Coping with inappropriate recursive queries to a nameserver

[Rob Windsor]

Blackhole the IP address.

When their "bandwidth goes to crap" because of timeouts on name resolution,
they'll re-evaluate their configuration.

Another creative thing to do is to feed them corrupted data.  One such fine
example is to resolve everything to a .gov site of choice.

Rob++

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 22:17:24 PDT, verily did David Wolfskill write:

> I'll grant that my home network isn't a "large" installation, but I
> would expect that this issue would arise in them, and wonder what --
> if anything -- can be done about it.
> 
> By virtue of lucky timing, I got a static IP address when I signed up
> for DSL.  And since I have that address, I operate various servers that
> are "visible" there, including the master (externally-visible) name-
> server for catwhisker.org.
> 
> Since that ameserver needs to be able to be queried from the "outside
> world," I also provide slave nameservice for a handful of other zones.
> 
> So far, so good.
> 
> However, I have no desire to provide information about zone for which my
> nameserver is not authoritative (i.e., recursive queries), except for
> hosts on one of my internal networks.
> 
> Accordingly, in the "options" stanza for named.conf, I have:
> 
>         allow-recursion {
>                 127.0.0.1;
>                 172.16.0.0/15;
>         };
> 
> in order to enforce that.  (I have the 172.16.0.0/15 space split in
> half, with 172.16/16 for the "trusted" network and 172.17/16 for a
> "guest" network.  The latter is where the wireless access points go, for
> example.)
> 
> And as a result of this, I see (during my daily review of the logs)
> messages such as:
> 
> Apr 18 13:38:34 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for mail129.mail.bellsouth.net IN
> Apr 18 13:38:44 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.in-addr.arpa IN
> Apr 18 13:39:56 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.blackholes.mail-abuse.org IN
> Apr 18 13:40:11 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.dialups.mail-abuse.org IN
> Apr 18 13:40:16 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.blackholes.mail-abuse.org IN
> Apr 18 13:40:24 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.relays.mail-abuse.org IN
> Apr 18 13:40:31 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.dialups.mail-abuse.org IN
> Apr 18 13:40:36 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.proxies.relays.monkeys.com IN
> Apr 18 13:40:43 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.relays.mail-abuse.org IN
> Apr 18 13:40:49 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.list.dsbl.org IN
> Apr 18 13:41:01 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 69.58.152.205.relays.osirusoft.com IN
> Apr 18 13:41:11 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for 38.238.200.80.in-addr.arpa IN
> Apr 18 13:41:14 janus named[70668]: denied recursion for query from [65.179.6
>5.233].32829 for jrcsdevelopment.com.dsn.rfc-ignorant.org IN
> 
> Now, on the one hand, it is somewhat gratifying that the configuration
> is thus varified as doing what I want; on the other, the novelty has
> worn off quite soome time ago, and I would prefer to encourage whoever
> misconfigured the machine that was using the IP address 65.179.65.233 in
> that interval to fix things, both to quit cluttering my log and to
> improve any performance the machine in question might exhibit.
> 
> A "whois" query against the IP address shows that it's part of the
> SPRINT-IPDIAL-2BLK netblock, allocated to Sprint, at 12502 Sunrise
> Valley Dr., Reston, VA.  I tried writing to the listed contacts
> (ip-req at sprint.net and NOC at sprint.net), but got nothing except the auto-
> reply (as expected).
> 
> I've considered doing something such as just black-holing the IP
> address(es) in question at my firewall (at least temporarily), but
> I'm writing in the hope that one of my colleagues will have a
> reasonably-effective approach that isn't quite so crude.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> I'll summarize private responses in about a week (or when I get a Truly
> Elegant approach, whichever comes first).
> 
> Thanks,
> david
> -- 
> David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
> Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not
> consistent with reliability.  I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems.
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Internet: windsor at warthog.com                             __o
Life: Rob at Carrollton.Texas.USA.Earth                    _`\<,_
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The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.