Register.com Nameservers Suffered DOS Attacks

Rai

News

attack, DDOS, domain, dos, name servers, register.com, resolve

Infosec.org News reports that Register.com suffered yet another DDOS attack last April 2 that has a wide-scale effect on its critical operations. Nameservers are down so not one domain that uses Register.com’s nameservers can be resolved, resulting to downtime and to most customers, loss of income. Even the domain registrar’s official website cannot be accessed during the time of the attacks.

I managed to get through their clogged phone lines and the customer service representative assured that their engineers are working hard to bring the servers back to operation.

Hopefully after this unfortunate event, which surely cost them valuable customers, has taught them to be more pro-active against potential attacks to their networks.

Update:

Register.com formed an official announcement regarding their service disruption during the DDOS attacks on their network infrastructure. Here is the official statement:

As we previously communicated, Register.com has been experiencing intermittent service disruptions as a result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

We want to update you on where things stand.

As of now, all web services are operational. If you are experiencing any issues please call 1-888-734-4783. We have support teams standing by to respond immediately.

Please note we are not discounting the possibility of an escalated DDoS attack. We are taking every possible precaution to protect our infrastructure and our customers. In response we have:

* Deployed counter-measures to mitigate the attack and added capacity across the company’s network
* Setup special channels with major ISPs to re-enable customers’ services
* Isolated the profile of the attack through forensic data analysis
* Engaged the FBI and The Department of Homeland Security

We promise to update you if there is any change to the situation.

Throughout this attack we have received incredible support from our customers and want to thank you for your understanding and continued loyalty. We recognize these attacks create significant hardships for our customers and will continue to work to maintain and earn your trust.

Jun

Tip: Using dig to Show Nameservers

Rai

Linux

domains, Linux, name servers, perl, script, Tips

If the need to scan a list of domains arises, be it one or one hundred, I have one handy Perl script that will list all nameservers of a domain. This script uses the command dig, and filters and lists the result. Do note that Perl must be installed to do this script.

# vi mx_checker.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

$file=$ARGV[0];
chomp($file);

@list = `cat $file`;

foreach $domain(@list) {
chomp($domain);
$ns = `dig ns $domain +short`;
chomp($ns);
$ns =~s/\n/\t/g;
print “$domain\t$ns\n”;
}

To make the script executable, change the permissions:

# chmod 700 mx_checker.pl

Then build the list of domains by listing it on a text file, one domain per file.

# vi domains.txt

google.com
yahoo.com
usautoparts.com

Now that the script and domain list is ready, it is time to execute the script:

# ./mx_checker.pl domains.txt

The nameservers will then be listed and can be piped to a text file, which can be exported to a spreadsheet as tab-separated values.