The Case Against DNSSEC

I was talking to my good friend Verner Entwhistle the other day when he suddenly turned to me and said "I don't think we need DNSSEC". Sharp intake of breath. Transpired after a long and involved discussion his case boiled down to four points: 1. SSL provides known and trusted security, DNSSEC is superfluous, 2. DNSSEC is complex and potentially prone to errors, 3. DNSSEC makes DoS attacks worse, 4. DNSSEC does not solve the last mile problem. Let's take them one at a time... more»

Defending Networks Against DNS Rebinding Attacks

DNS rebinding attacks are real and can be carried out in the real world. They can penetrate through browsers, Java, Flash, Adobe and can have serious implications for Web 2.0-type applications that pack more code and action onto the client. Such an attack can convert browsers into open network proxies and get around firewalls to access internal documents and services. It requires less than $100 to temporarily hijack 100,000 IP addresses for sending spam and defrauding pay-per-click advertisers. Everyone is at risk and relying on network firewalls is simply not enough. In a paper released by Stanford Security Lab, "Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks," authors Collin Jackson, Adam Barth, Andrew Bortz, Weidong Shao, and Dan Boneh provide ample detail about the nature of this attack as well as strong defenses that can be put in place in order to help protect modern browsers. more»

New Report Warns Against "DNS Forgery Pharming" on BIND 9

In a recent report released by Trusteer, security researcher Amit Klein has cracked BIND's random number generator and demonstrated a new attack affecting most Internet users. In this "DNS Forgery Pharming" attack fraudsters can remotely force consumers to visit fraudulent websites without compromising any computer or network device. more»

Thoughts About "Protection Against BIND"

Imagine my surprise upon reading a BBC article which identified ISC BIND as the top security vulnerability to UNIX systems. At ISC, we have striven for a decade to repair BIND's reputation, and by all accounts we have made great progress. "What could this be about," I wondered, as I scanned the BBC article for more details. It turns out that BBC was merely parroting what it had been told by SANS. OK, let's see what SANS has to say... more»

Discussion at the Internet Governance Forum in Geneva

While travelling home from Geneva, I was thinking quite a lot on the relationship between a ccTLD (registry) and a Country. This is because many countries are starting to talk louder and louder about the responsibilities Countries have on critical infrastructure, or (possibly more important) the management of the critical infrastructure. Will for example any (none?) of ccTLD operators (servers) sustain a denial of service attack of a scale similar to the attack on the root servers? What can ccTLD operators do to resist the malicious attacks? Should this be discussed? more»

Anycast Technology Effectiveness in Recent DNS Attack

During the attack, which lasted almost eight hours, six of the 13 root servers that form the foundation of the Internet's DNS were targeted, ICANN said. However, only two were noticeably affected. These two did not have Anycast installed because the technology was still being tested, ICANN said.

"With the Anycast technology apparently proven, it is likely that the remaining roots--D, E, G, H and L--will move over soon," ICANN said. The letters refer to the five of the 13 official root DNS servers that do not yet have Anycast installed. more»

Attack Seriously Slows Two Internet Root Servers

Online attackers have briefly disrupted service on at least two of the 13 "root" servers that are used to direct traffic on the Internet.

The attack, which began Tuesday at about 5:30 a.m. Eastern time, was the most significant attack against the root servers since an October 2002 distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, said Ben Petro, senior vice president of services with Internet service provider Neustar Inc. more»

Trench Warfare in the Age of The Laser-Guided Missile

The historical development of spam fighting is allowing computer-aware criminals to take the upper hand in the fight against what has now evolved into a completely technologically and organizationally merged threat to public safety. If we do not change our strategic approach immediately, the battle, indeed even the war may be all but lost... Of late, much has been said in the popular and computer press about a vector that is annoying, but hardly critical in nature: 'Image spam'. Spammers have jumped on the new technology of 'image-only' payloads, which morph one pixel per message, rendering them unique, and traditional check-sum blocking strategies ineffective... Fortunately this fraudulent stock-touting scheme leaves a paper trail that has allowed for some successful prosecutions in the latter half of the year. Stock spamming, while popular at present time is likely to decline as legal actions increase... more»

Legal Attack on ARIN Dismissed in Court

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has announced [PDF] that it has prevailed in a lawsuit that challenged ARIN's ability to allocate Internet Protocol (IP) number resources fairly. The lawsuit was brought by an individual - Gary Kremen - who sought to have a netblock of IP addresses transferred to him without agreeing to ARIN's standard terms and conditions.

"Today's victory is significant for consumers who rely on the Internet to operate efficiently and effectively," said ARIN President and CEO Raymond Plzak. more»

Worm Propagation Strategies in an Ipv6 Internet

A recent paper called "Worm Propagation Strategies in an IPv6 Internet", written by Steven M. Bellovin, Angelos Keromytis, and Bill Cheswick, examines whether or not the deployment of IPv6 will in fact provide a substantial level of barrier against worms. Shared below are the introductory paragraphs from this paper. "In recent years, the internet has been plagued by a number of worms. One popular mechanism that worms use to detect vulnerable targets is random IP address-space probing..." more»

Behind the Smoke Screen of Internet and International Infrastructure

In my recent write-up I start by discussing some recent threats network operators should be aware of, such as recursive DNS attacks. Then, a bit on the state of the Internet, cooperation across different fields and how these latest threats with DDoS also relate to worms and bots, as well as spam, phishing and the immense ROI organized crime sees. I try and bring some suggestions on what can be done better, and where we as a community, as well as specifically where us, the "secret hand-shake clubs" of Internet security fail and succeed. Over-secrecy, lack of cooperation, lack of public information, and not being secret enough about what really matters. more»

Report on DNS Amplification Attacks

In this newly released paper Randal Vaughn and Gadi Evron discuss the threat of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks using recursive DNS name servers open to the world. The study is based on case studies of several attacked ISPs reported to have on a volume of 2.8Gbps. One reported event indicated attacks reaching as high as 10Gbps and used as many as 140,000 exploited name servers. more»

A Survey of DNS Security: Most Vulnerable and Valuable Assets

The following provides and introduction to a study by Venugopalan Ramasubramanian and Emin Gun Sirer, called "Perils of Transitive Trust in the Domain Name System". The paper presents results from a large scale survey of DNS, illustrating how complex and subtle dependencies between names and nameservers lead to a highly insecure naming system... "It is well-known that nameservers in the Domain Name System are vulnerable to a wide range of attacks. We recently performed a large scale survey to answer some basic questions about the legacy DNS." more»

Black Frog: Next Generation Botnet, No Generation Spam Fighting

Black Frog -- a new effort to continue the SO-CALLED Blue Security fight against spammers. A botnet, a crime, a stupid idea that I wish would have worked -- News items on Black Frog. Blue Frog by Blue Security was a good effort. Why? Because they wanted to "get spammers back". They withstood tremendous DDoS attacks and abuse reports, getting kicked from ISP after ISP. ...The road to hell is filled with good intentions. Theirs was golden, but they got to hell, quite literally, non-the-less. ...When Blue Security went down, some of us made a bet as to when two bored guys sitting and planning their millions in some café would show up, with Blue Security's business plan minus the DDoS factor. Well -- they just did. more»

Should the Government Prepare a Preemptive Cyber-Attack?

The House Committee on Science recently held a hearing to "examine the extent of U.S. vulnerability to cyber attacks on critical infrastructure such as utility systems, and what the federal government and private sector are doing, and should be doing, to prevent and prepare for such attacks." Specific issues addressed at the hearing included whether: 1) the U.S. is able to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure; and 2) is there a clear line of responsibility within the federal government to deal with cybersecurity... more»