns getting nice kick backs from scammers to keep domains from being filtered, etc. There will be false blocks by accident etc. OpenDNS would have the ability to push companies and personal sites around. Who knows what the OpenDNS people are catering to. What if they catered to the Christian right, and started blocking non wholesome content, etc. This is a bad idea people. -koft
These are such lofty claims that I doubt they will be able to live up to them. I like the idea that competitive services will appear, but if that happens I believe that OpenDNS will be a big loser.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Ahh, yes - Yet Another Root Domain Name System, like AlterNic.
One that also does redirection in the case of an invalid domain name, thus breaking code (like mail servers) that rely upon being able to detect bogus domains.
One that requires users to change their DNS settings, with all the attendant breakage and difficulties for troubleshooting.
One that will ALSO load down the upstream DNS servers, since the users won't be using their ISP's name servers.
And I am sure their policy of blocking spammy sites' resolution will sit very well with the Slashdot Zeitgeist.
Yes, I am sure this will be a spectacular success, just like AlterNIC is.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If people want to filter out bad sites and auto-correct bad URL's then that sounds like a job for a client-side application, not for DNS servers. DNS does one thing and it does it well: it acts like a phonebook for IP addresses. There is no bias in its resolutions. Keep it simple and let it do its job without red tape.
Service is pretty cool for people who can't run Bind (or something similiar). However for those that can, I am guessing its probably just as effective as running a caching only DNS server and maybe Squid to emulate their phishing blocking (assuming you have access to known phishing sites). As a matter of fact, the local version should be even faster (although the cache will obviously be smaller so there is a tradeoff). Off the top of my head, I am not sure how you could do the spell checking. Does Bind have a similiar option?
Its one thing to supply facts, but this service is editorializing DNS. I think they are leaving themselves open to attack based on their choices.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
So using DNS servers that are 23 hops and 170ms away from me is meant to be faster than using ones 4 hops and 5ms away? Think they need some sort of distributed system with servers in every country, and some good peering.
This is nothing more than another attempt to make some money off of the basic infrastructure of the Internet. DNS is free right now. And to some people, that means that there is a chance to "monetize" that service.
But how to turn a profit from something that's being given away for free right now?
You'd have to offer some additional incentives. Like "phishing blocking" or claiming that a popular website would "load faster".
As far as I know, the DNS resolution has never been the problem for MySpace loading slowly. It's slow because so many other people are hitting their servers and bandwidth. And since Win2K, Microsoft has included a caching DNS app so once you do hit MySpace, you've cached the address on your workstation. You can't get much faster than that.
This POS is neither new nor newsworthy nor useful, at least not for the reasons they try to sell it to you for.
An alternative-root DNS system will never work (since Critical Mass is impossible to attain).
Myspace will not get faster. Whoever made you believe that is selling snake oil, too.
In fact, your DNS will actually slow down by a good bit; at least if you belong to the majority of the world (unlike root DNS servers, which actually deliver geographical and network dispersion). The big cache they are so proud of will create lots of problems if they actually do it differently from regular DNS resolver caches that you have at every major (and minor) ISP -- and those will be a lot closer to you than OpenDNS ever will.
Fixing typos is a double-edged blade. Sure it's nice if slashdo.torg works. How about whitehouse.gom, though ? And who decides that microsaft.com is really typo-squatter ? (They might just make nice juices !)
Their business model is funny, too. They sell advertisement for search pages in case they can't figure out where you want to go. This is hilarious, really. The selling point is that it can send you to the right page when you make a typo, but not figuring out what a typo was supposed to mean makes them more money. Hrrm. The better they become at their game, the less money they get ! Brilliant !
(Not to mention that this is precisely what got Verizon into hot water with their SiteFinder crap).
How on earth will OpenDNS stem the tides of spam ? Even IF it had a chance doing that purely with DNS, if it was relevant at all Spammers would find a way to make it inconsequential.
Last, but not least, their company is small. There is no oversight. I don't know whether I want to trust a group of 20 people to decide who is an abuser and who is not. I'd rather have hundreds of parties involved in the process, providing a stable balance to one another. (Fun scenario : OpenDNS gets bought out by DirectRevenue.com, starts redirecting EVERY DNS request to their own servers, encasing every website with a nice adbar. Oops. (points for doing it after attaining critical mass).
