The Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-Assad hacking group, altered the DNS records used by the New York Times, Twitter, and the Huffington Post. The changes forced one site offline and caused problems for the others. Here are three ways such attacks happen, and how they can be mitigated

DNS servers work by translating IP addresses into domain names. This is why you can enter CIO.com into the browser to visit our sister site, instead of trying to remember 65.221.110.97.

When DNS is compromised, several things can happen. However, compromised DNS servers are often used by attackers one of two ways. The first thing an attacker can do is redirect all incoming traffic to a server of their choosing. This enables them to launch additional attacks, or collect traffic logs that contain sensitive information.

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