'Serious' internet flaw revealed

Jolly-Swagman · Jul 9, 2008

'Serious' internet flaw revealed

Computer industry heavyweights are hustling to fix a flaw in the foundation of the internet that would let hackers control traffic on the World Wide Web.

Interesting read here http://www.news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=594290

Are You at Risk?

Captain Helghas · Jul 9, 2008

XKCD did a comic on this recently. Too lazy to link it though...

Xaotic · Jul 9, 2008

Better information is here:

http://www.doxpara.com/

The issue resides at the DNS server level, rather than the user level. You can check your DNS servers at the site. OpenDNS servers are safe to use for forwarding requests, though I'd suspect that they will be significantly slower due to increased traffic.

Oni · Jul 9, 2008

Man, those vicious, vicious hackers, eh? They just want to control everything! From your banking info, to your email, to your MySpace Account.

Serious flaw or not, the whole fear-mongering thing revolving around this bothers me to unprecedented levels. Hackers have better things to do than trying to hack your email. Hell, they can hack my email all they want! I don't even want to read my own email, let alone somebody elses, and I'm sure most hackers feel the same. I'm sure Norton, McAfee and the makers of ZoneAlarm will see huge spikes in sales over the next couple weeks due to luddites purchasing software so those evil hackers can't steal their children RIGHT THROUGH THE INTERWEBTUBETRUCKNETS OMG!!!11

Medication soon . . .

Mr.Guvernment · Jul 9, 2008

they released an update already i beleive, but it is causing more trouble then it fixed.

EmAn · Jul 9, 2008

I wonder how well this "patch" will work once deployed

SteveLord · Jul 9, 2008

Mr.Guvernment said:
they released an update already i beleive, but it is causing more trouble then it fixed.

So they had Microsoft and Ubisoft engineers working on it then?

Malpine Walis · Jul 10, 2008

Oni said:
Man, those vicious, vicious hackers, eh? They just want to control everything! From your banking info, to your email, to your MySpace Account.

Serious flaw or not, the whole fear-mongering thing revolving around this bothers me to unprecedented levels.

Yah, and we have to go through this once every several years. Probably about as often as it takes for most people to forget the utter nonsense that we all had to go through for no real return at all.

Back in 1992, we all were told that on March 6th, every hard drive in the world was going to become blank at the hands of the Michelangelo virus. Didn't happen. Made Norton and McAfee into household words though.

Then starting around the beginning of 1999, we all had to hear about Y2K. This time accompanied by words from so-called experts waring us that “this is not another Michelangelo, this time it is real and it is going to happen”. Didn't happen, despite the special pleading.

Today, we get to hear about whatever this is. Neither article is saying enough to even begin to assess the real risk. All that we know is OMG!!11!!! BIG AND SCARY!!!11!!!!!1! That and “This will not be another Y2K. We actually fixed it before we told anyone else about it but make sure that you click this link anyway just to make sure that you are safe.

So um, we are safe but not safe?

wa77ss · Jul 10, 2008

Well at least the internet had a good run.

Remove · Jul 10, 2008

wa77ss said:
Well at least the internet had a good run.

Sig material there.

Captain Newbie · Jul 10, 2008

Since I don't know what the vulnerability is, I don't know if I should be concerned.

To Microsoft and friends: GOOD GOING. Thanks for the responsible disclosure.

edit: Oh, I understand now. Yeah. DNS kinda sucks—no, strike that, it really sucks—and the Right Thing to do right now is twofold: one, patch the hole, and two, design a new Domain Name System that doesn't suck as bad.

wa77ss · Jul 10, 2008

I still don't understand completely comprehend how they could control all the traffic on the web. Especially if its coming from a home computer. Does this only affect DNS servers that ISP's supply or something?

tenchi86 · Jul 10, 2008

Actually, pretty cool IMO. Amazing to think all these companies were able to work all this time together and not break silence. Almost seems fake though at the same time. As for the flaw, just sounds like advanced IP spoofing to me.

hank123 · Jul 10, 2008

I know im safe from hackers. No one wants my bad credit LOL.

Theres is so many things that you can get your self into. Like changing the bandwidth speed on your cable. To easy. Never have done it all the way but have gotten to the point of seeing what to do.

Im with Malpine Walis on this. Oh ya what happen to bird flue?

ShadowPho · Jul 10, 2008

Oni said:
Man, those vicious, vicious hackers, eh? They just want to control everything! From your banking info, to your email, to your MySpace Account.

Serious flaw or not, the whole fear-mongering thing revolving around this bothers me to unprecedented levels. Hackers have better things to do than trying to hack your email. Hell, they can hack my email all they want! I don't even want to read my own email, let alone somebody elses, and I'm sure most hackers feel the same. I'm sure Norton, McAfee and the makers of ZoneAlarm will see huge spikes in sales over the next couple weeks due to luddites purchasing software so those evil hackers can't steal their children RIGHT THROUGH THE INTERWEBTUBETRUCKNETS OMG!!!11

Medication soon . . .

Wow, you sound like a turnedover hard core hacker

*psst* you should teach me some.
j/k

IntelLoyalist · Jul 12, 2008

You know, that's really not an internet flaw; it's a "World Wide Web" issue.

Which should not be taken as a criticism of you in any sense. It's just that a lot of the fear mongering that ONI referred to is tied into most people not understanding that the Internet and the WWW are two different things.

Basically, the "flaw" is this:

IP Addresses are a PITA to remember and they aren't "intuitive".

So we use DNS servers to connect spoken language names to those IP addresses.

This flaw is basically like someone printing up bad fake phonebooks.

It doesn't affect the phones, but it might fool the person making a phone call into calling a wrong number.

Springbok · Jul 13, 2008

wa77ss said:
I still don't understand completely comprehend how they could control all the traffic on the web. Especially if its coming from a home computer. Does this only affect DNS servers that ISP's supply or something?

I think a single hacker could control your DNS results pretty easily, but wide scale control of the internet would take a huge coordinated effort or a ridiculously bad worm.

I'm with Oni, this is just propoganda.

CaptnBackfire87 · Jul 14, 2008

Just wrap some duct tape around the holes in the internet.

Albaholic · Jul 14, 2008

CaptnBackfire87 said:
Just wrap some duct tape around the holes in the internet.

Agreed, duct tape fixes everything. It's been holding my computer together for years.

Malpine Walis · Jul 14, 2008

Duct tape is like The Force. It has a light side, a dark side and it holds the universe together.

On a more serious note, I just found a piece on google news that is a decent read on this:

http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/security/news/article.php/3758706

'Serious' internet flaw revealed

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