DNS Re-Binding

One of the biggest problems with security threats in the Web 2.0 world is the erosion of trust boundaries. Dynamic web applications pull data together in "mashups" from multiple sources. Modern online business seems to require rich, dynamic code and data, yet as fast as we can field it, there are problems keeping boundaries cleanly separate.

Some researchers at Stanford have spent some time identifying some very critical problems involving the use of DNS in the Web 2.0 world. It's not insecurity research, though, because they provide some options for solutions, addressing the problem conceptually.

[Image taken from PDF document]

Basically, the problem--which can be accomplished for less than $100 in capital expenses-- consists of changing the IP address to which a DNS record points, after a "victim" connects to the malicious web server. This allows for circumvention of firewall policies, since the connections are initiated by victim clients. The paper also discusses how this method could be used to obfuscate or distribute the origins of spam or click fraud.

The solution, though, is simple. DNS records can be "pinned" to an IP Address instead of allowing it to live only transiently in memory for a few seconds. And DNS records pointing to internal or private (non-routable) IP address ranges should be handled with caution.

It's also interesting to note that DNSSEC does nothing to prevent this problem, since this is not a question of the integrity (or authenticity) of the DNS records from the DNS server; the DNS server is providing the malicious records. It's not a man-in-the-middle attack (although that could be a way to implement this, potentially).


And on a side note ... This is yet another example of why firewalls are pretty much useless in a modern information security arsenal. We cannot hide behind OSI Layers 3-4 anymore when all the action is happening in layers 5-7 (or layer 8).