Hi everybody on Swinog,
some time ago I once again had to help out some friends with the setup
of their new ADSL connection (the kind of private support favour
probably most of you on this list also get asked for over and over
again by relatives and friends). Just after I connected a laptop to
the LAN-port of their router that needed to be set up, I got this mail
in the inbox:
> Received: from Sandbox Mail Server
> From:sandbox@noreply
> To: *****
> Precedence: bulk
> Message-ID: *****
> Subject: Support Information
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> Date: Thu, ** *** **** **:**:** -0000
>
> Lieber Kunde
>
> Der Benutzername (Beispiel: Name(a)ISP.ch) Ihres Internet-Anschlusses
> ist nicht korrekt.
> Bitte überprüfen Sie den eingegebenen Benutzernamen im Router/Modem
> oder wenden Sie sich an Ihren Internetanbieter.
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüssen
> Ihr Internetanbieter
[* used to overwrite some info from the original mail, containing user
names and other things I don't want to share]
Now, this seems like a helpful feature at first - but the thing that
bothers me is that the provider of the sandbox actually "hijacks" (I
didn't check it out in detail, but maybe through a DNS server with a
wildcard entry or directly on the TCP/IP level, it doesn't matter how)
outgoing connections for various services and redirects them to their
servers.
While I think this is okay maybe for HTTP to display a helpful message
in the browser, I don't like somebody to "provide" other services (as
POP3, SMTP, FTP, HTTPS, whatever) and be able to happily log provided
user/password information (yes, I know, everybody should just use
encrypted connections, always check certificates and never supply a
password in plain-text to any service -- but we all know that's not
the reality).
Admittedly, I may seem a little bit too paranoid here, but still I'd
just like to know who operates these sandbox machines: Is it the
individual providers or Swisscom? What's the policy for this service?
What protocols/services are hijacked? Do the connections get logged
somehow?
What do you think? Or is there somebody on the list who's responsible
for or at least knows more about these sandbox machines? Just
wonder... :)
Regards,
Beat Vontobel
MeteoNews AG
P.S.: This is my first post to the list. I was following it for quite
some time now, mostly to stay up-to-date on Swiss network issues, as I
too often had to debug issues outside of our own network, when our
customers (we provide weather data and services) had connectivity
issues. But things are really much more relaxed now, since we finally
operate our own AS44238 and are no longer dependent on one single
provider... of course, now it might just be me and myself who mess
things up -- but then I should also be able to fix it myself instead
of just have to wait until a NOC somewhere fixes a stupid routing
issue... So much for a short introduction. :)