Internet Security Flaws Addressed
Industry heavyweights are moving quickly to fix a flaw in the very foundation of the Internet that would let hackers control traffic on the World Wide Web.
Major software and hardware makers worked in secret for months to create a software patch released last week to repair the problem.
The problem lies in the way computers are routed to web pages.
"It's a very fundamental issue with how the entire addressing scheme of the internet works," analyst Rich Mogul told Australian IT. "You'd have the internet, but it wouldn't be the Internet you expect. Hackers would actually control everything."
The flaw would be a boon for phishing cons that involve leading people to imitation web pages of businesses such as banks or credit card companies to trick them into disclosing account numbers, passwords and other data.
Attackers could use the vulnerability to route Internet users wherever they wanted no matter what web address was typed into a web browser.
Locally, this is something that could result in a barrage of new Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale computer repair issues.
Security researcher Dan Kaminsky of IOActive stumbled upon the Domain Name System vulnerability six months ago and reached out to some giants including Microsoft, Sun and Cisco to collaborate on a solution.
As all Boca Raton computer repair experts know, DNS is used by every machne that links to the Internet and works like a phone system, routing calls to proper numbers - in this case the online, numerical addresses of sites.
The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a warning to underscore the seriousness of DNS "cache poisoning attacks" that a vulnerability could allow.
"An attacker with the ability to conduct a successful cache poisoning attack can cause a nameserver's clients to contact the incorrect, and possibly malicious, hosts for particular services," CERT assessed in a statement.
"Consequently, web traffic, email, and other important network data can be redirected to systems under the attacker's control."
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