There are many threats that we can find when surfing the Internet. That is why whenever we are on the network we must take precautions and thus avoid a malfunction of our devices. In this article we are going to talk about what DNS Cache Poisoning is, or DNS cache poisoning, but first we must know how it works every time we put a website in the browser.
As we well know, when it comes to putting a URL in our browser, our team interprets it as an IP address. This is where a DNS server comes into play. What it does is recognize where we want to go and it redirects us to that page, to that IP address, just by putting the URL. That DNS server is a huge database where all the address records are, what happens is that to save us time or at least make it faster, the DNS cache stores that data and in this way saves time the next time we visit a site that we have already visited.
This is where DNS cache poisoning can come into play. This is a maliciously or unwantedly created situation that provides data from a domain name server (DNS) that does not originate from authoritative DNS sources. This can happen due to inappropriate software designs, misconfiguration of server names, and maliciously designed scenarios that exploit the traditionally open architecture of a DNS system. Once a DNS server has received that unauthenticated data and temporarily stores it for future performance increases, it is considered poisoned, spreading the effect of the situation to the server’s clients.
What cybercriminals do is modify pages where they can make a profit. Take as an example a web page of a well-known bank that has many users. What they do is create a website that is almost traced to the original. They modify the user’s DNS cache and when it enters an address that is correct, it actually redirects it to another modified one, putting the data that they enter in this malicious page at risk.
The best thing we can do to avoid this threat is to have security programs and tools. In this way, we avoid the entry of malware that could put systems at risk and, in this case, modify the DNS cache. Furthermore, it may be interesting to clean the DNS cache from time to time, especially if we suspect that we have been a victim. In this way, once our equipment is completely clean, we will not run the risk.
Check also:
DNS Poisoning – A Real Danger for DNS Servers
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