DOCSLIB.ORG

Review Paper on Prevention of DNS Spoofing

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Review Paper on Prevention of DNS Spoofing Volume-4, Issue-3, June-2014, ISSN No.: 2250-0758 International Journal of Engineering and Management Research Available at: www.ijemr.net Page Number: 164-170 Review Paper on Prevention of DNS Spoofing Roopam1, Bandana Sharma2 1,2CSE, Kurukshetra University, INDIA ABSTRACT similar to: 7.9.18.26. A computer always needs to understand Today, to deceive customers financially in banks or to what numerical IP address of user alphanumeric address such their confidential data, one of the broadly used attack is internet as WWW.EXAMPLE.COM, which is accomplished through attack. Web criminals doing an internet scam through Phished DNS servers. Finally DNS listed for the Domain Name Websites that harms the user’s confidentiality. Attackers spoof delivers the answer back to the requesting computer. the data by mimicking the original Websites using DNS spoofing. 1.3 Domain Name Spoofing An essential part of the internet on whose many other protocol rely is the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS allows hosts on the A computer hacking attacks termed as DNS spoofing network to make updates to DNS records dynamically, without or also known as DNS cache poisoning, in which a data that is the need for restarting the DNS service. Server gets User’s being introduced into a Domain Name Server results in passwords, credit card numbers and any of their confidential diverting traffic to another computer and return an incorrect details by directly redirecting the user to a fake server. This can IP address. be done by injecting Fake DNS server in place of Original A DNS server is provided by the computer user's Server. In this thesis we want to prevent the DNS server from organization or an Internet Service Provider (ISP) generally DNS spoofing with efficient algorithm. The algorithm included in this thesis increases the security of url request from the attacker. used by networked computer .An organization's network This can be done by encrypting the url request by the user at deploy a DNS server to improve resolution response client side using RSA 1024 public key encryption and exactly performance by caching previously obtained query results. An double its encrypted security by appending bits generated from attacker is just need to exploit a flaw in the DNS software to blum blum shub generator at client side only. This whole accomplish a cache poisoning attack. If the request made by encrypted data then be sent to server side. DNS server doesn’t validate to ensure that they are from authoritative source the server will end up caching the Keywords- DNS, Public Key Algorithm, RSA Encryption , Blum incorrect entries locally and serve them to other users that Blum Shub Generator. make the same request. Attackers can use this technique to direct users of a website to another site of the attacker's I. INTRODUCTION choosing. Attacker needs to do is to spoof the IP address of DNS entries for a target website on a given DNS server, takes 1.1 Internet a control of his server by replacing that IP Address. Then files Internet Protocol (IP) is the standard that is used to will be created on the server he controls similar to the names link several billion devices worldwide is being used by matching the target server. A user who referenced to the computer network for the interconnection of a global system malicious server could be convinced in accepting content is termed as Internet. A broad array of electronic, wireless, coming from fake server and forced to download malicious and optical networking technologies are used to create a link content. between millions of private, public, academic, business, and 1.4 Phished Websites government networks, that create a network of network is A web site that is being created to capture any fields commonly called as internet. An extensive range of completed by the user (such as username and passwords)is information resources and services is being carried by termed as phishing websites . As soon as the user completes Internet, such as the infrastructure to support email, the inter- these fields , an attacker captures all his information. An linked hypertext documents and applications of the World attacker creates a fake web site that looks like exactly the Wide Web (WWW), , and peer-to-peer networks for file same as real web site for eg. facebook . The attacker sned his sharing and telephony. fake web site instead of original one whenever being 1.2 Domain Name Server requested by user and also trick the user into clicking a link Domain Name Server can be abbreviated as DNS, that leads to the fake site. When the user clicks to attempts to which helps in translating word based addresses of system to log on with their account information, all the information the system that should be located at that address or to the including his username and password is being stored to the numerical IP address of the computer (such as attacker record. WWW.EXAMPLE.COM to the Internet Protocol). All computers and systems on the Internet use addresses that look 164 Fig. 1.1 Phished website II. PROBLEM EXPLANATION The problem we formulated can be explained as capturing In Figure 1, clients will communicate with wrong or eavesdropping on users confidential data or misguiding destination and consequently receive incorrect IP . These them. This can be done diverting the user’s request from real destinations might be fake web servers to gain DNS server to the fake DNS server. username/password or private