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Malaysia's Plan To Block Overseas DNS Dies After a Day (theregister.com) 30

Malaysia's telecom regulator has abandoned a plan to block overseas DNS services a day after announcing it, following a sharp backlash and accusations of government overreach. From a report: Last Friday, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) published an FAQ that stated it had instructed all ISPs to redirect traffic headed for offshore DNS servers to services operated by Malaysian ISPs -- a move it claimed would prevent access to malicious and harmful websites such as those concerning gambling, pornography, copyright infringement or scams. "No, the DNS redirection will not affect your connection speed or browsing experience for legitimate websites," the Commission promised in its FAQ.

But opposition to the plan quickly emerged, on grounds that it could amount to censorship and therefore represented government overreach. Musician turned state legislator Syed Ahmad Syed Abdul Rahman Alhadad labelled the decision "draconian" and a negative for Malaysia's digital economy. Fellow state assemblyperson Lim Yi Wei described the policy as "ill-advised," censorship, inefficient, and unsecure -- as well as counterproductive to government efforts to develop tech startups, innovation and datacenters.

Malaysia's Plan To Block Overseas DNS Dies After a Day

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  • Let them do it.

    Please.

    • Let them do it.

      Please.

      Yes. This. We need some IT Crowd grade humo(u)r in our boring lives.

      (Gov DNS lackey) “No Sir, it doesn’t appear to be a DDoS attack, just an entire countries worth of queries you assumed about..”

      • Re:Hold on (Score:5, Informative)

        by Generic User Account ( 6782004 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2024 @04:04PM (#64777859)

        I don't know what you guys expect, but most people already use exactly the servers that the government wants them to use, the ones assigned by the ISPs' DHCP/PPPoE servers. More applications and mobile devices have started to use resolvers provided by Silicon Valley industry heavy-weights, but using your ISP's resolvers was not unusual and they can handle the load, easily. Malaysia didn't ask for the world's DNS traffic, just that DNS queries by an ISP's clients would be redirected to the ISP's servers if the queries were addressed to leave the country. In network parlance this is called transparent proxying, and it's particularly easy with DNS because the protocol is stateless. It doesn't generally break DNSSEC either, just in the event of manipulated responses.

        • I don't know what you guys expect..It doesn't generally break DNSSEC either, just in the event of manipulated responses.

          Really? You should ask about the number of manipulated responses before assuming it’s no big deal.

          We all know why DNSSEC is needed. All of it. Now ask why it hasn’t happened.

          • Resolvers cache responses. Put the manipulated results in the cache and prevent them from aging out and you're done. All the lookup code is already there and doesn't take any extra time. One can trivially bypass DNS redirection with DoH and other techniques, but that's not what you were getting at. If your argument is based on "it's infeasible", one easy proof by doing it is enough to disarm you.

  • But a society has to consider restricting freedom if it is in the best interests of the population.

    Mandatory national DNS is probably not the worst idea in the world in theory, but in practice I suspect it would do more harm than good if it were actually enforceable.

    • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2024 @03:47PM (#64777785)

      Mandatory national DNS is probably not the worst idea in the world in theory, but in practice I suspect it would do more harm than good if it were actually enforceable.

      Of course it would.

      Say what you want about the youngin’ in the room called “America”, but its Constitution and subsequent Bill of Rights tends to speak centuries worth of wisdom regarding why you can never trust the “government”, regardless if it’s lead by a President or a King.

      Censorship always follows disarmament.

      • its Constitution and subsequent Bill of Rights tends to speak centuries worth of wisdom regarding why you can never trust the “government”,

        It’s just the americans who don’t trust the government, thanks to their bourgeois, calvinist culture where the government is continuously denigrated and thus, there is next to no culture of competent civil service as talent is not attracted to government because of it’s stigma.

        What does not help is that the overwhelming majority of politicians are failed businessmen who have no idea how to operate a company, and much less a country. All those people understand is the concept of money in t

    • Mandatory national DNS is probably not the worst idea in the world in theory

      I think is an awful idea even in theory but please explain what theoretical benefits do you think it may have, |I can see none (single use would be censorship).

  • Same thing anywhere. Only the degree varies.

  • Since the start of September, Malaysia has enforced the blocking of third-party DNS servers, although several mobile operators and ISPs had already begun implementing this restriction in August. The Communications Minister’s recent statement, suggesting that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) should have consulted telecom companies—rather than the public—before this rollout, comes far too late. The blocking measures are already active, and the MCMC operates indep
  • This clearly is the hand of the medieval, retarded, tentacular islamic "scholars" that prop-up that imperialist, totalitarian religion, the religion of murder that subverts more and more governments, even some Western ones (yeah, Britain, I’m looking at your islamic courts).

    They know very well that education is the absolute ennemy of their obscurantism. Islam must be absolutely be fought by all means possible, it’s a cancer that threatens to take back Mankind a thousand years!

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off. -- Woody Allen

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