I fought my ISP's bad behavior and won

http://erichelgeson.github.io/blog/2013/12/31/i-fought-my-isps-bad-behavior-and-won/

by helfire • 13 years ago

400 108 13 years ago

erichelgeson.github.io

Very nicely done: reporting this as abuse to the companies offering these affiliate programs seems quite appropriate, and it sounds like they reacted appropriately. One person complaining to an ISP is noise; one person making an abuse report is all it takes to get that ISP banned from the affiliate program.

helfire9• 13 years ago

Thanks! I was in a state of hopelessness for a week or so till I had that idea.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

I was very impressed with your firm but polite tone! We'll done.

webmonkeyuk2• 13 years ago

If the ISP was being transparent about where they were going to source traffic I'm surprised that they ever got onto the affiliate program in the first place.

tdumitrescu• 13 years ago

"I will continue to monitor periodically their DNS entries and compare them with other public DNS servers."

This would make for a great watchdog site to provide visibility across different ISPs (and could also discourage other ISPs from pulling this crap).

helfire9• 13 years ago

I think so too, though CDN's will mess with the results a bit. It would be nice if DNS had a way to sign/validate/somehow know the record you got was correct. Especially on the apex record as it can happen before ssl.

Procrastes• 13 years ago

It's interesting no one brought up DNSSEC[1]. Has anything happened there since 2010?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System_Security_Ext...

JoshTriplett2• 13 years ago

CDNs will indeed mess with the results, but it would still likely be possible to tell the difference between a legitimate result and a forged one, especially if you know something about the CDN structures used by major site. And the more people run it, the more likely you can detect anomalies, much like Perspectives does for SSL.

SSL, incidentally, seems like a major help here: you could detect common DNS hijackings by accessing the site via SSL. If you access https://amazon.com/ , an ISP hijacking the site would produce either a certificate error or a connection failure (depending on whether they even attempt to listen for SSL traffic).

DavidHogue• 13 years ago

Isn't that exactly what DNSSEC is? Unfortunately not all that many domains are using it today.

_RPM• 13 years ago

Gaming the system seems to be the secret to winning.

gesman• 13 years ago

Gaming the system is as sustainable as winning at casino.

It's fun while it lasts.

philip1209• 13 years ago

This is why you should encrypt your DNS.

helfire9• 13 years ago

Do you have a link to a usable encrypted DNS solution? I searched but didn't find anything actively used, but a lot of proposals.

IvyMike2• 13 years ago

DNSCrypt http://www.opendns.com/technology/dnscrypt/

This works well for me. But I have found that this is the kind of thing where an expert can pop in and say "have you considered risk X with solution Y?" and leave me dumbfounded.

So use at your own risk.

dmourati4• 13 years ago

You can easily setup a VPN and use the DNS servers on the other side. Connecting to the VPN can be done via IP.

rcfox2• 13 years ago

Could you elaborate on this? How would encryption help? The DNS server would need to decrypt the request in order to service it.

lambda• 13 years ago

  This also shows a weakness in DNS. There is currently no 
  way to validate the DNS record you’re being served is what 
  the person hosting the website intended.

That's what DNSSEC is for, but it hasn't become pervasive enough yet to be able to depend on it.

rwg• 13 years ago

Strangely enough, the largest deployment of DNSSEC-enabled, customer-facing, recursive/caching nameservers in the United States is... Comcast. That's right, the same Comcast that, back in 2009, hijacked NXDOMAIN responses by default and returned A records pointing to servers that served up advertisement-laden search pages over http.

jasoncartwright• 13 years ago

I was also impressed to see that my Comcast connection uses IPv6. Turns out they have (or will have) one of the the largest IPv6 network in the world - http://gigaom.com/2013/11/27/comcast-xfinity-broadband-is-no...

IvyMike2• 13 years ago

Sadly DNSSEC kinda sucks. Here's some earlier discussion on HN, with a lot of links. (Namedrop: tptacek is against DNSSEC and talks about it in the link.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5937004

TLDR: DNSSEC is kinda complex and hacko, doesn't protect you as much as you might think, and introduces a whole new PKI that you should probably trust even less than the current ones. But read the links above for the real story.

I'm using DNSCrypt right now, which (correct me if I'm wrong) protects against DNS interception by my ISP, and seems like a whole lot less trouble than DNSSEC.

graylights• 13 years ago

DNScrypt only protects from your host to your nameserver. Your nameserver can still be poisoned as it queries other nameservers.

dnssec protects mostly from poisoning between nameservers. It does little to protect between a host and their namserver.

