We have released a new version of Turris OS 5.0. It is based on top of OpenWrt 19.07.3 with our patches and feed for all of Turris routers. In this article, we will go through new features and changes, including experimental migration from the Turris OS 3.x version. We will mention a few obstacles we faced during the development and introduce several features you can expect in future releases.
Survey: How do you configure DNS resolvers?
DNS resolvers are constantly adding features while not removing any, but this trend cannot continue indefinitely because the software would eventually break under its own weight. Which features are used in practice and which can be safely removed? We present preliminary results of a survey among DNS resolver administrators, and also invite readers to participate in cross-vendor survey which is open until 2020-06-30.
Launching DNS Crawler
As a planned milestone in the ADAM project (Advanced DNS Analytics and Measurements), CZ.NIC Laboratories in cooperation with CSIRT.CZ are about to commence regular operation of DNS crawler. This tool will periodically scan all second-level domains under TLD .cz, collect selected publicly available data about them, and process them further in various ways. Despite the name, the DNS crawler will collect data not only from DNS; it will also communicate with each domain’s web and e-mail server. We plan to run the tool with two periods: most data items will be collected on a weekly basis, only the contents of main web pages <domain>.cz or www.<domain>.cz will be retrieved less frequently – once a month. In addition, newly registered domains will be subject to an extra scrutiny: their data will be retrieved daily for the first two weeks of their existence. The DNS crawler software is designed so as to minimize the impact on the operation of second-level domains and network infrastructure in general. Data obtained from the crawler will be used for these principal purposes: