Domain Parking Service Vulnerable to DNS Cache Poisoning? — Is Your

Probably not, but here’s a way to check.

You may have heard regarding recently discovered vulnerabilities in the DNS system that take advantage of recursive DNS to allow DNS cache poisoning. Spare the technical details: basically, if the nameserver your domain is hosted on is vulnerable, cybercriminals could redirect traffic meant for your site to a different web page.

Many domainers don’t own web sites, but they certainly have their domains parked on other people’s name servers. Are you vulnerable? Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has a fresh tool available to find out.

I tested the nameservers for many of the parking firms and found they are safe: Parked.com, Sedo, and Dotzup.

The test could not determine if my DomainSponsor parked domains were OK since of the way the nameservers are set up. Still, my domains on the old TrafficClub nameserver (now part of DomainSponsor) tested fine.

TrafficZ’s main nameserver ns1.trafficz.com apparently has some vulnerability, but the tool states it’s low risk. I found a similar result with mini-site development firms Evolanding and WhyPark. (Update: WhyPark informs me that it has fixed the issue. Their nameservers are showing as ‘safe’ with IANA’s tool now. Update 2: TrafficZ has confirmed that is removed recursive lookups and had safeguards in effect to prevent exploitations.)

You ought to take these findings with a grain of salt. The IANA tool has a disclaimer “This tool has been implemented quickly to assist name server operators. It may have problems as it has not been thoroughly tested, so you ought to also perform your own tests and use this only as a guide.”

But if any of the technical teams from these parking firms wants to comment regarding what they have done since this vulnerability was exposed, please comment.