July, 2008

Geek / wtf — 28 Comments
21
Jul 08

Rogers DNS Hijacking – A Summary So Far

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen Rogers pull some incredible stunts. Between the iPhone, Data Plans, and Funny Teaser Campaigns, Rogers has managed to get quite a bit of pie on its face. Nothing trumps that however as much as the recent reports that Rogers is redirecting invalid domain names to their own search page with custom advertisements. There’s a lot of confusion about what this is and how it works so I thought I’d summarize some of it here so that we can clear it up.

Rogers is redirecting traffic from invalid domains to its own search page. This doesn’t involve deep packet inspection, it simply means they’ve configured their DNS servers so that if you mis-spell the domain name in your browsers address bar you’ll go to a different site. DNS is a service that all ISP’s will run, and for the non-technical folk the process goes a little something like this (and for the technical please disregard my brushing over of the issue)

Every computer on the internet has a number, from 1-4 billion or so. When you type an address into your address bar and hit ‘go’ your computer will say “Do I know where that is already?” and if it doesn’t, it will ask a different computer, or DNS (Domain Name Server) for the number of the computer you want to visit. Every single time you type an address into your browser or click on a link this is what happens. For more information on how DNS really works go here (beginner), here (intermediate) or here (youalreadyknow).

Now, what normally happens when you type an invalid or non-existant domain name into your browser, the DNS server will return a special code that says ‘Theres no answer for this name’, and you just get a notification in your browser. Type in “http://example.co” using Firefox and you’ll get something that looks like this:

This is how DNS works, and how the browser is setup to respond to the message that says ‘Theres no answer’. Clear as mud? Lets move on.

The DNS servers that Rogers operates are doing something special. When your computer asks where ‘example.co’ is, the server won’t respond back saying ‘Theres no answer’, but will actually give you the answer containing the name of a server that belongs to Rogers. It will also do something speecial – It will build a page for you that contains links based on keywords of your domain. So if you typed in ‘search.example.co’ while using a Rogers DNS server, you’ll get a page that looks like this:

This does several things. For one it breaks the way DNS is supposed to work (and coincidentally the way some applications work), and it also violates some concepts regarding Network Neutrality. It represents a way for ISP’s to squeeze out as much value from their end-users as possible, and as John over at Blamcast writes it puts ads on invalid subdomains as well. This means that if you type in maill.google.com it will print up an ad on Rogers servers using Yahoo’s search feature.

I talked to some iPhone users and while they use Rogers, this doesn’t seem to be taking place on the 3G network’s DNS servers. I dont have those IP addresses so I can’t test it out myself. (Does anyone have that info kicking around?)

A couple companies also do this. A “feature” in IE8 is address-bar searching which is effectively the same thing. When you type an invalid domain into the address bar, it will direct you to Microsoft’s search page with results that suggest what you may have meant – and an ad or two of course.

Verizon also did this a few years ago with something called Site Finder but it ended rather quickly due to criticism.

Update: Parkerjon writes with information about an alternative Rogers DNS server, Here is the information

altdns.rnc.net.cable.rogers.com
64.71.255.202

General — 6 Comments
17
Jul 08

MP Response to Bill C-61

Hedy Fry is our MP here in Vancouver, and this is a response that I received regarding an email I sent to her office about Bill C-61. I’m so underwhelmed by it that all I’ll do is post it and say no more.

Dear Mr. Orsztynowicz:

Thank you for your correspondence concerning Bill C-61, An Act to amend the Copyright Act.

As you are aware the previous Liberal government had tabled a Bill on this issue but it did not come to debate because of the election.  The current Conservative Bill has been eagerly awaited since they announced their intentions, in December 2007.

Canada has signed two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties, but has not yet ratified them.  The last time the Canadian Copyright Act was amended was in 1997 but these amendments did not address the WIPO treaty agreements. In the interim, communications technology has expanded rapidly.  Everyone is in agreement that the Copyright Act has to be amended to reflect the impact of digital technology.

Bill C-61 should strike a balance between the right of creators to be reimbursed for their creative, intellectual property and the desire for consumers to have access to these creative works.

Indeed digital technology serves both the creator and the consumer well.  It increases the reach and distribution of creative works as never imagined, before; which is precisely what creators need and it gives consumers easy access to creative works that can entertain, enrich, and educate.

