New Jersey's Cablevision Hijacks DNS Error Pages 200
Selikoff writes "I just noticed Cablevision's Optimum Online service has begun hijacking DNS Error pages with, you guessed it, ad-supported results. Aside from hurting the underlying stability of the Internet, there have been instances where hackers have used such tools against customers. I know Road Runner customers have had to deal with this for a couple months now, although at least they have an outlet to turn it off." Update: 09/30 13:18 GMT by T : Note, as several readers have pointed out, this hijacking is of DNS errors rather than 404 errors as originally presented.
Give me a break... (Score:5, Informative)
Even on slashdot, we have people who don't know a DNS error (and yes, TFA gets it right) from a 404 (which can't be hijacked without modifying the stream itself)
The submitter confuses DNS and HTTP errors (Score:5, Informative)
No, they didn't (Score:5, Informative)
New Jersey's Cablevision Hijacks 404 Error Pages
No, they didn't.
If the submitter had read the summary, they would know that it's DNS errors that are being hijacked, not 404s.
It's an important difference - 404 means that they are transparently proxying your connections, which can cause problems with various sites (and that they are recording every URL you visit.)
For example: http://slashdot.org/akasjdflkasdjfl;kajsdl;aksdjfkdjkfdjlkjsdf [slashdot.org] would not be affected by this, whereas http://sslashhdot.org/ [sslashhdot.org] would.
Is it *too* much to ask that a technical news site present technical articles correctly?
Bad Summary (Score:2, Informative)
You can opt out here... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.optimum.net/DNSRedirect/DoOptOut [optimum.net]
Re:404? (Score:3, Informative)
404 == HTTP error code for "page not found". And the summary's wrong, they're actually hijacking 502 (bad gateway/no such domain) pages, which is a major difference. Hijacking 502s only requires their DNS servers to redirect nonexistent domains to the ad page, while hijacking 404s would require them to sniff every page you visit.
Re:Solution for ISPs mucking with DNS results (Score:2, Informative)
That's a good thought and a viable one. I do the same thing myself. The problem is that my dollars are still going to support the ISP's DNS servers, which still warrants complaint.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The submitter confuses DNS and HTTP errors (Score:3, Informative)
Insight Communications in Indiana and Kentucky have been doing this [dslreports.com] for a while now.
Re:Hurting the Underlying Stablity of the Internet (Score:5, Informative)
Quite simple: run a mailserver, then use these type of DNS servers. In a few days, you'll have so much mail that doesn't get accepted by xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (your provider's DNS) that it might fill your storage. Then 7 days later (instead of a few hours later) the e-mail gets sent back with the message that the other server doesn't accept the mail (instead of saying that the domain doesn't exist) after being retried hundreds of times eating up valuable bandwidth and processing time. Then if your end-user isn't smart enough, he'll retry sending it, not noticing he has a typo in his address book, because after all, the other e-mail server DOES exist.
Rogers Cable (Score:3, Informative)
The kicker is that I also think they're actively blocking access to other search engines periodically in order to increase usage of their own. www.Google.com will sometimes time-out while trying to load, but works fine when accessed through Dogpile meta-search.
Since I've moved off of Rogers already, I can't do more experiments to test, but if anyone else is on it, I suggest you keep an eye out.
Re:Give me a break... (Score:2, Informative)
Not the root servers.
The .com, .net, whatever they had level ones - one below the root, still ones you have to use if you want DNS to work...
Re:Charter Communications (Score:4, Informative)
A laughable example of how poorly implemented the Charter DNS error is:
http://flickr.com/photos/listrophy/2194252038/ [flickr.com]
Things to note:
For this and many other things, I have since stopped using Charter. My soul feels so much cleaner now that I'm not giving them money.
Re:Hurting the Underlying Stablity of the Internet (Score:3, Informative)
And, the reverse that others have mentioned.
If you use a DNS blocking list (DNSBL) for e-mail, you will stop receiving any e-mail, because every lookup will always return a "found", and DNSBLs work by returning NXDOMAIN if the site isn't listed, and returning an IP address if it is.
Re:The submitter confuses DNS and HTTP errors (Score:3, Informative)
I was curious, so I went and found instructions from Verizon on how to switch:
http://netservices.verizon.net/portal/link/help/item?case=dns_assist&partner=verizon&product=fios [verizon.net]
However, some of the links from that page go nowhere.
This page has links to the actual DNS server IPs:
http://netservices.verizon.net/portal/link/help/index.jsp?epi_menuItemID=c567d167631f692124525d7253295c48&objId=23885 [verizon.net]
Re:Moved off Rogers to what exactly? (Score:3, Informative)
Some of the small resellers buy raw bandwidth, so you can avoid the brain-damage.
--dave
Suddenlink customers can opt out here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No ads. What's the point then? (Score:3, Informative)
That's the "Opt-out" page... a 200 OK response. The "Opt-in" page has all of the ads.