I did a quick test:
.org -
.net -
- DNS query -
- dutch hosted
opendns
Query time: 1228 msec - they have to query upstream
Query time: 261 msec
Query time: 192 msec
Query time: 192 msec
Query time: 193 msec
my isp
Query time: 74 msec - they have to query upstream
Query time: 29 msec
Query time: 30 msec
Query time: 29 msec
Query time: 29 msec
- us hosted
opendns
Query time: 380 msec - they have to query upstream
Query time: 192 msec
Query time: 193 msec
Query time: 193 msec
Query time: 193 msec
my isp
Query time: 184 msec - they have to query upstream
Query time: 29 msec
Query time: 30 msec
Query time: 29 msec
Query time: 29 msec
- Ping test -
Ping to open dns: 192ms
Ping to my isp: 29ms
- Conclusion -
The dns repsonse is the same as the ping so they will never get faster then my isp.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
I can understand why slashdot geeks wouldn't want their DNS servers messed with, I'm among you, however most of the internet users out there aren't nearly as computer literate as we are, and this service I believe would be really good for them. Netcraft has been trying to fight the good fight against phishing and scamming sites for a long time, and here's a group of guys who are really blocking them at the source.
I applaud their efforts, while it may not be for me, I think a lot of people are going to find it very useful.
OpenDNS has been around for YEARS. The original reason it was made had nothing to do with any of this, it was so that members could vote to add new root domains that would have never been added to the "official" DNS servers. It was an end run around ICANN, basically. There are very few restrictions on OpenDNS on what can be added, and it's all voted on by the members. I actually tried using OpenDNS for awhile, but I had problems with it. There just weren't enough servers, and those that were there went down frequently. They acted as a relay to the "real" DNS as well, so you could resolve .com, .net, .org, etc. But after the 5th DNS outage in a month, I finally set BIND on my server to hit the root servers again instead of OpenDNS. The service just wasn't reliable enough. These goals that are being mentioned in this article have absolutely nothing to do with what OpenDNS was supposed to be about. Either TFA is BS written by a media drone who has no clue what's going on, or OpenDNS has radically changed its goals since I last used it a year ago. I hope for their sake that it's the former.
RFC 2782. I quote:
It doesn't require any DNS infrastructure changes, but clients need to support it. For example, Firefox and Mozilla don't support it.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
It's only an issue for a very small number of people. How big was the revolt when port 25 blocking began?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
*All* recursive DNS servers/resolvers do caching. They also obey something called 'TTL' for records when doing so, and dynamic-IP services such as those you refer to set a suitably short TTL so as to cause caching to expire appropriately.
That they cache data isn't really that noteworthy, its more them calling attention to it in their marketing more than anything else. Perhaps they have configured their servers to support a very large cache, so that it doesnt have to delete anything until the TTL does call for it to expire.
Really the more useful part of this (for the average used) would be the blocking of known phish sites and/or typo correction, than the caching. And to be honest, I don't see that greate a value in it. For myself, I run my own DNS servers (both authoritative for my personal domains, and recursive for my workstation[s])
FTFA: "Those who click on a link in a phishing e-mail that attempts to take them to a fake site and con them into entering their credit card number won't even make it to the website, if OpenDNS knows about it."
... so when can the user trust that OpenDNS has successfully caught the phishing attempt, and when should they check that it has failed? The answer is simple; they should perform the same checks WITH OpenDNS as without, except now there will be a whole raft of users who don't know that and the phishing will get worse.
...
A false sense of security is worse than no security at all. "if OpenDNS knows about it" indeed
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions
OpenNIC is a totally different organization. They are an alternate root. We're (OpenDNS.com) not anything close.
We're about giving you control over your recursive DNS, something you should want. If you don't want us catching typos for you, that's fine. Just check out our FAQ and learn a bit more.
-david
# Hack the planet, it's important.
I'm sorry. When I think of system I think of daemons. Improvements to the DNS system would be appreciated. Someone to provide me with commercialized redirections and pay per use DNS service doesn't equate to improvement.
Sites providing free email without protecting their URIz with spf protection is what needs to be fixed. This would help to kill spammers pretending to be google, yahoo, aol, et al.
For a real improvement in DNS use spf http://www.openspf.org/ and urge others to use it too.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Your company advocates a
(*) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid company for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!