Henry L.Coleman wrote:
> Hi Duane, could you explain what this does (in simple terms)?

Sure, the idea is similar to how HTTPS works but for DNS. A public key
is used to encrypt a DNS request and an embedded AES key which is used
to encrypt the reply so the client can decrypt it.

The reason for this is most DNS requests don't matter, you end up
browsing to the website or what not, so there is little point in masking
the content.

However for ENUM lookups, just the request contains the same information
that the NSA and US telcos were getting into strife for collecting in
the past. Even without going down that path there is other possible ways
to abuse DNS, such as ISPs collecting this sort of information to try
and sell you phone services.

Unfortunately everyone doing ENUM lookups is leaking this sort of
information, most probably won't care or know about the implication of
doing so.

Then of course because of the lack of wide spread encryption with VoIP
it makes hiding lookups pointless, but at the same time if no one does
anything about it and encryption for VoIP comes to pass DNS is likely to
remain plain text.

We've released patches for FreePBX to do encrypted ENUM lookups, but to
date these haven't been incorporated, although since beginning to write
an Internet Draft on the topic things have changed to allow for future
changes to occur without breaking things and forcing everyone to make a
bunch of changes later to accommodate the changes.

-- 

Best regards,
 Duane

http://www.freeauth.org - Enterprise Two Factor Authentication
http://www.nodedb.com - Think globally, network locally
http://www.sydneywireless.com - Telecommunications Freedom
http://e164.org - Global Communication for the 21st Century

"In the long run the pessimist may be proved right,
    but the optimist has a better time on the trip."

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