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DNS Inventor Tackles Flaw
nk497 writes "Dr Paul Mockapetris is looking to fix the flaws in the Domain Name System he helped invent. 'It was never meant to be the only security mechanism for naming data on the internet, but was intended for additional security measures to be added to it later.' The flaws, first uncovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky over the summer, lets attackers redirect genuine URLs to malicious ones — a problem Mockapetris believes could be solved using digital signatures."
Ok, so this approach where you release something half-way done and fix it later is much older than I thought.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
... but it seems that a DNS attack redirected it to a fluff piece without any useful content.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
You always have the option to boycott that ISP, but if you live somewhere like I do, you only have one broadband option.
I see you're using the sense of "always" that means "occasionally" or even "very rarely."
Mockapetris wrote a nice book on the ideas behind the domain naming system, which is sadly long out of print. One statement that he made has always stuck in my mind, "names are not routes are not addresses". Keeping those things distinct and well-defined avoids many problems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Look at the history of DNSsec; the specs have been done and redone several times over, there is no consensus, and it looks like it would be a bitch to admin.
Not really, you do not need the internet to survive, its a luxury.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Not really. Back when DNS was invented (1982) pretty much everything connected to the Internet was essentially a trusted machine. Arguably that was almost true until the Morris worm in 1988. Of course you could never truly trust them, but the idea was that if someone did something silly other people would phone them and then they would stop. Essentially it was an anarchy populated by non malicious people.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
True enough, but the Almighty Invisible Hand of the Free Market isn't taking care of this, either.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
ICANN is going to start selling new gTLDs that will turn the current DNS system into arbitrary mish-mash anyways. Just wait until we start seeing links to .cheapdrugs domains, and we try to find the DNS info for that.
Then we'll find ourselves longing for the current DNS problem.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So if your internet at home went down, would you wither up and die?? Or just a little inside?
No, but considering the fact that I live over 1,500 miles from the office where I work, it is not merely a luxury that I telecommute. If I can't have broadband Internet, I'll need to quit my job and find another, convince my wife to quit her job and sell our house during the housing market slump so we can move (either somewhere I *can* have broadband Internet, or somewhere within driving distance of my company's office), or leave my wife behind so I can move. I can't simply boycott the only broadband ISP in my area on a whim, as you suggest -- it is a much, much bigger issue for me.
You're creating the false dichotomy that everything which is not necessary to survive is a luxury. I agree that I do not strictly need broadband Internet to survive, but disagree that the Internet is a luxury, for me at least. Perhaps you would have no problem boycotting utility companies if you felt they were doing something irresponsible, since after all electricity, water, natural gas, etc are not necessary for survival (and in fact many people in the world do not have these things), but most people in the US would argue that they are more than luxuries. Maybe you are lucky enough to have well or cistern water, and live in a climate where winter heating isn't necessary for survival, or perhaps you have a wood-burning stove/fireplace that could heat your house if you don't have electricity or natural gas -- but that doesn't mean that they are luxuries for everyone, irrespective of the circumstances of that person's life.
Those are more extreme examples, but the fact is that my life is currently based around having broadband at home, and although I could do without it (just as I could do without electricity, natural gas, and city water), I would need to make very large changes to my life to do so.