alt Hacker NewsDNS: A Replacement for Finger
Comments
I've really not written as much as I used to - at least not on my personal blog, but I covered finger there and my nostalgia back in August last year. It also did the rounds on here: https://blog.alexellis.io/the-90s-unix-command-fell-out-of-f...
The DNS angle is nice and I get why using a TXT record was interesting for you as a replacement.
I don't think simply having data returned was the issue. It was more about the kinds of data it exposed and doxxed from the user - to anyone with access. That and of course the vulnerability that caused the worm to propagate.
That said - we're seeing RCEs in Node, Python, and other common tools now and they're not going the way of the dodo. So maybe finger's time was simply up - and Facebook, Twitter, etc just took over.
Something ironic about pure text, status info, cgi-bin being replaced by long form video of tigers chasing men and riots. That's what our brains are being fed these days.
Fun. But a status needs to be updated semi-frequently and my dns service only offers api mgmt for bigger customers.
I guess I could delegate a zone to another provider who does.
I don't think this is a generally safe thing to do. DNS is allowed to be unmoderated because it's supposed to be for technical information only. If too many people starts doing this, someone will start forcing DNS infra to censor it, by OP53B or stricter KYC or legally mandated DNS defederation or anything that may or may not even work.
I don't need it.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44916853
The real challenge is not finding another channel for transmitting personal information. It is finding something else for the FINGER protocol to do. (-:
Page does not seem to work with Firefox on Linux, or maybe its just down.
Seems like I get served gibberish bytes in the response body when visiting this site! I promise I’m not a bot :(
> many large TXT records can be abused for DDoS purposes. dig -t txt ebay.com for a DDoS Example used today
What does this mean, I see a bunch in the lookup but I don't understand the ddos part
What is this altchan.org place? Looks very new. Where's the reply button?
And why do we want finger to exist?
Nice! Very cool personal image board implementation as well, I have a personal wiki, but I think something like this is better as it has the potential to be collaborative as well.