Domain registrar VeriSign will receive "major security update" by 2011
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A well-known security vulnerability in the way .com and .net websites process DNS values - the way alphanumeric website names are translated into numeric web addresses - will be fixed, but not until 2011, according to a report from tech news website ZDNet.
VeriSign, the company responsible for the registry of websites with the .com and .net suffixes, said that the issue will be solved by DNSSEC, a program that will verify the integrity and origin of DNS information. Technical problems are the major roadblock to DNSSEC implementation, according to VeriSign.
Currently, it is possible to implant false DNS information into web addresses in order to mislead users into visiting a different site than they had intended. This technique is frequently used to infect computers with malicious code and can be used in conjunction with "drive-by downloads" to spread Trojans and other malware. This tactic is called "cache poisoning."
Cache poisoning is not the only widely-used malware distribution trick in the modern cyber criminal's arsenal. SQL injection, scareware, and malvertising are also common tactics among malicious hackers.
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