The Backstory of the Kaminsky Bug

Ant recommends a Wired piece on the background story of the Kaminsky DNS bug and its (temporary) resolution, decreasing the odds of a successful breach from 1 in 2^16 to 1 in 2^32. We've discussed this uber-hole a number of times. Wired follows the story arc from before Kaminsky's discovery of the bug to his public presentation of it in Las Vegas.

Comments

Re:Slashdotted

[snowtigger]

Any financial institution that resets a password based solely off of an e-mail deserves to be raped. Most do forgotten password link -> sends e-mail to reset the pass with a unique URL -> user clicks on unique URL and answers additional verification questions

Right, but that's not the problem here. You don't even need the "recover password" feature. If a website that looks like the bank and has the url of the bank, most users would just buy it and type in their username and password. Or you could easily set up a proxy kind of webserver to make it look like everything is working as usual.

why do people consider this hype?

[circletimessquare]

yes his attack only involves one dns server, but it is devastating and quick and effective. you can attach yourself vampirically to one dns server, sniff for bank info, redirect google, look at email, or whatever, and then quit shop before anyone raises alarm, and set up shop somewhere else, easily and quickly and invisibly

yes, you won't be able to take over ALL dns servers, but why is doing that the only thing that qualifies in your mind as truly threatening? kaminsky's attack, as described, is a hell of a scary hard core hack. its not hype, its the genuine frightening article. its the creme de la creme of hacks: simple, elegant, and as devastating as they come. any yahoo can move in, take over a dns server, victimize users downstream, and move on unnoticed and set up shop somewhere else. hardcore. devastating. frightening

is it some sort of ego thing? you have to belittle the validity of someone else's discovery? why do people consider this hype?