My brain just hurts right now.
From SpamSuite.com:
I’ve (ed. Mickey) been watching Sierra Corporate Design, Inc., v. David Ritz, for a long time. You haven’t seen it here because the documents are not kept online and are, therefore, not accessible. However, a decision has been reached in that case and the clerk of court in Fargo was kind enough to fax me a copy of the findings of fact, conclusions of law, and order for judgment.
In 12 pages of bad law, a North Dakota District Court judge has declared that using the “host” command with the “-l” option constitutes computer hacking. The “-l” option, which effects a DNS zone transfer, is only available to computers and maybe administrators, with the prior written consent of Major League Baseball. That means that pages mentioning the potential for use by non-administrators like this one should probably go away since it’s teaching people how to “hack”. And, of course, this also means that the manual pages on all Linux, *nix, and *BSD machines include hacking instructions thanks to the inclusion of a man page for host which mentions the -l option
I should point out that David Ritz is facing criminal charges in this case. My (insert deity), I think that we have fully discovered where the real crime lies. And to add a little more info for the non-*nix readers here is an excerpt from a linux man page for the “host” command:
List mode is selected by the -l option. This makes host perform a zone transfer for zone name. The argument is provided for compatibility with older implementations. This option is equivalent to making a query of type AXFR.
I had to grab a new keyboard. I busted my old one with my forehead.
[tags]Illegal DNS Requests, Bad Law, David Ritz, Sierra Corporate Design[/tags]