Internet Security and Programming

The Web became a substantially more dangerous place this week, thanks largely to the publication of instructions that show cyber criminals how to exploit a pervasive, critical flaw in the Internet infrastructure. While Internet service providers and corporations can mitigate the danger by updating the software that powers vulnerable components of their networks, data released yesterday indicates that only about half of the world’s online population is currently protected by these updates. At issue is a basic design flaw in the domain name system. DNS is the communications standard that acts as a kind of telephone book for the Internet, translating human-friendly Web site names like example.com into numeric addresses that are easier for networking equipment to handle and route. When people type a Web site name into their Internet browser, the process of routing of that name to Internet address is generally handled through DNS servers managed by [...]

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