DNS Spoofing: What Is It and How Can Email Security Help?

DNS spoofing is the process of poisoning entries on a DNS server to redirect users to a malicious website under attacker control. The attacker can poison ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) tables, and force targeted user devices into using the attacker-controlled machine as the server for a specific website.

What Is DNS Spoofing?

A user often falls victim to DNS spoofing attacks. It allows hackers to intercept personal information such as bank account numbers, passwords, credit card details, etc. The DNS spoofing works by fooling people into visiting a fake, malicious site instead of the legitimate site. Using this technique, criminals could steal sensitive information and gain access to user accounts. Users should be careful when entering personal information online. A malicious hacker can quickly gain unauthorized access to your data by simply visiting a spoofed site. Once you enter your login credentials, the hacker may use them to log into your account and steal your private information. Your identity theft risk increases if you reuse passwords across different websites.

DNS Spoofing Methods

A DNS spoofing attack can occur under many guises. The most widely spread techniques hackers use for this are DNS hijacking (DNS server compromise), cache poisoning, and man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM). Perpetrators or bad actors can use one of these methods or a combination of them to achieve their goals.

A DNS hijacking attack can be performed by obtaining access to other DNS servers and modifying the configuration to return an alternative IP address associated with a malicious website.

The middleman attack allows an attacker to intercept communications between two parties, such as a user’s computer and the DNS server. This technique can be used to redirect users to phishing websites.

DNS cache poisoning is a type of hacking that allows cyberattackers to force users to visit malicious, fake websites that appear to be legitimate. Cybercriminals utilize modified DNS queries to redirect online traffic to a malicious site designed to resemble the user’s intended destination. When targets are prompted to login into the fraudulent page, they may be tricked into disclosing sensitive information such as usernames and passwords. In addition, the fake website can attempt to install malware on the user’s endpoint in order to grant the perpetrator long-term access to the company network.

DNS Spoofing vs. DNS Poisoning

DNS spoofing and DNS poisoning attacks are similar, but they have different characteristics. They both trick users into leaking sensitive data, which could result in a targeted user installing malicious software. Both DNS spoofing and poisoning pose a risk to user data privacy.

DNS cache poisoning attack changes entries on DNS resolvers or DNS servers where IP addresses are stored. That means any user from any location on the Internet will be redirected to a malicious attacker-controlled fake website provided they use the poisoned DNS server’s entries. The poisoning could affect global users being redirected to a poisoned server.

Any attack that changes DNS entries and forces users to access an attacker-controlled site would be considered spoofing, including poisoning entries. Spoofing could lead to more direct attacks on a local network where an attacker can poison DNS records of vulnerable machines and steal data from business or private users.

Domain Name System (DNS) poisoning attack and spoofing are types of cyberattacks that exploit DNS server vulnerabilities to redirect traffic away from legitimate servers toward fake ones. Once you’ve traveled to a fraudulent page, you may be puzzled about how to resolve it — despite being the only one who can. You’ll need to know precisely how DNS spoofing works to protect yourself.

How to Prevent DNS spoofing

DNS attacks may be difficult to detect, as they can affect both user devices and private DNS servers. However, certain measures could be taken to prevent a DNS system attack:

• setting up DNS security extensions (DNSSEC) to authenticate DNS entries. This prevents DNS redirection as it ensures that all DNS responses come from legitimate websites and not from malicious websites.
• avoiding to click on unknown links or ads, even if you found them on a legitimate website you normally use
• regularly scanning your devices for malware and viruses. To do this, you can use an antivirus software or, if you have your own website or DNS server, you can install DNS spoofing detection tools.
• using a VPN (virtual private network) that stops cyberattackers from tracking your activity and intercepting your web traffic.
• making sure your connection is secure. Always check for the gray padlock symbol in the address bar (domain host’s security certificate) which signifies that Google considers it a trusted domain.

What Are Email Spoofing and Phishing?

According to the FBI’s 2020 Internet Crime Report, phishing and business email compromise(BEC) was the most common cybercrime in 2020, with over 240,000 victims leading to a loss of over $50M. And the number of victims has more than doubled since 2019 and is almost ten times higher than in 2018.

