https://github.com/fitzwilliammuseum/fitzwilliammuseum.github.io
Holding site to prevent root 404
https://github.com/fitzwilliammuseum/fitzwilliammuseum.github.io
html
Last synced: 6 months ago
JSON representation
Holding site to prevent root 404
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/fitzwilliammuseum/fitzwilliammuseum.github.io
- Owner: FitzwilliamMuseum
- Created: 2022-01-10T10:11:46.000Z (over 4 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2022-07-25T07:33:39.000Z (almost 4 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-01-14T10:48:26.253Z (over 1 year ago)
- Topics: html
- Language: HTML
- Homepage: https://github.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
- Size: 2.93 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 1
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
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Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# Fitzwilliam Museum Repository Holding Page
This is a very simple repository containing a single HTML page with full page background of the Fitzwilliam Museum portico. It's purpose is very simple! It is used as a landing page to prevent a "dangling DNS" record being used for a subdomain takeover, which happened to us. For a good explanation of this, Microsoft have created an [accessible explanation](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/fundamentals/subdomain-takeover) relating to Azure, but the principles remain the same. Subdomain security is an interesting area and conference papers now discuss this regularly eg [Can I Take Your Subdomain? Exploring Same-Site Attacks in the Modern Web](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec21-squarcina.pdf).
To explain, our DNS set up at the Fitzwilliam Museum uses chained CNAMEs (not always considered best practise) to enable us to subdomain our static websites using Github pages (see [RFC 1034 - Domain names - concepts and facilities](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1034.html#section-3.6.2) . We have a master CNAME: [github.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk](https://github.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk) and then subsequent CNAMEs which chain off this eg [data-islands.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk](https://data-islands.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/).
Due to an oversight, we forgot to create a repository that linked to the master CNAME used for static page websites, and this domain was snaffled by a random, malicious developer who created an illicit downloaded PDF farm using that domain name. This was discovered by our search engine spider, which started to index a bunch of random PDFs on our domain. To get the domain back takes a bit of liaison with Github by raising tickets, and setting up [text record authentication on your DNS](https://docs.github.com/en/pages/configuring-a-custom-domain-for-your-github-pages-site/verifying-your-custom-domain-for-github-pages) for your domains. So if this happens to you via Github Pages, raise a ticket with their support team and then follow the steps they ask you to complete, verify your domain and then mitigate for any reputational damage that might occur.