Chromium’s DNS-Hijacking Tests Accused of Causing Half of All Root Queries

ZDNet reports:
In an effort to detect whether a network will hijack DNS queries, Google’s Chrome browser and its Chromium-based brethren randomly conjures up three domain names between 7 and 15 characters to test, and if the response of two domains returns the same IP, the browser believes the network is capturing and redirecting nonexistent domain requests. This test is completed on…

Can Firefox Be Saved?

“Even with another infusion of cash from Google, you have to wonder just how long Firefox will survive as a viable, mainstream web browser,” argues ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols:
I’ve been using Mozilla’s Firefox browser since it was still in beta. In 2004, for a while, it was my favorite web browser. Not because it was open-source, but because it…

Cloudflare’s 23-Minute Outage Today Also Took Down Major Web Sites

“Many major websites and services were unreachable for a period Friday afternoon due to issues at Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS service,” reports TechCrunch: The outage seems to have started at about 2:15 Pacific time and lasted for about 25 minutes before connections began to be restored. Google DNS may also have been affected. Cloudflare at 2:46 says “the issue has been identified…

Microsoft Warns of a 17-Year-Old ‘Wormable’ Bug

Since WannaCry and NotPetya struck the internet just over three years ago, the security industry has scrutinized every new Windows bug that could be used to create a similar world-shaking worm. Now one potentially “wormable” vulnerability — meaning an attack can spread from one machine to another with no human interaction — has appeared in Microsoft’s implementation of the domain name…

Ask Slashdot: Could We Not Use DNS For a Certificate Revocation Mechanism?

Long-time Slashdot reader dhammabum writes: As reported in the recent slashdot story, starting in September we system admins will be forced into annually updating TLS certificates because of a decision by Apple, abetted by Google and Mozilla. Supposedly this measure somewhat rectifies the current ineffective certificate revocation list system by limiting the use of compromised certificates to one year… But in…

Multiple Service Providers Are Blocking DuckDuckGo In India

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Just a few days after India banned 59 Chinese apps, many users in the country are reporting that privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is inaccessible to them. Users on Reddit have noticed they’re unable to access the site on their Airtel and Reliance Jio mobile network connections. While Some users on Twitter…

Comcast Becomes the First ISP To Join Mozilla’s TRR Program

Comcast has joined Cloudflare and NextDNS in partnering with Mozilla’s Trusted Recursive Resolver program, which aims to make DNS more trusted and secure. Neowin reports: Commenting on the move, Firefox CTO Eric Rescorla, said: “Comcast has moved quickly to adopt DNS encryption technology and we’re excited to have them join the TRR program. Bringing ISPs into the TRR program helps us…

Insignia Project Aims To Resurrect Xbox Live For the Original Xbox

Last week, Kotaku reported on a new project, called Insignia, “that aims to recreate the original Xbox Live service, potentially restoring online play to many dozens of classic Xbox games that fell offline when the original Xbox Live service closed on April 15, 2010.” From the report: The project’s announcement on the r/originalxbox subreddit came from SoullessSentinel, a screen name of…

A Massive Database of 8 Billion Thai Internet Records Leaks

Thailand’s largest cell network AIS has pulled a database offline that was spilling billions of real-time internet records on millions of Thai internet users. From a report: Security researcher Justin Paine said in a blog post that he found the database, containing DNS queries and Netflow data, on the internet without a password. With access to this database, Paine said that…

What Keeps Developers Happy? Contributing to Open Source

This week long-time open source advocate Matt Asay warned employers that the best way to keep their developers happy was to let them contribute to open source projects:
SlashData recently surveyed over 16,000 developers to see what makes them tick… what they care about. The data is collected in SlashData’s State of the Developer Nation, though let me give you the tl;dr:…