Current Hostname Practice Considered Harmful
RFC 8117, “Current Hostname Practice Considered Harmful”, is an Informational document published in March 2017 by C. Huitema, D. Thaler, R. Winter. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
Giving a hostname to your computer and publishing it as you roam from one network to another is the Internet's equivalent of walking around with a name tag affixed to your lapel. This current practice can significantly compromise your privacy, and something should change in order to mitigate these privacy threats.
There are several possible remedies, such as fixing a variety of protocols or avoiding disclosing a hostname at all. This document describes some of the protocols that reveal hostnames today and sketches another possible remedy, which is to replace static hostnames by frequently changing randomized values.
What “Informational” means
Published for the general information of the community. It does not define an IETF standard and carries no standards-track status.
The canonical text of RFC 8117 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
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