Breaking the Internet 101

I have not posted on here in FAR to long, apologies to my hordes of loyal readers (hi mom!)

I just wanted to bring 2 excellently written articles to people attention on the DNS Vulnerability discovered by Dan Zaminksy earlier this year. Unless you where hiding under a rock, if you are in anyway involved in the Security industry this is an attack you should know inside out (as well as DNS Cache Poisoning and RR attacks). This stuff comes up all the time when I am teaching SANS courses (GSEC and GCIH), and the students are always amazed at the simplicity of the attacks. If the students do not walk out of the classroom at the end of the day terrified that the entire Internet is based on such a horribly unsecure protocol, I have not done my job properly :)

Boing Boing has an excellently written article on Dan's discovery of the attack and the subsequent media storm that followed. It reads akin to the plot for a hollywood blockbuster (much better than Swordfish) and I found it hugely entertaining.

It is a bit light on the exact details of the attack, which are just as interesting - and can be found here. Incidently an exploit is available as part of the Metasploit toolkit over here.

As I said before - a must read for anyone involved in security - but Boing Boing have done a fine job of making the attack understandable for everyone