Missing dot drops Sweden off the Internet

**Glaswegian** · 10-13-2009, 01:09 PM

What was essentially a typo last night resulted in the temporary disappearance from the Internet of almost a million Web sites in Sweden -- every address with a .se top-level down name.

According to Web monitoring company Pingdom, which happens to be based in Sweden, the disablement of an entire top-level domain "is exceptionally rare. …Usually it's a single domain name that has been incorrectly configured or the DNS servers of a single Web host having problems. Problems that affect an entire top-level zone have very wide-ranging effects as can be seen by the .se incident. … Imagine the same thing happening to the .com domain, which has over 80 million domain names."

The total blackout of .se lasted for about an hour and a half, Pingdom says, although aftershocks are expected to continue.

"The .SE registry used an incorrectly configured script to update the .se zone, which introduced an error to every single .se domain name," says Pingdom. "We have spoken to a number of industry insiders and what happened is that when updating the data, the script did not add a terminating '.' to the DNS records in the .se zone. That trailing dot is necessary in the settings for DNS to understand that '.se” is the top-level domain. It is a seemingly small detail, but without it, the whole DNS lookup chain broke down."

Sweden's Internet Infrastructure Foundation, which administers .se, issued this statement: "The cause was an incorrect software update, which, despite our testing procedures were not detected. Thanks to well-functioning surveillance system .SE discovered the error immediately and a new file with the DNS data (zone file) was produced and distributed within one hour. … The false information that was sent out affected accessibility to all .se domains for a short time. However, there may still be some name servers that have not changed out of misinformation against the real."

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...e=rss_security

Mcninjaguy · 10-14-2009, 01:55 AM

Wow such far reaching consequences for such a small error as it is of this world.

10-13-2009, 01:09 PM	#1 (permalink)
Glaswegian Moderator/ Rangemaster TSF Academy; Analyst, Security Team; Oor Wullie; TSF Surgeon and Resident Comic Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Glasgow Posts: 25,377 OS: Win XP Pro SP3 / Win 7 Pro My System Blog Entries: 10	Missing dot drops Sweden off the Internet What was essentially a typo last night resulted in the temporary disappearance from the Internet of almost a million Web sites in Sweden -- every address with a .se top-level down name. According to Web monitoring company Pingdom, which happens to be based in Sweden, the disablement of an entire top-level domain "is exceptionally rare. …Usually it's a single domain name that has been incorrectly configured or the DNS servers of a single Web host having problems. Problems that affect an entire top-level zone have very wide-ranging effects as can be seen by the .se incident. … Imagine the same thing happening to the .com domain, which has over 80 million domain names." The total blackout of .se lasted for about an hour and a half, Pingdom says, although aftershocks are expected to continue. "The .SE registry used an incorrectly configured script to update the .se zone, which introduced an error to every single .se domain name," says Pingdom. "We have spoken to a number of industry insiders and what happened is that when updating the data, the script did not add a terminating '.' to the DNS records in the .se zone. That trailing dot is necessary in the settings for DNS to understand that '.se” is the top-level domain. It is a seemingly small detail, but without it, the whole DNS lookup chain broke down." Sweden's Internet Infrastructure Foundation, which administers .se, issued this statement: "The cause was an incorrect software update, which, despite our testing procedures were not detected. Thanks to well-functioning surveillance system .SE discovered the error immediately and a new file with the DNS data (zone file) was produced and distributed within one hour. … The false information that was sent out affected accessibility to all .se domains for a short time. However, there may still be some name servers that have not changed out of misinformation against the real." http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...e=rss_security __________________ Iain - Defender of the Haggis and all things Scottish. I don't help by PM - post in the Forums. PC Safety & Security::PC running a bit slow?::Donate::Photographers Corner

10-14-2009, 01:55 AM	#2 (permalink)
Mcninjaguy Temporarily Banned Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Posts: 10,422 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit My System Blog Entries: 1	Re: Missing dot drops Sweden off the Internet Wow such far reaching consequences for such a small error as it is of this world.