The Ask Mr. DNS Podcast

In this episode, Matt and Cricket are joined by Ulrich Wisser, a colleague of Matt’s at ICANN. Ulrich explains the latest efforts in the area of DNSSEC automation, including CDS, CDNSKEY and now even CSYNC records and how they’re used. Ulrich mentions a Github repo [https://github.com/oskar456/cds-updates] that includes a list of registries, registrars, DNS providers and software that support DNSSEC automation; and an SSAC report [https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/security-and-stability-advisory-committee-ssac-reports/sac-126-16-08-2024-en.pdf] on DS record automation. This very informative section gradually devolves into amusing (for us, anyway) recollections of attempts to “tamper” various hardware security modules. Toward the end, as is their wont (and when do you ever hear the word “wont” except in that context?), Matt and Cricket profess their childlike excitement over the upcoming “Murderbot” [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30444310/] series, and Matt admits (much to Cricket’s astonishment) that he has never read “Dune.”

In this episode, Matt and Cricket are joined by Renée Burton, Infoblox’s Vice President of Threat Intelligence. They briefly introduce Protective DNS and its advantages as a security mechanism, then talk about threat feeds and how they’re created, and finally discuss Renée’s team and their work on analyzing Passive DNS data and DNS metadata to detect–and in some cases predict–the malicious use of DNS. Toward the end, they segue (or perhaps “lapse”?) into a meandering discussion of Neal Stephenson’s “Polostan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polostan]” (Cricket is, embarrassingly, stuck), Dennis E. Taylor’s Bobiverse [https://bobiverse.fandom.com/wiki/Bobiverse_Wiki] series (which Matt recommends), von Neumann probes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft] (which Cricket either had not heard of or did not remember, necessitating an explanation from Matt, and which illustrate John von Neumann’s incredible mind and remarkable versatility), “Silo [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14688458/]” (because Cricket is still not over Rebecca Ferguson–see episode 63) and AppleTV+’s run of other worthwhile shows, including “Slow Horses [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5875444/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1],” “Bad Monkey [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15203646/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1],” and “For All Mankind [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1].”

To make good on a new year’s resolution, Mr. DNS recently put on his system administrator hat and upgraded his creaky WordPress installation. (Why does Mr. DNS insist on running his own WordPress installation rather than putting it in the new-fangled cloud that’s so popular these days? Well, Mr. DNS is a creature of habit and stuck in his ways. He will not discuss this topic further.) The upgrade appeared to go without incident, but alas, it was not so. Mr. DNS is grateful to eagled-eyed listener Lyle Tagawa, who noticed that Mr. DNS’s beloved podcast logo no longer appeared in the feed. Mr. DNS dived back into the depths of WordPress and emerged victorious, or so he thought. The default logo remained in some obstinate podcast clients. His many seconds of Internet research leads him to believe that publishing a post will cause podcast clients of the world to fetch and once again display the beloved logo. Thus he writes this post and its accompanying sound file with…one second of silence. He hopes you are not terribly disappointed to find the written rather than spoken word in the feed. He promises another episode will arrive at some future date, but he has learned never to commit to a particular time: one cannot rush the process.

In this episode, Matt and Cricket are joined by Professor Casey Deccio, of DNSViz and now Brigham Young University fame. (Matt is embarrassed and sorry that he misremembered and called Casey’s magnum opus “DNSSECViz” by mistake.) They tackle a listener’s question about a recent “DNS outage,” examining the causes of both Facebook’s and Slack’s failures and how they might have been avoided. Then they dive into recent developments in sci-fi and fantasy, including “Dune” (thumbs-up from Cricket), “Foundation,” Charles Stross’s “The Merchant Princes” series, and Cixin Liu’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy.” (During this latter segment, Cricket might have gone on for a little too long about Rebecca Ferguson.)

In this episode, Matt and Cricket are joined by Graeme Bunton, director of the newly formed DNS Abuse Institute [https://dnsabuseinstitute.org].  Graeme describes his background and explains the mission of the institute and what they’re working on.  And we finally (sort of) answer a long-suffering listener’s question about producing a kind of “Compleat DNS Specifications RFC” and ramble on for a bit about two great new sci-fi books, Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FHBV4ZX/] (which Matt mistakenly called the “Hail Mary Project”…) and Martha Wells’s Fugitive Telemetry [https://publishing.tor.com/fugitivetelemetry-marthawells/9781250765376/]. Oh, and the lengthy hiatus? We shan’t speak of it.