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Tell HN: U.S. gov't blacklisted all DNS entries pointing to Linode machines
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 17y agoThe less the government sees of the internet, the less they interfere with it. I hope they blacklist the entire thing.
- DennisP 17y agoYep, one more reason to use Linode.
- Slashed 17y agoHeard 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 17y agohttp://blog.linode.com/2010/01/15/linode-and-the-google-cyber-attacks/ 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"
- ig1 17y agohttp://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA10-055A.html http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA10-055A.html suggests otherwise.
- MrHyde 17y agoSo, McAfee identifies a single node as "associated" with the incident: li107-40[dot]members[dot]linode[dot]com. And Linode has a post which specifically references a single node being associated but under Google's control and not malicious control at all times. Doesn't appear to me that there's any contradiction. There is no evidence that a Linode was used for anything malicious. There is evidence that a Linode was used.
- ig1 17y agoFrom the cert page: "the following malicious domains were identified"
- ww520 17y agoWTF. I host in Linode.
- chaosmachine 17y agoThis 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.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- fadmmatt 17y agoCan anyone check to see if http://matt.might.net/ http://matt.might.net/ is blocked? I host it on a linode. Thanks!
- wgj 17y agoSet up a reverse proxy somewhere for your government friends to use.
- carl_ 17y agoDo you have a direct link to this CERT awareness report? Google foo is failing me at present.
- fnid2 17y agoI 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 17y agoI wouldn't use any provider that took an active interest in monitoring my traffic or examining my VPS.
- fnid2 17y agoIt's not about that, it's about figuring out who you are before you sign up.
- mantas 17y agoHow? By adding a "Are you a terrorist?" checkbox in signup form? Doing full CIA scan for all new users? Maybe they should require web serving license issued by govt, like they do for guns?
- fnid2 17y agoThere are ways that are less intrusive, but still somewhat effective. Security is mostly about probabilities. The more circles you remove from the venn diagram, the lower the probability of problems. So if you remove everyone from China, sure, you remove a lot of fine customers, but you also remove a huge swath of the internet crime rings. Require a US based address. Email the people and have a conversation. Require a phone call. It's the same as renting out an apartment, If you start renting your apartments to criminals, pretty soon, all you'll have is criminals.
- caker 17y 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 17y agoI 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 http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA10-055A.html
- otto 17y agoI work for a gov agency and both linode and hosted sites work for me.
- kljensen 17y agoNot 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.