Yesterday, the .com domain name of the New York Times’ website was maliciously hijacked to redirect visitors to websites controlled by the attackers.
In the same incident, the hackers attempted to change the records of around a dozen separate websites, including major brands and media organisations such as Twitter and the Huffington Post.
It is these domain name records that ensure visitors who type “nyt.com” end up at The New York Times website. The attackers altered these records and visitors who navigated to these domain names were unable to reach the intended websites for several hours.
An increasing threat
The problem is, this type of attack is becoming increasingly common and hackers are utilising evermore devious social engineering and phishing tactics in order to gain access to these domain name records.
Earlier this week, Google's Palestine domain name google.ps suffered a similar attack. This follows several other attacks in recent months on high profile brands such as Microsoft, Skype, Dell, Kaspersky and Yahoo! in different countries around the world.
The good news is that we developed a solution to mitigate the risk and exposure to such attacks.
Protecting your .au domain names
In response to these increasing threats, AusRegistry launched a new security measure earlier this year called .auLOCKDOWN, which allows .au domain name owners to lock their domain name records and prevent unauthorised changes.
.auLOCKDOWN combats the type of incident seen with the New York Times by adding an additional layer of authorisation at the .au registry level. Only authorised individuals who are verified are permitted to alter domain name records.
