Free Republic

Abstract. We describe the use of formal methods in the development of IRONSIDES, an implementation of DNS with superior performance to both BIND and Windows, the two most common DNS servers on the Internet. More importantly, unlike BIND and Windows, IRONSIDES is impervious to all single-packet denial of service attacks and all forms of remote code execution. Introduction DNS is a protocol essential to the proper functioning of the Internet. The two most common implementations of DNS are the free software version BIND and the implementations that come bundled with various versions of Windows. Unfortunately, despite their ubiquity and...

BREAKING: GoDaddy, the world's largest domain registrar and one of the biggest web hosts, is experiencing major downtime. The main GoDaddy.com domain is unreachable and websites hosted by GoDaddy are also down. The more problematic part is that any domain registered with GoDaddy that uses its nameservers and DNS records are also down. That means that even if you host your site elsewhere, using GoDaddy for DNS means it is inaccessible.

Thousands may lose Internet access when FBI shuts down serversBy Brendan Sasso - 07/06/12 10:45 AM ET Hundreds of thousands of people could lose Internet service on Monday when the FBI shuts down servers from an online fraud ring that allegedly planted a virus among computer users. The FBI says about 252,000 computers worldwide could be affected and that about 45,000 of those computers are in the United States. Users can check whether their computer is infected with the malicious software — often called malware — by visiting dcwg.org, a site run in cooperation with the FBI, or by visiting...

An estimated 300,000 computers, most of them in the United States, Italy and India, could be infected and lose their Internet service, Queen's University associate professor Thomas Dean said Friday. Dean said Canadians can go to www.dcwg.org to check if their computers are infected and take appropriate measures. If computers have been infected due to the scam, they haven't been able to perform anti-virus software or system updates, leaving them vulnerable to other malware, said Dean, who teaches in Queen's University's department of electrical and computer engineering.

Thousands of PCs worldwide may be unable to access the Internet beginning July 9 unless those machines are rid of the pernicious DNSChanger malware that first surfaced in 2007. The Federal Bureau of Investigation helped shut down the criminal ring responsible for DNSChanger in late 2011. The federal agency then briefly handled the Internet Domain Name System routing for all infected Mac and Windows systems.

In a move the technology sector will surely see as a victory, a controversial antipiracy bill being debated in Congress will no longer include a provision that would require ISPs to block access to overseas Web sites accused of piracy. Rep. Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), one of the biggest backers of the Stop Online Piracy Act, today said he plans to remove the Domain Name System or DNS-blocking provision. "After consultation with industry groups across the country," Smith said in a statement released by his office, "I feel we should remove DNS-blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that...

> According to the indictment, the suspects entered into deals with various internet advertisers in which they would be paid for generating traffic to certain websites or advertisements. But instead of earning the money legitimately, the FBI said the defendants used malware to force infected computers to unwillingly visit the target sites or advertisements -- pumping up click results and, therefore, ill-gotten profits to the tune of $14 million. The malware was also designed to prevent users from installing anti-virus software that may have been able to free the infected computers. > In the first case, if a user searched...

I live in Central Illinois and for the last hour, Free Republic has been the only website I can access. No eBay, Weather, Paypal, Drudge Report, craigslist, youtube, not even my local bank. I get the "... can't find server" error. I can't even get email. But I seem to be able to access Free Republic just fine. I mean it's a good sign for when the end of the world begins. But for right now it's kind of frustrating.

The domain seizures by the United States authorities in recent days and upcoming legislation that could make similar takeovers even easier in the future, have inspired a group of enthusiasts to come up with a new, decentralized and BitTorrent-powered DNS system. This system will exchange DNS information through peer-to-peer transfers and will work with a new .p2p domain extension.

Probably not many people noticed, but FR changed its IP address over the weekend, from 209.157.64.201 to 209.157.64.200. I only noticed because I had hard coded the address to my HOSTS file. I just wanted to remind the admins that there are many links to 209.157.64.201 out there. Search any search engine for site:209.157.64.201 to see.