information of clients. Websites This DNS server problem originated when an attacker contain malicious content such as worms and viruses; fake place a fake DNS server in spite of real DNS server. This can update server for the software and operating system, and be done by placing a wrong IP address instead to original one sometime it threatens the network availability. by doing a very small modification in it. This whole process is termed as DNS spoofing. A process of stealing a confidential or secret data or user III. METHODOLOGY can be accomplished using Fake Website. A Fake website is a website, which looks similar to the real website with a slight The methodology we used in our thesis can be explained or unmarked difference with it. This difference can be as follows: A descriptive research on specific attacks that are explained as, a letter which looks similar to each other can be performed on Websites have been done by us. DNS spoofing, replaced so that user won’t be able to judge the difference now a days have become a critical issue to be resolved which between real and fake. As soon as the user start accessing the is very common and popular in web crime. Many different illegitimate website, the information like username, password, approach have been proposed against it which we discussed phone number, address etc will be sent to the fake DNS above. Giuseppe Ateniese from department of Computer server. And finally attacker will be able to steal or copy all the Science of JHU Information Security Institute and Stefan details of user for any harmful reason. Mangard from Institute for Applied Information Processing This can be explained as below: and Communications (IAIK) both proposed a new Approach to DNS SECURITY (DNSSEC). In our paper we presented a technique to prevent DNS server from attacker. This is having a 1024 pubic key which is used by RSA encryption to encrypt the url request by user. Further more Blum Blum Shub generator is used to generate 1024 binary bits and those bits are appended to the encrypted url data. Finally this whole encrypted data will be sent to server site. At server site, RSA decryption will be done to decrypt the data received from client site. And finally resulted in an original form of request. This whole methodology will help the user from being attacked by hackers. If any attacker in middle try to eavesdrop or divert the request from original DNS server then he won’t be able to judge the real request. 165 IV. RESULT RSA 1024 Encryption with blum blum shub generator: Fig 4.4 decryption time taken at server side V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Fig 4.1 url request by user at client side Securing a DNs is a major challenge now a days therefore required to be secuired as soon as possible. The proposal to do such a change is introduced above which resulted in a positive way. The protocol or technique we introduced above make use of Public key RSA encryption with public key size 1024 with blum blum shub generator which helps in additional secuirity with minimum time. The protocol helps the user to secure his url request by given technique in comparatively less time to others. This can be seen above. Besides this we concluded that if we compare the security between the proposed architecture Fig 4.2 url request encrypted at client side showing time and others, we can see that proposed technique with public key size 1024 generate the same or more secuirity than the technique used before with 2048 key size or more. We presented a proposal, when properly implemented, and offers the higher security than others. It also degraded the time taken and improves the level of traffic of network. In future this can be done in a more dynamic way. Also one can implement the same protocol with small key size that will be able to generate comparatively more secure url request when compared with others. VI. LITERATURE SURVEY 1. G. Aghila, Professor, CDBR-SSE Lab, Department of Computer Science, Pondicherry University and V.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • DNS Spoofing 2
    Professor Vahab COMP 424 13 November 2016 DNS Spoofing DNS spoofing, also known as DNS Cache Poisoning, is one of the most widely used man-in-the-middle attacks that capitalizes on vulnerabilities in the domain name system that returns a false IP address and routes the user to a malicious domain. Whenever a machine contacts a domain name such as www.bankofamerica.com, it must first contact its DNS server which responds with multiple IP addresses where your machine can reach the website. Your computer is then able to connect directly to one of the IP addresses and the DNS is able to convert the IP addresses into a human-readable domain name. If an attacker is able to gain control of a DNS server and change some of its properties such as routing Bank of America’s website to an attacker’s IP address. At that location, the attacker is then able to unsuspectingly steal the user’s credentials and account information. Attackers use spam and other forms of attack to deliver malware that changes DNS settings and installs a rogue Certificate Authority. The DNS changes point to the hacker's secret DNS name server so that when the users access the web they are directed to proxy servers instead of authorized sites. They can also start to blacklist domains and frustrate the user with their day to day activities. All blacklisted domains would have their traffic dropped instead of forwarded to their intended destination. Based on the rogue Certificate Authority the system has no sign that an attack is taking place or ever took place.
