Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

netmeister.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 54 posts

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#41

Post by junon »

superkuh wrote: post #26

Whois was killed off by the European Union passing the GDPR. It really changed how I use the internet for the worse. In the old days I could always at least send an email to a domain hosting a service. Now there's no default contact information and everything is behind walled gardens. Email was the great communicator. Removing it from WHOIS made the web more fragile and broken. But whois doesn't have to be that way a…

I don't follow. How does Whois now having privacy - which had nothing to do with GDPR - make the internet worse?

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#42

Post by Perenti »

billpg wrote: post #9

Why do domains have WHOIS records anyway? I get why IP blocks have it because machines actually do things from behind IP addresses, but the only thing I'm doing from a domain name is stopping other people from using it. Someone is hosting copyrighted content? Look up that machine's IP-WHOIS. Someone is trying to DDOS me? Look up that machine's IP-WHOIS. Someone is holding a domain I want? If their answer is going to…

IPs are shared by many machines these days, in particular CGNAT bundles many machines in potentially very disperse locations together. You can't identify the source of DDOS by whois in that case.

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#43

Post by layer8 »

billpg wrote: post #39
layer8 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single IP can host many domains, each of which may have separate technical and administrative contacts. Conversely, different subdomains (and MX for email) can live on different IPs. If I use dyndns, there isn’t any fixed relation between IP and domain at all. I happen to own several domains, but I don’t own the IPs where they are hosted.

But why would I, a complete stranger to you, need to look up that contact information? We both hold a number of domains, but that alone isn't a reason for needing to contact each other.

For example if I published something on my web page you have privacy or copyright claims to. Or if my mail server errors out in the middle of trying to send email to your mail server. Or if the domain name is violating someone else's rights. Or if some public service or functionality is broken on the domain and you want to inform those who are in charge of the domain. Tnere are any number of reasons why you'd want to contact a domain registrant or the relevant technical or administrative contact.

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#44

Post by teddyh »

mike_d wrote: post #38

A lot of Linux based command line whois clients still use "whois-servers.net" to look up up the appropriate whois server for a TLD, which is long dead (it still responds but is no longer maintained). Many years ago I built a replacement whoisservers.org, and tried contacting a few maintainers, but nobody seemed to really care. If you want to make use of it, you can run "whois -h com.whoisservers.org exmaple.com" (or…

Similar to whois.geektools.com, then?

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#45

Post by superkuh »

junon wrote: post #41
superkuh wrote: post #26

Whois was killed off by the European Union passing the GDPR. It really changed how I use the internet for the worse. In the old days I could always at least send an email to a domain hosting a service. Now there's no default contact information and everything is behind walled gardens. Email was the great communicator. Removing it from WHOIS made the web more fragile and broken. But whois doesn't have to be that way a…

I don't follow. How does Whois now having privacy - which had nothing to do with GDPR - make the internet worse?

In the old days (up to ~2018) you could always contact people on the internet. Now you cannot contact people. That's bad. It's like the switch from knowing and being able to talk your neighbors to not knowing and not talking to your neighbors. Like the switch from a small town to a megacity.

And you're completely wrong about GDPR. It is the primary, if not exclusive, reason most registrars in most regions have removed WHOIS information. ref: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registration-data... https://circleid.com/posts/20210119-whois-record-redaction-a...

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#46

Post by teddyh »

_8j50 wrote: post #36

I use to have a very reliable but simple python script that asks the whois server for the TLD then gets the whois server from it and asks that server the whois of the apex and if it gets another whois it asks that server and so on recursively. It was more reliable than any service I found because a lot of TLDs that aren't mainstream or run by random countries have their own finnicy whois with some custom weird webui…

> I use to have a very reliable but simple python script that asks the whois server for the TLD then gets the whois server from it and asks that server the whois of the apex and if it gets another whois it asks that server and so on recursively.

Don’t modern whois clients all do this? (I.e. not the one available in, say, macOS.)

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#47

Post by _8j50 »

teddyh wrote: post #46
_8j50 wrote: post #36

I use to have a very reliable but simple python script that asks the whois server for the TLD then gets the whois server from it and asks that server the whois of the apex and if it gets another whois it asks that server and so on recursively. It was more reliable than any service I found because a lot of TLDs that aren't mainstream or run by random countries have their own finnicy whois with some custom weird webui…

> I use to have a very reliable but simple python script that asks the whois server for the TLD then gets the whois server from it and asks that server the whois of the apex and if it gets another whois it asks that server and so on recursively. Don’t modern whois clients all do this? (I.e. not the one available in, say, macOS.)

Possibly but I was stuck using windows at the time.

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#48

Post by junon »

superkuh wrote: post #45
junon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. How does Whois now having privacy - which had nothing to do with GDPR - make the internet worse?

In the old days (up to ~2018) you could always contact people on the internet. Now you cannot contact people. That's bad. It's like the switch from knowing and being able to talk your neighbors to not knowing and not talking to your neighbors. Like the switch from a small town to a megacity. And you're completely wrong about GDPR. It is the primary, if not exclusive, reason most registrars in most regions have remove…

WHOIS having privacy guards was a thing at least as far back as 15 years ago, as memory serves.

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#49

Post by billpg »

Perenti wrote: post #42
billpg wrote: post #9

Why do domains have WHOIS records anyway? I get why IP blocks have it because machines actually do things from behind IP addresses, but the only thing I'm doing from a domain name is stopping other people from using it. Someone is hosting copyrighted content? Look up that machine's IP-WHOIS. Someone is trying to DDOS me? Look up that machine's IP-WHOIS. Someone is holding a domain I want? If their answer is going to…

IPs are shared by many machines these days, in particular CGNAT bundles many machines in potentially very disperse locations together. You can't identify the source of DDOS by whois in that case.

You can, it's just the answer will be "Someone using (ISP)". Even then, that ISP will be the one to contact.

Re: Whois: Fragile, Unparseable, Obsolete

#50

Post by mike_d »

teddyh wrote: post #44
mike_d wrote: post #38

A lot of Linux based command line whois clients still use "whois-servers.net" to look up up the appropriate whois server for a TLD, which is long dead (it still responds but is no longer maintained). Many years ago I built a replacement whoisservers.org, and tried contacting a few maintainers, but nobody seemed to really care. If you want to make use of it, you can run "whois -h com.whoisservers.org exmaple.com" (or…

Similar to whois.geektools.com, then?

Geektools actually does the whois for you.

Mine points your client to the appropriate whois server you need to talk to for a specific TLD. Like I said the same functionality is already built into a few whois clients, they are just using a DNS zone that is no longer updated.

Post reply on HN