You wake up one morning to see that your website has been hacked and the ownership is transferred to someone else overnight? Can you dream of this nightmare, when all your business activities are driving through the website? Cybercrime has ebbed over the years and hackers are digging into the vulnerabilities and executing their nefarious designs. Reports suggest that the personal information of around 10 lakh customers of Big Pizza Chain (operating in India) is uploaded on the dark web. 

Domain security is quintessential and is often neglected. The solution to DNS (Domain Name Server) hijacking is by protecting the website with the help of Registry and Registrar Locks. These locks provide an extra layer of protection to the website and save from incurring heavy costs to the organization. At an estimate, 79% of organizations have experienced DNS attacks and each attack incurred a cost of $924,000 on the organization surveyed for the purpose. 

The registry and registrar locks are some kinds of elixir to the threat of DNS attacks. The registry lock allows the owner of the domain name to lock down the sensitive information and can only be unlocked through authentication by the owner, known as authenticated contact. Being a manual process, registry locks provide for the highest security of strategic domains of the organization. 

SECURITY MECHANISM OF REGISTRY LOCK (Graphics can be added for it)

1. Unlock requested by the domain name owner  (temporary or permanent)
2. Registry acknowledges the request and secure codes and validation links are shared with the owner via email or telephone.  
3. Gets unlocked after the registry authenticates, verifies, and validates. After 48 hours the domain automatically gets locked.
4. Domain-related information is sent to the authorized customer contact. 

Registrar lock can be deployed wherein organizations are devoid of strategic domain names with registry locks. This lock helps in thwarting any attempts to change or transfer the ownership of the domain and is issued by the registrar company such as VEBONIX. For preventing the fraudulent transfer of the domain, the registrar can ask the registry to freeze the domain name’s data.

Registrar locks prohibit any alteration in domain name including, 

• Transfer of domain name
• Deleting domain name
• Changing the contact details of a domain 

As far as cybercrime is concerned, phishing attacks have emerged as one of the most common yet significant mediums of DNS hijacking. Mischievous elements attack DNS for defacing, abusing, Denial of Service (DoS), or for damaging the online presence of any business. How small or large the size of your organization, neglecting DNS security may cost dearly and can hamper the business activities partially or fully.  According to a report by Efficient IP, India experienced 12.13 attacks per organization in 2020 while the global DNS attack rate is 9.5. Around 27% of companies lost sensitive information and 44% reported damage to their brands and 26,121 websites were hacked in India in 2020.  Check whether your website is protected or not at https://www.vebonix.com/whois 

WAYS TO PROTECT DOMAINS FROM PHISHING ATTACKS

1. Generic, department-based email addresses must be issued such as [email protected]. This helps in the identification of fraudulent mail. 
2. Isolating and protecting the devices of DNS administrators and beefing up security and revising the security policies. 
3. Email filtering services can be roped in for segregating and averting phishing attacks. 
4. Filtering DNS queries from renowned phishing sites, which in turn alerts employees and prevents employees from visiting those websites. 

TYPES OF DNS ATTACKS AND THEIR IDENTIFICATION

1. VOLUMETRIC ATTACK
   1. Direct DNS DoS Attack
   2. DNS Reflection Attack
   3. DNS Amplification (DDoS)
   4. Bogus Domain Attacks
2. EXPLOITS
   1. Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
   2. Protocol Anomalies
   3. DNS Based Exploits
   4. DNS Rebinding

VEBONIX AND YOUR SECURITY

Registrars play a pivotal role in enhancing the security of the website. Vebonix provides 128 or 256-bit encryption to maximize the security of your domain and boosts the confidence of customers by gazing at the SSL certificate at your website. Major domain addresses such as .com, .net, .name, .biz and many more don’t get hijacked and no wonder Vebonix is a registrar, offering the best offers at affordable rates to their customers. If you register a domain with Vebonix, it provides Rs. 5000 worth of services such as DNS Management, Domain Forwarding, and Domain Theft Protection FREE. 

Protecting a website can be a herculean task; the SITELOCK MALWARE DETECTOR of Vebonix provides ROUND THE CLOCK SECURITY and automatically safeguard the website from attacks and vulnerabilities. For more information visit https://www.vebonix.com/