    [Show full text]
  • Secure Shell- Its Significance in Networking (Ssh)
    International Journal of Application or Innovation in Engineering & Management (IJAIEM) Web Site: www.ijaiem.org Email: [email protected] Volume 4, Issue 3, March 2015 ISSN 2319 - 4847 SECURE SHELL- ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN NETWORKING (SSH) ANOOSHA GARIMELLA , D.RAKESH KUMAR 1. B. TECH, COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING Student, 3rd year-2nd Semester GITAM UNIVERSITY Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh India 2.Assistant Professor Computer Science and Engineering GITAM UNIVERSITY Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh India ABSTRACT This paper is focused on the evolution of SSH, the need for SSH, working of SSH, its major components and features of SSH. As the number of users over the Internet is increasing, there is a greater threat of your data being vulnerable. Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol provides a secure method for remote login and other secure network services over an insecure network. The SSH protocol has been designed to support many features along with proper security. This architecture with the help of its inbuilt layers which are independent of each other provides user authentication, integrity, and confidentiality, connection- oriented end to end delivery, multiplexes encrypted tunnel into several logical channels, provides datagram delivery across multiple networks and may optionally provide compression. Here, we have also described in detail what every layer of the architecture does along with the connection establishment. Some of the threats which Ssh can encounter, applications, advantages and disadvantages have also been mentioned in this document. Keywords: SSH, Cryptography, Port Forwarding, Secure SSH Tunnel, Key Exchange, IP spoofing, Connection- Hijacking. 1. INTRODUCTION SSH Secure Shell was first created in 1995 by Tatu Ylonen with the release of version 1.0 of SSH Secure Shell and the Internet Draft “The SSH Secure Shell Remote Login Protocol”.
    [Show full text]
  • Threat Modeling and Circumvention of Internet Censorship by David Fifield
    Threat modeling and circumvention of Internet censorship By David Fifield A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor J.D. Tygar, Chair Professor Deirdre Mulligan Professor Vern Paxson Fall 2017 1 Abstract Threat modeling and circumvention of Internet censorship by David Fifield Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California, Berkeley Professor J.D. Tygar, Chair Research on Internet censorship is hampered by poor models of censor behavior. Censor models guide the development of circumvention systems, so it is important to get them right. A censor model should be understood not just as a set of capabilities|such as the ability to monitor network traffic—but as a set of priorities constrained by resource limitations. My research addresses the twin themes of modeling and circumvention. With a grounding in empirical research, I build up an abstract model of the circumvention problem and examine how to adapt it to concrete censorship challenges. I describe the results of experiments on censors that probe their strengths and weaknesses; specifically, on the subject of active probing to discover proxy servers, and on delays in their reaction to changes in circumvention. I present two circumvention designs: domain fronting, which derives its resistance to blocking from the censor's reluctance to block other useful services; and Snowflake, based on quickly changing peer-to-peer proxy servers. I hope to change the perception that the circumvention problem is a cat-and-mouse game that affords only incremental and temporary advancements.
    [Show full text]
  • Thesis That TW-OR Forwards All DNS Queries to a Resolver in China
    The Impact of DNSSEC on the Internet Landscape Von der Fakult¨atf¨urIngenieurwissenschaften, Abteilung Informatik und Angewandte Kognitionswissenschaft der Universit¨atDuisburg-Essen zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften genehmigte Dissertation von Matth¨ausWander aus Lubin (L¨uben) Gutachter: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Torben Weis Prof. Dr.-Ing. Felix Freiling Tag der m¨undlichen Pr¨ufung:19. Juni 2015 Abstract In this dissertation we investigate the security deficiencies of the Domain Name System (DNS) and assess the impact of the DNSSEC security extensions. DNS spoofing attacks divert an application to the wrong server, but are also used routinely for blocking access to websites. We provide evidence for systematic DNS spoofing in China and Iran with measurement-based analyses, which allow us to examine the DNS spoofing filters from van- tage points outside of the affected networks. Third-parties in other countries can be affected inadvertently by spoofing-based domain filtering, which could be averted with DNSSEC. The security goals of DNSSEC are data integrity and authenticity. A point solution called NSEC3 adds a privacy assertion to DNSSEC, which is supposed to prevent disclosure of the domain namespace as a whole. We present GPU-based attacks on the NSEC3 privacy assertion, which allow efficient recovery of the namespace contents. We demonstrate with active measurements that DNSSEC has found wide adoption after initial hesitation. At server-side, there are more than five million domains signed with DNSSEC. A portion of them is insecure due to insufficient cryptographic key lengths or broken due to maintenance failures. At client-side, we have observed a worldwide increase of DNSSEC validation over the last three years, though not necessarily on the last mile.
