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U.S. Government Domains Hit by Hijacking Wave

An emergency directive from the Department of Homeland Security is ordering administrators of most federal agencies to protect their Internet domains against a plethora of attacks that have hit executive branch websites and email servers in the last few weeks. These attacks are directly targeting web, email traffic and possibly other network services using certain techniques that I have personally learned about recently in my IT 460 class. Some on the techniques being;

- The attacker begins by compromising user credentials, or obtaining them through alternate means, of an account that can make changes to DNS records.

- Next, the attacker alters DNS records, like Address, Mail Exchanger, or Name Server records, replacing the legitimate address of a service with an address the attacker controls. This enables them to direct user traffic to their own infrastructure for manipulation or inspection before passing it on to the legitimate service, should they choose. This creates a risk that persists beyond the period of traffic redirection.

- Because the attacker can set DNS record values, they can also obtain valid encryption certificates for an organization's domain names. This allows the redirected traffic to be decrypted, exposing any user-submitted data. Since the certificate is valid for the domain, end users receive no error warnings.


To address these issues, it is important that agencies detect and mitigate any unauthorized access to DNS records and digital certificates. It is important to audit public DNS records on all DNS servers to verify they resolve to the intended location. These attacks are very serious, the hijacking of a domain server can put a lot of people and business data at risk.




https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/multiple-us-gov-domains-hit-in-serious-dns-hijacking-wave-dhs-warns/

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