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My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

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Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#481

Post by sowbug »

mrighele wrote: post #391
sowbug wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a car brand did, I would find it surprising that a buyer of that brand would complain about it.

He would complain if he was forced to buy _only_ that brand's gasoline. That's in fact the approach of many printer manufacturers regarding toner/ink cartridges, and usually users complain about that.

I wrote "buyer," not "user" or "complainer." I have no problem with self-appointed Good Samaritans who leave anti-Lexmark Amazon reviews. But a buyer of a car requiring the manufacturer's gas would understand what he or she was getting into.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#482

Post by shawnz »

Sylamore wrote: post #443
shawnz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't make assumptions about the user's situation Using 8.8.8.8 is exactly the opposite of an assumption. It always works in any config, that's the point. EDIT: Besides, obviously, the OP's extremely unusual config, where he is effectively just blocking the service with his firewall. Why isn't he outraged about having to unblock all of YouTube's other IPs? What's special about 8.8.8.8?

8.8.8.8 isn't a youtube IP, it's Google's DNS service. Most networks hand out their own DNS and generally expect clients on their network to be using it. While most consumer home networks are very permissive not every network is and not respecting the dns server handed to a client by DHCP is broken behavior.

I adressed these points already in other places through this thread: Why would it be any different if they just hardcoded the IP to YouTube? Would that also be "not respecting the DNS server from the DHCP client"? What if they used a proprietary protocol (not DNS) to look up the IP to YouTube?

Just because your network provides a DNS server does not mean that it makes sense to use that DNS server for every single IP address lookup in every piece of software. It's there for general internet browsing purposes, not specialized proprietary purposes like this.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#484

Post by acct1771 »

hannasanarion wrote: post #372
pixl97 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is you are falling in the same trap as the Google engineers here. Why would ______ want to do _______ with their ______ device? You can make a locked down device that only does a very limited subset of functions, but you really should make that known to the user before hand. "This device requires access to $X servers to function". If you have secret requirements that go far beyond user expectations,…

The fact that we got six years into the chromecast world before anybody complained is a pretty good indicator that, no, in fact, most people who want to watch youtube on their TVs don't configure their firewalls to block 8.8.8.8.

Mmmm...I love manufactured consent in the morning.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#485

Post by nashashmi »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #119

Knowing who he is, my takeaway should be, "Wow! An Internet Hall of Famer weighing in against a Google product!" But my actual takeaway is, "Legends of the CS world write informal, pithy rants to Google just like the rest of us mortals."

I agree with you. He had more leverage if he said:

  my ISP blocks 8.8.8.8. 
  I cannot activate chrome cast.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#486

Post by belorn »

lukeschlather wrote: post #451
belorn wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat is actually more at IANA than DNS. I would not be surprised if ISP supplied routers would start MITM quad ip DNS servers in order to retake the data and control. A lot of harm will happen if that became standard practice. DNSSEC do not protect against this.

Would that break DNSSEC?

No. DNSSEC makes sure that the record is correct as given by the authoritative DNS server. It does not specify or control who resolved the name and for whom.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#487

Post by StreamBright »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #457
StreamBright wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about buying a better network device for home and have VLANs and ACLs just to take control of my internet again. It is pretty annoying that Google not only trying to track me everywhere but actively overriding system wide settings to be able to get information what sites I am visiting.

You don’t necessarily need a better networking device if your current router is supported by openwrt/lede

I was looking into that yesterday. How can I disable forwarding in Dnsmasq for certain domain names? Maybe I should run a local resolver server myself instead of forwarding the DNS requests to 3rd parties and do it that way with ACLs? Let me know if you have detailed documentation about how to use OpenWRT for these.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#488

Post by dazilcher »

userbinator wrote: post #452
kllrnohj wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both cases the client software ignored the network's settings. It's identical in behavior to the network. Either that's circumventing how the internet works or it isn't. Sounds like you agree that it's not, in fact, circumventing how the internet works?

The critical difference is whether it is under control of the user.

That's a critical difference which has nothing to do with "how the internet works".

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#489

Post by kllrnohj »

markstos wrote: post #441
kllrnohj wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't exactly secret about the fact that Chromecast connects to Google's data centers. Especially if you're using it to, say, watch YouTube, as Paul Vixie was. Chromecast connecting to Google is not a "secret requirements that go far beyond user expectations." Expecting a cloud-connected product to continue to work when you've randomly blacklisted IPs that belong to that company is, however, an unreasonable ex…

We expect that Chromecast connects to Google's servers when you are using Google services. By forcing you to use their DNS service, they can track every non-Google DNS query you make as well, which is all tied to your IP address. It is a form of surveillance of everything that you do on your Chromecast, for which there is no explicit consent. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/62273/can-dns-s... It is simil…

> By forcing you to use their DNS service, they can track every non-Google DNS query you make as well, which is all tied to your IP address.

It's a Chromecast. You literally can't make non-Google queries on it at all in the first place.

So what, exactly, is the privacy concern here? What specific flow of events does the Chromecast using 8.8.8.8 impact your privacy?

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#490

Post by kllrnohj »

michaelmrose wrote: post #474
kllrnohj wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last thing the Internet needs is even more dependence upon Google. This doesn't change that? It's a google streaming device that in order to function at all requires a connection to google's data centers. Why does it matter if that connection happens via 8.8.8.8 or some other IP resolved by a different DNS server? What is the actual, practical difference of that? It's still connecting to Google in order to prov…

Choosing to block 8.8.8.8 for devices in your own home is neither censorship nor breaking the free and open nature of the internet. It is baffling how you could imagine it is. It is in fact strange that a device that facilitates streaming from a variety of servers needs to resolve a particular dns server to function. Its obvious that it should need to resolve SOME dns server to function but not a particular one. Clea…

> Clearly it can't update if it can't talk to google but why shouldn't it be able to play local content or stream netflix without talking to a particular google IP?

All cast apps & authentication are provided by Google's servers. Once it begins streaming from Netflix then Google isn't involved, but they handle initiation of that connection. Same for local content. And they don't exactly need to hijack DNS to figure out that you're watching Netflix after they launch the Netflix app.

And they know when streaming stops. Hence why it switches back to the slide show screensaver when you leave Netflix stopped for a minute or two.

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