But in reality dnssec is not a solution, it's a problem. It will never be adopted in a meaningful way without major overhaul in spec.

mike-cardwell4• 13 years ago

"protects against DNS interception by my ISP"

Your ISP can still see the IP address of every web server that you connect to, and can still see the "Host" header that your browser sends in HTTP requests, and also in HTTPS requests (due to SNI) if you're using a reasonably modern OS/Browser combo.

All you've done is add an additional third party that can view and log what you're doing.

rcfox2• 13 years ago

One a slightly related note, in Chrome extensions, it's possible to redirect DNS requests on a per-URL basis. This is how Media Hint works to allow non-US Netflix users access the US version of the site.

I'm surprised we haven't seen similar behaviour from Chrome extensions. I'm sure it would be caught eventually, but this isn't exactly something that people tend to look for, so it would take a while for people to catch it.

dangrossman• 13 years ago

I'm surprised we haven't seen similar behaviour from Chrome extensions

The "Window Resizer" Chrome extension got a silent update a few weeks ago. It rewrote all the links on Google search result pages to point to a proxy that added affiliate links where possible.

peregrine• 13 years ago

Over the holiday I did usual, fix/clean my grandmother's computer. She's been using chrome because I explained to her how much safer it is.

I did a google search and realized something wasn't right. Uninstalled all the crapware apps that wormed their way in. And then I looked at the chrome extensions and low and behold there it was, more crapware.

I removed them and they re-added themselves. I had to run spybox s&d to remove it completely.

Moral of the story: chrome extensions are in some ways worse than toolbars.

dminor• 13 years ago

I had an extension that did that as well. I reported it to Amazon and left a 1 star review warning other users.

ozh• 13 years ago

+1 to OP, and +2 to companies who responded positively (and -3 to ISP, obviously)

dmourati4• 13 years ago

Super shady stuff. I never rely on any ISP provided DNS servers. I'm glad you talked to the the etailers to let them know what was going on. These business practices do introduce latency, regardless of what he told you. Not to mention, they are highly unethical and dishonest.

helfire9• 13 years ago

A really shady ISP could intercept and redirect any outgoing port 53 traffic to their servers.

dmourati4• 13 years ago

If that were the case, I would immediately terminate any relationship with them and out them in public. While technically possible, you're now talking about a whole other form of dishonest behavior. Some would say criminal.

cdjk• 13 years ago

That's what my ISP does. What's worse is that sometimes their dns servers fail intermittently (something to do with fragmented packets and retrying DNS queries in TCP mode).

It did take a while to figure out what was causing the intermittent DNS failures. "My ISP is hijacking all port 53 traffic" was fairly low on my list of possibilities, I must admit.

Fortunately it's not that hard to run a local resolver that forwards queries to an external resolver on a vps on an alternate port.

I'd switch ISPs, but I live in a remote area and my only other choices would be satellite or cellular, so I'm stuck with them.

aendruk4• 13 years ago

My ISP [1] actually does this. They offer an opt-out of NXDOMAIN hijacking, but silently proxy all port 53 traffic regardless.

This experience has taught me simply to distrust the DNS protocol in its current form and use DNSCrypt in all situations.

  [1]: Shaw Communications, chosen by the landlord.
  [2]: http://dnscrypt.org/

kaffeinecoma• 13 years ago

  Super shady stuff. I never rely on any ISP provided DNS servers

Doesn't that mean that you don't benefit from nearby CDNs? Perhaps worth the tradeoff anyway.

jrockway4• 13 years ago

8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are anycast.

dmourati4• 13 years ago

No. For example you set up your own resolvers and use those for your network's DNS needs. The source IP's from your resolvers recursive requests will be used to help CDNs and other geo-aware resolvers send you to the nearest appropriate site.

belorn• 13 years ago

I think you would be hard pressed to find a public well known service that is depended on ISP CDNs.

Google? No. Games? No. JS libraries? No.

Even if some might use CDNs, they are likely to also use geo-aware DNS servers. It cheap, don't cost anything, and can be combined with CDNs on ISP level.

taralx• 13 years ago

No, good public DNS servers (like Google's) forward your subnet to the resolver to ensure that you get correct responses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network#edns-...

sloop• 13 years ago

If your ISP and/or Aspira were making any significant amount of affiliate commissions, I would be surprised if the merchants do not take action against them for fraud.

This sounds like the same behaviour that Shawn Hogan got in trouble for with cookie stuffing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Hogan

helfire9• 13 years ago

I chatted with a company that investigates affiliate fraud, they may have a blog post up after the new year about this. Will submit it if/when they do.

dmak• 13 years ago

Ahh... DigitalPoint, those were the days.

jauer3• 13 years ago

The ISPs that I've heard of using this claim to be getting low to mid thousands per month in revenue from it. I'm not sure if that counts as a significant amount of commission, but...

gpcz• 13 years ago

The cynical side of me says that the ISP is just going to redirect the author's traffic to the "pure" DNS server in the future (even when he or she directs traffic to the main one) unless they get in serious enough trouble with one of the companies this first time.

