Protect Your Dns From Cache Pollution

By Author: Gyan ojha
Total Articles: 19
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DNS hosting service is a challenging job. While providing the services you need to figure out the major troubling areas so that you as service provider can provide effective and proficient services. Usually, the common problem that occurs while dealing in DNS hosting services is cache pollution. This is a major problem which can occur if Domain Name System (DNS) spoofing has been encountered. Here spoofing means that some malicious data is been transferred in response to the DNS query. When a DNS server has received some non-authentic data and caches it with the purpose of performance optimization, it is considered poisoned and spoofing occurs. These cause great difficulties to the users as they are supplied with non-authentic data.

DNS cache pollution is an increasingly common problem which needs to be handled with lot of care. For every DNS hosting service provider handling the cache pollution is a daunting task. But for the smooth and efficient DNS hosting you need to take some measures. As we know that all the DNS servers are able to cache the results of DNS queries before forwarding the response to the host but ...
... if you found that your query forwarded got polluted then what. Undoubtedly, the DNS cache significantly improve DNS query performance throughout the organization but if get polluted can damage the whole thing. What happens is that if some malicious data enters the DNS queries the server cache becomes polluted and once it is polluted it cannot give the intended results. This is a thing to understand that if your cache is not pure anymore; it is not going to give the desired results.

In the problem situation, the backup DNS forwards malicious websites instead of the websites the user wants. This alarms security risk or data integrity compromise in the Domain Name System. It is usually due to the deliberate attempt by some unknown source. But that is not always the case as there are many possible authentic reasons too. One of the common reasons could be the intended result of a misconfiguration of DNS cache or due to some improper software design of DNS applications. Reasons are many but the major concern is how to deal with it. It is apparent in the DNS which if not dealt properly can cause big problems for the end users. On the other hand, for a DNS hosting service provider, handling this situation is a huge test.

Be responsible and make sure that all DNS servers in an organization have cache pollution protected DNS.