Comments

An Attack on DNS is an Attack on the Internet

• Comment posted Aug 22, 2010 3:16 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  "If you are the victim...." Peter I think you miss the point, one of their customers was a target, many of them suffered. This approach avoids having a shared fate with all the other customers. The providers could do something…

• Comment posted Aug 21, 2010 2:14 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  Presumably those using DNS Made Easy as a provider of secondary DNS servers would still have had a functional (if slower) DNS during the attack, unless their domain was specifically targeted. That raises the issue of motivation, which hasn't been…

ICANN's gTLD Proposal Hits a Wall: Now What?

• Comment posted Dec 24, 2008 10:13 am PST — by Simon Waters
  About the issue of making changes.... "It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of…

ICANN Responsible for Domain Name Trademark Mess

• Comment posted Dec 01, 2008 8:57 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  For what it is worth, I don't implement content based filtering on email. The filters I manage don't assume anything about the content of an email because they know nothing of the nature of our users businesses, and we don't…

Ties That Bind

• Comment posted Nov 23, 2008 10:39 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  The much maligned NHS Direct shows geographical data of symptoms reported on their website (for the UK). During the last flu outbreak, you could see the virus spread from city to city, as people reported flu like symptoms to NHS…

ICANN Responsible for Domain Name Trademark Mess

• Comment posted Nov 22, 2008 10:11 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  Even if a model were created, it would seem inappropriate to restrict people's behaviour because a computer model said it might cause a civil case which you might lose. That is a judgment call for the person making the investment…

More on 'Researchers Hijack Storm Worm to Track Profits'

• Comment posted Nov 11, 2008 10:25 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  If the response rate is 1 in 12.5 million and you educate half the remaining people clicking on spam the response rate will be 1 in 25 million. So whilst I agree education isn't the answer, it is part of…

On Why and How the Internet Needs to Be Governed

• Comment posted Nov 09, 2008 11:25 am PST — by Simon Waters
  The bulk of investment in Internet infrastructure in the US and Europe has come from the commercial sector. As such it is clear that most of the developed world doesn't need ¨Internet governance" to make the investments needed. At best…

Universities Spending $80K to Over $100K Per Year on Policing P2P Activities

• Comment posted Oct 20, 2008 9:08 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  This "required to consider" is a euphemism for "don't do anything". It isn't the Universities job to enforce other organisations copyright. So they "consider it", and conclude "income in zero" "costs paid out greater than zero" recommendation "do not do…

Recent Bank Merger Names Already Cybersquatted

• Comment posted Sep 20, 2008 12:01 am PDT — by Simon Waters
  ... how do they distinguish those bought for phishing from those bought for squatting? In the UK we have reserved second level domains for Limited Companies and PLCs which are a real pain as no one ever tells Nominet (or…

U.S. Not Vulnerable to Type of Cyberattacks Launched at Georgia

• Comment posted Aug 21, 2008 9:08 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  It'll never happen to me ;) I wonder what country the folks who wrote the Storm worm are from? What was it at its peak 7% of all PCs with malware? Now how much bandwidth do you need to take…

IPv6 Considered a Problem by Some Users

• Comment posted Aug 08, 2008 8:48 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  If and when there will be IPv6-only web sites, they will not be able to access them. I looked to sign-up with my ISP IPv6 trials, and discovered my router doesn't support IPv6. Okay I could flash it with OpenWRT,…

Is Anti-Virus Dead?

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2008 9:06 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  I think there is a fundamental issue here, you can't redraw the perimeter if the OS is compromised. You can't make a secure channel on an untrusted system. You can try, you can have Java code that is signed, and…

Just a Matter of Time Before DNS Attack Code Might Surface

• Comment posted Jul 23, 2008 8:10 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  After hearing about the Kaminsky announcement (but not the details) I sat down and worked out how long I'd expect it to take for a DNS spoofing attack to control a domain on a typical ISPs recursive DNS server and…

Is It Time to Create a Market for IPv4 Addresses?

• Comment posted Jul 17, 2008 7:30 am PDT — by Simon Waters
  Yeah, well I guess whilst IANA have 10%+ of the existing space unallocated it isn't exactly urgent despite what some folks claim. And a fair few of those early /8 allocations are clearly ridiculous. If a market is to work…

• Comment posted Jul 14, 2008 7:22 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  ... Loading ... One approach I haven't seen discussed is reclaiming IP space from groups involved in illegal activity. There is vast amounts of IPv4 address space used by a relatively small number of spammers and crooks which could be…

Censorship: A Threat to the Stability and Security of the DNS?

