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HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

jacobkiers.net

21–30 of 77 posts

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#21
post #16

Wondering why I can't query the DNS directly. $ dig posts-2021-08-17-serving-blog-content-over-dns-md.hod.experiments.jacobkiers.net TXT ; > DiG 9.8.3-P1 > posts-2021-08-17-serving-blog-content-over-dns-md.hod.experiments.jacobkiers.net TXT ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER

That's weird, it should work. I'll investigate when I get home.

Just tried it again, now it works like magic. Don't know what was wrong.

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#22

> You might not be able to see it immediately Or at all since the content is entirely injected via JS with no fallback (and the JS uses class fields in case you thought an old browser might be able to load it).

Been wondering about this, how many people are using old browsers? caniuse.com reports [0] 96% support for ES6 classes. The other 4% is divided between Internet Explorer, Opera Mini and obsolete versions of every other browser. So I'm trying to figure out what kind of people are using such ancient technology and why? What kind of unusual visitors would I be missing out on?

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#23
post #22

> You might not be able to see it immediately Or at all since the content is entirely injected via JS with no fallback (and the JS uses class fields in case you thought an old browser might be able to load it).

Been wondering about this, how many people are using old browsers? caniuse.com reports [0] 96% support for ES6 classes. The other 4% is divided between Internet Explorer, Opera Mini and obsolete versions of every other browser. So I'm trying to figure out what kind of people are using such ancient technology and why? What kind of unusual visitors would I be missing out on?

You're missing on visitors with disabled (or whitelisted) javascript. On HackerNews that'll be pretty common.

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#24
post #22

> You might not be able to see it immediately Or at all since the content is entirely injected via JS with no fallback (and the JS uses class fields in case you thought an old browser might be able to load it).

Been wondering about this, how many people are using old browsers? caniuse.com reports [0] 96% support for ES6 classes. The other 4% is divided between Internet Explorer, Opera Mini and obsolete versions of every other browser. So I'm trying to figure out what kind of people are using such ancient technology and why? What kind of unusual visitors would I be missing out on?

Anecdote: I know someone who has some antiquated games that he couldn't get working in anything other than a real install of Windows XP. The game has a forum, so he frequently uses IE8 installed on the computer to access it.

I guess there are lots of tiny edge cases that look like that.

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#25

> You might not be able to see it immediately Or at all since the content is entirely injected via JS with no fallback (and the JS uses class fields in case you thought an old browser might be able to load it).

I don't know how to do this without JS.

Also, since this was mostly a DNS-focused proof of concept, I don't particularly care about that. Not in this case, at least.

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#26
Well the content is stored in a DNS Zone file but it is requested using JavaScript to an external HTTP API. I wouldn't really call that HTML over DNS but rather "DNS Zone as blog database".

Anyway, this made me think of iodine [1], an IP over DNS solution, which I still run on my main server even though it has a lot less use now than it had until a few years ago when there were a lot of open wifi with captive portals and way less 4G available.

[1] https://code.kyro.se/iodine/

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#27
post #23
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been wondering about this, how many people are using old browsers? caniuse.com reports [0] 96% support for ES6 classes. The other 4% is divided between Internet Explorer, Opera Mini and obsolete versions of every other browser. So I'm trying to figure out what kind of people are using such ancient technology and why? What kind of unusual visitors would I be missing out on?

You're missing on visitors with disabled (or whitelisted) javascript. On HackerNews that'll be pretty common.

[deleted]

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#28

Corollary is, spyware can use DNS to exfiltrate data [0]. Or, send out client-side metrics with cleverly drafted DNS requests [1], or use it as a 3p-cookie replacement [2]. [0] https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/dns-tunneling-how-dns-ca... [1] https://github.com/Jigsaw-Code/choir (disclosure: I co-develop hard-forks of two other related Jigsaw-Code projects) [2] http://dnscookie.com/

Packet size is a really good detection for this. DNS packets should only be so big ;)

Re: HTML over DNS: Serving Blog Content over DNS

#29

As someone who has an obsession with base64 encoding (as exemplified by my poorly written shell scripting here: https://miscdotgeek.com/curlytp-every-web-server-is-a-dead-d... ) I love this. It makes me wonder if some CSS and maybe even a highly compressed image or two could be added.

If you're obsessed with base64 here is a fun thing for you:

A few years ago I randomly remarked that repeated base64 prefix converge to a fixed point. I tweeted [1] the first characters of that string out of amusement, without any additional details.

Then someone saw the tweet, found it funny, and did a write-up about it [2], and then there was an interesting discussion on Reddit [3]. There may have been one on HN too, I don't remember.

Have fun :).

[1] https://twitter.com/p4bl0/status/298900842076045312

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160313123301/https://fmota.eu/...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/18234a/the_base64_...

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