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Random URL Redirects and Bad DNS Resolution
jotate
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey everyone. Sorry for not being around lately and diving back here when I have a problem. I'm a little stumped and couldn't figure out a decent Google search to find an answer for this thing.
A couple days ago, I moved into a new house and set up my desktop. Same ISP, same service, same modem, same router, same computer. Same old Firefox, though I have tried and experienced the issue in both Chrome and IE as well.
I noticed something strange one day when I clicked to http://images.google.com, it listed "http://images.google.com" in the address bar but loaded the webpage for http://www.carpentersunionbc.com. A couple other random pages did similar things (loaded random other pages, some I'd been to before, some I hadn't), and all of them eventually resolved to the correct page if I hit refresh enough times. I did some /flushdns, but that didn't fix it every time. My DNS server was set to my default gateway, so I statically set it to a public DNS (4.2.2.2) and that seemed to resolve the problem. Testing it out on other computers in my house that were still obtaining automatically, none of them seemed to have the problem.
I waited a few days and curiosity started to get to me. I swapped my DNS back to obtaining automatically and experienced similar but slightly more mind boggling issues. I clicked a link from Reddit to go to a Youtube video, the URL displayed in the address bar was the same URL suffix, but the domain was swapped to www.smbc.com. And the page that loaded was some miscellaneous MySpace page. I promptly made this face: o_O
Set my DNS back to 4.2.2.2, flushed DNS, restarted the browser, and things seem to be squared away again. But I still want to know what the hell is wrong with my PC, just because this problem is so ridiculous.
Anyone ever experienced anything like this or have any ideas? Thanks in advance.
A couple days ago, I moved into a new house and set up my desktop. Same ISP, same service, same modem, same router, same computer. Same old Firefox, though I have tried and experienced the issue in both Chrome and IE as well.
I noticed something strange one day when I clicked to http://images.google.com, it listed "http://images.google.com" in the address bar but loaded the webpage for http://www.carpentersunionbc.com. A couple other random pages did similar things (loaded random other pages, some I'd been to before, some I hadn't), and all of them eventually resolved to the correct page if I hit refresh enough times. I did some /flushdns, but that didn't fix it every time. My DNS server was set to my default gateway, so I statically set it to a public DNS (4.2.2.2) and that seemed to resolve the problem. Testing it out on other computers in my house that were still obtaining automatically, none of them seemed to have the problem.
I waited a few days and curiosity started to get to me. I swapped my DNS back to obtaining automatically and experienced similar but slightly more mind boggling issues. I clicked a link from Reddit to go to a Youtube video, the URL displayed in the address bar was the same URL suffix, but the domain was swapped to www.smbc.com. And the page that loaded was some miscellaneous MySpace page. I promptly made this face: o_O
Set my DNS back to 4.2.2.2, flushed DNS, restarted the browser, and things seem to be squared away again. But I still want to know what the hell is wrong with my PC, just because this problem is so ridiculous.
Anyone ever experienced anything like this or have any ideas? Thanks in advance.
jotate on
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I would recommend using 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3 or www.opendns.com for DNS servers anyway, just for speed and reliability.
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Who's your ISP? It's not unheard of for ISP DNS servers to get hijacked or otherwise messed up? When you use their DNS and you do some nslookups of known URLs/IPs, do the results come back OK? Do you have a router in between you and your ISP that is acting as a middleman for your DNS (relatively common)? If so, your router software may have gotten messed up or compromised and you need to reflash with the latest version.
ISP is Insight here in Columbus, OH. I believe the router is acting as the DNS when I set it to dynamic. I haven't done any nslookups, I'll give that a looksie and see what they come back with. Seems odd that the router would be having issues since the other machines using the same router are doing alright.