If anyone wants to do this in the future, I'd recommend just sending affiliate abuse emails with no notice to the ISP. Also, the future person may want to revise the [2] script to scan in a more surreptitious manner (change the order, add delays, simulate legit web traffic, etc).

neil_s• 13 years ago

Interestingly, you might have benefitted more from keeping quiet about this. While the original retailers are losing money through this, you aren't really affected negatively by them doing it. In fact, with this additional revenue source, they might be able to support thinner margins on their broadband charges, saving you some money. You did the morally correct thing, but perhaps at a potential personal cost.

goldenkey2• 13 years ago

The affiliates are getting hurt hugely though. Affiliate profits are supposed to be for helping the purchase - through marketing efficiency. The ISP is doing none of that, they are simply mafiosoing affiliate dollars through hijack. Amazon would not like this, the ISP gives exactly 0% efficiency boost to the e-commerce process, they're just a gypsie snake.

emilv2• 13 years ago

Why did you have to end an otherwise good answer with a racist slur?

ars_technician4• 13 years ago

you aren't really affected negatively by them doing it.

Even if you are fine with your ISP committing fraud, you are negatively effected by the complexity (points of failure) and latency this adds to the network.

jauer3• 13 years ago

As a ISP when we were considering using Aspira they claimed that no referral tokens would be replaced and that the only behavior was injecting a popup coupon window.

I decided not to proceed with it because it seemed like a support nightmare and tampering with non-malicious subscriber traffic crosses a line.

Their marketing affiliates (such as Cash4Trafik) are always reaching out to CEO types at small ISPs and the money they bring (particularly when you are small) can be hard to pass up.

erichurkman• 13 years ago

Cash4Trafik

It may be the cynic in me after seeing abuses for companies like Cash4Gold, but "Cash4" anything does not instill any amount of trust in a brand, at least to me.

helfire9• 13 years ago

Yes, and conditioning your users to click on popups. Glad you chose not to!

click170• 13 years ago

May I ask which ISP you work for?

Knowing that you consider tampering with nonmalicious subscriber traffic to be crossing a line is something I would pay a premium for.

jauer3• 13 years ago

Just a little Rural Wireless/Fiber+Metro Datacenter/whatever provider in Southeastern Wisconsin. I try to keep my personal opinion at least one step removed from their name just in case :-) My email is in my profile. If you need a connection in that geographic area hit me up and I'll see what we can do.

gnu8• 13 years ago

Is there a way we can choke companies like Apira by making a concerted distributed effort to disrupt the referral programs they exploit (either by reporting them or by feeding them false referrals somehow)?

gregcohn• 13 years ago

Agree with this sentiment, but I think the effort would be better spent taking steps to switch to trusted DNS providers, as well as building layperson tools to monitor them.

natch• 13 years ago

I'd like to try out this curl command. I'm not using macports, though. Like many people, I've switched to brew since some time. Is there a quick way to see if my curl install is compiled with 'ares' whatever that is?

helfire9• 13 years ago

ports > brew!

But seriously I don't know how brew works, though looks like the code supports the option: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/For...

sikhnerd• 13 years ago

  brew install curl --with-ares

helfire9• 13 years ago

Also looks like MacOS 10.9 has ares by default.

afhof• 13 years ago

Cox does something similar but bypasses the the DNS records and just slipstreams in a response. I noticed Cox would redirect javascript requests to their own HTTP server and put in their own snippets, effectively doing mass javascript injection.

The snippet ended up being some sort of alert about upcoming maintenance, but using a malicious technique for a benign purpose is the path to the dark side. Use HTTPS!

(I use 8.8.8.8, it didn't help)

jamesbritt• 13 years ago

I had this happen to me and it pushed me to use a vpn for all personal Web traffic.

RKearney• 13 years ago

Comcast also injects JavaScript into HTML responses if they feel the need to send you a message.

Here's the code they use: https://gist.github.com/ryankearney/4146814

And here's my (extremely short) writeup on it: http://blog.ryankearney.com/2013/01/comcast-caught-intercept...

venomsnake• 13 years ago

Isn't that CFAA abuse on their side?

ihsw• 13 years ago

Rogers (Canada's Comcast) does the same thing, but for warning you about your bandwidth usage.

squintychino2• 13 years ago

VPN + HTTPS for good measure

squintychino2• 13 years ago

VPN + HTTPS just for good measure

zquestz2• 13 years ago

Eric, I am very sorry to see this happen to you. Unfortunately more and more companies are using our data for marketing purposes.

