Rogue DNS servers rampage

THERE are more than 68,000 fake DNS servers on the Internet which are hijacking traffic from infected computers to fraudulent web sites, according to a paper published this week by researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology.

According to the paper, punters with compromised computers are sometimes being directed to the wrong web sites and often have no idea.

Once at a spoof website they are encouraged to hand over as much data as they can. Some of the spoof sites are pretty convincing.

Presented to the Internet Society's Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego, the paper said that while attacks using manipulated DNS results aren't new, but the profit driven hackers are getting clever about their use.

For example the rogue DNS servers don't always return incorrect results and convince users into believing their Internet access is working properly.

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