Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Collin Jackson, Adam Barth, Andrew Bortz, Weidong Shao, Dan Boneh. "Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks". Computer and Communications Security, October, 2007.

Abstract
DNS rebinding attacks subvert the same-origin policy of browsers and convert them into open network proxies. We survey new DNS rebinding attacks that exploit the interaction between browsers and their plug-ins, such as Flash Player and Java. These attacks can be used to circumvent firewalls and are highly cost-effective for sending spam e-mail and defrauding pay-per-click advertisers, requiring less than $100 to temporarily hijack $100,000 IP addresses. We show that the classic defense against these attacks, called "DNS pinning," is ineffective in modern browsers. The primary focus of this work, however, is the design of strong defenses against DNS rebinding attacks that protect modern browsers: we suggest easy-to-deploy patches for plug-ins that prevent large-scale exploitation, provide a defense tool, dnswall, that prevents firewall circumvention, and detail two defense options, policy-based pinning and host name authorization.

Electronic downloads

• http://crypto.stanford.edu/dns/dns-rebinding.pdf

• HTML

  Collin Jackson, Adam Barth, Andrew Bortz, Weidong Shao, Dan
  Boneh. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/307.html"
  >Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding
  Attacks</a>, Computer and Communications Security,
  October, 2007.

• Plain text

  Collin Jackson, Adam Barth, Andrew Bortz, Weidong Shao, Dan
  Boneh. "Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding
  Attacks". Computer and Communications Security,
  October, 2007.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{JacksonBarthBortzShaoBoneh07_ProtectingBrowsersFromDNSRebindingAttacks,
      author = {Collin Jackson and Adam Barth and Andrew Bortz and
                Weidong Shao and Dan Boneh},
      title = {Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks},
      booktitle = {Computer and Communications Security},
      month = {October},
      year = {2007},
      abstract = {DNS rebinding attacks subvert the same-origin
                policy of browsers and convert them into open
                network proxies. We survey new DNS rebinding
                attacks that exploit the interaction between
                browsers and their plug-ins, such as Flash Player
                and Java. These attacks can be used to circumvent
                firewalls and are highly cost-effective for
                sending spam e-mail and defrauding pay-per-click
                advertisers, requiring less than $100 to
                temporarily hijack $100,000 IP addresses. We show
                that the classic defense against these attacks,
                called "DNS pinning," is ineffective in modern
                browsers. The primary focus of this work, however,
                is the design of strong defenses against DNS
                rebinding attacks that protect modern browsers: we
                suggest easy-to-deploy patches for plug-ins that
                prevent large-scale exploitation, provide a
                defense tool, dnswall, that prevents firewall
                circumvention, and detail two defense options,
                policy-based pinning and host name authorization.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/307.html}
  }
  

Posted by Adam Barth on 28 Oct 2007.
Groups: trust
For additional information, see the Publications FAQ or contact webmaster at www truststc org.