This Bill does not serve either consumer or creator well.  It prescribes narrow, punitive solutions to a complex problem.  In fact the Bill could well have the effect of curbing the use of digital technology, to the extent that it becomes useless. This would be a pity!  As well implementation of the measures in the Bill would be nearly impossible, unless one abandons all privacy rights or imposes locks on the digital technology that severely limits its application.  How to monetize digital technology to reward the creator and allow free and open use by the consumer is challenging

As Liberals we believe that there should have been extensive consultations with legal experts, creators, distributors and conventional and digital media industries to find the right balance of solutions.  It is typical of the Harper government that they do not consult but impose.

Liberals intend to begin these consultations over the course of the summer so that when the Bill comes to the House we can propose appropriate amendments. Moreover we believe that the Bill should be further subject to public scrutiny if it ever gets to committee stage.  It could be that after we consult with the expert groups they believe that Bill C-61 is unsalvageable, in which case one would have to vote against the Bill and rewrite a new one.

These are exciting and challenging times in media communications technology that can broaden the consumption of arts and cultural products, in a manner unheard of since the invention of the printing press.  The challenges seemed impossible then but solutions were found that led to a Renaissance of art and culture.  We are at a similar point in history, now.  We must not use a sledge hammer.

Once again, thank you for writing.  Please feel free to contact my office if I may be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Hon. Hedy Fry, M.P.
Vancouver Centre

Brainstorming / Geek — No Comments
16
Jul 08

Popurls Replacement

I’ve got a subversion repository full of projects that are essentially ‘proof of concept’ hacks and I’m fucking tired of seeing them in there. Lots of them were ideas I have while doing systems administration. Some of them are goddamned atricous (but functional!) perl programs I wrote for graphing NetFlow statistics, and for visualizing BGP routing. They all worked but I kept them to myself and they were forgotten.

One proof of concept hack I’m going to flesh out is this quick rails app, that with some initial groundwork laid out by Anis, is essentially another RSS reader. Actually its just an unapologetic Popurls ripoff, but I had a good reason for doing it. I like the popurls layout and the concept: Being able to see all the latest ‘buzz’ in one spot. The issue is that none of that information is at all important, but for some reason hitting refresh is really pleasurable. Who cares what the people on Digg and Reddit are saying. Fuck you. I want to know more about Cloud Computing, Cooking, and Sailing, and I want to be able to digest that information with a glance – not browse through it site by site, category by category. Bah! (Its still a long way off from what I *really* want but more on that later)

Anyway, here’s a screenshot. Once I’ve setup OMPL imports, User Accounts and fixed the Background Processing chunk I’ll release version 0.0.1 to the public.

Note: I acknowledge the total uselessness of Slashdot, and I don’t read Al Jazzera – I was just seeing if it would work. I dont know what those words are.

Update: I’ve checked some rudimentary code into GitHub.

Brainstorming / cloud / Geekness / Ideas / sysadmin — No Comments
15
Jul 08

Feature as a Service

Websites have gone from hand-typed static pages, to massive applications with every feature under the moon. Most applications have some secret sauce that does magical things in the background – whether that be the ability to handle massive amounts of volume, reduce the barrier to entry into a market, or just keep users engaged by providing endless amounts of quick short updates.

Take Amazon as an example. Amazon operates their environment as a bunch of different groups, each running different services within the same company. S3, EC2, Payment Services. They’re all independent, highly scalable functions, tied together in the application we call Amazon.com.

Companies and startups are starting to break this operational model open, and putting those individual functions online for everyone. They’re building services that do something really well – or rather that do one thing really really well. They’re companies that focus on a specific function or feature and are open enough so creative people can say “I’m going to take this, this, and this – mix it in a pot and voila!”.

Do you want to build your own Twitter? Find an SMS gateway, Cloud Computing Host and XMPP service provider.

Do you want to build an interesting RSS/ATOM service? Find an RSS aggregator service and pour on some glue – see what sticks.

It’s Feature as a Service world (to use an already overused description). Eventually cloud companies will realize that doing one thing really *really* well is tremendously valuable. Why does everyone have to build their own DNS service? Why does everyone have to build their own hosting system? What about Enterprise Storage, Authentication, SMS Gateways, Massively scalable XMPP services? How come I have to do that myself? Can 10,000 messages sent through a jabber server be worth a dollar? I think it can (maybe the math needs adjusting but you get my point). We’re all really just building a massive computer called the internet, only with each big trend we replace ‘The Internet’ with something else. First it was ‘The Web’, then it was ‘Web 2.0′, and now its ‘The Cloud’. The fact of the matter remains – the further along we go the more tightly knit the internet becomes, and that means that theres opportunity for programmable white label services to propel us further and faster.

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