Forwarded from: rferrellat_private > "It is normal for a company to run two name servers. If you manage > to shoot both of them down, the company will disappear from the > Internet," Petursson said. No, it will simply stop receiving information sent to that hostname, and even then not (entirely) until the name to IP address mapping expires from the cache of other DNS servers (usually 20-24 hours). It is important to remember that computers use IP addresses to communicate over the Internet. They don't care about or make any use of the host names that we're so fond of employing. The domain name system exists solely to make it easier for people to find the Web site they're looking for. If you make a host table on your own computer, you can map whatever name you want to whatever address you want, DNS notwithstanding. It doesn't have to conform to the '.com/.org/.net/.gov/.mil/' et al. conventions, either. If you're using Win 98, for example, and you make a file called 'hosts' in the /windows directory on your root drive that contains the following line 207.46.197.102 i.like.to.pick.my.nose digger and then type either "i.like.to.pick.my.nose" or "digger" into the URL box of your browser, you'll end up at Microsoft, just the same as if you typed "www..microsoft.com." We used to keep our own individual host tables and update them every night, back before the Internet got so big that this became impractical. DNS cache poisoning and DNS denial of service attacks are annoying, and even potentially damaging if you're not very savvy about the various alternate means of mining for domain name to IP address mapping. But they don't in themselves make anyone 'disappear from the Internet.' Directory assistance may be out of commission, but the phone still works if you know the number. RGF Robert G. Ferrell rferrellat_private - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jun 06 2002 - 23:04:34 PDT