This is the DNS Zone Transfer Kali Linux Tutorial. It is important to have a good foundational knowledge of ethical hacking. This is one of those concepts that you should have experience with. Misconfigurations in DNS servers can result in a vulnerability that allows anyone on the network to make requests they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
DNS Servers have a setting, Zone Transfers that allows for requests from authorized devices on the network. But what happens when anything on the network is allowed to make these requests?
See the Youtube video for a guided DNS Zone Transfer tutorial.
Here’s What You Need
- Windows Server 2016 with DNS DS Role installed.
- Kali Linux (VirtualBox)
Don’t have a penteseting lab setup? That’s easy read How to Setup an Active Directory Domain Controller to Hack at Home in 10 Steps!
How DNS Zone Transfers Help Hackers
The correct usage of the Zone Transfer settings is to authorize redundant DNS servers to make these requests. That means there should be a master DNS server and authorized slave servers. When any IP address is allowed to make them then literally all of the hostnames for all of the IP ranges can be enumerated.
First open Server Manager followed by DNS Manager.
Open the properties tab on the pentesting lab domain you setup for your home testing. In this example it’s testlab.local.
Here we change the Zone Transfers settings to allow zone transfers to any server which means anything on the network actually.
For this tutorial I have added some hosts to to my testlab.local AD Domain. With the JANICE host AD-joined in this virtual network as an example, see how it along with all the other hosts are listed by making a DNS Zone Transfer request.
Using the host command in Kali Linux, the format is host -l domain <ip of DNS Server>. A successful abuse of DNS Zone Transfer settings dumps all the DNS names. For an ethical hacker who is trying to enumerate the hosts on the network this is perfect, that is if you can find where this misconfiguration exists.
That’s it for the DNS Zone Transfer Kali Linux tutorial if you have questions or comments feel free to leave them at the end of the page!
Recommended Reading
I highly recommend buying Georgia Wiedman’s Penetration Testing. Check the price on Amazon.
Note* As as an Amazon associate I may earn from qualifying purchases.