    [Show full text]
  • Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks
    Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks Collin Jackson Adam Barth Andrew Bortz Stanford University Stanford University Stanford University [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Weidong Shao Dan Boneh Stanford University Stanford University [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT these security goals, modern browsers implement the same- DNS rebinding attacks subvert the same-origin policy of origin policy that attempts to isolate distinct “origins,” pro- browsers and convert them into open network proxies. We tecting sites from each other. survey new DNS rebinding attacks that exploit the inter- DNS rebinding attacks subvert the same-origin policy by action between browsers and their plug-ins, such as Flash confusing the browser into aggregating network resources Player and Java. These attacks can be used to circumvent controlled by distinct entities into one origin, effectively con- firewalls and are highly cost-effective for sending spam e- verting browsers into open proxies. Using DNS rebinding, mail and defrauding pay-per-click advertisers, requiring less an attacker can circumvent firewalls to spider corporate in- than $100 to temporarily hijack 100,000 IP addresses. We tranets, exfiltrate sensitive documents, and compromise un- show that the classic defense against these attacks, called patched internal machines. An attacker can also hijack the “DNS pinning,” is ineffective in modern browsers. The pri- IP address of innocent clients to send spam e-mail, commit mary focus of this work,
    [Show full text]
  • Dns / Opennic / Dnscrypt
    dns / opennic / dnscrypt Serial: 2015111401 What is DNS ● Domain Name System ● In simple words when you are looking for hackerspace.gr you 're looking for the IP of the server that hosts the hackerspace site. ● But how ? How DNS works public/open dns ● Goodle dns – 8.8.8.8 2001:4860:4860::8888 – 8.8.4.4 2001:4860:4860::8844 ● OpenDNS – 208.67.222.222 2620:0:ccc::2 – 208.67.220.220 2620:0:ccd::2 ● norton dns/comodo/dns advantage/dns.watch ● fdn/freeDNS/Verisign ● BUT THEY ALL track what you are watching!!!! https://www.opennicproject.org/ ● OpenNIC is an alternate network information center/alternative DNS root which lists itself as an alternative to ICANN and its registries. ● Total DNS Neutrality ● Have A Say In Your DNS ● Protect Your Privacy ● No More ISP DNS Hijacking ● No Cost (Gratis) ● Freedom From Government Intervention openic website/wiki New Top Level Domains .bbs .ing .dyn .micro .free .neo .fur .null .geek .oss .gopher .oz .indy .parody 1. How does opennic work? . 82796 IN NS ns9.opennic.glue. 82796 IN NS ns3.opennic.glue. 82796 IN NS ns8.opennic.glue. 82796 IN NS ns4.opennic.glue. 82796 IN NS ns10.opennic.glue. 82796 IN NS ns6.opennic.glue. 82796 IN NS ns7.opennic.glue. 82796 IN NS ns2.opennic.glue. ;; Received 174 bytes from 94.242.59.170#53(94.242.59.170) in 126 ms 2. gr. 172800 IN NS gr-br.ics.forth.gr. gr. 172800 IN NS gr-at.ics.forth.gr. gr. 172800 IN NS estia.ics.forth.gr.
