Threat Intelligence

Biggest Botnet Takedown to Date

Yesterday law enforcement officials arrested 6 people and charged them with running a massive internet fraud ring. Over 4 million PCs were part of the botnet. According to the FBI, "the cyber ring used a class of malware called DNSChanger to infect approximately 4 million computers in more than 100 countries. There were about 500,000 infections in the U.S., including computers belonging to individuals, businesses, and government agencies such as NASA." more

The ITRs and Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is a top-of-mind issue with calls for individual vigilance, national legislation, and international treaties to address gaps that are exploited causing significant harm and financial loss on a daily basis. The vast majority of these calls are well-intentioned though even among the best-intentioned, some are poorly directed. Such is the case with all of the proposals that would introduce security into the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). more

Understanding the Threat Landscape: Basic Methodologies for Tracking Attack Campaigns

The indicators of compromise (IOCs) outlined in my last blog post can be used as a baseline for developing intrusion sets and tracking attack campaigns and threat actors. When launching an attack, threat actors use a variety of vectors and infrastructure, which Verisign iDefense analysts -- as well as analysts across the cybersecurity community -- correlate to group attacks, tracking actors and determining attack methods. more

NXDOMAINS, SSAC’s SAC045, and New gTLDs (Part 4 of 5)

In 2010, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) published SAC045 [PDF], a report calling attention to particular problems that may arise should a new gTLD applicant use a string that has been seen with measureable (and meaningful) frequency in queries for resolution by the root system. The queries to which they referred involved invalid Top-Level Domain (TLD) queries (i.e., non-delegated strings) at the root level of DNS, queries which elicit responses commonly referred to as Name Error, or NXDomain, responses from root name servers. more

Cybersecurity Considerations in the Work-From-Home Era

Verisign is deeply committed to protecting our critical internet infrastructure from potential cybersecurity threats, and to keeping up to date on the changing cyber landscape. Over the years, cybercriminals have grown more sophisticated, adapting to changing business practices and diversifying their approaches in non-traditional ways. We have seen security threats continue to evolve in 2020, as many businesses have shifted to a work from home posture due to the COVID-19 pandemic. more

Response Policy Zones (RPZs): Use as a Blocklisting Process

Gradually it seems the word is spreading about a new blocking methodology to interrupt the ability of end users to click and visit phishing sites - thereby having their personal information/credentials at risk. This is the DNS Response Policy Zones. DNS RPZs allows companies that run recursive resolvers to create a zone that will not resolve specific domains. more

Placing New Domain Names in Temporary “Penalty Box” Could Deter Malicious Use, Says Paul Vixie

Paul Vixie proposes a 'cooling-off period' when domain names are registered in order to help detect and deter malicious activity. "There's no legitimate reason for a new domain name to be registered and go live in less than a minute... more

Authenticated Resolution and Adaptive Resolution: Security and Navigational Enhancements to the DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) has become the fundamental building block for navigating from names to resources on the internet. DNS has been employed continuously ever since its introduction in 1983, by essentially every internet-connected application and device that wants to interact online. Emerging from an era where interconnection rather than information security was the primary motivation, DNS has gradually improved its security features. more

Zoom Security: The Good, the Bad, and the Business Model

Zoom - one of the hottest companies on the planet right now, as businesses, schools, and individuals switch to various forms of teleconferencing due to the pandemic - has come in for much criticism due to assorted security and privacy flaws. Some of the problems are real but easily fixable, some are due to a mismatch between what Zoom was intended for and how it's being used now - and some are worrisome. more

When Businesses Go Dark: A DDoS Survey

In February 2012, Neustar surveyed IT professionals across North America to better understand their DDoS experiences. Most were network services managers, senior systems engineers, systems administrators and directors of IT operations. In all, 1,000 people from 26 different industries shared responses about attacks, defenses, ongoing concerns, risks and financial losses. more

IPv6 Security Considerations

When rolling out a new protocol such as IPv6, it is useful to consider the changes to security posture, particularly the network's attack surface. While protocol security discussions are widely available, there is often not "one place" where you can go to get information about potential attacks, references to research about those attacks, potential counters, and operational challenges. more

Doug Madory Reports on Shutting Down the BGP Hijack Factory

A lengthy email to the NANOG mailing list last month concerning suspicious routing activities of a company called Bitcanal initiated a concerted effort to kick a bad actor off the Internet. more

Phishing: the Worst of Times in the DNS

The Anti-Phishing Working Group has released its latest Global Phishing Survey, written by myself and Rod Rasmussen. This report comprehensively examines a large data set of more than 250,000 confirmed phishing attacks detected in 2015 and 2016. By analyzing this cybercrime activity, we have learned more about what phishers have been doing, and how they have done it. Unfortunately, there's more phishing than ever, and phishers are registering more domain names than ever. more

DNS Security Flaw Secret Leaked Prior to Set Date: Patch DNS as Fast as Possible

In what seems to have started with a blog post by reverse engineer Halvar Flake, and subsequent blog postings from other experts in the know, the details of the recently announced DNS vulnerability was quite likely made public today. The DNS flaw was found earlier this year by security researcher Dan Kaminsky and earlier this month announced publicly along with various tools and patches provided by numerous vendors... more

Internet Root Servers Hit with Unusual DNS Amplification Attack

On Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, several of the Internet Domain Name System's root name servers received high rate of suspicious queries, reaching as high as 5 million queries per second, according to a report released by the Root Server System Advisory Council. The incident has been categorized as a unique type of DNS amplification attack. more