Re: [gentoo-user] How to prevent a dns amplification attack

["Norman Rieß" <norman@smash-net.org>]

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Am 29.03.2013 um 23:34 schrieb Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>:

> On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Peter Humphrey
> <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> wrote:
>> On Thursday 28 March 2013 20:53:49 Paul Hartman wrote:
>> 
>>> In my case, my ISP's DNS servers are slow (several seconds to reply),
>>> fail randomly when they should resolve, return an IP (which goes to
>>> their ad-laden "helper" website if you are using a web browser) when
>>> they should instead return nxdomain, and they have openly admitted to
>>> selling customer DNS lookup history to marketers for targeted
>>> advertising.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> That is just evil. Have you no alternative to this ISP?
> 
> Not really.
> 
> I have a 100 megabit connection through the cable company; my only
> wired alternative is DSL (1.5 mbit for almost half the price I'm
> paying for 100mbit). Cellular or satellite are not viable options for
> me because of comparatively poor value, latency and miniscule data
> usage caps.

> […]
> 
> It is no longer legal for local governments to award monopolies, but
> the damage has been done. What we have is essentially the cable TV
> infrastructure that was laid out during the decade when local cable
> monopolies were legal, and the cost of entry for a new player into the
> market now is so high that nobody ever bothers. End result for
> consumers is a lack of choice. There are some places where competition
> exists, but those places are pretty rare, in my experience.
> 
> There are some other possible alternatives to cable internet and DSL,
> such as municipal wifi, mesh networks, powerline and FTTx, but none
> are available where I live.
> 
> The service I receive from the cable company here is actually
> excellent, with the exception of the aforementioned DNS woes.
> 
> Pretty much every major ISP in the US does DNS-hijacking and other
> shenanigans, so there's no avoiding the evilness. I believe the board
> members of major cable and telecom companies would sell their own
> mothers into slavery if it meant a rise in share prices or a larger
> bonus at the end of the year...
> 

That is pretty much the same as what happened in Germany. The telephone network was build by the german postal service in the past and was run by the government. As we all know everything works better and cheaper when things are privatized, so the Deutsche Telekom was created and with it a semi monopoly over night.
Regions not dense enough are not part of the developing plans of any of the companies. So if you are lucky like me, you are stuck with 16mbit DSL provided by one company rented by an other company. If people start to build their own network or a competitor reaches for a specific underdeveloped region, this region gets an upgrade like to DSL 3 Mbit or something like that, so the competitors draw of.
If you are really lucky you live in a region which is really dense or a cable company provides you with internet, so you get 100mbit. But this is only a fraction of all people.
If the government is confronted with this they say, the market will regulate that, which it does not. And if voices get too loud, the tell the companies to develop the underdeveloped regions, they shake hands on TV and nothing happens.
And as Paul said, most ISP do DNS-hijacking and the like, which breaks things in incredible unexpected ways.

So when i wrote this post to the mailing list and got answers like "unnecessary crap" and "why make it available for everyone" i thougt, this to be answers of some weirdos which should be ignored.
Here you do not trust your ISP… you use the ISP which sucks less or the only one that gives you any internet at all.
If you reach a certain level of knowledge, you change your DNS settings to free DNS servers and if you run a resolver you do it for the other poor souls as well.
There are lists of unfiltered DNS Servers (http://www.ungefiltert-surfen.de/nameserver/de.html), which are checked regularly if they provide unfiltered answers an the like.
And there are howtos for the average user on how to change the dns settings and to avoid your isp´s dns servers.

Regards
Norman




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