    [Show full text]
  • DNS and the DNS Cache Poisoning Attack
    Lecture 17: DNS and the DNS Cache Poisoning Attack Lecture Notes on “Computer and Network Security” by Avi Kak ([email protected]) June 25, 2021 3:21pm ©2021 Avinash Kak, Purdue University Goals: The Domain Name System BIND Configuring BIND Running BIND on your Ubuntu laptop Light-Weight Nameservers (and how to install them) DNS Cache Poisoning Attack Writing Perl and Python code for cache poisoning attacks Dan Kaminsky’s More Virulent DNS Cache Poisoning Attack CONTENTS Section Title Page 17.1 Internet, Harry Potter, and the Magic of DNS 3 17.2 DNS 5 17.3 An Example That Illustrates Extensive DNS 13 Lookups in Even the Simplest Client-Server Interactions 17.4 The Domain Name System and The dig Utility 28 17.5 host, nslookup, and whois Utilities for Name 42 Lookup 17.6 Creating a New Zone and Zone Transfers 45 17.7 DNS Cache 48 17.7.1 The TTL Time Interval 51 17.8 BIND 56 17.8.1 Configuring BIND 58 17.8.2 An Example of the named.conf Configuration File 64 17.8.3 Running BIND on Your Ubuntu Laptop 68 17.9 What Does it Mean to Run a Process in a 70 chroot Jail? 17.10 Phishing versus Pharming 73 17.11 DNS Cache Poisoning 74 17.12 Writing Perl and Python Code for Mounting a 81 DNS Cache Poisoning Attack 17.13 Dan Kaminsky’s More Virulent Exploit for 92 DNS Cache Poisoning 17.14 Homework Problems 99 Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 17 Back to TOC 17.1 INTERNET, HARRY POTTER, AND THE MAGIC OF DNS If you have read Harry Potter, you are certainly familiar with the use of owl mail by the wizards and the witches.
    [Show full text]
  • A Review of Man-In-The-Middle Attacks
    A Review of Man-in-the-Middle Attacks Subodh Gangan Abstract: This paper presents a survey of man-in-the-middle (MIM) attacks in communication networks and methods of protection against them. In real time communication, the attack can in many situations be discovered by the use of timing information. The most common attacks occur due to Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) cache poisoning, DNS spoofing, session hijacking, and SSL hijacking. Introduction Man-in-the-Middle (MIM) attacks make the task of keeping data secure and private particularly challenging since attacks can be mounted from remote computers with fake addresses. Whereas communications security was primarily that of breaking of encryption transformations (as in the case of the Enigma machine during the Second World War [1]), the problem of security in computer networks also involves active interference by intruders, and of these MIM attack is one of the most spectacular. The MIM attack takes advantage of the weaknesses in the authentication protocols being used by the communicating parties. Since authentication is generally provided by third parties who issue certificates, the system of certificate generation becomes another source of potential weakness. The MIM attack allows the intruder or the unauthorized party to snoop on data through the backdoor. This intervention is also being used by companies to pry upon their employees and for adware. For example, in early 2015, it was discovered that Lenovo computers came preinstalled with adware called Superfish that injects advertising on browsers such as Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. Superfish installs a self-generated root certificate into the Windows certificate store and then resigns all SSL certificates presented by HTTPS sites with its own certificate.
    [Show full text]
  • Attack Packet Victim Response Rate
    CS 361S Attacks on TCP/IP, BGP, DNS Denial of Service Vitaly Shmatikov slide 1 Reading Assignment “SYN cookies” by Bernstein “IP spoofing demystified” from Phrack magazine “It’s the end of the cache as we know it” by Kaminsky (BlackHat 2008) slide 2 Warm Up: 802.11b NAV (Network Allocation Vector) • 15-bit field, max value: 32767 • Any node can reserve channel for NAV microseconds • No one else should transmit during NAV period … but not followed by most 802.11b cards De-authentication • Any node can send deauth packet to AP • Deauth packet unauthenticated … attacker can repeatedly deauth anyone slide 3 Internet Is a Network of Networks backbone ISP local network Internet service provider (ISP) Autonomous system (AS) is a local network collection of IP networks under control of a single administrator (e.g., ISP) TCP/IP for packet routing and connections Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for route discovery Domain Name System (DNS) for IP address discovery slide 4 OSI Protocol Stack email, Web, NFS application presentation RPC session TCP transport IP network Ethernet data link physical slide 5 Data Formats application Application data message layer transport TCP TCP TCP segment layer header data header data header data network IP TCP packet layer header header data data link Ethernet IP TCP Ethernet frame layer header header header data trailer slide 6 IP (Internet Protocol) Connectionless • Unreliable, “best-effort” protocol Uses numeric addresses for routing Typically several hops in the route Alice’s computer Bob’s ISP Packet Alice’s
    [Show full text]
  • Whac-A-Mole: Six Years of DNS Spoofing Lan Wei John Heidemann {Weilan,Johnh}@Isi.Edu University of Southern California/ Information Sciences Institute
