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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

#71

Post by yardstick »

vetinari wrote: post #31
isostatic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google DNS came about because of a very real problem of shitty ISPs giving shitty DNS servers that gave fake results (especially in NXDomain cases) I can see why you would want to use a known-good dns provider in your product, however at the very least there should be an ability to turn off such behaviour.

It is not shitty ISPs giving fake results. It is me. My resolver does that and it is for a reason. Disrespecting what the local network tells you to use just leads to arms race.

To be fair once DNS over TLS/HTTP become mainstream, local DNS servers won’t work without valid certificates, which I’m guessing will be a pain even with letsencrypt and co.

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

#72

Post by ctime »

Its not just this device, its others like the Google Home.

Why? Because ISPs and home networks are awful a non-trivial amount of time. It also gives leverage to Evil ISPs to hold Google ransom for the DNS queries needed to make the thing work propertly.

I dont think the average person knows or cares how fragile the internet actually is (unless, of course, you happen to live in China, which activiely manipulates and breaks DNS routinely for glorious reasons)

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

#73

Post by rmoriz »

judge2020 wrote: post #38
scrollaway wrote: post #14

I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff (and funnily enough, much more serious privacy issues related to Google are ignored/downvoted). Hardcoded DNS servers are common. Extremely common in a bunch of IOT devices, given how broken some ISPs are. This is a non-story and the only reason it's being upvoted is because Google is doing it, and they als…

> You know what would be an actual story though? If Google used Google DNS to spy on people. this. I highly doubt Google is actually using DNS for tracking or connecting queries to someone's account, especially when they say they don't [1]. Many people say "use Cloudflare DNS if you're worried about privacy", but Google effectively makes the same claim as Cloudflare that they don't use DNS to track you. The only plus…

> I highly doubt Google is actually using DNS for tracking or connecting queries to someone's account, especially when they say they don't [1].

But pi-hole (or other privacy dns appliances/services) also block tracking targets. By enabling/enforcing the "free and unaltered internet experience" Google also ensures access to tracking.

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

#74

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

judge2020 wrote: post #38
scrollaway wrote: post #14

I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff (and funnily enough, much more serious privacy issues related to Google are ignored/downvoted). Hardcoded DNS servers are common. Extremely common in a bunch of IOT devices, given how broken some ISPs are. This is a non-story and the only reason it's being upvoted is because Google is doing it, and they als…

> You know what would be an actual story though? If Google used Google DNS to spy on people. this. I highly doubt Google is actually using DNS for tracking or connecting queries to someone's account, especially when they say they don't [1]. Many people say "use Cloudflare DNS if you're worried about privacy", but Google effectively makes the same claim as Cloudflare that they don't use DNS to track you. The only plus…

You have to trust any place you send your traffic, but I trust Cloudflare more than Google simply because of their business model. People get too caught up in "evil!" but it's simply about business models and how likely a business is to bend towards unethical behavior to stay in business, or continue to grow revenue/profits.

Cloudflare doesn't need to analyze my data to make money -- they offer a great service that people will throw money at them to use.

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

#75

Post by quickben »

scrollaway wrote: post #50
apostacy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a case of an IOT device though. My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers, to serve ads behind my pi-hole. It would respect all of my DHCP parameters, but silently ignore DNS settings. It was clearly intentional to serve ads. I had to set up a firewall to force it to use my DNS server. And eventually even that stopped working with an update (which themselves are reall…

I can't really entertain the suggestion that pi-holes are considered by Google as a serious-enough threat that they'd go through this trouble just to fuck with it. Seriously, think about the venn diagram of Chromecast users and pi-hole users. It looks a lot like a tennis ball being dropped into the sun.

At a maximum rate of $58 per tenis ball:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195680/share-of-keywords...

