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Paul Vixie: 100,000 DSL Modems May Lose Their DNS On July 9

Posted by timothy on from the blame-the-feds dept.

Dante_J writes "Up to 100,000 DSL modems may lose access to DNS come July the 9th, due to scripted web interface changes made to them by DNSChanger. This and other disturbing details were raised by respected Internet elder Paul Vixie during a presentation at the AusCERT 2012 conference."

5 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Why not warn them? by l_bratch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why don't they just start redirecting web users to a warning page explaining the situation to them at some point before the cut off date?

    1. Re:Why not warn them? by n5vb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because they would probably do what they do any other time something complicated appears on the screen: click OK and get back to searching for pr0n.

      They couldn't if their DNS doesn't return anything but the warning page.

      You would be amazed how many times some people would click the OK button before giving up and either telling everyone the Internet isn't working, or calling and screaming at their OS platform support until redirected to their ISP, and then calling their browser support instead and screaming at them. It's incredible the lengths to which some people will go to avoid reading what's on their effing screen..

  2. Re:8.8.8.8 by foradoxium · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would worry more about your ISP being forced to cache (for 2 years) all the same information for the government or their employers to use then google using your habits to form better directed ads..

    http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=2288

    all it takes is this legislation to gain footing in a few states, then the rest start caving.

    Google watching you really should be the least of your online privacy worries..

  3. Re:8.8.8.8 by Lifyre · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These days? I would bet more than 50% by traffic probably A LOT more by traffic...

    Do you think Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, AT&T (SBC), Bright House, Verizon etc... aren't? What percentage of DNS services do they provide?

    Even if they don't use it directly many of them are selling it to someone who does.

    --
    I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
  4. This is a trivial number by Skleed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In 2009, there were 32 million DSL modems in the United States. http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm

    Even if there has been no growth in DSL usage, 100,000 modems represents 0.3% of all DSL users.

    BUT, this 100,000 number is world wide modems that have been compromised. That makes the actual percentage of modems affected so small that it hardly seems worth the time to calculate it.

    Turn the "bad" DNS off, and most tech support lines will not even notice the increase in support calls.