From 9 December Norwegian domain names can be secured with DNSSEC. This means that an end user can know for sure that he arrives at the correct web page when he looks up a domain name.
DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) is a security extension to the domain name system (DNS). DNSSEC protected domains are cryptographically signed, and this makes it possible to check that the reply to a domain lookup comes from the correct source of origin, and that the lookup remains unchanged. The purpose is among other things to prevent a scammer to falsify an answer in order to send an end user to a fake web page.
In addition to making it more secure to use domain names, extensive use of DNSSEC in the domain name system will prepare the grounds for new services that have to trust safety critical data in DNS.
&nash; DNSSEC increases the security, but at the same time it demands more competence from the people running the name service for a domain. We still think that the technology now is mature enough to be used as an upgrade of the infrastructure, says Hilde Thunem, Managing Director in Norid.
Norid is now offering DNSSEC, and encourages registrars to use the service, but the mechanism will not be activated autmatically for all Norwegian domains. So far 16 registrars offer DNSSEC.