Email Spoofing Falls Into The Following Categories:

• Business Email Compromise (BEC). Employees’ Brand Name (Impersonation attack)
• Customers / Partners Phish URL Based Attack An email with an URL (Lure attack)
• Employees / Partners  Look-alike Domain Attack (Impersonation attempts attack type)
• Employees / Partners Account Takeover / Compromised Account Display Name Deception(Email scam) 

Email Phishing

A malicious actor has successfully used email spoofing to send emails to your company’s customers that seem to originate from one of your corporate service emails. The content of these emails looks precisely like a legitimate email from your company using the same styling and format. The email text could be an urgent message to update some account information, including a hyperlink to the alleged web portal. Suppose the receiving mail server of a user does not flag the email as spam or of uncertain origin. In that case, the user might click on the link, which could execute malicious code or lead them to a spoofed domain asking for sensitive information.

Methods To Stop Email Spoofing

A sender verification service allows you to verify the identity of an email address before sending messages to it. An attacker can forge the envelope sender information to trick email servers into accepting the statement as legitimate.

SPF allows you to publish IP address ranges for a specific domain. In SPF, the sender indicates what server he uses to send the email.example.com.SPF works to prevent spoofed emails from being sent to your inbox. Your email provider uses this information to avoid spam.

A valid DKIM signature lets you verify that an email came from your domain cryptographically.

DKIM also helps prevent spammers from sending emails that pretend to be from your email service provider by verifying that they came from your domain name. You can check if the two features listed above are enabled on your email service provider’s webmail interface.

Verify Header Using DMARC

DMARC verification is an even more powerful feature than SPF and DKIM to combat “Direct Domain Spamming” and also includes the “Display Name“ and “Brand Impersonations” attacks. Domain Source tie-in authenticates the sender of an email message by using the sending domain name as part of the From header field.

To pass DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication), an incoming email must pass one of these authentication mechanisms: SPF, DKIM, or DMARC.

How Does Trustifi’s Inbound Shield Protect from Spoofing Attack?

Trustifi provides advanced protection against spoofing as well as other cyber threats to an organization’s email system. Trustifi features the Inbound Shield and anti-phishing policies and acts as an email filter. As soon as Trustifi’s Inbound Shield is deployed to your company’s email system, sophisticated AI software begins scanning every email received by your server. Each incoming email is placed in a sandbox where Inbound Shield’s multi-layered detection inspects everything about the email, including sender, email subject, content, links, and attachments. An email must pass all tests at each layer to be deemed safe.

The email is scanned in 3 parts and has a unique and advanced approach for each detail.

Email Content and Headers.

• AI detects and classifies BEC, VEC, Spoof Attacks, Spam, and GRAY.
• Header analysis detects DNS spoofing and impersonation techniques.

Links – Advanced Methods to Catch the Most Sophisticated Phishing Sites

• Deep analysis based on content, metadata, and domain reputation.
• Proprietary method to catch zero-day phishing sites.

Files – Deep Scanning

• Detects and neutralizes links inside files, inboxes, and junk email folders.
• Searches zipped and archived files.
• Sandboxes all messages with attachments until they are determined safe.
• Seeks out malicious emails, Trojans, viruses, and malware.

Why Trustifi?

Trustifi is a cyber security firm featuring solutions delivered on software as a service platform. Trustifi leads the market with the easiest to use and deploy email security products, providing both inbound and outbound email security from a single vendor.

As a global cybersecurity provider of both inbound and outbound email protection, Trustifi currently supports customers from countries including the USA, Canada, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, the UK, the Netherlands, India, the UAE, China, Japan, Cyprus, the Philippines, and more. The company has also developed “One-Click Compliance” capabilities that cater to world security regulations, including PDPO for Hong Kong, POPI for South Africa, GDPR for Europe, and LGPD for Brazil.

Culture.
Trustifi’s email security services feature a comprehensive suite of email tools for advanced threat protection, easily configurable Data Loss Prevention, and enterprise email encryption. Trustifi’s easy-to-use software is unmatched in its user-friendliness, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. Trustifi’s time to value, ease of deployment, and lower cost of ownership for SecOps make the company culture secure and a financial match for any client seeking email security, data exfiltration, and message encryption.