All is not lost though.

There are several ways you can protect yourself from these practices. The first thing I would do is get a router capable of using dnscrypt-proxy (http://www.opendns.com/technol.... Then you can be confident that your DNS traffic is not being modified by your ISP. It does require that you have trust in a 3rd party DNS provider like OpenDNS, but at the end of the day you have to trust someone to provide DNS lookups.

The second option is to setup DNSSEC so that you can verify where your DNS responses are coming from. While people will still be able to intercept what sites you're looking up, at least you know you're getting valid responses which is better than your situation is currently.

Third is to use both. =)

Anyhow, really awesome to see people standing against these practices. It takes users complaining to make change. The sad truth of the matter.

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

It does require that you have trust in a 3rd party DNS provider like OpenDNS ...

The same OpenDNS that hijacks NXDOMAIN responses?

webmonkeyuk2• 13 years ago

Only for the unregistered accounts IIRC. Can't you disable it after going thought the simple registration and claiming of IP address?

zquestz2• 13 years ago

I only said OpenDNS was one of the options. There are many DNSCrypt enabled servers not run by OpenDNS. Seems anytime someone event mentions OpenDNS the same arguments get brought back up. If you don't like OpenDNS, then use DNSCrypt with another server. Simple solution.

GigabyteCoin• 13 years ago

Congratulations. What they were doing was absolutely evil in my opinion.

AlonsoGL2• 13 years ago

Here it goes: Behind a ISP-wide cache. Any 'traceroute' passes by transtelco.net (ISP used to have their own infraestructure for voip services Megafon) now i have 5/6? DNS jumps! and all my traffic going to Transtelco.

  traceroute to news.ycombinator.com (198.41.191.47), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
  1  customer-GDL-**-***.megared.net.mx                 << 177.230.**.*** Dynamic IP, GDL is the city of the company
  2  10.0.28.62 (10.0.28.62)  8.939 ms  8.941 ms  8.935 ms
  3  10.2.28.195 (10.2.28.195)  8.912 ms  8.903 ms  8.891 ms
  4  pe-cob.megared.net.mx (189.199.117.***)  8.878 ms  8.866 ms  14.201 ms << COB is the user city
  5  10.3.0.29 (10.3.0.29)  23.494 ms  23.483 ms  23.408 ms
  6  10.3.0.13 (10.3.0.13)  22.842 ms  19.609 ms  19.596 ms
  7  10.3.0.10 (10.3.0.10)  19.560 ms  19.555 ms  19.536 ms
  8  201-174-24-233.transtelco.net (201.174.24.233)  19.527 ms  20.650 ms  19.468 ms
  9  201-174-254-105.transtelco.net (201.174.254.105)  34.239 ms  31.793 ms  31.268 ms
  10  fe3-5.br01.lax05.pccwbtn.net (63.218.73.25)  31.792 ms  31.736 ms  33.533 ms
  11  any2ix.coresite.com (206.223.143.150)  32.834 ms  33.221 ms  33.429 ms
  12  ae3-50g.cr1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.124.113)  41.288 ms  41.228 ms  41.231 ms
  13  ae2-50g.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.127.142)  42.632 ms ae1-50g.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.127.138)  35.192 ms 33.860 ms
  14  as13335.xe-11-0-6.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.125.106)  35.143 ms  44.714 ms  44.666 ms
  15  198.41.191.47 (198.41.191.47)  37.638 ms  37.239 ms  36.997 ms

I don't know how normal or ethic is this type of cache. No download limits, I have the 10mb and get 20mb(2000-2300kbps) downloads, for uploads is limited to 1mb.

emilv2• 13 years ago

As long as they don't tamper with the data I think an HTTP cache is perfectly OK. HTTP has loads of built-in mechanism for that kind of caching. It saves bandwidth upstream, not least for website owners, and may make your web browsing speed faster if the proxy is good.

Tampering with the data, however, is not OK at all. In the U.S. I believe it may make the ISP exempt from for example the safe harbor clauses in the DMCA.

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

Some of the big content providers like Netflix are even reportedly making caching deals for their content. Both the content provider and the ISP get better performance and less exterior bandwidth.

toast0• 13 years ago

Your traceroute doesn't show that you're behind a cache, just that your ISP uses transtelco.net for IP transit; at least to the destinations you tried.

AlonsoGL2• 13 years ago

Well, I was wrong then. Yes, the ones I've noticed are youtube and other video services. Thank you guys :)

samweinberg• 13 years ago

Anyone know if Time Warner Cable does this?

I fought my ISP's bad behavior and won

Related Stories