Re: International DNS compromise?

[john <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 4 Aug 2004 22:11:01 -0700 (PDT)
Zhen Shi <zhenshi99@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Dear all,
>   Recently I noticed something fishy in the DNS system
> between US and China. 
>   First, any IPs, dead or live, in China will respond
> to your DNS query for some domains. For example
> (screen shot with some clean-up and comments): 
> 
> C:\>nslookup
> 
> > server 210.77.0.0     <=== pick a random IP     in
> China 
> Default Server:  [210.77.0.0]
> Address:  210.77.0.0
> 
> > www.rfa.org
> Server:  [210.77.0.0]
> Address:  210.77.0.0
> 
> Non-authoritative answer:
> Name:    www.rfa.org
> Address:  203.105.1.21  <=== you got response!!!!
> 
>   Second, every time the response is different: 
> 
> > www.rfa.org
> Server:  [210.77.0.0]
> Address:  210.77.0.0
> 
> Non-authoritative answer:
> Name:    www.rfa.org
> Address:  64.66.163.251

> <snip>

It looks like it all works OK with most domain names. But rfa.org is the
sort of site the Chinese would want to censor. Evidently this is part of
their strategy for doing that.

This has the side-effect that you could discover the list of sites being
censored by systematically comparing DNS replies from a server in China
with those from an uncompromised server.

John