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

#76

Post by steelframe »

apostacy wrote: post #43
scrollaway wrote: post #14

I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff (and funnily enough, much more serious privacy issues related to Google are ignored/downvoted). Hardcoded DNS servers are common. Extremely common in a bunch of IOT devices, given how broken some ISPs are. This is a non-story and the only reason it's being upvoted is because Google is doing it, and they als…

This isn't a case of an IOT device though. My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers, to serve ads behind my pi-hole. It would respect all of my DHCP parameters, but silently ignore DNS settings. It was clearly intentional to serve ads. I had to set up a firewall to force it to use my DNS server. And eventually even that stopped working with an update (which themselves are reall…

I really gave Chromecast an honest run for the money. One day at the start the of the weekend, it started hanging at 80% when initiating streaming content I had purchased on the Play store. The forums had a ton of other people who were complaining about the same thing. Google had pushed out an update that they apparently hadn't event done the most rudimentary testing on. They didn't roll back, and they didn't fix it until after the weekend. I replaced it with a Roku, and I no longer trust Google to do consumer devices.

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

#77

Post by rmoriz »

scrollaway wrote: post #61
vbezhenar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Broken" ISP are likely to intercept DNS requests, so really the only option against them is something like DNS over HTTPS.

[citation needed] on that "likely" word. I've seen instances of that, but they're extremely rare because intercepting DNS altogether is a fucked up thing to do for an ISP. Seen far, far more instances of: - ISPs shipping shitty network devices / awful factory settings - ISP's own DNS servers being terrible in various ways - Uncle Steve "the IT guy of the family" having messed with the network settings and nobody know…

the amount of broken, intercepting and censoring DNS out there does not make Google a community service, though.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

apostacy wrote: post #43
scrollaway wrote: post #14

I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff (and funnily enough, much more serious privacy issues related to Google are ignored/downvoted). Hardcoded DNS servers are common. Extremely common in a bunch of IOT devices, given how broken some ISPs are. This is a non-story and the only reason it's being upvoted is because Google is doing it, and they als…

This isn't a case of an IOT device though. My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers, to serve ads behind my pi-hole. It would respect all of my DHCP parameters, but silently ignore DNS settings. It was clearly intentional to serve ads. I had to set up a firewall to force it to use my DNS server. And eventually even that stopped working with an update (which themselves are reall…

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by bobthedino »

fixermark wrote: post #63
bobthedino wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you meant by "1337 hacker skills" (sounds sarcastic to me) but the guy in question helped create the Domain Name System!

I know, and yes, it was intended to be sarcastic. ;) He of all people should understand that the practical implementation of DNS and DHCP has become so broken by bad-acting ISPs that consumer electronics devices end up side-stepping the spec entirely so the thing works for the common consumer user.

Fair enough!

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

#80

Post by adsadadsad »

pexaizix wrote: post #62
apostacy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a case of an IOT device though. My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers, to serve ads behind my pi-hole. It would respect all of my DHCP parameters, but silently ignore DNS settings. It was clearly intentional to serve ads. I had to set up a firewall to force it to use my DNS server. And eventually even that stopped working with an update (which themselves are reall…

>My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers No it didn't, it just queried 8.8.8.8 instead of whatever DNS server your DHCP configuration told it to use. Putting "nameserver 8.8.8.8" in /etc/resolv.conf and marking it read-only would have the same effect. Doesn't look like much trouble does it?

Maybe. But it's trivial, for your ADSL/DSL/Fiber shitty $30 router to intercept port 53/(udp|tcp) bind it to it's own local dnsmasq or whatever and then send DNS onward to DHCP DNS servers supplied by your ISP. When I say trivial I mean I've seen it happen on several setups, old me - we'll just change the DNS on this box to bust the cache here to 1.1.1.1(CF)/8.8.8.8(EvilG) but still end up a shitty ISP dns servers (and their poisoned cache regardless). There's a reason for the push for DNS over HTTPS.

You think you're guaranteed to be querying 8.8.8.8 with "nslookup hostname.tld 8.8.8.8"?

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