Since the birth of Internet and web, the researchers, software engineers and the computer scientists conducted new researches to find out if there exists any loophole in the chain of security and Internet protocols. Their researches find out new vulnerabilities in the Internet protocols which gave birth to ‘DNSSEC‘. The vulnerabilities linked to this security drawback result in fake traffic, rerouting traffic from the targeted IP to a forged IP and losing credibility to the visitors.
Researchers and technicians understood the loophole lying on the chain of communication and invented the new security protocols to thwart fake traffic, DNS Spoofing, forged rerouting of web traffic and other manipulative measures used by the cyber criminals and hackers. The scientists conducting researches on Internet protocol have crowned with success, however, it took time and resources. Thanks to their good endeavor and cutting-edge technology!
What Is DNSSEC and What It Stands for?
Many beginners do not know what is DNSSEC. So, first of all, let’s know what it is. DNSSEC stands for ‘Domain Name System Security Extensions’ which are a set of security protocols which the servers use to authenticate the DNS lookup while processing data and sending responses to the visitors.
Want to to know more about it? As the protocol is linked to DNS lookup, so you have to know a little more about how DNS works. Very often the users browse over the web to find out various information, data, carry out transaction or do whatever they like. Now, whatever you do, you need a device with active network. Whatever you put in the browser’s tab or search box, your computer translates the domain name(containing relevant information) into an IP address. IP address is very easy to remember for computer which may look like this 119.132.118.101.
But it is difficult for human readers. To overcome this difficulty, DNS servers use domain name . Once you type a web address on your computer’s search box and hit the Enter, the targeted DNS server translates it into a domain name that human readers can understand and read. So, servers responsible for DNS management translate a domain into an IP address and vice versa.
There are several registries containing the list of domains with the domain endings like.com, .net, .org, .info etc. All these data linked with domains are stored in the Root Zone database for DNS management.
When during 1980s DNS was implemented, the scope of Internet users was limited to a few numbers. There was no vulnerability. But as days gone, Internet users grew worldwide and new vulnerabilities were detected. To counter this manipulative attempt, the researchers started their work during the 1990s and the result is a security protocol, called DNSSEC which adds a layer of security between the destination server and DNS resolver.
Why Is DNSSEC Important?
So far, you have understood what is DNS Security Extensions. No need to repeat it again, however, I am going to tell you that it is a security protocol used to authenticate DNS lookup and data exchange. Now, let’s know why DNS Security Extensions are important to the DNS resolvers as well as to the webmasters.
DNSSEC is developed to authenticate whether the host server receives genuine traffic and the request made traverses the whole path—–From Root zone DNS resolvers to the host DNS which responds to an IP address against a query. Unlike the older days of 1980-1990s, now manipulating DNS server is very difficult. Hackers can’t serve rogue responses to the servers if the host server has enabled DNS Security Extensions. Nor they can execute router pharming or man-in-the-middle attack. It prevents DNS hijacking, cache poisoning and other malicious threats linked to Domain Name System.
How to Enable DNSSEC?
You can enable DNSSEC from your domain control panel for your registered domain in a single click. Enabling DNS Security Extensions is not difficult. You can activate it with ease.
So, go through the following steps to enable DNS Security Extensions:
- Login to your domain hosting account.
- Locate the Domain List menu.
- Locate the Domain.
- Click on the ‘Manage’ button in front of the domain.
- It takes you to the domain control panel where you can see ‘Advanced DNS’.
- Click on the ‘Advanced DNS’ which takes you to the nest page where you can see ‘DNSSEC’.
- Click on the button located next to DNS Security Extensions to make it enabled.
So, first of all, login to your account where from you can access and control your domain. Once you logged in into your account, you can see the several menus under the Dashboard like Domain List, Hosting List, Email etc. Scroll down along the scroll bar of your windows until you locate the ‘Domain List,. Once you have located it, click on it, to go to the next step.
On the next step, you can see the Domain List page which displays the registered domain with relevant data like actions, filters, status, auto-renew, expiration etc.
Now, click on the rectangular box located beside the domain, to mark it. Go to the right side of the horizontal bar and you can see the’Manage’ button as indicated with an arrow in the above screenshots.
Click on the ‘Manage’ button in order to go to the next page. Once you clicked on it, it takes you to the next page as shown below.
It is the Domain Control Panel which contains separate pages on products, sharing-transfer and advanced DNS. You need to set up DNSSEC, so click on the ‘Advanced DNS’ and it takes you to the next page.
This page contains data on:
- DNS Templates
- Host Record
- Dynamic DNS
- Premium DNS
- DNSSEC etc.
Scroll down along the scroll bar until you see and locate the DNS Security Extensions containing a button in front of it, to make it enable or disable. You need to enable it.
So, click on the button located in front of it, as indicated with an arrow. Once you click on it, the button will be activated and your Domain Name System Security Extensions starts working to authenticate DNS lookup and data exchange processing.
Now, you can see that DNSSEC has been enabled for your registered domain.
The system displays on-screen success message as shown below.
Thanks to the Internet Engineering Tusk Force(IETF) who undertook and started to research to invent a security protocol to validate DNS servers from the Root Zone Database to the Host servers so as to accept and deliver genuine data to the real IP addresses.
