DNS Heavyweights Raise Concern Over DNS Filtering

penciling_in writes "A group of DNS heavyweights have released a paper detailing serious concerns over the proposed DNS filtering requirements included as part of the bill recently introduced in the US Senate named Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP Act). The group which includes Paul Vixie, Dan Kaminsky, Steve Crocker, David Dagon and Danny McPherson, have detailed several serious technical and security concerns in the event that the mandated DNS filtering is enacted into law. Dan Kaminsky says: 'There are efforts afoot to manipulate the DNS on a remarkably large scale. The American PROTECT IP act contains several reasonable and well targeted remedies to copyright infringement. One of these remedies, however, is to leverage the millions of recursive DNS servers that act as accelerators for Internet traffic, and convert them into censors for domain names in an effort to block content.'"

Not on my servers!!

[Eggplant62]

I guess it's time to get a read done of this nonsense and the see if I can't straighten my own elected officials out about how the tech works... *sigh*

What's a DNS server?

[billlava]

I think you greatly overestimate the technological literacy of the average American. Most people aren't going to have a clue how to change their DNS servers, but even for those who do understand how to get around such restrictions, this is still disturbing. This is just a way for government to get its foot in the door. Soon, they'll be mandating to ISPs which DNS servers their clients are allowed to use, and what IP ranges are 'legal' to access on the internet. Maybe I should just take off the tinfoil hat and relax, but I can't see how government getting involved in legislating the internet in ANY way is a good thing.

Re:What's a DNS server?

[DarkOx]

Like the average smuck was not going to be able to use dvdshrink? Come on you know some 1337 kid is going to read up on DNS just enough to learn how to set which server is used on Windows, whip out his intro to VB.net book and whip up a little single form program with all his code in the DoIt.OnClick() handler to set the value to some server in The Republic of North Bumfuck.

Then everyone moron on facebook will be sending it to each other and installing it. That is Week 1.

Week 2 is when everyones ISP just starts NAT'ing ever packet with a dst port 53 tcp or udp to their own DNS server.

Week 3 same kid who has now learned that port translation can be used for other things besides playing wow behind his Linksys router starts his Google quest for a COM object that implements SSH....

Week 4... Frustration ensues

Week 5 ... A new VB.net app is published!