Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Area of Focus

From: "Jeremy Spilman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 03:14:28 -0800

On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 08:57:53AM +0000, Matt Corallo wrote:
>> There was recently some discussion around dnsseeds. Currently some
>> dnsseeds are getting blocked by ISPs because the hosts they pick up
>> (which run bitcoin core nodes) often run rather web servers alongside
>> which serve malware or whatever else and thus end up on IP-based malware
>> blacklists.

On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 02:08:17 -0800, Roy Badami <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Why would we want to have anything to do with people who are hosting
> malware?  Or do I misunderstand?

It sounds like Matt is saying the nodes the dnsseed is pointing to as  
valid full nodes, that those IPs are hosting the malware. Since the  
dnsseed picks up any stable nodes it can find without auditing, it's  
perhaps not surprising some servers in the world are running a full node  
and a malware server together.

I guess what confused me about this though, how are ISPs reading the  
dnsseed's node list, scanning *those* IPs for malware, and then ending up  
blocking the dnsseed? Seems like a pretty winding path to end up blocking  
a DNS server?

Since when do ISPs null-route a DNS server for happening to resolve some  
domains to IPs which happen to also be hosting some malware? Null-route  
those endpoint IPs sure, but the DNS server too? I guess there was that  
incident of Microsoft taking over No-IP.com -- are dnsseeds being blocked  
ostensibly because they are acting as dyanamic DNS infrastructure for  
malware sites?