I've been doing a little amateur covid-19 epidemiology for a few months now.
While tracking down some reliable statistics on the number of active caes
recently, I came across two otherwise unrelated websites with the same IP
address: 23.236.62.147, namely <covidaustralia.com> and <covid19data.com.au>.
(<covidlive.com.au is also a good site, and all three seem very reputable.)
APNIC reveals the large chunk of IP4 address space which includes the above
address is allocated to Google-Cloud: 23.236.48.0 - 23.236.63.255. So instead
of keying either symbolic URL into the browser I plugged in the numeric
address, with this curious response from wix.com:
Hey,
We Know What You're Trying To Do :)
But We Actually Need You To Type In The Website URL
Wix.com also has a separate address space 185.230.63.0 - 185.230.63.255 with
contact details in Israel.
I presume Google-Cloud has sub-allocated a space containing 23.236.62.147 to
wix.com, and wix.com is even sharing that specific address between
<covidaustralia.com>, <covid19data.com.au>, and no doubt others by parsing DNS
lookups.
I know I'm retired and rapidly becoming out of touch, but if true, that scheme
doesn't sound to me like a good idea. The world's domestic and SME routers
rely on masquerading for security, and that assumes each IP address corresponds
one system or organisation. It also allows Google to immediately identify
traffic for it's own universe of users and possibly expedite it.
Do Linkers have a more informed view? Is hacking the DNS like that allowed by
the relevant RFCs?
David Lochrin
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