    Whac-A-Mole: Six Years of DNS Spoofing Lan Wei John Heidemann {weilan,johnh}@isi.edu University of Southern California/ Information Sciences Institute ABSTRACT cryptographic signature that can verify each level of the DNS is important in nearly all interactions on the Internet. DNS tree from the root. Unfortunately, DNSSEC deployment All large DNS operators use IP anycast, announcing servers is far from complete, with names of many organizations in BGP from multiple physical locations to reduce client la- (including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipedia) still tency and provide capacity. However, DNS is easy to spoof: unprotected [23], in part because of challenges integrating third parties intercept and respond to queries for benign or DNSSEC with DNS-based CDN redirection. Even for domains malicious purposes. Spoofing is of particular risk for services protected by DNSSEC, client software used by many end- using anycast, since service is already announced from mul- users fail to check DNSSEC. tiple origins. In this paper, we describe methods to identify While there has been some study of how DNS spoofing DNS spoofing, infer the mechanism being used, and identify works [10], and particularly about the use of spoofing for organizations that spoof from historical data. Our methods censorship [15], to our knowledge, there has been little pub- detect overt spoofing and some covertly-delayed answers, lic analysis of general spoofing of DNS over time. (Wessels although a very diligent adversarial spoofer can hide. We currently has an unpublished study of spoofing [36].) Increas- use these methods to study more than six years of data about ing use of DNSSEC [11], and challenges in deployment [5] root DNS servers from thousands of vantage points.
    [Show full text]
  • How India Censors The
    How India Censors the Web Kushagra Singh∗ Gurshabad Grover∗ Varun Bansal Centre for Internet and Society Centre for Internet and Society Centre for Internet and Society [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT First, the regulations do not mandate ISPs to use specific filter- One of the primary ways in which India engages in online censor- ing mechanisms. Thus, ISPs are are at liberty to employ various ship is by ordering Internet Service Providers (ISPs) operating in its technical methods [47]. jurisdiction to block access to certain websites for its users. This pa- Second, website-blocking orders, especially those issued by the per reports the different techniques Indian ISPs are using to censor Government, are rarely available in the public domain. ISPs are, in websites, and investigates whether website blocklists are consistent fact, mandated by regulations to maintain confidentiality of cer- across ISPs. We propose a suite of tests that prove more robust than tain website-blocking orders issued by the Government [3].Various previous work in detecting DNS and HTTP based censorship. Our attempts by researchers and advocacy organisations to obtain the tests also discern the use of SNI inspection for blocking websites, complete list of blocked websites have failed [4, 24]. which is previously undocumented in the Indian context. Using Third, the whimsy of ISPs and the Government aggravates these information from court orders, user reports and government orders, problems. Despite strict net neutrality regulations in India that we compile the largest known list of potentially blocked websites in prohibit ISPs from arbitrarily restricting access to websites [35], India.
    [Show full text]
  • DNS Spoofing and Poisoning
    DNS Spoofing and Poisoning: Trust, Danger, and Solutions Alex Polyakov [email protected] Mentor: Ming Chow, Department of Computer Science, Tufts University Abstract. The Domain Name System is the way in which human-readable domain names resolve to numeric IP addresses. This protocol is meant to facilitate an easy, streamlined navigation pattern for human users across the web. Unfortunately, the user-friendly choices made in the design of the protocol come with tradeoffs when considering the security qualities thereof. This paper is meant as an overview of the threats facing the protocol, and by extension users on networks where DNS is in use as an address resolution mechanism. We will explore methods of attacking the system as well as potential motivations and benefits for attackers. Finally, the paper will propose several techniques defend the system against attacks, both on the level of individual users or providers, and on the level of protocol features that govern the functionality of DNS. 1. Introduction – The Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS, for short), is the application-layer protocol which governs the way that Human-Readable addresses (i.e. a URI in the form “http://www.google.com”) resolve to numeric IP addresses for the purpose of sending requests and responses along a network. The chief use of DNS is to provide human users of the Internet with a way to access the network, but abstract away the necessity for users to memorize the actual numeric identifiers for the resources therein. Often, a network DNS is likened to a physical phonebook, where human-readable names are also translated to numeric identifiers for navigation of the network (i.e.
    [Show full text]