GoDaddy’s DNS Outage Exposes the Need for DNS Redundancy

/in , , /by

The GoDaddy DNS outage had wide spread effect. Hacktivists claimed to have caused it but Interim CEO Scott Wagner said the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted route data tables.

No matter what the cause, whether it was internal errors or external attacks, the outage Read more

Botnets, Route Hijacking, and Other Security Threats

/in , , /by

Cyber crime has become big business. In the past, hackers tended to work alone or in small groups, and their impact was usually quite minimal. Sometimes it was done just for bragging rights rather than monetary gain, and often had no adverse affects on most of the general public. Read more

Lack of DNSSEC Deployment on Financial Services Web Sites

/in , , , /by

It comes as a real surprise that one of the industries (financial services) that should be most interested in the security of their web sites has not implemented a key piece of protection, Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). DNSSEC is a technology that was developed to add critically needed security to the domain name system. Without DNSSEC, internet users cannot be certain that they Read more

Four Vulnerabilities in Infrastructure Defense

/in , , , /by

“The basic underpinnings of the Internet — BGP, DNS, and SSL — we take for granted they were built in much friendlier times when friendly people wanted to communicate with friendly people. The Internet was built to be survivable, not trustable,” said John Pescatore, vice president and research fellow for Gartner Research. This quote was sited in an article in Darkreading by Kelly Jackson Higgins. Read more

DNS over IPv6: Lessons from the field

/in , /by

We have learned some lessons in the field about DNS over IPv6.  The other day, one of our clients called us asking for help with their configurations. They were doing some lab testing while working on their annual upgrade of our software. To give you some background, our customers normally certify each upgrade they intend to use and they do extensive lab testing before they roll it out to their production DNS servers. Read more

DNS Diversity

/in , , , /by

Every DNS administrator knows that you need to configure at least two recursive or authoritative DNS servers so that you can still provide service in case one fails. Many administrators also know that these servers ideally should be located in different data centers and utilize different networks so that DNS service will not be interrupted in the event of a data center or network outage. Read more

FCC Recommends Code of Conduct for ISPs

/in , , , /by

In an earlier blog we mentioned the recommendations made by the CSRIC (Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council), a Federal Advisory Committee for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to improve Internet safety. This is a set of industry-wide best practices for ISPs and other organizations that operate critical infrastructure. The voluntary best practices outlined in the recommendations are designed to address three main cyber-security issues facing commercial networks and the Internet: Read more