Very nicely done: reporting this as abuse to the companies offering these affiliate programs seems quite appropriate, and it sounds like they reacted appropriately. One person complaining to an ISP is noise; one person making an abuse report is all it takes to get that ISP banned from the affiliate program.

Thanks! I was in a state of hopelessness for a week or so till I had that idea.

I was very impressed with your firm but polite tone! We'll done.

"I will continue to monitor periodically their DNS entries and compare them with other public DNS servers."

This would make for a great watchdog site to provide visibility across different ISPs (and could also discourage other ISPs from pulling this crap).

I think so too, though CDN's will mess with the results a bit. It would be nice if DNS had a way to sign/validate/somehow know the record you got was correct. Especially on the apex record as it can happen before ssl.

It's interesting no one brought up DNSSEC[1]. Has anything happened there since 2010?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System_Security_Ext...

CDNs will indeed mess with the results, but it would still likely be possible to tell the difference between a legitimate result and a forged one, especially if you know something about the CDN structures used by major site. And the more people run it, the more likely you can detect anomalies, much like Perspectives does for SSL.

SSL, incidentally, seems like a major help here: you could detect common DNS hijackings by accessing the site via SSL. If you access https://amazon.com/ , an ISP hijacking the site would produce either a certificate error or a connection failure (depending on whether they even attempt to listen for SSL traffic).

Gaming the system seems to be the secret to winning.

This is why you should encrypt your DNS.

Do you have a link to a usable encrypted DNS solution? I searched but didn't find anything actively used, but a lot of proposals.

DNSCrypt http://www.opendns.com/technology/dnscrypt/

This works well for me. But I have found that this is the kind of thing where an expert can pop in and say "have you considered risk X with solution Y?" and leave me dumbfounded.

So use at your own risk.

  This also shows a weakness in DNS. There is currently no 
  way to validate the DNS record you’re being served is what 
  the person hosting the website intended.

That's what DNSSEC is for, but it hasn't become pervasive enough yet to be able to depend on it.

Strangely enough, the largest deployment of DNSSEC-enabled, customer-facing, recursive/caching nameservers in the United States is... Comcast. That's right, the same Comcast that, back in 2009, hijacked NXDOMAIN responses by default and returned A records pointing to servers that served up advertisement-laden search pages over http.

I was also impressed to see that my Comcast connection uses IPv6. Turns out they have (or will have) one of the the largest IPv6 network in the world - http://gigaom.com/2013/11/27/comcast-xfinity-broadband-is-no...

Sadly DNSSEC kinda sucks. Here's some earlier discussion on HN, with a lot of links. (Namedrop: tptacek is against DNSSEC and talks about it in the link.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5937004

TLDR: DNSSEC is kinda complex and hacko, doesn't protect you as much as you might think, and introduces a whole new PKI that you should probably trust even less than the current ones. But read the links above for the real story.

I'm using DNSCrypt right now, which (correct me if I'm wrong) protects against DNS interception by my ISP, and seems like a whole lot less trouble than DNSSEC.

"protects against DNS interception by my ISP"

Your ISP can still see the IP address of every web server that you connect to, and can still see the "Host" header that your browser sends in HTTP requests, and also in HTTPS requests (due to SNI) if you're using a reasonably modern OS/Browser combo.

All you've done is add an additional third party that can view and log what you're doing.

All you've done is add an additional third party that can view and log what you're doing.

You forgot the part where it's protecting against trashy ISPs like the one in this article.

One a slightly related note, in Chrome extensions, it's possible to redirect DNS requests on a per-URL basis. This is how Media Hint works to allow non-US Netflix users access the US version of the site.

I'm surprised we haven't seen similar behaviour from Chrome extensions. I'm sure it would be caught eventually, but this isn't exactly something that people tend to look for, so it would take a while for people to catch it.

I'm surprised we haven't seen similar behaviour from Chrome extensions

The "Window Resizer" Chrome extension got a silent update a few weeks ago. It rewrote all the links on Google search result pages to point to a proxy that added affiliate links where possible.

Super shady stuff. I never rely on any ISP provided DNS servers. I'm glad you talked to the the etailers to let them know what was going on. These business practices do introduce latency, regardless of what he told you. Not to mention, they are highly unethical and dishonest.

A really shady ISP could intercept and redirect any outgoing port 53 traffic to their servers.

