K9SECURE

K9 DNS zone transfer vulnerability scanner: why is it needed?

AXFR protocol is used to share zones between DNS servers. Using a misconfigured DNS server may allow attackers to access all your domain's DNS information. The DNS zone transfer vulnerability scanner can be used to scan your DNS zones. DNS zones can be transferred between servers as a means of sharing information. DNS information is transferred from one server to another via AXFR protocol, which contains ZONE files on DNS servers. Various attacks can be executed against a target using information gathered from zone files, such as targeting less secure test or development servers.

A vulnerability in DNS zone transfer can have a significant impact

There is no authentication offered by DNS zone transfers. The DNS server can therefore provide a copy of the entire zone to any client or someone posing as a client. As a result, anyone can get a list of all hosts for a domain, giving them many possible attack vectors unless some kind of protection is introduced.

How does the scanner work?

As soon as the tool finds your target domain, it discovers all of its name servers. Following this, it sends an AXFR DNS request to each name server and determines whether the request succeeded or not. A complete zone file is displayed if success has been achieved. A full DNS Zone file is also displayed if it can be accessed, along with all the name servers for the target domain.