dns

New flap over SOPA copyright bill: Anti-Web security?

Hollywood-backed legislation to knock suspected copyright-infringing Web sites offline could hinder efforts to secure Internet domain names, a key member of Congress said today.

Rep. Dan Lungren, who heads the Homeland Security subcommitteee on cybersecurity, said his panel has been working on ways to tighten the security of the Internet's domain names through a set of security improvements called DNSSEC.

An "unintended consequence" of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, would be to "undercut the real effort that would practically help us secure the Internet" through DNSSEC, Lungren said during a hearing this morning. &… Read more

FBI tackles DNSChanger malware scam

If you've been familiar with the malware scene over the past few years, you know one of the prominent attacks on personal computers and information has been the DNSChanger scam.

DNSChanger is a Trojan horse that was distributed in many forms, and when installed it actively changes the infected system's DNS settings to rogue servers that redirect legitimate searches and URLs to malicious Web sites that attempt to steal personal information and generate illegitimate ad revenue for the scammers.

The DNSChanger malware was first discovered around 2007, and since this time has infected millions of computers, around 500,… Read more

Microsoft's online services hit by outage

Several of Microsoft's online services suffered an outage last night but are reportedly all back up at this point.

The company's Office 365, Hotmail, SkyDrive, and various Windows Live services were down throughout the world for a period of around three hours. Microsoft acknowledged the outage late yesterday in its Inside Windows Live blog and on its Office 365 Twitter feed and said that it was working to resolve the issue.

After a couple of hours of investigation, the company pinned the cause on a DNS (Domain Name System) issue and said that it was starting to see … Read more

This Day in Tech: Yahoo's Bartz is out; Google's Korean offices raided

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Tuesday, September 6.

• CNET got the scoop about Google's mobile search practices. Korean trustbusters raid Google offices in Seoul. Jay Greene writes: "Regulators are apparently interested in information about Google allegedly limiting access to rival search engines on its Android mobile operating system."

•Yahoo's Carol Bartz is out as CEO; fired by the board. Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse will fill in as CEO.

• Just because you're not checking into Foursquare doesn't mean … Read more

Sites of UPS, Acer, others redirected in DNS attack

A U.K. domain name registrar confirmed today that an attack on its system redirected traffic for some of its customers' sites to a Web page controlled by hackers.

Fewer than a dozen domain names registered by NetNames were affected by the attack, which occurred on Sunday, according to Stuart Fuller, a spokesman for NetNames parent Group NBT. He declined to name the sites that were redirected.

A list on Zone-H, which retains copies of Web defacements, shows seven sites registered by NetNames or affiliate Ascio that were affected by the Domain Name System (DNS) redirect attack on Sunday, including … Read more

Anonymous claims DNS attacks against Symantec, Apple, Microsoft

The Sri Lankan branch of Anonymous claims to have hacked into the DNS servers of Symantec, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and several other large organizations over the past few days.

Posting the news and records of its exploits on Pastebin, the group is taking credit for launching "DNS Cache Snoop Poisoning" attacks against its victims.

DNS cache snooping is the process whereby hackers can query a DNS server to find out which domain names are being resolved into IP addresses.

DNS cache poisoning is a method through which hackers are able to insert malicious and fake records into the … Read more

Google, OpenDNS add geo speed boost to Net

OpenDNS, Google, and a few others have built a new technology into their Internet operations that's designed to speed up the delivery of data around the globe.

The technology augments the Domain Name System that provides the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) address needed to get data to an Internet domain such as news.com. Those that developed it include OpenDNS, Google, and VeriSign. Called edns-client-subnet in technical circles, or more ambitiously the "Global Internet Speedup," it uses geographic information associated with IP addresses to help computers fetching data get it from the closest--and therefore fastest--server.

"Anybody … Read more

D-Link routers get OpenDNS-based Web filtering

D-Link announced today the integration of OpenDNS technology into its select routers, which will enable you to block unsafe and inappropriate Web content, such as adult and phishing Web sites.

The company says that with OpenDNS technology, D-Link routers offer consumers the ability to mange content filtering and security services from anywhere over the Internet.

The new feature is called OpenDNS parental controls. It divides Web sites into more than 50 categories, allowing parents to choose their desired filtering level from "high" to "minimal." This can also be further customized to include certain categories of sites … Read more

D-Link ships ShareCenter dual-bay NAS servers

D-Link announced today the availability of its ShareCenter dual-bay NAS servers, the DNS-320 and the DNS-325.

The company says these new servers can host two SATA 3.5-inch hard drives of capacities up to 2TB each and can be accessed remotely using the Mydlink mobile application.

The new NAS servers from D-Link also support media streaming and are able to host digital content for media streamers, like game consoles or the D-Link Boxee Box.

Related links • D-Link DCS-932L • D-Link Boxee Box

Other than that, the two new servers have a standard set of features like most NAS servers. They can … Read more