DNS attacks are draining corporate IT coffers

Attacks on companies' Domain Name System (DNS) servers are causing CIOs to spend a considerable amount of time and money to deploy complex security measures to keep their sites protected from malicious attackers. And according to NetworkWorld, despite this investment, companies are still vulnerable. In a study of 465 IT and business professionals, more than half the respondents reported having fallen victim to some form of malware attack. Over a third were hit by a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, and more than 44 percent had experienced a pharming or cache-poisoning attack. External and internal DNS servers were equally vulnerable: Both types succumbed to attacks with roughly the same frequency, according to the study by Mazerov Research and Consulting. A DNS server compromised by a hacker could be used to funnel Web surfers to all sorts of phishing attacks and malicious Web sites, and in some cases could even cause havoc with directory services and email. 

For more on DNS attacks:
- check out this Network World article