Byzantium/Byzantium — Issue #41: Redirect commonly accessed URLs to frontpage of Byzantium node.
Author: virtadpt
Created: 2011-10-28 17:37:16+00:00
State: open

dnsmasq is capable of performing a DNS hijack on certain IP addresses to redirect traffic elsewhere. In this case, traffic destined for certain popular websites (such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter) should be redirected to the node's frontpage (https://nodename.byzantium.mesh/) to inform the user that a) they are on a mesh, b) proper operational security measures should be taken, and c) they have to click through to acknowledge this fact. This is done with the address= directive in dnsmasq.conf, and looks like this:

address=/www.google.com/10.x.y.1

Due to the fact that the IP address to redirect to has to be specified, we can't set this up ahead of time. It'll have to be configured at the same time that the dnsmasq.conf.include file is created by the control panel. This will be pretty easy to do as it will only involve the addition of a couple of writes to the .include file.

So far, www.google.com, encrypted.google.com, twitter.com, and facebook.com are on the list. Any others we should hijack?