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

The modern student of history and economics will have little difficulty discovering for himself where Communist theory departs from the most elementary aspects of reality.

W. Cleon Skousen

It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record.

G. K. Chesterton

The law helps him who watches.

Unknown

Everything stands or falls with the act of speaking out.

Mattias Desmet

But the mere fact that social order reigns to some degree does not mean that a given society has come to explicitly understand its own behavior, its own moral code.

Jordan Peterson

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

Unknown

The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.

William O. Douglas

We must not seek martyrdom, though we must endure it when it comes.

U.S. Conf. of Catholic Bishops

It is at least as certain that God . . . exists as any demonstration in geometry can be.

René Descartes

The Sacrament [of Confession] gives us a double dose of what we need: forgiveness of our sins and training in humility.

Jimmy Seghers

Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

I am a gun. I can be used for both good and evil. I can take a life. I can be used to save them.

R. G. Yoho

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

Henry Ford

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Maya Angelou

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

William Faulkner

How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success.

Elbert Hubbard

In every group of intimidated people, each thinks ‘I will rebel,’ but each waits for the others.

Mignon McLaughlin

Just as pragmatism is unpragmatic and empiricism is not empirical, rationalism is irrational. You can’t prove that truth is only what can be proved.

Peter Kreeft

I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

Abraham Lincoln

The knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all.

John Damascene