DNSCrypt Guide: Five Important Tips to Avoid DNS Attacks

Online hacks, snooping activities, and other serious cyber crimes may force you to configure DNS settings

Online hacks, computer attacks, snooping activities, and other serious cyber crimes may force you to configure DNS settings on your device, servers, and networks. In the cyber world today, where threats are just a click away, you require deploying some security tools that can protect DNS servers. Read the article to know why you need such tools and what consequences you may face, if you don’t install them.

It is true that the virtual world is full of stubborn threats and infections that may compromise your Internet security and privacy. DNSCrypt is an amazing utility that helps you to protect DNS servers and enjoy an encrypted web browsing experience. Malware authors and hackers will always look for opportunities that can help them to enter into your system or network. Therefore, installing the OpenDNS utility becomes highly imperative to encrypt Internet and prevent DNS attacks.

There are plenty of reasons for encrypting your web browsers, Internet sessions, and even DNS servers. Many users avoid installing such programs because considering that they are safe online, but constant security alerts or warnings from your ISP may make you feel worried.

Read below to know what common practices you should follow to avoid being one of the victims of DNS attacks:

1. Allow DDNS Updates for Secure Connections Only

According to a recent study, many of the DNS servers accept dynamic updates that may turn harmful for the entire network. The dynamic update feature of the DNS servers enables them to register secure DNS hostnames and IP addresses for hosts. DNS servers consider that all of the servers use DHCP for host IP addressing. In this situation, DDNS can serve as a great boon in reducing the administrative security issues. The DDNS support also helps the DNS administrators by reducing the chances of configuring DNS resources records manually.

It is important to consider that DDNS updates may lead to some major security issues if they are allowed to get applied on the server without undergoing a security check. The situation may lead to serious cyber attacks as a potential malware author can configure a host to update DNS host records dynamically. The malware author can also modify or even change the records of a file server, Web server, or database server, resulting in forwarding connections to rogue or malicious websites.

Tech geeks recommend providing DDNS permissions for the secure connections only to reduce the risk of malicious DNS updates. You can easily set your secure connections for the dynamic updates by asking your DNSCrypt tool to configure DNS settings for Active Directory-integrated zones. It is also important to consider that all the domain members will be able to update their DNS information dynamically, soon after you make the change in the protocol.

2. Always Disable Zone Transfers For Better Security

Online users perform zone transfers between primary and secondary DNS servers to enjoy a safer and faster information transfer. Primary DNS servers are authoritative for specific domains and contain writable DNS zone files that get updated automatically. Secondary DNS servers can only receive a read-only copy of zone files that get transferred from primary DNS servers. Many online users often take help of the Secondary DNS servers to improve DNS query performance in an organization or over the Internet.

The problem occurs when the user isn’t able to set the limitations of the Primary as well as Secondary servers. Since zone transfers cannot get limited only to secondary DNS servers, any online user can issue a DNS query that may dump the entire zone database files. According to the leading cybercrime trends, most of the malicious users apply the zone database files information to reconnoiter the naming schema for an organization. Additionally, the malware authors can also steal the crucial information about an organization and can attack key infrastructure services using those details. The best resolution to avoid such attacks is to configure DNS setting to deny zone transfer requests automatically or allow it to only specific servers.

3. Use Firewalls for Controlling DNS Access

Like Windows Firewall features, you can also set firewalls for gaining access control over users who can connect to your DNS servers. You can configure your DNS servers to block connections from external hosts, if it is only being used for internal client queries. Set your DNS servers to receive and reply to the caching-only forwarders that get connected to your assigned DNS endpoints. Additionally, you should also set some special parameters and firewall policies that should restrict internal users from using the DNS protocols of the external servers.

4. Assign Access Controls on DNS Registry Entries

Sometimes, malicious users may enter in the Domain Name Servers to make changes in the registry entry. The change in the registry entries may result in snooping, man-in-the-middle attacks and other dreadful cybercrimes. You should apply some necessary tweaks to the Windows-based DNS servers and configure access controls on the DNS server-related Registry settings. Making the changes will put a necessary barrier to the DNS access and only authoritative users can read or change the Registry settings.

5. Assign Access Control on DNS File System Entries

Similarly, like Registry entries, your file system entries also require some additional protection to encrypt Internet. You must configure access controls on Windows-based DNS servers to ensure that the accounts with relevant permission can read or change the DNS files. Always ensure that you only allow the system account to access all the DNS folder and subfolders.

Conclusion

DNSCrypt is an astonishing tool that can help you to prevent and protect DNS servers from snooping, spoofing, and other related virtual attacks and threats. It is highly important to protect yourself from DNS attacks because they may lead to severe situations where malware author will be able to trace your each and every online activity. You should encrypt Internet to ensure that all of your personal details, financial information, and other important details are safe and protected from such threats. Apart from just installing the OpenDNS utility, you must exercise safe browsing and downloading practices to keep security threats at bay.

License: You have permission to republish this article in any format, even commercially, but you must keep all links intact. Attribution required.