Internet Censorship: Malaysia

Malaysia has become the latest country to begin filtering the Internet. The news web site www.malaysia-today.net is being blocked by Malaysia largest Internet Service Provider, TMnet, after the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission ordered the web site blocked.

TMnet has configured their DNS serverssuch that they do not properly resolve the correct IP addresses for www.malaysia-today.net or malaysia-today.net.

$ dig @202.188.1.5 www.malaysia-today.net

; < <>> DiG 9.4.2-P1 < <>> @202.188.1.5 www.malaysia-today.net
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER< <- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 18677
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.malaysia-today.net. IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
malaysia-today.net. 3600 IN SOA ns1.blocked. blocked.tm.net.my. 1 900 600 86400 3600

;; Query time: 270 msec
;; SERVER: 202.188.1.5#53(202.188.1.5)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 28 09:20:20 2008
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 104

$ dig @202.188.1.5 malaysia-today.net

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P1 < <>> @202.188.1.5 malaysia-today.net
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER< <- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15429
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;malaysia-today.net. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
malaysia-today.net. 3600 IN A 127.0.0.1

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
malaysia-today.net. 3600 IN NS ns1.blocked.

;; Query time: 292 msec
;; SERVER: 202.188.1.5#53(202.188.1.5)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 28 09:20:42 2008
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 77