Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-17 Thread Steven M. Bellovin

In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], william(
at)elan.net writes:


On Sun, 16 Jan 2005, Joe Maimon wrote:

 Thus justifying those who load their NS and corresponding NS's A records 
 with nice long TTL

Although this wasn't a problem in this case (hijacker did not appear to 
have been interested in controlling dns since it points to default domain
registration and under construction page), but long TTL trick could be 
used by hijackers - i.e. he gets some very popular domain, changes dns to 
the one he controls and purposely sets long TTL. Now even if registrars 
are able to act quickly and change registration back, those who cached new
dns data would keep it for quite long in their cache.


Many versions of bind have a parameter that caps TTLs to some rational 
maximum value -- by default in bind9, 3 hours.  Unfortunately, the 
documentation suggests that the purpose of the max-ncache-ttl parameter 
is to let you increase the cap, in order to improve performance and 
decrease network traffic.  

The suggestion that someone made the other day -- that the TTL on zones 
be ramped up gradually by the registries after creation or transfer -- 
is, I think, a good one.

--Prof. Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb




Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-17 Thread Joe Maimon

Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], william(
at)elan.net writes:
 

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005, Joe Maimon wrote:
   

Thus justifying those who load their NS and corresponding NS's A records 
with nice long TTL
 

Although this wasn't a problem in this case (hijacker did not appear to 
have been interested in controlling dns since it points to default domain
registration and under construction page), but long TTL trick could be 
used by hijackers - i.e. he gets some very popular domain, changes dns to 
the one he controls and purposely sets long TTL. Now even if registrars 
are able to act quickly and change registration back, those who cached new
dns data would keep it for quite long in their cache.

   

Many versions of bind have a parameter that caps TTLs to some rational 
maximum value -- by default in bind9, 3 hours.  Unfortunately, the 
documentation suggests that the purpose of the max-ncache-ttl parameter 
is to let you increase the cap, in order to improve performance and 
decrease network traffic.  

The suggestion that someone made the other day -- that the TTL on zones 
be ramped up gradually by the registries after creation or transfer -- 
is, I think, a good one.

--Prof. Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
 

From bv9ARM
*max-ncache-ttl*
   To reduce network traffic and increase performance the server stores
   negative answers. *max-ncache-ttl* is used to set a maximum
   retention time for these answers in the server in seconds. The
   default *max-ncache-ttl* is 10800 seconds (3 hours).
   *max-ncache-ttl* cannot exceed 7 days and will be silently truncated
   to 7 days if set to a greater value.
*max-cache-ttl*
   *max-cache-ttl* sets the maximum time for which the server will
   cache ordinary (positive) answers. The default is one week (7 days).
So loading TTL's to longer than 7 days will have diminishing returns.
Is this really such a good thing?
Joe


fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine

Oki all,

Delivery of RC mail to me is fairly desultory. Apparently there is an
earlier thread. Post-Rome the very purpose of the RC seems to me to be
doubtful (advocacy for registrars other than NetSol+4), and post-Elana
the process of the RC left me disinterested.

I'm particularly enamored by Ross' notion of what is going on on NANOG.

Cheers,
Eric

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Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:57:03 -0500
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Subject: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked
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On 1/16/2005 12:29 AM Mark Jeftovic noted that:

 There's a thread on NANOG to the effect that panix.com has been
 hijacked from Dotster over to MelbourneIT and it has pretty
 well taken panix.com and its customers offline, see
 http://www.panix.net/

I don't see what you are looking at - .net and .com point to the same 
place with no indication of anything awry...of course, I'm late to the 
game and the DNS probably tells a different story...

 
 Looks like this may be among the first high-profile unauthorized
 transfer under the new transfer policy.

Looks like a bunch of guys on the NANOG list engaging in a lot of 
conjecture without the benefit of a lot of facts.

 Maybe there needs to some sort of emergency reversion where at least the
 nameservers can be rolled back immediately while the contesting parties
 sort it out.

Might be interesting - what criteria would trigger the process?



- -- 
Regards,


-rwr






In the modern world the intelligence of public opinion is the one 
indispensable condition for social progress.
- Charles W. Eliot (1834 - 1926)

--- End of Forwarded Message



Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread Lou Katz


Is there anything that us folks out in the peanut gallery can
do to help, other than locally serving the panix.net zone
for panix.com?
-- 
-=[L]=-


Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread Daniel Karrenberg

On 16.01 10:25, Lou Katz wrote:
 
 
 Is there anything that us folks out in the peanut gallery can
 do to help, other than locally serving the panix.net zone
 for panix.com?

