Stefan Mileschin

Firefox makes a laughing stock of UK government efforts

An industry group of internet service providers has branded Firefox browser maker Mozilla an “internet villain” for supporting a DNS security standard which turns the UK government’s “porn shield” into an electric chocolate teapot.

The UK’s Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA), the trade group for UK internet service providers, nominated the browser maker for its proposed effort to roll out the security feature, which they say will allow users to “bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the UK”.

Mozilla said late last year it was planning to test DNS-over-HTTPS to a small number of users.

Whenever you visit a website — even if it’s HTTPS-enabled — the DNS query that converts the web address into an IP address that computers can read is usually unencrypted. The security standard is implemented at the app level, making Mozilla the first browser to use DNS-over-HTTPS. By encrypting the DNS query, it protects the DNS request against man-in-the-middle attacks, which allow attackers to hijack the request and point victims to a malicious page instead.

DNS-over-HTTPS improves performance, making DNS queries faster although in our experience things have been slowing a bit since we installed it.

However, ISPA doesn’t think DNS-over-HTTPS is compatible with the UK’s glorious website blocking regime.

Under UK law, websites can be blocked for facilitating the infringement of copyrighted or trademarked material or if they are deemed to contain terrorist material or child abuse imagery. In encrypting DNS queries, it’s claimed that it will make it more difficult for internet providers to filter their subscribers’ internet access.

https://fudzilla.com/news/49010-mozi...wall-of-albion