Tell HN: U.S. gov't blacklisted all DNS entries pointing to Linode machines

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169849

by kljensen • 16 years ago

68 25 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

This means DNS queries will not resolve for government employees if they point to Linode hosted machines.

I've verified this with USMC, USDA, & Sandia national lab. Heard that the top level domain linode.com was black holed due to its association with malicious activity as per a US-CERT Situational Awareness Report 10-015-01A UPDATE.

This is a big pain in butt for those of us that are grant funded or work with U.S. Government.

praeclarum• 16 years ago

The less the government sees of the internet, the less they interfere with it. I hope they blacklist the entire thing.

DennisP• 16 years ago

Yep, one more reason to use Linode.

Slashed• 16 years ago

Heard that the top level domain linode.com was black holed due to its association with malicious activity [...]

Reading this sentence, reminded me of Google using Linode when that incident happened with Chinese hackers.

metamemetics• 16 years ago

http://blog.linode.com/2010/01/15/linode-and-the-google-cybe... "No Linodes were involved in malicious activity related to this event. In fact, it was Google itself that chose to use Linode to aid in their investigation of the attacks"

ig12• 16 years ago

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA10-055A.html suggests otherwise.

ww520• 16 years ago

WTF. I host in Linode.

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

This reminds me of when I worked tech support for a big US ISP. I would get calls from users who couldn't connect to certain .mil sites because they had an IP ending in zero (x.x.x.0). The only solution was to reset their modem and hope the DHCP server would give them a new IP that didn't end in zero.

fadmmatt2• 16 years ago

Can anyone check to see if http://matt.might.net/ is blocked?

I host it on a linode.

Thanks!

fadmmatt2• 16 years ago

My brother in the Army can still see it, so it's apparently not all government.

By the way, he can't get to Hacker News.

otto2• 16 years ago

I work under DOI and works for me.

wgj• 16 years ago

Set up a reverse proxy somewhere for your government friends to use.

nwinter• 16 years ago

Ugh, Linode is our reverse proxy.

hack_edu• 16 years ago

Try Chunkhost, free beta.

carl_• 16 years ago

Do you have a direct link to this CERT awareness report? Google foo is failing me at present.

fnid23• 16 years ago

I think the real issue here is just letting anyone use your servers for whatever they want. It's a big problem in the cloud because even there, you're guilty by association.

The cloud providers are going to have to be more scrupulous about who they allow to use their infrastructure if they don't want to tarnish the image of their upstanding customers.

tomhogans• 16 years ago

I wouldn't use any provider that took an active interest in monitoring my traffic or examining my VPS.

fnid23• 16 years ago

It's not about that, it's about figuring out who you are before you sign up.

caker• 16 years ago

> This means DNS queries will not resolve for government employees if they point to Linode hosted machines.

This is total FUD. Please check your statements for accuracy.

jpalmer• 16 years ago

I agree. I work in a govt agency and while linode.com is blocked, I can still access my site that is hosted at linode as well as the linked site below in comments. Searching us-cert for linode, turns up the following: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA10-055A.html

otto2• 16 years ago

I work for a gov agency and both linode and hosted sites work for me.

kljensen• 16 years ago

Not FUD. Verified for multiple cases in which a CNAME points to a linode XXX.members.linode.com address.

I'm guessing the variance is due to different agencies implementing different security stuff. Again, 3x verified & no intent of FUD --- I love linode.

Tell HN: U.S. gov't blacklisted all DNS entries pointing to Linode machines

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