DNS zone transfers ruled illegal
Daft US ruling of the day
A COMPUTER geek manager has been successfully prosecuted in the former British colony of Virginia for asking a public DNS server for all the particular public info it provides about a domain.
Yes, we know that network administrators do it all the time. Along with tracking spam and running a traceroute. But these are also things that are now illegal, at least in North Dakota.
David Ritz was hauled before the beak under the North Dakota Computer Crime Law and the court did not believe that he was not a hacker.
What worried the judge was if she didn't convict Ritz of being a hacker, then the computer crime laws in the Land of the Free would be turned on their head.
It was much tidier to make it a crime to access a server on the internet that is set up to provide that public info. It seems that no one explained to the judge what the Internet was.
Either way the judge felt that Ritz had engaged in a variety of activities without authorisation on the Internet. It looks like in North Dakota you will be required to get written permission before you connect to another person's server.
These included the sins of port scanning and the compilation and publication of Whois lookups without authorisation from Network Solutions.
More here. µ
Comments
Most servers aren't set up to provide the information publically..
If a system administrator has any sense whatsoever, the DNS server will be set up to deny zone transfers from anything other than authorised servers.Zone transfers are absolutely not required when performing normal DNS operations.
Still, the case is an overreaction, regardless.
???
Of course it's very difficult to explain to a judge that the Internet is a "Series of Tubes" (at least according to Ted Stevens Senator from Alaska)f this
if common sense no longer rules then let the whole f'n mess come crashing down