RE: NetReg: CommonName

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From: King, Michael (MKing@bridgew.edu)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 17:17:37 CDT


Ok, I've brought some more information. Since I had a hard time figuring
this one out myself, I'd let everyone know what I did.

Since I've been having trouble making myself understood today. (Been a very
long day, can you guess when my students moved in?) I'm going to try to make
my thoughts as clear as possible.

Item 1: NetReg is working perfectly for Normal computers.

Item 2: Certain computer that have a spyware program called CommonName
installed on them.

Item 3: Computers from Item 2 Do Not get the registration page. They get
nothing. They do not even time out and get an error message. My test
computer sitting next to me has been trying to open the page for about 5
minutes.

Item 4: I have the following message in my log:
192.168.132.181 - - [29/Aug/2002:17:50:41 -0400] "GET
/find2.asp?cn=LQoECxcOSQoGSUwETFccVVRFAlteVFdUU20HGQAD&app=100&vs=3.54&rs=ht
tp HTTP/1.1" 404 3239

Item 5: The error 404 response was given, NetReg has done it's job, and
should have given the registration page, but the clients do not get it. 3rd
party program (See Item 2) has broken a relativity easy process.

To test this yourself, goto http:\\www.commonname.com and hit the "Enable my
browser for CommonName", it will install itself, and ask you to restart your
browser. I did so, and noticed I got a popup ad when I visit my colleges
homepage. Ok, so it's working.
Unregister yourself, and see if you can get it to work.

Workarounds:
I created a file named find2.asp in my root htdocs directory. Instead of
getting no response, I now get this file. I cut and pasted the file that I
linked to earlier that had directions on how to remove the software.

Synopsis: By default, NetReg did not appear to handle how CommonName was
messing with the DNS System. With the addition of another file (find2.asp)
in the document root, the problem can be corrected.

Figured I'd share the wealth. Later all,

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Valian [mailto:valianp@southwestern.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 2:23 PM
To: netreg@southwestern.edu
Subject: Re: NetReg: CommonName

Oh. Hmmm...NetReg should work fine...commonname.com will resolve to the
netreg box and find2.asp will trigger the 404 redirect.

It does look like it may interfere with other campus web services. In
any case, we don't tollerate any spyware (passive or active) and will
probably do the redirect that Radford Univ is doing.

Thanks Mike.
-p

King, Michael wrote:
> Very true, I should have been more specific. It's not intialiating a DNS
> request on port 53, It's passing it via a ASP script hosted on the
> http://www.commonname.com/find2.asp.
>
> I first noticed it when I troubleshot a students computer, whatever
address
> I typed in the address bar, it tried to contact www.commenname.com
instead.
> I ended up having to uninstall the program commonname to get it to work.
> (Of course there is no easy uninstall program, you have to goto the
program
> files folder, into the commonname folder, and run the uninstall program
from
> there)
>
> Mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Valian [mailto:valianp@southwestern.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 1:11 PM
> To: netreg@southwestern.edu
> Subject: Re: NetReg: CommonName
>
>
> I would recommend not allowing users to use off-campus DNS, IMHO.
> It's port 53...tcp and udp.
>
> We do not allow it and have not allowed it for serveral years. Have
> never had a complaint. If a user asks if they can use an off-campus DNS
> server, I'd be suspicious.
>
> Sometimes we become authoritative for domains we'd rather not have
> students go to (i.e. napster.com)...those were the days before good
> bandwidth management tools. That effectively broke any clients trying
> to connect to whatever.napster.com.
>
> -p
>

-- 
Peter Valian
Network & Systems Administrator
Southwestern University
Georgetown, Texas
512.863.1586 office
512.863.1605 fax
--

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