How hackers hijack the net's phone books,What To Do?

Hackers in the world everywhere anytime to spy our activites do it,like that Online services that charge to kick people out of games or bombard websites with data have been put out of action by PayPal and security researchers.The payment firm and the experts worked together to identify the accounts used by so-called "booter" services,They are thought to carry out hundreds of thousands of attacks each year and charge up to $300 (£200) a month.

Research suggests the action cut the number of active booter services by about 90%.

The booting services use many different ways to batter sites with data but have joined with many other cyber criminals recently in abusing art of the net's net infrastructure - the Domain Name System (DNS).

This acts like a phone book and translates the website names people use into the numeric equivalents that computers are happy with.

So when you type bbc.co.uk, DNS translates that into 212.58.244.18 so your browser can find the page.

"DNS underlies everything you do on the internet," said Neil Cook, chief technology officer at security firm Cloudmark. It is used billions of times a day to make sure you reach the site you are looking for.

Its very usefulness has made it a tempting target for criminally-minded hackers, said Mr Cook, especially because few firms see it as a potential attack vector.

"Most people just see it as plumbing," he said. "They don't see it as a security hole."

A 'rogue' operator was using DNS as a way to cut the cost of using the web overseas

But it is, he said. An attacker that can subvert the DNS system has total control over the data emerging from a company, internet service provider (ISP), home or phone.

Cloudmark was alerted to its potential for trouble by one of it customer, a mobile operator that noticed a massive jump in the amount of data being sent to its DNS servers.

This was odd because the typical DNS query does not involve much data - a simple query and response. There was no good reason why, suddenly, far more data was being sent to those computers.

Closer inspection revealed the culprit. "It was a rogue operator," said Mr Cook. "It had installed software on user's handsets so it did not have to pay roaming charges."

The rogue was outside the UK and was funnelling customers data via DNS so it did not have to travel over the main mobile network and be paid for.

At its fastest, DNS can move data around at about 200 kilobits per second - much slower than most mobile networks. But, said Mr Cook, the fact that users paid nothing to browse the web overseas offset the inconvenience.

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31603930