• Comment posted Jun 01, 2008 10:23 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  As others said the article describes a BGP problem (not a DNS problem). Hijacking IP space is a problem - the issue is people believed Pakistan telecomms announcement of routes for space it isn't responsible for. I do DNS, not…

Google Surpasses Supercomputer Community, Unnoticed?

• Comment posted May 22, 2008 8:22 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  I think it is just the Press looking for big numbers and focusing only on processing speed. The big supercomputers are often built for specific tasks, such as climate modeling, and similar numerical modeling tasks. For these tasks you often…

Microsoft's Contribution Was TCP/IP

• Comment posted Apr 26, 2008 4:29 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  I seem to remember Mosaic was fine. But my point is Microsoft didn't force consistency. The organizations I saw had consistency of networking protocol, and Microsoft was forced to play along with the other kids or be sidelined. The Internet…

• Comment posted Apr 26, 2008 1:53 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  Urm - reality check time. Microsoft's failure to bundle IP was a major delaying factor in deploying global IP easily. Back in 1990 I graduated from a Univerity on the UK JANET which was an IP based network and joined…

Trust in Email Begins with Authentication

• Comment posted Apr 03, 2008 12:58 am PDT — by Simon Waters
  Authentication without trust is a waste of time. This was demonstrated by spam forming the majority of email passing SPF checks early in SPF life. In the case of SPF some limited trust is/was indirectly provided by the DNS, to…

Thus Ends the Stupid Network Model?

• Comment posted Nov 12, 2007 6:30 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  I think some of these papers are so vague as to be almost useless. I doubt consumer devices will ever be able to do more than say "this traffic is lower than average priority", since otherwise it is open to…

Getting Rid of Whois

• Comment posted Oct 31, 2007 9:50 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  I've never really understood the complaint. My employers (webhosting) have long registered domains names in their name for clients who want their domain name registered that way. As long as the details get a "responsible person", I don't think anyone…

In Praise of OpenDNS and a Wii Factoid

• Comment posted Oct 25, 2007 9:10 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  If you are not already using OpenDNS on your home network I have one question for you. Why not? Simple - to avoid breakage. Anyone who works on the Internet (i.e. Most CircleID readers) need to see what the correct…

Where are DNS Root Servers? See them on Google Maps

• Comment posted Sep 17, 2007 10:42 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  Far too many if you ask me. You only need to compromise one to snaffle a decent share of global traffic to ones own nefarious purposes.

How Spammers Get Around SPF

• Comment posted Aug 22, 2007 12:33 am PDT — by Simon Waters
  Mostly this demonstrates spammers are stupid, as most domains don't use SPF, they could just send as any of those and save the cash. You can't use the SPF records published by spammers to build a blacklist, as you can't…

CAN-SPAM Defendant Awarded $111k in Fees/Costs: Gordon v. Virtumundo

• Comment posted Aug 08, 2007 12:11 am PDT — by Simon Waters
  I think you are so far out of line with opinion on the net, that you'll be surprised. All he need do is offer to represent ISPs, their are plenty without the experience, or desire to pursue these battles independently,…

Domain Ads Generating Twice the Conversion Rate of Search Ads

• Comment posted Jun 07, 2007 8:22 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  I think the SEO rockstars covered a related point once. They had a site with database driven content, and when the database was down but the Google ads still worked, the ads got a much higher click through rate. If…

Hotmail Running Its Own SMTP Variation

• Comment posted May 18, 2007 11:23 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  Hotmail's tactics might best be described as "Embrace and delete". SPF is broken by design, the signing of emails (either by server, or by sender) allows the authenticity to be established, independent of the route an email took to get…

CircleID Relaunched: New Topics, New Tools, Mobile Access and More

• Comment posted May 04, 2007 8:02 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  Some of the inbound links broke. Mainly pages about users. Any plans to stick redirects on these? Google will love you more if you do.

Social Networking and Web 2.0 Creating DNS Performance Issues for Carriers

• Comment posted Mar 08, 2007 7:54 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  The root servers only measure a very specific type of traffic (mostly lost traffic). The volume of genuine queries is largely unrelated to traffic to the root servers. Most surveys of root server traffic show a small number of abusive…

• Comment posted Mar 07, 2007 7:03 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  Someone produce some proper figures quick please. My guess is DNS traffic growth is down to; Deployment of broadband. Peer to peer (if/where they use DNS). Spam Antispam measures Email is a great way of generating DNS requests, for every…

IE Namespace: We Need Personal Domains!

• Comment posted Jan 26, 2007 6:48 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  Can you quote the current prices of .IE domain registration, as I'm sure some readers won't know. Last we looked it was unusually expensive.

