The Kaminsky Bug In-Depth

Posted August 7, 2008, 10:42 a.m.

I’ve written a couple entries over the past weeks regarding a critical bug in the Domain Name System (DNS)—one of the core engines behind a functioning, secure Internet. This bug, if exploited, would have allowed attackers to redirect legitimate Internet traffic to malicious sites and could have destabilized the entire web. Dan Kaminsky, the security researcher who discovered the bug, worked with major DNS software maintainers and various major web sites on the web to put out an unprecedented multi-vendor patch, and many system administrators around the world deserve commendation for testing and applying those patches.

If you’ve been waiting for details (as I have), they’re now available in a downloadable PowerPoint presentation over at Dan Kaminsky’s web site. The bug is as bad (and perhaps even worse) than all the chatter and speculation led us to believe.

Over on Kaminsky’s site you can also check your DNS servers to see if they are secured (which is likely your ISP’s responisibility). Do your part too: run Windows Update (Windows), Software Update (Mac), or apt-get/yum/Update Manager/Pup/whatever (Linux) to make sure your system is up-to-date.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is the best policy.

George Washington

Those who deny that a tendency toward evil is basic to human nature cannot make sense of history, which becomes merely endless, incomprehensible tragedy.

James Hitchcock

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Aristotle

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

Jesus Christ

Whenever men are unanimous on great public questions, whenever there is but one party, freedom ceases and despotism commences.

Anonymous

American young people have got to understand from an early age that the world pays off on results, not on effort. Not everyone should win a prize no matter where he or she finishes.

Thomas Friedman

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.

Barry Goldwater

For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.

Aristotle

The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

Alexander Hamilton

There are only two kinds of government programs—those that are ineffective and those that are counterproductive.

Thomas Sowell

God prefers a loving sinner to a loveless ‘saint.’ Love can be trained; pride cannot.

Fulton Sheen

Kids, the fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

Stephen King

The question is not what power the federal government ought to have, but what powers in fact have been given by the people. . . . The federal union is a government of delegated powers. It has only such as are expressly conferred upon it and such as are reasonably to be implied from those granted.

Owen Roberts

Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD. . . .

Holy Bible

The tragedy in all of this is the simple fact that the average tax-paying American was not given an honest and genuine choice. The voter finds himself enduring one party long enough to witness a whole series of travesties and then switches to the other party thinking he will get a substantial reversal of policy. But he doesn’t.

W. Cleon Skousen

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

Hannah Arendt

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hating life, despising life—even for the genuine pain that life inflicts—merely serves to make life itself worse, unbearably worse.

Jordan Peterson

The Light can shine in darkness, but the darkness does not comprehend it.

Fulton Sheen

The British Empire is typically characterized as an overwhelmingly negative force in history, but a comparison with the rival imperialism of Islam provides a corrective to this view.

Ibn Warraq