Ongoing DNS Hijacking Attack – NCSC Issued an Alert for Organizations and Provide Mitigation Steps

National cybersecurity center issued an alert for ongoing DNS hijacking attack, a large-scale global campaign that targets various countries around the world.

NCSC recently observed various targeted attacks which exploit the Domain Name System (DNS) to deface or take down the websites and steal sensitive data.

DNS hijacking attack performs unauthorized alteration of DNS entries in a zone file on an authoritative DNS server or the modification of domain configurations in relation to a domain registrar.

The unauthorized alteration let attacker redirect the malicious traffic and compromise the victim Domain name system to obtain the data.

Due to the alteration of the DNS records, the organization will lose the complete control of the domain and threat actors will change the domain ownership details which is very hard to recover.

Dangerous Risk of DNS Hijacking

There are other dangerous risks involved by Hijacking the Domain Name System, in which DNS Hijacking campaign targeting various domains that belong to organizations, government, telecommunications, and internet infrastructure entities.

Generating Malicious DNS records

Once the attacker hijacks the DNS, they create a phishing website which is associated with the domain that organization familiar. later threat actors used it to phish the employee and gathering the sensitive information.

Stealing the SSL certificate

By abusing the domain-validated SSL certificates which is used to create the DNS records, the attack uses these certificate to create a phishing website and makes to looks like the more legitimate site and easily tricks victims to give away their personal data.

Intercept the Organization Data

The attack could modify the domain zone entries such as “A” or “CNAME” records and replace with their own infrastructure records and point traffic to their own IP which is known as transparently proxying traffic that used to intercept the victim’s data.

Mitigation Steps to Protect Your Organization

Registrar Security

1. Regularly audit registrar control panel and make changes with the registrar.
2. Keep up to date with four points of contact (registrant, technical, administrative, and billing contacts) when organizations grow, shrink, move, or are acquired.
3. Do not use individuals’ email addresses for any of the domain contacts and make sure the members of the group are completely skilled about phishing attacks.
4. keep monitoring the operations such as domain transfers, WHOIS data changes, and name server changes.

Nameserver Security

1. implement a robust change control system to control processes to manage any changes to your zone file that will provide a backup of your DNS records and easy to rollback.
2. Apply strict restrict policy for employees to access an infrastructure hosting DNS zone files or providing DNS services for your domain
3. Conduct regular Audit and monitor entries configured in your zone files to ensure its present.
4. Use tools like crt.sh to monitor for the creation of SSL certificates
5. Enable DNSEC it adds an additional layer of security to the DNS system and protects clients from forged DNS by verifying its authenticity.

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