DNS attack

In a DNS attack, the attacker uses the vulnerabilities of the Domain Name System (DNS) to manipulate IP addresses. Key vulnerabilities of the DNS system are the clear- text communication and the connectionless UDP protocol, which does not provide for authentication of the message source.

DNS attackers use the communication between DNS clients and name servers to log into a DNS provider's website with stolen credentials and redirect DNS records. Since the DNS client cannot verify the identity of the sender, it cannot determine whether the message actually originated from the sender. Since a DNS attack only requires changing the IP address of the sender, the Internet Engineering Task Force( IETF) has developed the Domain Name System Security Extension( DNSsec), which improves authentication by using digital signatures.

For defending against DNS attacks, multi-factor authentication comes in handy when changes are made to the organization's DNS infrastructure.