DNSCrypt : The need for a better DNS security

DNS is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Internet.  It's used any time you visit a website, send an email, have an IM conversation or do anything else online.  While OpenDNS has provided world-class security using DNS for years, and OpenDNS is the most secure DNS service available, the underlying DNS protocol has not been secure enough for our comfort.  Many will remember the Kaminsky Vulnerability, which impacted nearly every DNS implementation in the world (though not OpenDNS).

That said, the class of problems that the Kaminsky Vulnerability related to were a result of some of the underlying foundations of the DNS protocol that are inherently weak  -- particularly in the "last mile."  The "last mile" is the portion of your Internet connection between your computer and your ISP.  DNSCrypt is our way of securing the "last mile" of DNS traffic and resolving (no pun intended) an entire class of serious security concerns with the DNS protocol. As the world’s Internet connectivity becomes increasingly mobile and more and more people are connecting to several different WiFi networks in a single day, the need for a solution is mounting.

There have been numerous examples of tampering, or man-in-the-middle attacks, and snooping of DNS traffic at the last mile and it represents a serious security risk

Why DNSCrypt is so significant

In the same way the SSL turns HTTP web traffic into HTTPS encrypted Web traffic, DNSCrypt turns regular DNS traffic into encrypted DNS traffic that is secure from eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.  It doesn't require any changes to domain names or how they work, it simply provides a method for securely encrypting communication between our customers and our DNS servers in our data centers.  We know that claims alone don't work in the security world, however, so we've opened up the source to our DNSCrypt code base and it's available on GitHub.

DNSCrypt has the potential to be the most impactful advancement in Internet security since SSL, significantly improving every single Internet user's online security and privacy.

Download

http://shared.opendns.com/dnscrypt/packages/windows-client/DNSCryptWin-v0.0.5.exe

http://shared.opendns.com/dnscrypt/packages/osx-client/dnscrypt-osx-client.pkg

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The FBI will turn off the Internet on Monday

On Monday, the DNS Changer Working group will discontinue providing DNS service to hosts infected with the DNS changer virus. This new item led to a flood of news reports, which IMHO blow the entire affair out of proportion (the headline to this diary entry pretty much reflects a discussion I had today with a non technical person responding to one of these articles). Reading this article, it is likely that you will be one of the people being asked for advice as "how to protect yourself" from this virus. I find it useful to stick to these talking points:

The DNS Changer malware was spreading last year and changed DNS settings in computers it infected. After arresting the group behind this malware, the FBI, as permitted by a court order, worked with ISPs and the DNS Changer Working Group to continue to operate the DNS server that the infected systems pointed to. The hope was to identify and notify as many infected systems as possible. As expected, over the last few months, these efforts had diminishing results. The court order permitting the DNS server is about to expire and as a result, this stand in DNS server will not continue to operate.

If your system is still configured to use the bad DNS server, you will not be able to resolve host names. Even if you removed the malware, it is still possible that you didn't revert the DNS settings change.

For Windows users, this may actually not matter. According to some reports, Windows may actually revert to the default settings once the DNS server is turned off. If you used the bad DNS server, chances are that various entities tried to notify you. Google for example should have shown you a banner. If you don't see a warning banner when visiting Google, you are not one of the systems identified as infected.

Some ISPs setup their own DNS servers for DNS Changer victims. These DNS servers will remain active for now.

This malware is also old enough were Antivirus, if you run any, should have signatures for it.

In short: Don't worry. There are estimates of 250,000 infected systems based on data from the DNS changer working group. There are about 2,000,000,000 internet users. So about 0.01% of internet users are infected. In other words: Very few. People wh have disregarded warning banners, phone calls from ISPs, AV warnings, and other notification attempts. They probably should be disconnected from the Internet.

In a few cases routers may be affected by the change, and the router will use the wrong DNS server. Again: if you are connected to one of these routers, you should have seen warning banners. If you haven't seen warning banners at Google: Don't worry.

Lastly: Tell people to go to dcwg.org (short for DNS Changer Working Group.org). It has a little test to tell you if you are affected or not. It also got a lot of first hand information about this malware

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