[dns-operations] charter, sitefinder, opendns (slashdot today)

[Sam Norris]

From: "Paul Vixie" <paul at vix.com>
> today on <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/15/0432259>, we see:
>
>    The Internet
>
>    paulbiz writes
>
> "Charter Cable's DNS servers have just started resolving all invalid
> hostnames and pointing them to their own error page. The About page
> states: 'This service automatically eliminates many of the error pages
> you may encounter as you surf the web. No software was installed on
> your computer for this service to work.' It has an 'opt-out' page, but
> when you use it Charter simply sets a cookie that makes their page
> redirect errors to Microsoft Live Search instead!"
>

Do we see udp port 53 hijacking as the next step in this ?  I'm curious as 
to what is the driving factor for doing this was.  Cash from advertisements, 
lower cost of support resources, phishing protection?  Lots of software 
depends on getting a correct DNS response, even if it's NXDOMAIN.

>    One more reason to use OpenDNS, where you can actually opt out of the
>    custom error page.

As I mentioned above, how long until Charter's OpenDNS users are forced back 
to the local cache based on port 53 queries.

Sam