[aklug] Re: ACS Google Gateway

On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 8:45 PM, Kevin Miller <atftb2@alaska.net> wrote:

> On 10/10/2013 04:56 PM, Shane Spencer wrote:
>
>> Google has an address on ACS
>>
>> I noticed this after a rather long split-net situation between commodity
>> DSL and the rest of the Internet while I was trying to diagnose the
>> problem.
>>
>> Any idea what's the what here?
>>
>
> Maybe this:
> http://www.**alaskacommunications.com/**Online-Care/Support-Center/**
> FAQs/About-AlaskaMail-Our-**upgraded-Email-Service.aspx<http://www.alaskacommunications.com/Online-Care/Support-Center/FAQs/About-AlaskaMail-Our-upgraded-Email-Service.aspx>
>
> See the bit about the new email system being powered by google.
> So I wonder if they're outsourcing their email system to google. Lots of
> new features plus google will now get to cruise your acsalaska.net inbox.
> Sigh.
>
> I just stumbled across that page yesterday. They haven't sent me any
> notices about it but I wonder if in the near future they'll make everybody
> roll off the old POP system and become a rebranded google slave...

Any move to Google's hosted email services wouldn't require a phalanx of
IPs (there are 88 hosts up in that /24, and all but five of them are in a
single sequence that overlaps with those Google A records that you found.)
 I suspect that these Google IPs are for something other than email.

These IPs in that /24 are also interestingly named:

Netflix1.acsalaska.net (204.17.140.250)
Netflix2.acsalaska.net (204.17.140.254)

(I can only imagine that someone external required those capital Ns;
they're pretty rare in the ACS DNS.)

The email FAQ item was news to me as well; I had heard rumblings about an
ACS mail switchover to Google, but haven't actually gotten any
notifications or timeline info about same.

And if you're worried about Google trolling your mail, you're not reading
the right blogs. :-/ schneier.com is down right now (?), but here's the
Google cached copy of his blog post about Quantum and FoxAcid.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:T43aU54kIuwJ:https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/how_the_nsa_att.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Saving up the really good zero-days for the really bad guys is clever. I'm
no NSA apologist, but whether or not you agree with the tactic, it gets the
mission accomplished. Judged on pure hack value, it's pretty slick.

Royce

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Received on Thu Oct 10 21:47:01 2013