NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
| Re: RoadRunner intercepted & changed my FireFox experience. said by CajunWon  :How does one figure which DNS is best to avoid intrusions, or is DNS purely a service which does not facilitate snooping/spying on me? Anybody running a DNS server can, in theory, snoop, or spy on you. The Internet is not a private medium, and privacy is a very scarce commodity on the Internet.
Open DNS site suggests my DNS setting can affect my LAN security. So how to pick the best?
I can't envision how DNS can affect LAN security, outside of the possibility of being redirected to a malicious site. But that would be more a problem with computer security, I think.
Unless they are referring to the nature of running a 'ping' command (or the like) against a NetBIOS computer name. If you run 'ping local_machine_name', the command initiates a lookup in the 'hosts', or 'lmhosts' file. If no match is found, then the lookup goes to the DNS server configured for your computer. This will, usually, fail because most people don't use a host name with a DNS record for the 'local_machine_name'. But you have just sent a DNS request outside of your LAN with 'local_machine_name' in that request. Moreover, a redirecting DNS server, such as Road Runner, or OpenDNS operates, will send you to a web page, so your 'ping' command will either fail, or just ping the redirect web site.
With a free OpenDNS account, you can add your 'local_machine_name' to an exception list, and OpenDNS will not redirect on that name. Or, if you are using a router which allows IP address reservation, or you are willing to manually set up static IP addresses on your LAN, you can just add your 'local_machine_name' to your 'hosts' file (or, if you know how to set it up, your 'lmhosts' file).
In the case of your 'local_machine_name' listed in your 'hosts' file, your network commands, such as 'ping', will always find the LAN IP address without going off to the DNS servers.
You need to be able to set up your LAN so your computers always have the same IP address (either IP address reservation in a router, or manually configured static IP addresses0 for your 'hosts', or 'lmhosts' file to work properly.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
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