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From the news desk to the desktop, Between the Lines brings you industry views of the recent news. In this issue, learn about the Kaminsky DNS Vulnerability, as well as outages from both Netflix and Gmail.
The Kaminsky DNS Vulnerability: Also in Email Flavor 
Earlier this year, Dan Kaminsky, director of penetration testing for IOActive, discovered a flaw in the Internet's Domain Name Server (DNS) system. In August, at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, he revealed the details of the flaw, which can leave users open to the dangers of cache poisoning attacks--"tricking the DNS to accept an incorrect request which subsequently reroutes unsuspecting users to another, usually malicious, Web site," as described by the Channel Wire blog. But the trouble doesn't stop there. The vulnerability can also be used, the blog notes, "to exploit IPSec VPNs, SSL certification, automatic software update systems, spam filters, and VoIP systems." An Associated Press article highlights the vulnerability's ability to intercept email messages, as well, but notes that "there's no evidence yet that this method of targeting email has been used in a successful attack." The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team's Web page on the DNS vulnerability lists the systems known to be affected. Also, Dan Kaminsky has a DNS Checker on his personal blog, DoxPara Research, that lets you know whether the DNS server you use is vulnerable to attack.
See how helpful that is? This is why we don't shoot the messenger, even if we attach his name to a really horrible DNS vulnerability.
If you come across a bug that you think can compete for the title of Bug of the Month, send it to Joey McAllister at jmcallister@sqe.com for possible inclusion in the next Between the Lines.
A Flicker of Netflix Founded in 1997, Netflix has grown to become one of the most popular DVD rental services. According to Wikipedia, the company has more than 55 million discs, spread across 100,000 titles, and ships to 8.2 million subscribers. And, until this month, the service hadn't seen anything more than the briefest interruption. Between August 12 and August 14, Netflix experienced "technical problems" that "affected all of the ... company's 55 shipping centers" and "severely limited the number of DVDs it could send out," according to an Associated Press article published while many Netflix users were still waiting for their next discs to arrive. Some early reports stated that Netflix was still attempting to discern the cause of the issues, while others stated that the company simply refused to comment on the cause. The company did note that the cause was based within its own technology, and "not at all the fault of the United States Postal Service," according to an article that ran in the San Jose Mercury News. On August
22, Netflix's head of IT operations, Mike Osier, wrote on the Netflix Community Blog that the root cause of the outage had been "identified as a key faulty hardware component." The service also gave customers affected by the outage a 15 percent credit.
And while some might say it was "only two hours"--as opposed to multiple days for the Netflix outage--the more popular the service, the louder the complaints when it goes down even for a short time. Google posted an official apology on its Gmail blog, stating that the Gmail team had received emails and phone calls. It also stated that it had seen the "many Twitter posts." Some of those Twitter posts noted how unusual it was that the Twitter service, known for having its own string of outages, was up and running while Gmail was not. The Gmail blog post also mentioned that workers inside Google, who use Gmail for their company email, were among the complainers. The issue, according to a post on TechNewsWorld, was "a temporary glitch in Google's contacts system, which was preventing Gmail from loading properly." The TechNewsWorld post also notes that the scrutiny of this outage is representative of the "hyperscrutiny" of "huge service providers" in general. Of course, some of that scrutiny also centers on the fact that Gmail, after many years of public use, is still a "beta" product. If something goes horribly wrong with your personal or business email account hosted on Gmail, well, it's still in testing, isn't it? Were you affected by the Gmail outage? What are your thoughts on its ongoing beta status? Tell us about it in the Survey Says! section below!
Related Articles Media Spotlight: Check out the latest StickyMinds Soundbyte, in which Francesca Matteu talks to Naomi Karten about how people respond to change differently and how to help these people transition through change as a team. Then, Francesca discusses Michele Sliger's latest column.
Listen: http://www.stickyminds.com/podcasts/#SMSB_08late
The latest Web seminar brought to you by StickyMinds.com and Better Software magazine * Sponsored by Oracle * All too often, stated or presumed objectives of performance testing do not map to the stakeholder's informational needs. During this talk, Scott Barber and Matthew Demeusy will present an approach for getting objectives in line with informational needs to help ensure not only that your performance testing will be more relevant but also that you don't spend time conducting performance testing that solves technical challenges that don't add value to your project. Join us Tuesday Sept. 9, at 2 p.m. ET. Register and attend this Web seminar to be automatically entered into our drawing for a StickyMinds.com PowerPass membership. http://www.sqe.com/go?WS090908BTL
Last Month's Survey Results In July, we asked, "What do you think about the arrest of Terry Childs for withholding passwords to San Francisco's network?" Here's how you responded:
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