If that were the case, I would immediately terminate any relationship with them and out them in public. While technically possible, you're now talking about a whole other form of dishonest behavior. Some would say criminal.

My ISP [1] actually does this. They offer an opt-out of NXDOMAIN hijacking, but silently proxy all port 53 traffic regardless.

This experience has taught me simply to distrust the DNS protocol in its current form and use DNSCrypt in all situations.

  [1]: Shaw Communications, chosen by the landlord.
  [2]: http://dnscrypt.org/

Are you using Shaw's DNS servers? I don't remember dealing with NXDOMAIN issues when I had Shaw, but I have run my own DNS servers for a long time now.

It's been 7 years or so since I used Shaw.

It doesn't matter what DNS servers I specify; Shaw intercepts all DNS requests. I can even make up a nonexistent DNS server as long as it's internet-routable, and will get a valid response from Shaw. This works, for example:

  dig @www.facebook.com news.ycombinator.com

All that means is that you're using their recursive DNS servers. They can configure these any way they choose. Stop using third party recursive DNS servers and you will not have problems with unwanted advertising and NXDOMAIN hijacking.

Run your own recurive DNS server (e.g. dnscache) on 127.0.0.1.

Alternatively, query authoritative servers directly. Use a port other than 53 if you really think your ISP is trying to filter your outgoing queries; I sincerely doubt they would bother.

192.5.6.30 is an authoritative .com server. Memorize that number.

dig +norecurse -b0.0.0.0#5353 news.ycombinator.com @192.5.6.30

The names on the right of the "NS" rows are the authoritative servers for ycombinator.com. (Cloudflare. No comment.)

192.5.6.30 has the IP addresses for those. You'll find them in the "ADDITIONAL SECTION". Let's say it lists 1.2.3.4 as an IP address.

dig +norecurse -b0.0.0.0#5353 news.ycombinator.com @1.2.3.4

And you should receive the IP address for news.ycombinator.com, or at least your next clue where to look (if the DNS admin has chosen to play games with CNAME).

This method can be automated.

Your ISP is not "intercept[ing] all DNS requests". You are sending your requests to your ISP's recursive DNS servers (why?), and those servers are feeding you whatever information the ISP chooses. Go figure, they are sending you bogus info to inject advertising. Solution: Stop sending your requests to your ISP's recursive DNS servers (or any third party recursive DNS servers). Send your requests to your own recursive DNS server running on 127.0.0.1, or send nonrecursive requests to authoritative DNS servers only.

Did you even read his comment?

"dig @www.facebook.com news.ycombinator.com" does not use the ISP's DNS servers at all. It sends a DNS query to Facebook for Google, which should normally fail. His ISP hijacks the request and provides a response. In this scenario, the advice in your comment is pointless because they will hijack requests whether they are directly to authoritative servers or if they are to recursive servers.

"What aren't you getting?"

I am glad you asked. I am not getting what it is you are trying to say. I also do not get why you keep mentioning Google.

"The query for Facebooks server may use the ISPs DNS server, but that's not the problem."

Why is that not the problem?

If you query the ISP's DNS servers, then the ISP can send you bogus answers. By giving you bogus answer they can redirect your HTTP requests, which enables them to insert ads, among other things. I presume you would want to avoid this. I gave examples how you could do that. One way is to run your own recursive DNS server on 127.0.0.1. Another is to only query the proper authoritative servers.

Shaw uses a "DNS Redirect service". Customers can opt out.

https://community.shaw.ca/docs/DOC-1218

Even if a customer does not disable this "service", I believe Shaw will not interfere with packets sent to remote DNS servers other than Shaw's.

In any event, the reason I commented on this was because (unless the customer has changed his defaults)

dig @www.facebook.com news.ycombinator.com

sends queries to Shaw's DNS servers. So stop doing this.

Unless the customer opts out, these queries are going to get redirected.

If you wanted to test your theory (that Shaw is redirecting every DNS packet sent by evey customer, even ones not using Shaw's DNS servers), then the above invocation of dig will not test this. It sends queries to the Shaw DNS servers. Stop doing that.

Why does it send queries to Shaw's DNS servers? From the dig(1) manpage:

"SIMPLE USAGE A typical invocation of dig looks like:

            dig @server name type

       where:

       server
           is the name or IP address of the name server to query. This can be
           an IPv4 address in dotted-decimal notation or an IPv6 address in
           colon-delimited notation. When the supplied server argument is a
           hostname, dig resolves that name before querying that name server.
           If no server argument is provided, dig consults /etc/resolv.conf
           and queries the name servers listed there. The reply from the name
           server that responds is displayed.