I have two DNS servers from my ISP A&TT that I use. Just wondering if using a free DNS would do any harm, slow me down or is would be unsafe to use.

A networking error has caused computers in Chile and the U.S. to come under the control of the Great Firewall of China, redirecting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube users to Chinese servers. Security experts are not sure exactly how this happened, but it appears that at least one ISP recently began fetching high-level DNS (domain name server) information from what's known as a root DNS server, based in China. That server, operated out of China by Swedish service provider Netnod, returned DNS information intended for Chinese users, effectively spreading China's network censorship overseas. China tightly controls access to a number of...

Every day it gets harder and harder to use FreeRepublic. For some reason the site is suffering from unspecified "server" problems that are rarely explained in a way that longstanding members such as myself can even find. The only reason I know there is a server problem is because someone finally posted a comment from FR Staff over on the Alternate Free Republic site; a place I find myself turning to more and more frequently while waiting for the latest daily problem to be resolved. To say this is merely frustrating is the understatement of the year. I grant you...

Without the ingenuity of America’s brightest minds and the investment of U.S. taxpayer dollars, there would be no Internet, as we now know it today. Now, the Obama administration has moved quietly to cede control of the Web from the United States to foreign powers. Some background: The Internet came into being because of the genius work of Americans Dr.Robert E. Kahn and Dr. Vinton G. Cerf. These men, while working for the Department of Defense in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the early 1970s, conceived, designed, and implemented the idea of "open-architecture networking."

An attack directed at the DNS provider for some of the Internet's larger e-commerce companies--including Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Expedia--took several Internet shopping sites offline Wednesday evening, two days before Christmas. Neustar, the company that provides DNS services under the UltraDNS brand name, confirmed an attack took place Wednesday afternoon, taking out sites or rendering them extremely sluggish for about an hour. A representative who answered the customer support line said the attacks were directed against Neustar facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose, Calif., and Allen Goldberg, vice president of corporate communications for Neustar, confirmed that at about 4:45 p.m....

From the 'Mission Accomplished?' files: For more than a year now I've heard lots of people in the Internet industry proclaiming DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) as the long-term solution to DNS cache poisoning vulnerabilities. That may not necessarily be the case. A new vulnerability is now out that attacks DNS servers  WITH DNSSSEC installed. In the summer of 2008, security researcher Dan Kaminsky made the whole world aware of potential security issues with DNS, which could have undermined the integrity of the Internet itself. DNSSEC is supposed to be answer, with most of the world's major Internet registries moving to...

I discovered something quite interesting just now. The domain name "ImpeachObama.com" was registered on 15 Jul 2004 07:10:37, just over one week after Obama was CHOSEN to give the keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, which he delivered on July 27, 2004, nearly two weeks AFTER the domain was registered. Any browse to that address results in bringing up a Google search on the word "Obama," where, naturally, the first result is Obama's "Organizing for America" organization at BarackObama.com. When it comes to scheming, those Democrats sure don't mess around, do they?

The US government has relaxed its control over how the internet is run. It has signed a four-page "affirmation of commitments" with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time. Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann - drawing criticism from other countries and groups. The new agreement comes into effect on 1 October, exactly 40 years since the first two computers were connected on the prototype of the net.

Re: FR Down in Virginia --- In freerepublic2@yahoogroups.com, "freeper_p8riot" wrote: > > Went down just a few minutes ago > It is down here as well...El Paso area. Seems to be missing from my DNS server? I can get on FR if I use the TOR network. peculiar....it's like someone erased FR from the domain name server list...all I get is Address Not Found Firefox can't find the server at www.freerepublic.com.

Russian researcher claims vulnerabilities can be exploited in less than a day, but others disagree... Patches meant to fix a flaw in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) don't completely protect the Web's traffic cop from attack, a Russian research claimed Friday. The head of the non-profit that maintains the most commonly used DNS software, however, said there was little to worry about. In a blog post , Russian researcher Evgeniy Polyakov said he had created an exploit able to insert bogus routing information into systems running the most-up-to-date version of BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain), the popular open-source software...