Protecting DNS Data should be on the minds of all system administrators. Vulnerabilities at the software and network levels are susceptible to the same kind of attacks as any other distributed computing system would be. There are three ways the data can be insecure. Losing integrity of the system can result in the authorized modification or malicious deletions of the information. The loss of availability will discontinue access to servers. Compromising DNS data allows the unauthorized disclosure of personal information. These are all serious issues for the system administrator to manage.
While rare, if the servers are still using a simple zone file then it is imperative to make sure the permissions are restricted on that file. Ideally, the only one with access to the zone file should be the system administrator. If the servers are using a database then it becomes imperative to secure the database using all means necessary. This includes encryption and strong passwords. A regular backup routine is also needed.
Another consideration when protecting DNS data is the conventional network attack like masquerading. These types of attacks can literally deny service to all clients needing access to the resources on that particular node. It does this by corrupting the data in the cache for that node. So the masquerader is indirectly causing the denial of service attack while hijacking resources. All these attacks can have a significant impact on the entire Internet.
There is a proposed standard for securely authenticating information in the domain name system. The DNS security extension proposed is DNSSEC. The problem so far has been the operational costs when using the security extension. Despite the costs to the infrastructure and the bottom line is still wise to install a DNSSEC capable name server.
Network security is paramount today. Protecting DNS Data is also important for the entire Internet. It should be the goal of every System Administrator to see the DNSSEC name server fully deployed on the infrastructure across the entire domain tree starting with their individual servers.
Author Resource:-
Sumit Gurg provides information about DNS security,DNS load balancing and Protecting DNS Data .for more details visit at: http://www.nominum.com
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