DNSCrypt Protection Guide: Top Five DNS Threats You Must Avail Protection Against

Ensuring DNS security is quite important to enjoy a safer yet trouble-free Internet experience. Encrypted browsing sessions help in keeping security risks, threats, DNS attacks and malicious infections away. You can avail optimal DNS protection by installing the DNSCrypt program, available for free download on OpenDNS’s official website.

Many a times, you may feel threatened when you read or hear about news related to online frauds and cyber crimes. Almost all of the users have a habit of avoiding real vulnerability by underestimating their powers to cause physical, virtual and internal damages to your systems. Tech experts also refer DNS security and stability as one of the prime matter of concern for the online users. They further claim that the main reason for cyber attacks, online crimes, and man-in-the-middle dangers is ignorance. Since the Domain Name System (DNS) is highly persistent in virtual threats and cyber attacks, users should deploy strategic plans to fight against such threats.

Read the complete article to know about five DNS threats you must protect against:

DDoS Attacks

DDoS attacks, Short for Distributed Denial of Service attacks, does not exactly relate to DNS. But the Domain Name System is highly vulnerable to these attacks as they present a logical choke point on networks. Many a times, organizations overlook these factors while capacity-planning their infrastructure. You business website may face disabling or degrading issues if the DNS infrastructure isn’t capable of handling the number of incoming requests. If you wish to avail enhanced protection against DDoS attacks, then engage a managed DNS provider who uses a protected network of Anycast servers. The protected network of Anycast servers can handle DNS traffic efficiently and ensure completely encrypted browsing, leaving no space for cyber threats to attack the network or device.

Typosquatting

Typosquatting is the process of registering a domain name that is confusingly similar to an existing popular brand. You can also explain the entire process by understanding the exact phenomenon of the trademark attorneys. The attack may possess higher risks to your corporate confidentiality, business secrets, and other organization’s security problems. Typosquatting not only deals with registering confusingly similar domains to get the advantage of the misdirected web traffic, but it also plays a vital role in stealing sensitive information. Online hackers and DNS attackers usually try to obtain access to corporate emails by typosquatting certain domains. The process can help them in stealing passwords, tracking sales information and revealing other trade secrets. Some of the sophisticated attacks can also help the hackers to obtain details about both the email sender and recipient. You should monitor new registered domain names and confusingly similar brand names to protect against the issue.

DNS Amplification Attacks

DNS amplification attacks often get combined with the DDoS attacks to leverage DNS servers applied using insecure configurations. DNS’s ‘Recursion’ feature allows hackers for domain name resolution by presenting more robust name servers. In reality, the "open" recursive DNS servers are neither controlled nor restricted. Many online hackers use these servers to increase the strength of their DDoS attacks. If the hacker gets successful in compromising the security of the recursive DNS server, then he can see every spurious packet that gets delivered from one of its bots. The outcome of the web tracking and suspicious activities could result in botnet wielding.

Cache Poisoning

Your network records the cache DNS data whenever you send an email or visit a website. Browsing Cache helps in improving the performance of the Internet and provides authoritative DNS responses. But, sometimes these cache DNS data becomes vulnerable to ‘poisoning’ attacks. Attackers exploit security vulnerabilities or poorly configured DNS servers to inject fraudulent information into caches. Innocent users accessing the cache will get redirected to the targeted site that is controlled by the attacker. You can deploy the protocol known as DNSSEC to avail enhanced protection across worldwide registries and registrars. DNSSEC digital signature can help browsers and ISPs to validate that DNS information and prevent cache poisoning attacks.

Registrar Hijacking

Domain names get registered via an authentic registrar company, and a single point of failure may result in most dreadful online experience you can ever face. If the attack is successful, the attacker can compromise your account and gain control over your domain name. The attacker can then choose any server of their choice such as name servers, Web servers, email servers, corporate servers and others. These attacks may result in causing damages to the high-profile victims, login details, passwords, and other social engineering processes. Choose a registrar offering extra security precautions like multi-factor authentication, experienced account managers, and premium services that can help in reducing the risk of hijacking.

Conclusion

It is true that downloading and installing the DNSCrypt protocol can help you prevent the leading DNS threats. Ensuring 100% DNS security isn’t possible at all. Hence, you must deploy all the possible DNS protection measures to enjoy a safer online experience. Try to install and use tools that offer encrypted browsing support to prevent serious cyber crimes, online hacks, and DNS attacks.