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China's Great Firewall Infects Other Countries
angry tapir writes "A networking error has caused computers in Chile and the US to come under the control of the Great Firewall of China, redirecting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube users to Chinese servers. Security experts are not sure exactly how this happened, but it appears that at least one ISP recently began fetching high-level DNS information, from what's known as a root DNS server, based in China. That server, operated out of China by Swedish service provider Netnod, returned DNS information intended for Chinese users, effectively spreading China's network censorship overseas."
The headlines now tell you absolutely nothing about the actual stories.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Misconfiguration of resolv.conf does not put China's firewall in your way. Add yourself to the tool belt.
Which, proves the point that perhaps China should not be allowed to have any DNS root servers.
I would say that if a DNS server does not return the same information as all other root servers in the world that it should not be allowed to be a root server.
Also, the internet routes around censorship? Ooops....
Seems we were wrong. Apparently, the Internet detects censorship and routes it around.
Not really surprising, because the root DNS servers are not yet all signed with DNSSEC and Verisign is dragging its heels when it comes to implementing DNSSEC in the .com domain. Apparently there isn't much real-world use for DNSSEC. Nice to have a concrete counter-example - thanks China.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
China can have all the root servers they want - just don't configure your server to poll them.
Actually China is demonstrably incapble of having any working root servers at all. A DNS server that returns incorrect information is not a "root" server, if by "root" you mean "authoritative source of DNS information that resolves domain names properly."
It's really too bad that China is incapable of hosting DNS root servers. Hopefully by the end of the 21st century China will be a little less backward and isolated from the rest of the world, which would benefit greatly from interaction with so many people from such diverse cultural and political backgrounds.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.