Security Consultants Warn About PROTECT-IP Act 298
epee1221 writes "Several security professionals released a paper raising objections to the DNS filtering(PDF) mandated by the proposed PROTECT-IP Act. The measure allows courts to require Internet service providers to redirect or block queries for a domain deemed to be infringing on IP laws. ISPs will not be able to improve DNS security using DNSSEC, a system for cryptographically signing DNS records to ensure their authenticity, as the sort of manipulation mandated by PROTECT-IP is the type of interference DNSSEC is meant to prevent. The paper notes that a DNS server which has been compromised by a cracker would be indistinguishable from one operating under a court order to alter its DNS responses. The measure also points to a possible fragmenting of the DNS system, effectively making domain names non-universal, and the DNS manipulation may lead to collateral damage (i.e. filtering an infringing domain may block access to non-infringing content). It is also pointed out that DNS filtering does not actually keep determined users from accessing content, as they can still access non-filtered DNS servers or directly enter the blocked site's IP address if it is known. A statement by the MPAA disputes these claims, arguing that typical users lack the expertise to select a different DNS server and that the Internet must not be allowed to 'decay into a lawless Wild West.' Paul Vixie, a coauthor of the paper, elaborates in his blog."
politicians (hock...patoooiiiii) (Score:4, Interesting)
Greetings and Salutations....
Why does this seem like one of those "feel good" laws that politicians pass to get brownie points with their followers, rather than to actually address and fix a problem?
I am more and more convinced that attempts to regulate the Net are a bad idea, and, any official that attempts to do this should be voted out of office or recalled.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
My nieces and nephews all got MacBooks issued to them from their school. Just like the ones in that webcam scandal. So the school had a firewall installed that was supposed to block inappropriate sites. It was amazing how fast people, who had never owned a computer before, learned how to use a proxy, and learned to put that s on the end of https because apparently the firewall didn't filter sites using ssl. And one of the first things they learned was electrical tape defeats the webcam.
Cousins got iPhones. It was amazing how people who didn't even know what firmware was learned the concept of jailbreaking. No, they didn't all know how to do it. But they knew how to go on Facebook and ask "does anybody know how to jailbreak an iPhone"?
The moral of this story is, if you try to take it away and there is a way to get it back, they'll find it even if they have no idea how to do it right now. It's not that they're incapable of learning. It's they have had no reason to up until now.
Wrong, there are laws, and this breaks one of them (Score:5, Interesting)
When was the Internet anything other than a "lawless wild west"?
The internet is the wild west, but it is far from lawless... it just so happens that there are very few laws.
One of those laws is the trustworthiness of DNS. The proposal at hand is actually one that makes the internet MORE lawless, not less, as DNS falls utterly as the (relatively) trustworthy backbone of the internet it has been until today.
Who would knowingly point to a DNS server that might mislead them after this is passed? I sure wouldn't.
or: (Score:1, Interesting)
People will just move to namecoin, first site admins and then the general populus (just as it happened 35 years ago with ip protocol) and centrally operated DNS will just become obsolete...
DNS is dead
Long live namecoin [bitcoin.it]!
Re:politicians (hock...patoooiiiii) (Score:4, Interesting)
large government = evil!
Such a blanket statement is nonsense. In the UK the National Health Service is a massive government run institution and despite its problems is still many times better than what private healthcare in the US can deliver. The public is broadly in favour of expanding it and pumping in more money, so much so that all parties at the last election declared their intent to shield the NHS from spending cuts that every other public institution would have to bare.