DNS Lockdown

When planning the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Navy targeted three key US resources. Most people know that the first was the fleet of US battleships, which was decimated in the attack. The second, equally well known, was the US aircraft carrier fleet, which was safely at sea far from Hawaii on December 7. Less widely known was the third target: more than 4 million barrels of fuel oil stored at Hawaii, which the Japanese thought might be the most crucial target but were unable to find. Despite the devastation of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the attack was a failure in two of its three strategic objectives.

Like battleships and aircraft carriers, mainframes and servers receive most of the attention from experts who analyze security risks for a private network. Yet a network's "oil" might actually be the infrastructure functions, such as DNS, that keep it running.

DNS: At Risk?
Because DNS neither stores nor transmits proprietary data, it might seem an unattractive target for attackers. But DNS can attract several types of attacks—for example, someone could intercept DNS registrations and use them to impersonate users. . . .