"

If for some reason you wanted to send a query for news.ycombinator.com to the IP address for www.facebook.com (without using any recursive DNS servers like Shaw's which could give you bogus answers), then

dig +norecurse @31.13.75.17 news.ycombinator.com

would be the appropriate way to do it, assuming you choose to use dig.

DNSCrypt is useless. Yeah, they can't see that you did a DNS A record lookup for www.example.com, but they can still see your subsequent TCP connection to the IP you received in your encrypted DNS response, and see the HTTP Host header that your browser sends. Even if it's a HTTPS connection, modern browsers leak the hostname then too, due to SNI.

Signing DNS responses has much more value than encrypting them.

If you set up DNSCrypt with OpenDNS, you're not improving the situation. You're just adding an additional third party that can see what you're doing.

Why do you keep posting this? It's irrelevant because the idea isn't to hide what site you're visiting, it's to prevent the ISP from modifying the DNS responses. Signing DNS responses would be helpful if that was actually enforced anywhere.

DNSCrypt is a perfectly fine solution for this threat model.

  Super shady stuff. I never rely on any ISP provided DNS servers

Doesn't that mean that you don't benefit from nearby CDNs? Perhaps worth the tradeoff anyway.

8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are anycast.

You don't trust your ISP, so you go for the one company whose entire profit model is build around ads and profiling their users, and who is known to cooperate (willingly and/or unwillingly) with the NSA in their logging programs? I'm not sure that's the right response...

And GOOG-owned. Spam from a small-scale ISP, or tracking by a big ad firm? You lose either way.

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy

"We built Google Public DNS to make the web faster and to retain as little information about usage as we could, while still being able to detect and fix problems. Google Public DNS does not permanently store personally identifiable information."

"personally identifiable"

I don't see how this necessarily helps.

Edit: I did a little research on CDN resolution back in undergrad. One of the things that was most difficult to measure, or even define, was DNS "performance."

Just because Google anycasts its DNS network does not guarantee the best performance. Running namehelp[1] on many machines I often found that the "fastest" DNS server was not in the obvious set of DNS servers that you use.

So I guess the answer to the parent's question is: yes, possibly, but it's hard to define what "fastest" even means here. I would say that jrockway's response is even incorrect in his (implied) definite assertion that it cannot degrade your experience. If you want to know, you should measure from your endpoint. There is no other way.

[1] http://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/projects/namehelp

If your ISP and/or Aspira were making any significant amount of affiliate commissions, I would be surprised if the merchants do not take action against them for fraud.

This sounds like the same behaviour that Shawn Hogan got in trouble for with cookie stuffing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Hogan

Interestingly, you might have benefitted more from keeping quiet about this. While the original retailers are losing money through this, you aren't really affected negatively by them doing it. In fact, with this additional revenue source, they might be able to support thinner margins on their broadband charges, saving you some money. You did the morally correct thing, but perhaps at a potential personal cost.

The affiliates are getting hurt hugely though. Affiliate profits are supposed to be for helping the purchase - through marketing efficiency. The ISP is doing none of that, they are simply mafiosoing affiliate dollars through hijack. Amazon would not like this, the ISP gives exactly 0% efficiency boost to the e-commerce process, they're just a gypsie snake.

Why did you have to end an otherwise good answer with a racist slur?

As a ISP when we were considering using Aspira they claimed that no referral tokens would be replaced and that the only behavior was injecting a popup coupon window.

I decided not to proceed with it because it seemed like a support nightmare and tampering with non-malicious subscriber traffic crosses a line.

Their marketing affiliates (such as Cash4Trafik) are always reaching out to CEO types at small ISPs and the money they bring (particularly when you are small) can be hard to pass up.

May I ask which ISP you work for?

Knowing that you consider tampering with nonmalicious subscriber traffic to be crossing a line is something I would pay a premium for.

Is there a way we can choke companies like Apira by making a concerted distributed effort to disrupt the referral programs they exploit (either by reporting them or by feeding them false referrals somehow)?

I'd like to try out this curl command. I'm not using macports, though. Like many people, I've switched to brew since some time. Is there a quick way to see if my curl install is compiled with 'ares' whatever that is?

