[Bitcoin-development] Policy for DNS seeds

Wladimir laanwj at gmail.com
Mon Jul 21 13:43:42 UTC 2014


We've established a few basic rules for the DNS seeds as used in the
Bitcoin Core software. See below.

If you run one of the DNS seeds please reply to this and let us know
whether you agree to these terms. if you think some requirements are
unreasonable let us know too. If we haven't heard from you by
2014-08-04 we will remove your DNS seed from the list of defaults.

Expectations for DNSSeed operators
====================================

Bitcoin Core attempts to minimize the level of trust in DNS seeds,
but DNS seeds still pose a small amount of risk for the network.
Other implementations of Bitcoin software may also use the same
seeds and may be more exposed. In light of this exposure this
document establishes some basic expectations for the expectations
for the operation of dnsseeds.

0. A DNSseed operating organization or person is expected
to follow good host security practices and maintain control of
their serving infrastructure and not sell or transfer control of their
infrastructure. Any hosting services contracted by the operator are
equally expected to uphold these expectations.

1. The DNSseed results must consist exclusively of fairly selected and
functioning Bitcoin nodes from the public network to the best of the
operators understanding and capability.

2. For the avoidance of doubt, the results may be randomized but must not
single-out any group of hosts to receive different results unless due to an
urgent technical necessity and disclosed.

3. The results may not be served with a DNS TTL of less than one minute.

4. Any logging of DNS queries should be only that which is necessary
for the operation of the service or urgent health of the Bitcoin
network and must not be retained longer than necessary or disclosed
to any third party.

5. Information gathered as a result of the operators node-spidering
(not from DNS queries) may be freely published or retained, but only
if this data was not made more complete by biasing node connectivity
(a violation of expectation (1)).

6. Operators are encouraged, but not required, to publicly document
the details of their operating practices.

7. A reachable email contact address must be published for inquiries
related to the DNSseed operation.

If these expectations cannot be satisfied the operator should
discontinue providing services and contact the active Bitcoin
Core development team as well as posting on bitcoin-development.

Behavior outside of these expectations may be reasonable in some
situations but should be discussed in public in advance.

========

See
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/4566

Wladimir




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