New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
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New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#2I wonder how likely these errors are
Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#3This seems pretty unlikely with ECC modules. Worst reported error rate for regular RAM was 1 bit per hour per GB (via wikipedia) while other reports claim it'd take a century for that same amount of error.
Regardless, this is ever more reason to use something like TLS to initiate a trusted identity with another party. Even in the null cipher case, it's useful to exchange a certificate.
Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#4This seems pretty unlikely with ECC modules. Worst reported error rate for regular RAM was 1 bit per hour per GB (via wikipedia) while other reports claim it'd take a century for that same amount of error. Regardless, this is ever more reason to use something like TLS to initiate a trusted identity with another party. Even in the null cipher case, it's useful to exchange a certificate.
Even with regular non-ECC modules, it seems like the odds of this affecting you are very very low.
But the sheer number of operational computers probably means that the likelihood that at any given moment this is impacting someone's DNS query is probably fairly high.
Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#5I wonder how likely these errors are
This seems like it would be easy to test - register a bit;flipped domain name, set up a simple redirect script to the proper domain name and monitor the hits. A good evening or lunch-time project.
Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#6I wonder how likely these errors are
> Normally a couple hundred IPs a day will visit popular bitsquatted destinations. #blackhat
Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#7Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like it would be easy to test - register a bit;flipped domain name, set up a simple redirect script to the proper domain name and monitor the hits. A good evening or lunch-time project.
You would need something with high traffic.
How about Google.com or Facebook.COM?
Re: New DNS hijacking technique exploits RAM errors
#9This seems pretty unlikely with ECC modules. Worst reported error rate for regular RAM was 1 bit per hour per GB (via wikipedia) while other reports claim it'd take a century for that same amount of error. Regardless, this is ever more reason to use something like TLS to initiate a trusted identity with another party. Even in the null cipher case, it's useful to exchange a certificate.
Sections 7 and 8 of this paper [1] discuss inducing memory faults and potential countermeasures. Specifically they indicate that many desktop PCs shipped without ECC hardware at the time of writing (2003). I'm not sure to what extent that's still true, but I imagine it could be a problem for the masses of cheap/old hardware in use around the world.
edit: I found some more recent numbers via [2]. Relevant quote: "Our first observation is that memory errors are not rare events. About a third of all machines in the fleet experience at least one memory error per year (see column CE Incid. %) and the average number of correctable errors per year is over 22,000. These numbers vary across platforms, with some platforms (e.g. Platform A and B) seeing nearly 50% of their machines affected by correctable errors, while in others only 12–27% are affected. The median number of errors per year for those machines that experience at least one error ranges from 25 to 611." They were using server-class machines with ECC.
[1] http://sip.cs.princeton.edu/pub/memerr.pdf
[2] http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf