No-IP has been taken down by Microsoft!

[barnabas1969]

I received the following message From No-IP.com in my Spam folder (Gmail). Good thing I checked spam, because I was trying everything to figure out why I couldn't connect to home from work today. It should not have gone to spam. Here's the text of the message:

We want to update all our loyal customers about the service outages that many of you are experiencing today and to provide a temporary solution until we can get the issue resolved.

Our temporary solution is to log into your account and create a new hostname using any from the list (we have removed the ones included in the Microsoft takedown and have added new, unaffected ones including: ddns.net, webhop.me, serveminecraft.net, ddnsking.com, onthewifi.com).

Why is this happening? You can also read our formal response on our blog to comment and share on Facebook and Twitter.
It is not a technical issue. This morning, Microsoft served a federal court order and seized 22 of our most commonly used domains because they claimed that some of the subdomains have been abused by creators of malware. We were very surprised by this. We have a long history of proactively working with other companies when cases of alleged malicious activity have been reported to us. Unfortunately, Microsoft never contacted us or asked us to block any subdomains, even though we have an open line of communication with Microsoft corporate executives.

We have been in contact with Microsoft today. They claim that their intent is to only filter out the known bad hostnames in each seized domain, while continuing to allow the good hostnames to resolve. However, this is not happening. Apparently, the Microsoft infrastructure is not able to handle the billions of queries from our customers. Millions of innocent users are experiencing outages to their services because of Microsoft's attempt to remediate hostnames associated with a few bad actors.

Had Microsoft contacted us, we could and would have taken immediate action. Microsoft now claims that it just wants to get us to clean up our act, but its draconian actions have affected millions of innocent Internet users.

Vitalwerks and No¬IP have a very strict abuse policy. Our abuse team is constantly working to keep the No-IP system domains free of spam and malicious activity. We use sophisticated filters and we scan our network daily for signs of malicious activity. Even with such precautions, our free dynamic DNS service does occasionally fall prey to cyber scammers, spammers, and malware distributors. But this heavy-handed action by Microsoft benefits no one. We will do our best to resolve this problem quickly.

[3rob3]

Thanks for sharing......I have been trying to figure out WTH was going on with my no-ip.

[barnabas1969]

The weird part is that I can get to it from my Android phone, but I can't get to it from my laptop at work.

[STC]

^ DNS changes haven't propagated yet / Android still using cached routes.

I wonder what on Earth made MS think this was a good idea? Talk about peeing off a mass of people.
I mean, just wha....? I'm amazed, no gobsmacked, no I mean.... what the....HUH....???

Are they actually ON this planet?

Luckily I just use one no-ip.biz address to admin a remote router. No biggie thankfully. I use statics for home and businesses. Sorry for some of you others though

[holidayboy]

Static IP's here too - just in case this type of thing happens.

[choliscott]

Looks like NoIp might have known about this (before today)

http://www.noticeoflawsuit.com/

[barnabas1969]

Here's a scathing article about it:
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/36 ... ip-domains

And, www.noip.com does not respond. They must be getting hammered by people trying to login and change their host.

Time for me to change DYN DNS providers. Suggestions?

[Venom51]

Look at the bright side. At least they aren't ignoring the problem they themselves created with a couple decades of producing insecure systems for the masses to use. It's their fault. They need to take the flack for the mess they made and the mess they are making cleaning it up.

[barnabas1969]

Look at the bright side. At least they aren't ignoring the problem they themselves created with a couple decades of producing insecure systems for the masses to use. It's their fault. They need to take the flack for the mess they made and the mess they are making cleaning it up.

If the article I linked is true and Microsoft really found that 93% of No-IP users were involved in malicious activity, then good riddance to No-IP.

I'm trying duckdns.org right now. It's totally free, requires no monthly login, and the setup is detailed on their "Install" page. I use DD-WRT on my old Linksys WRT-54GL router, and Duck DNS has instructions on how to setup a "custom" DDNS service in DD-WRT which is nearly perfect.

It says:

Code: Select all

DDNS Service:Custom
DYNSND Server:duckdns.org
Username:NA
Password:NA
Hostname:a7c4d0ad-114e-40ef-ba1d-d217904a50f2
URL:http://www.duckdns.org/update?domains=exampledomain&token=
Additional DDNS Options:--verbose 5
Do not use External IP Check:Yes
Force Update Interval:10

First, you have to login to duckdns using your Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/Google credentials. I chose to use Google because all that is shared is my e-mail address.

Once you login, you get a token (a long hexadecimal string). You add that to the "token=" parameter on the URL in the example above. You can then create a host name. Replace "exampledomain" with the domain name you chose after you logged-in to Duck DNS. For DD-WRT, the user/password of "NA" is literal. You really need to enter that.

My router reports that it was successful. I haven't tried it with my phone or from work yet. I'll post back if it doesn't work.

I'm expecting a new router to be delivered soon (maybe today), and it will come with an asuscomm.com DDNS service for free... and I might use that.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the URL parameter can be HTTPS if you desire. That's what I did, and it was successful on my router. In case you don't know... everything after the question mark is encrypted when using HTTPS... so nobody can see your token when using HTTPS.

EDIT2: I just tested my new Duck DNS host over 4G from my Android phone, and it works!

Also, after reading the article I linked above... I think the reason my Android phone was working (and my PC at work wasn't) is because Microsoft says that they are only blocking "identified threats". All of my forwarded ports are on ports that are not "well known", but at work... I primarily connect via RDP to one of my computers at home... and it's possible that Microsoft identified RDP as a threat. My phone, on the other hand, only connects to HTTP and RTSP sources.

Of course, this is the reason I ordered a new router. My old router is not capable of handling a VPN connection (because it has such a small amount of RAM). The new router is capable... and I'll be eliminating most/all of my port forwards in favor of VPN.

[barnabas1969]

hahahaha... you can comma-separate the domain names in the "domains" parameter in the URL! So, you can have more than one, and it will be updated in a single HTTPS GET.

I picked some interesting ones... and they were available!

[STC]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/01 ... marketing/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/01 ... s_domains/

It doesn't really matter who the bot-nets use, they will just transfer to other working dynamic hosts and re-string. All this serves is to cause a little hiccup.

[STC]

It's ironic that Windows itself is the craptastic platform used to spread infection, and they can't do jack-diddly about fixing their own bug ridden code....
By design, it lures infection to itself.

Nor could they just trap the bad No-IP sub domains. Oh no, they had to nook the whole damn lot.

barnabas, I'm pretty sure whoever you choose will get inundated with new clients and in turn also become bot-net heaven over time

[christoph86]

If you have an Asus router you can get a free DDNS through them.

[barnabas1969]

If you have an Asus router you can get a free DDNS through them.

Yep, I know. My new router is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.