Avoid being caught by an IPR lawyer while helping; ;-)
Then organise operators to insert operational clue 
into the various policy processes.

Daniel


Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread Richard Irving
Don't panic ?
   ;)
Lou Katz wrote:
Is there anything that us folks out in the peanut gallery can
do to help, other than locally serving the panix.net zone
for panix.com?


Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread Andrew Brown

On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 07:21:55PM +0100, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:

On 16.01 12:46, William Allen Simpson wrote:
 
 --- Forwarded Message
 
 From: Ross Wm. Rader [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  
 
 I don't see what you are looking at - .net and .com point to the same 
 place with no indication of anything awry...of course, I'm late to the 
 game and the DNS probably tells a different story...
 
  
 
 This fellow is pretty confused, as from here (Michigan via Merit) the
 DNS has pointed to different places since yesterday.

A quick survey of some caching servers in my neighborhood reveals that
some of them return old/correct A RRs for panix.com at this time. 

presumably they have cached ns records from before the switch in the
com tld zone.

Following the DNS delegation chain from the root name servers provides
new/hijacked answers at this time. So I assume some operators of caching 
servers now choose to provide data that is inconsistent with the 
authoritative data in the DNS tree. So depending on where you ask, your
answer may vary. 

they're not choosing to do so, they're probably operating ~normally.
try asking them for the ns records for panix.com.  the age should give
you an idea of how long ago they were fetched from *.gtld-servers.net.
they probably got them before the switch, they'll time out soon
enough, and then they'll restart from the wrong servers.

-- 
|- CODE WARRIOR -|
[EMAIL PROTECTED] * ah!  i see you have the internet
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andrew Brown)that goes *ping*!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   * information is power -- share the wealth.


Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread gnulinux

On 16 Jan 2005 at 10:25, Lou Katz wrote:

 Is there anything that us folks out in the peanut gallery can
 do to help, other than locally serving the panix.net zone
 for panix.com?
 -- 
 -=[L]=-


actually this is amazingly helpful.  in fact 
encouraging more ISPs to do the same thing is, IMHO, 
the best way to route around hierarchical problems 
like this.  

imagine . . . The Association of Trustworthy ISPs   
these ISPs watch out for each other.  in the case of a 
member's domain being hijacked all other members serve 
the correct zone info.  this provides for a 
decentralized solution to the problem.  this 
association only admits members based on strict 
criterion and drops members immediately upon discovery 
of unethical behavior.  as more ISPs join the 
association end users will look for the association's 
seal of approval when shopping for an ISP.  


peace


Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread Joe Maimon

Andrew Brown wrote:
On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 07:21:55PM +0100, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
 

On 16.01 12:46, William Allen Simpson wrote:
   

--- Forwarded Message
From: Ross Wm. Rader [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I don't see what you are looking at - .net and .com point to the same 
place with no indication of anything awry...of course, I'm late to the 
game and the DNS probably tells a different story...


   

This fellow is pretty confused, as from here (Michigan via Merit) the
DNS has pointed to different places since yesterday.
 

A quick survey of some caching servers in my neighborhood reveals that
some of them return old/correct A RRs for panix.com at this time. 
   

presumably they have cached ns records from before the switch in the
com tld zone.
 

Thus justifying those who load their NS and corresponding NS's A records 
with nice long TTL

At least those whose caches' your still in will still talk to you after 
your registrar screws you.

(OT
Limiting named cache size could have an adverse effect for people hoping 
to cash into this inusurance. Shouldnt cache limiting kill low priority 
records such as A's which do not correspond to cached NS first
)


Re: fwd: Re: [registrars] Re: panix.com hijacked

2005-01-16 Thread william(at)elan.net


On Sun, 16 Jan 2005, Joe Maimon wrote:

 Thus justifying those who load their NS and corresponding NS's A records 
 with nice long TTL

Although this wasn't a problem in this case (hijacker did not appear to 
have been interested in controlling dns since it points to default domain
registration and under construction page), but long TTL trick could be 
used by hijackers - i.e. he gets some very popular domain, changes dns to 
the one he controls and purposely sets long TTL. Now even if registrars 
are able to act quickly and change registration back, those who cached new
dns data would keep it for quite long in their cache.

P.S. Just in case I chose not to send this info until panix.com had been
restored, but we really do need to deal with how it occurred in the first
place - even short term damage is bad so we need to have policies at ICANN 
that do no allow unauthorized transfers or else all domains can be LOCKED
by default by registrars which effectively does the same.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[EMAIL PROTECTED]