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Changing your website’s hosting is the closest you’ll ever get to magic in cybersecurity.
It’s somewhat like changing your phone number and having to announce the new one to literally everyone you know and want to keep in touch with. But instead of calling or text messaging everyone to announce the change and hope they’ll remember to save your new contact data, servers do all the time-consuming work for you. The time they need to do it is called DNS propagation.
Remember what Alina wrote about how the DNS was the phonebook of the Internet and how it translates domain names from human to computer language? That’s part of the magic I was talking about in the beginning.
What Is DNS Propagation?
As stated before, we define DNS propagation as the amount of time needed for the updates made to DNS records to be applied across servers all over the web.
How Long Does DNS Propagation Take?
The whole process could take as long as a few hours or 3 days. If you’re thinking you’re clearly doing a better (and quicker) job when personally announcing your phone number change, think again. Communicating your domain name’s new IP worldwide is a much more complex business and implies many more contacts being established.
When it comes to working with nowadays tech, we’re accustomed to seeing changes happening instantaneously, but in this case, that would be impossible. The DNS propagation is taking that long because of the nameservers, who need some time before refreshing the cache where they store domain record information.
What Affects the DNS Propagation Speed?
DNS propagation speed is influenced by four main factors that we’ll discuss further on:
- The domain name registrar. The domain name that you buy for your website comes from a domain name registrar and it will have the TLD you chose, with the IP addresses of the nameservers. You will get the nameservers’ IP addresses. Getting a managed DNS means you will need to make the change in this TLD’s name servers. There is nothing you can do to speed up the process which usually takes up to 48 hours.
- TTL values of the DNS records. The TTL means the time the recursive servers are supposed to keep in memory the DNS records in before updating.
- The recursive servers of Internet Service Providers (ISP) are another factor. Recursive DNS servers are not the same. In order to have less DNS traffic, the ISPs, who have their own TTL values of your DNS records, keep them for longer. So it could be your ISP that delays your DNS propagation.
- And finally, let’s not forget the DNS cache of the users’ computers. The DNS records for your site will be saved on the returning visitors’ computers for a while. If you changed the IP address of your site and want to visit it under its new IP, then you have to clean the DNS cache first. Your users will either have to wait for the DNS propagation to reach them or clean the DNS tool.
Can Hackers Attack My Website During DNS Propagation?
You’re not going to like it, but well… the answer is, as always, yes. It seems that for every single change or process, threat actors came up with a way to exploit the moment.
When it comes to DNS security, hackers have been very creative in finding ways to take advantage of the eventual vulnerabilities. DNS hijacking, DNS tunneling, DNS poisoning, which is also known as DNS spoofing, and Denial-of-Service (DoS) are only a few of the DNS-related types of attack you would want to mitigate.
As DNS records changes can’t happen on the spot, the process could give threat actors enough time to launch their attacks undisturbed.
Hackers frequently use Domain Name Server (DNS) spoofing in their Man in the Middle Attacks (MITM).
DNS spoofing means cybercriminals intercept DNS requests and transmit the address of their server instead of the real one. When launching a MITM attack, the victim is either directed to a malicious website that spoofs the real one or although she or he is directed to the real website, while threat actors steal their information.
Heimdal® DNS Security Solution
- Machine learning powered scans for all incoming online traffic;
- Stops data breaches before sensitive info can be exposed to the outside;
- Advanced DNS, HTTP and HTTPS filtering for all your endpoints;
- Protection against data leakage, APTs, ransomware and exploits;
How Can Heimdal® Help You Block a MITM Attack Through DNS Spoofing?
Threat actors need access to your local network if they plan to launch a DNS spoofing attack. Setting up the optimal security measures and preventing unauthorized persons to have access to your local network is vital for avoiding this type of attack. The DNS propagation period of time can be just the moment the cybercriminals were waiting for, don’t let them catch you off-guard.
Advanced DNS traffic filtering is proven to be, until now, the best tool to identify and deal with DNS-delivered attacks. Make sure you are always one step ahead of cybercriminals and apply a cybersecurity solution that offers active DNS filtering. Heimdal® Threat Prevention – Endpoint is always a good choice.
As 91% of cyber-attacks are DNS-targeted, Heimdal®’s Threat Prevention is able to detect hidden threats. It allows you to spot malicious URLs and processes in time and backtrack the threat actor’s origins with our code-autonomous endpoint DNS threat-hunting solution. This way you will make sure your team has the best tools, visibility, and control over your endpoints and network.
As Heimdal® Threat Prevention scans your users’ traffic in real-time, all of them regardless they are in the office or remote will be able to browse the Internet safely. The solution blocks infected domains and prevents further communication to cybercriminal infrastructures.
And since better safe than sorry is always good advice, take a look also at our Heimdal® Threat Prevention – Network solution, designed to protect your entire ecosystem, not just the endpoints.
Heimdal® Threat Prevention – Network works on any device or OS. This solution is ideal for both on-prem and cloud-based environments, as hybrid DNS allows you to secure traffic locally on any DNS server, without having to reroute to our resolvers.
Wrapping Up
DNS propagation might not sound like a liability factor. After all, it only defines the transition period of time between renouncing the old and communicating a new IP. But as benign as it might seem, if threat actors set their minds to it, it can be a perfect little gate for their attacks.
So keep in mind that safety comes first and unlike in other business aspects, in cybersecurity taking no risks is always the winning strategy.
If you feel you need to know more about DNS security, check our detailed, easy-to-read, e-book on the subject here.
DNS Security for Dummies
An eBook that gives a comprehensive role-based security approach and addresses the numerous dangers to the Domain Name Systems (DNS) as cyberattacks increase globally.
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