The Fragile Network

• Comment posted Jan 20, 2007 1:46 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  "I’d be interested to see some hard data on this issue." I'm sure the folks at NANOG would oblige. I'm not sure what Halcyon days are being referred to, probably the one where everyone in Australia paid per bit, one…

• Comment posted Jan 19, 2007 11:28 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  I doubt governments would produce a more robust network, or even a network as robust. I know the UK government failed pitifully to build such a network for its own military several times, that covered areas under one military, and…

AFNIC and DNS Server Redelegation

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2006 8:58 pm PST — by Simon Waters
  Historically all DNS operations were allowed, and expected over TCP, and there were TCP only resolvers. The RFC as you see is explicit that TCP queries should be allowed and answered. Now please comply with the RFC and stop projecting…

Why is .EU Trying to Destroy the Internet?

• Comment posted Nov 22, 2006 12:20 am PST — by Simon Waters
  25c hey? Well perhaps if we didn't have to cope with the monstrosity of a transfer system that ICANN and Verisign have landed us with. After many years they have effectively reinvented a sender push style domain transfer without the…

More than 99% of Email is Spam?

• Comment posted Nov 07, 2006 10:28 am PST — by Simon Waters
  Whilst I accept aggregation may make the figures more meaningful for a given supplier, in that they might be able to compare it to future, or past figures, it is too dependent on the nature of their client base, and…

What is Anti-Spam?

• Comment posted Oct 19, 2006 2:11 am PDT — by Simon Waters
  Clear definitions are for people who want lines where none really exist. One could envisage a weak approximation to a perfect spam system that still produced the desired outcome for all the emails a particular person received. i.e. that a…

ICANN Ordered by Illinois Court to Suspend Spamhaus.org

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2006 6:10 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  I'm curious - why ICANN? Surely the response from ICANN's lawyers will be if this is a matter pertaining to the operation of the ".ORG" domain, please demonstrate you have exhausted avenues via the ".org" registry. Which would throw the…

Internet Governance: An Antispam Perspective

• Comment posted Feb 21, 2006 8:53 am PST — by Simon Waters
  The problem is not identifying genuine email from Paypal, SPF will help you do that. The problem is stopping the other phishes, and where they use a domain they control, that record may also be approved by the corresponding SPF…

Phishing: An Interesting Twist on a Common Scam

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2006 1:22 am PST — by Simon Waters
  David, it is certainly the case that some ISPs are better than others in network security areas, it would be surprising if it was otherwise. I did a DNS review for a large merchant bank, and as part of that…

Europe is to the US Controlled GPS as Europe is to the US Controlled DNS Root?

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2006 12:50 am PST — by Simon Waters
  Please stop the bad analogies everyone. The GPS is controlled by one military body, the root name servers are controlled by a loose group of organisations (some of them European, indeed the ICANN root had more European based and controlled…

Internet Governance: An Antispam Perspective

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2006 12:27 am PST — by Simon Waters
  I've used a default deny email scheme, using the TMDA challenge response mechanism. It is an effective way to stop email spam, but almost whatever hurdle you place in peoples way will be too much for some legitimate correspondents. In…

Why I Am Participating in the ORSN Project

• Comment posted Oct 04, 2005 6:55 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  How is it anything more than a political weapon with which to beat ICANN, with the threat of a fork? The ORSN has less root servers in Europe than IANA, they only have a few more European server than the…

So You Think You're Safe from DNS Cache Poisoning?

• Comment posted Sep 04, 2005 9:20 am PDT — by Simon Waters
  Matthew, when I did get involved in monitoring and sorting DNS issues, I found you can't rely on the returned version number to reveal specific weaknesses with the implementation. Some of the big Unix vendors, commercial DNS implementations based on…

About Those Root Servers

• Comment posted Aug 10, 2005 5:27 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  Brett, I'm surprised you hadn't pondered using secondaries at big ISPs for the root zone, I've been espousing it's virtues off and on for a while. I think it is a more satisfactory system than creating many single point of…

An Infrastructure TLD: Avoiding the Side Effects of Today's .Net

• Comment posted Jun 27, 2005 1:20 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  If there is a problem - and I'm not totally convinced either way without testing some common DNS software and rereading some standards - surely the answer is to put the root servers in the root domain, and thus avoid…

There Is No "Spam Problem"

• Comment posted Jun 24, 2005 5:41 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  It is my impression AOL did start blocking just SYN packets. It is probably more complex, as certainly in the UK AOL try to proxy some outgoing email connections. So I assume they probably redirected the SYN or other strange…

• Comment posted Jun 23, 2005 7:20 pm PDT — by Simon Waters
  Hi David, the AOL outgoing spam I refer to is in a thread on Spam-L archive if you need details. It was in response to the claims by Carl that AOL had stopped their spam problem. At the time I…