> So, how does ".internal" work? I mean, it's just a hostname, and DNS responds to queries about hostnames. I don't think this is the normative intent but you

> So, how does ".internal" work? I mean, it's just a hostname, and DNS responds to queries about hostnames. I don't think this is the normative intent but you could certainly say that this TLD is reserved for use with the private IP range. That would mean that a) local resolvers would not forward requests to internet resolvers and b) local resolvers can reject records pointing to non-local IPs. That's not suuuper useful because you wouldn't get an answer anyway. What would've been useful roughly 40 years ago is for ICANN to do something like this and also say "oh, and btw., domains under internet TLDs CANNOT resolve to non-internet (local, private) IPs". That would've preempted DNS rebinding and all related attacks. It's of course impossible to do now because the "best practice" for the last ~15 years has been to register an internet domain and then use it for your internal network because there are no private TLDs and any TLD you come up with might be registered by someone else and suddenly become attacker-controlled over night (troublesome because now VPN leakage, which none of the Expensive Enterprise Client VPNs address, allows someone not-you to easily and globally impersonate you for leaked traffic and it's not even a rebinding attack in the narrow sense). Arguably the "Old Guard" of IP networking did "a little oopsie whoopsie" with their "Thou shalt have no other networks before me, IP, your god" commandment (the idea that the IP stack exists to support exactly one network, the internet).