I’ve been using unblock-us for some time (update: at the time I wrote this article I was creating a trial account every week, but after a few months of flawless service I decided it’s time to become a paying customer, which I am since April) and took only a few precautions like not signing in to any service but hulu.com while using this other DNS service.

Yesterday Damon wrote a great article on how to secure your system for unblock-us and I followed his lead.

My only machine runs Mac OS, so I had to do a bit of research…

Step 1: run bind

Following these instructions:


sudo -s
rndc-confgen -b 256 > /etc/rndc.conf
head -n5 /etc/rndc.conf | tail -n4 > /etc/rndc.key


Make sure the ports match.


launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.isc.named.plist
echo "launchctl start org.isc.named" >> /etc/launchd.conf


Step 2: configure

I didn’t need any fancy setup, so I pasted everything into /etc/named.conf:


//
// Include keys file
//
include "/etc/rndc.key";

// Declares control channels to be used by the rndc utility.
//
// It is recommended that 127.0.0.1 be the only address used.
// This also allows non-privileged users on the local host to manage
// your name server.

//
// Default controls
//
controls {
 inet 127.0.0.1 port 54 allow {any;}
 keys { "rndc-key"; };
};

options {
 forwarders {
  8.8.8.8;
  8.8.4.4;
 };

 listen-on-v6 { ::1; };
 listen-on { 127.0.0.1; };
};

zone "hulu.com" {
 type forward;
 forwarders {
  208.122.23.22;
  208.122.23.23;
 };
};
zone "unblock-us.com" {
 type forward;
 forwarders {
  208.122.23.22;
  208.122.23.23;
 };
};


Step 3: verify

Check for typos in the configuration:

named-checkconf /etc/named.conf

and check if we get new results. Before nslookup returned:

$ nslookup hulu.com
Server: 10.255.255.4
Address: 10.255.255.4#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: hulu.com
Address: 63.150.131.26
Name: hulu.com
Address: 63.150.131.11


Now I get:

# nslookup hulu.com
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: hulu.com
Address: 184.154.113.147
Name: hulu.com
Address: 50.22.86.53
Name: hulu.com
Address: 173.208.155.19
Name: hulu.com
Address: 173.208.170.19