DNS status request

OK, so there is a general query you can make of a DNS service. It's called a status request. Type 0 requests are standard queries, requests to ask what is the ip-address of "www.somecompany.com". Type 1 requests are reverse lookups such as what is the domain-name of "131.181.6.130"? Type 2 requests are "What is your current status?" That's just what we want, because it works with any DNS server, and it doesn't require any actual lookups, which might get delegated to other servers.

A DNS status query is easy to construct, but it has to be sent via UDP. So far all the challenges I have been sending are via TCP. So it wasn't responding, even though the DNS server is supposed to be listening on UDP and TCP.

The challenge turns out to be just:

\25\14\20\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0

The first two bytes are insignificant, just a unique ID generated by the client. The next byte holds the status request command, and everything else has to be 0.