Without the Domain Name System (DNS), we’re all lost on the Internet. DNS provides the service that translates our human readable Web addresses such as google.com to their real, but mysterious Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses, such as 8.8.8.8 or IPv6’s 2001:4860:4860::8888. The problem with this master yellow pages directory to the Internet is that DNS records themselves can be corrupted or your communications with the DNS servers interrupted by a man-in-the-middle (MiM) attack.

On March 16, the network security company BGPmon reported that Google’s Public DNS server, 8.8.8.8, was hijacked for Internet users in Brazil and Venezuela for 22 minutes. During this so-called MiM attack, anyone seeking a Web site, e-mail server, or the like was redirected to a site belonging to British Telecomm’s Latin America division. The assault seems to have been result of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking.

Google free public DNS services were briefly corrupted. More>