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Or: learn the basics of DNS if you decide to own a domain. Don’t blindly follow random instructions online without understanding them. (I’m pretty sure GitHub o

by oefrha 4y ago

Or: learn the basics of DNS if you decide to own a domain. Don’t blindly follow random instructions online without understanding them. (I’m pretty sure GitHub official docs never recommended setting up a wildcard A record for Pages, so the author must have gotten it from someone who similarly don’t understand the basics of DNS.) > After a lot of digging around, trying to figure out how the hijack was accomplished, it turns out it was via GitHub Pages. This is not what responsible domain ownership looks like. It shouldn’t take a lot of digging around to find out why a subdomain of yours resolves.

vxNsr 4y ago
This form of gatekeeping doesn’t make a lot of sense. DNS isn’t simple to understand, many very knowledgeable people still make mistakes with it. Expecting everyone to have a perfect understanding of DNS before they buy a domain is as unreasonable as not allowing someone to buy a car until they can assemble an engine.
- oefrha 4y ago
  A perfect understanding of DNS is like having a Ph.D. Not having to scramble and read random blog posts on the spot to figure out the DNS record you configured yourself that's causing a subdomain to resolve is like graduating primary school.
  - vxNsr 4y ago
    I hear, so assume I didn't graduate primary school, where would you suggest I start to avoid needing to google random blog posts on the spot?
chimeracoder 4y ago
> This is not what responsible domain ownership looks like. It shouldn’t take a lot of digging around to find out why a subdomain of yours resolves. DNS is one of the most notoriously cumbersome systems around, even for advanced engineers. Most people spend very little time (less than 1 hour per year) dealing with it, which isn't not long or often enough to commit learning to long-term memory, and the opacity of the different layers, plus tiers of caching, make it difficult to diagnose and debug problems when they arise. Even professional network engineers frequently trip over "basic" problems with DNS. It's a system with virtually zero guardrails and so many potential hazards that it's completely understandable for almost anyone to find themselves in these situation. There's a reason this haiku is so famous: > It’s not DNS > There’s no way it’s DNS > It was DNS
thayne 4y ago
Some of the blame lies with GitHub. Github should have some kind of verification that you actually own the domain before letting you take it over that works even with a wildcard cname. Even if that is just checking that it actually a CNAME to the user or arganizations github.io page
kruuuder 4y ago
Don't be so dismissive. Domains are cheap, and not everyone can be a professor of DNS wizardry. Not every project is important, playing around with tech is fun, and "digging around to find out" stuff is what makes a hacker in the first place. When I was a kid, blog posts like this one helped me understand things.

by oefrha 4y ago

vxNsr 4y ago

This form of gatekeeping doesn’t make a lot of sense. DNS isn’t simple to understand, many very knowledgeable people still make mistakes with it. Expecting everyone to have a perfect understanding of DNS before they buy a domain is as unreasonable as not allowing someone to buy a car until they can assemble an engine.

oefrha 4y ago
A perfect understanding of DNS is like having a Ph.D. Not having to scramble and read random blog posts on the spot to figure out the DNS record you configured yourself that's causing a subdomain to resolve is like graduating primary school.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  I hear, so assume I didn't graduate primary school, where would you suggest I start to avoid needing to google random blog posts on the spot?

chimeracoder 4y ago

> This is not what responsible domain ownership looks like. It shouldn’t take a lot of digging around to find out why a subdomain of yours resolves. DNS is one of the most notoriously cumbersome systems around, even for advanced engineers. Most people spend very little time (less than 1 hour per year) dealing with it, which isn't not long or often enough to commit learning to long-term memory, and the opacity of the different layers, plus tiers of caching, make it difficult to diagnose and debug problems when they arise. Even professional network engineers frequently trip over "basic" problems with DNS. It's a system with virtually zero guardrails and so many potential hazards that it's completely understandable for almost anyone to find themselves in these situation. There's a reason this haiku is so famous: > It’s not DNS > There’s no way it’s DNS > It was DNS

thayne 4y ago

Some of the blame lies with GitHub. Github should have some kind of verification that you actually own the domain before letting you take it over that works even with a wildcard cname. Even if that is just checking that it actually a CNAME to the user or arganizations github.io page

kruuuder 4y ago

Don't be so dismissive. Domains are cheap, and not everyone can be a professor of DNS wizardry. Not every project is important, playing around with tech is fun, and "digging around to find out" stuff is what makes a hacker in the first place. When I was a kid, blog posts like this one helped me understand things.