Virtual currency being DOSed by incorrect OpenDNS category listings
Virtual currency such as Litecoin and Bitcoin allow for "mining" of coins. Most people mine through mining pools. A very basic understanding of the way this works is that the next person to brute force the next hash gets paid virtual currency, which is worth real money. The more people mining, the less of a chance you will find the next coin. By pooling resources together, people stand a better chance of making money.
This week multiple virtual currency pool sites have been added to incorrect categories on OpenDNS, in effect blocking the people mining in these pools who use OpenDNS. This results in less money being made by the people in these pools, and more money being made by the people in the other pools.
Basically, OpenDNS is being misused to DOS virtual currency mining pools, which costs victims money. This includes me and my friends. Three of the pools I am a member of have have been in improper categories this week. bitcoinplus.com is an example of one of these sites. FWIW, I am a paying member of OpenDNS and I control the OpenDNS filtering on my network.
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"multiple virtual currency pool sites have been added to incorrect categories on OpenDNS... bitcoinplus.com is an example of one of these sites."
Definitely not: http://domain.opendns.com/bitcoinplus.com - there is no approved category, even no tag...
If you can prove your statement for other such sites, best would be you open a support ticket with the incorrectly categorized domains, so that OpenDNS staff can take appropriate measures. This cannot be well done in this user forum.
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Your statement "Definitely no:t" is inaccurate. Bitcoinplus.com had the malware tag on 6/13/2013. Many others have had various commonly blocked categories added to them this week. Case DT #PAY-54298-621 is one example. Having OpenDNS re-categorize this doesn't return the currency lost while these sites are improperly categorized.
The malware tag has been removed from the 'bitcoinplus.com' domain. Thank you for your patience with this matter.
Vinny LaRiza
Community Moderator
OpenDNS -
BTW, OpenDNS isn't the only URL filter being abused this week. I have a multilayer filtering approach in place. I use quite a few filters on my network and have had to deal with numerous issues this week. One of my other URL filters, which is by another one of the top 10 filtering companies, currently has Symantec Cloud Insight blocked as a Malware site. I have another URL filter from a top 5 antivirus company, and they also have had several but different false positives this week including virtual currency pools.
I don't believe these companies are licensing the same URL filter database from a 3rd party, I believe they all have their own unique database. The blocked sites have not matched between these filters.
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@edwinda
"Bitcoinplus.com had the malware tag"But this is not what you complained about. You talked about categories, and malware is not a category in the domain tagging system. If you had initially mentioned this, it would have been clearer.
"Case DT #PAY-54298-621 is one example."
What is this? An OpenDNS ticket reference? Doesn't ring a bell with me, I'm just a user like you, not staff.
"Having OpenDNS re-categorize this doesn't return the currency lost while these sites are improperly categorized."
Yes, sh.. happens, especially with business like this. There are many, many single points of failure possible, not just DNS. It's just a totally normal "business risk", if you know what this is. And, if you detected that sites were blocked, you would have been able to immediately unblock them for your network what you may have done anyway when saying "Having OpenDNS re-categorize".
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