DNS Hijacking

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DNS Hijacking 

On a Thursday morning in 2017, WikiLeaks readers woke up expecting to find the latest state secret released on the whistleblowing website, only to discover a message from a hacker collective called OurMine announcing that they were in control of the domain. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange quickly took to Twitter to clarify that the takedown was not a traditional hack, but instead a domain name system (DNS) attack.

What you need to know: DNS is often called the Achilles heel of the internet, or the internet’s phonebook, because it plays a critical role in routing web traffic. The DNS is the protocol used to map domain names to IP addresses. It has been proven to work well for its intended function. But DNS is notoriously vulnerable to attack, attributed in part to its distributed nature. DNS relies on unstructured connections between millions of clients and servers over inherently insecure protocols. The gravity and extent of the importance of securing DNS from attacks is undeniable. The fallout of compromised DNS can be disastrous. Not only can hackers bring down an entire business, they can intercept confidential information, emails and login credentials as well. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2019’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) raised concerns about high-profile DNS hijacking attacks against infrastructure, both in the United States and abroad. 

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