Kaminsky “Officially” Reveals DNS Flaw at Black Hat
August 6, 2008
Dan Kaminsky has had quite a month. Early in July, it was announced that months earlier he had discovered a major security problem with DNS, the addressing system of the Internet. But he didn’t make the news public. Instead he worked for months behind the scenes with major technology providers so patches could be programmed and made available. http://cparente.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/its-tuesday-must-be-time-to-fix-dns/
He wanted to give companies a full month to implement steps to protect their recursive nameservers. Then he promised to reveal all during an address today at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-08/bh-usa-08-speakers.html#Kaminsky
But it didn’t quite work out that way. Details of the vulnerability leaked out on July 22nd, stealing some of Dan’s thunder. But from all reports the presentation was jam packed, and Dan was shown the appreciation he deserved as he detailed the seriousness of the problem. Joe Menn from LA Times:
He called the problem the worst discovered since 1997. The standing-room only crowd gave Kaminsky two ovations, in part for the technical significance of the find and in part for his handling of the crisis. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, EBay and many Internet service providers have secured their machines.
“We got lucky with this bug,” Kaminsky said in his talk, saying other profound flaws are lurking that will be just as hard to resolve. “We have to have disaster-recovery planning. The 90-days-to-fix-it thing isn’t going to fly.” http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/08/internet-securi.html#comments
Interestingly what few of the articles on this problem talk about is, what now? The patches greatly reduce the danger that this flaw could be used for DNS cache poisoning attacks, but they don’t prevent it entirely. Many are touting DNSSEC as the ultimate answer, but that is years away in a best case scenario. Even after the final nameserver is patched against this latest threat, the issue of DNS security will remain critical. Too many things — cloud computing, SaaS, ecommerce, wireless NAC, VOIP — depend on reliable DNS for the status quo to continue. “Patched” isn’t good enough — DNS needs to be fixed.
Entry Filed under: Tech. Tags: Black Hat, DNS, DNSSEC, Joe Menn, Kaminsky, Paul Vixie, Technology.
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