Cox does something similar but bypasses the the DNS records and just slipstreams in a response. I noticed Cox would redirect javascript requests to their own HTTP server and put in their own snippets, effectively doing mass javascript injection.

The snippet ended up being some sort of alert about upcoming maintenance, but using a malicious technique for a benign purpose is the path to the dark side. Use HTTPS!

(I use 8.8.8.8, it didn't help)

Comcast also injects JavaScript into HTML responses if they feel the need to send you a message.

Here's the code they use: https://gist.github.com/ryankearney/4146814

And here's my (extremely short) writeup on it: http://blog.ryankearney.com/2013/01/comcast-caught-intercept...

Eric, I am very sorry to see this happen to you. Unfortunately more and more companies are using our data for marketing purposes.

All is not lost though.

There are several ways you can protect yourself from these practices. The first thing I would do is get a router capable of using dnscrypt-proxy (http://www.opendns.com/technol.... Then you can be confident that your DNS traffic is not being modified by your ISP. It does require that you have trust in a 3rd party DNS provider like OpenDNS, but at the end of the day you have to trust someone to provide DNS lookups.

The second option is to setup DNSSEC so that you can verify where your DNS responses are coming from. While people will still be able to intercept what sites you're looking up, at least you know you're getting valid responses which is better than your situation is currently.

Third is to use both. =)

Anyhow, really awesome to see people standing against these practices. It takes users complaining to make change. The sad truth of the matter.

It does require that you have trust in a 3rd party DNS provider like OpenDNS ...

The same OpenDNS that hijacks NXDOMAIN responses?

Only for the unregistered accounts IIRC. Can't you disable it after going thought the simple registration and claiming of IP address?

Here it goes: Behind a ISP-wide cache. Any 'traceroute' passes by transtelco.net (ISP used to have their own infraestructure for voip services Megafon) now i have 5/6? DNS jumps! and all my traffic going to Transtelco.

  traceroute to news.ycombinator.com (198.41.191.47), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
  1  customer-GDL-**-***.megared.net.mx                 << 177.230.**.*** Dynamic IP, GDL is the city of the company
  2  10.0.28.62 (10.0.28.62)  8.939 ms  8.941 ms  8.935 ms
  3  10.2.28.195 (10.2.28.195)  8.912 ms  8.903 ms  8.891 ms
  4  pe-cob.megared.net.mx (189.199.117.***)  8.878 ms  8.866 ms  14.201 ms << COB is the user city
  5  10.3.0.29 (10.3.0.29)  23.494 ms  23.483 ms  23.408 ms
  6  10.3.0.13 (10.3.0.13)  22.842 ms  19.609 ms  19.596 ms
  7  10.3.0.10 (10.3.0.10)  19.560 ms  19.555 ms  19.536 ms
  8  201-174-24-233.transtelco.net (201.174.24.233)  19.527 ms  20.650 ms  19.468 ms
  9  201-174-254-105.transtelco.net (201.174.254.105)  34.239 ms  31.793 ms  31.268 ms
  10  fe3-5.br01.lax05.pccwbtn.net (63.218.73.25)  31.792 ms  31.736 ms  33.533 ms
  11  any2ix.coresite.com (206.223.143.150)  32.834 ms  33.221 ms  33.429 ms
  12  ae3-50g.cr1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.124.113)  41.288 ms  41.228 ms  41.231 ms
  13  ae2-50g.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.127.142)  42.632 ms ae1-50g.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.127.138)  35.192 ms 33.860 ms
  14  as13335.xe-11-0-6.ar1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.125.106)  35.143 ms  44.714 ms  44.666 ms
  15  198.41.191.47 (198.41.191.47)  37.638 ms  37.239 ms  36.997 ms

I don't know how normal or ethic is this type of cache. No download limits, I have the 10mb and get 20mb(2000-2300kbps) downloads, for uploads is limited to 1mb.

As long as they don't tamper with the data I think an HTTP cache is perfectly OK. HTTP has loads of built-in mechanism for that kind of caching. It saves bandwidth upstream, not least for website owners, and may make your web browsing speed faster if the proxy is good.

Tampering with the data, however, is not OK at all. In the U.S. I believe it may make the ISP exempt from for example the safe harbor clauses in the DMCA.

Your traceroute doesn't show that you're behind a cache, just that your ISP uses transtelco.net for IP transit; at least to the destinations you tried.