If your website is experiencing abnormal access, or if users are redirected to strange pages, it may be due to domain hijacking. The core of domain hijacking is that attackers illegally gain control of your domain. They may achieve this by stealing registrar account passwords, exploiting registration system vulnerabilities, or using social engineering to deceive registrars' customer service. Once successful, they can arbitrarily modify the domain's DNS records, redirecting traffic originally destined for your website to any destination they desire.

The direct losses from such hijacking are obvious. The most obvious is service interruption; your website, email, and all other services relying on that domain will be completely paralyzed. For e-commerce platforms or online service businesses, every minute of downtime means a significant loss of revenue. Worse still, attackers often create a fake page that closely resembles your original website; unsuspecting users entering account passwords and payment information will fall into the attackers' hands.

The derivative harms during hijacking are equally significant. Search engines, after crawling malicious content redirected by your domain, may mark your website as unsafe or even remove it from their indexes; this reputational damage takes a long time to repair. When users see a website has been tampered with, their trust in the brand plummets, and this loss of intangible assets is often more difficult to compensate for than direct economic losses.

Implementing comprehensive protection needs to start from the domain registration stage. Choosing a reputable domain registrar is crucial, as these providers typically offer more robust security mechanisms. Enabling two-factor authentication for accounts effectively prevents the risk of password theft and is currently one of the simplest and most effective protection measures. Always use real information and ensure email security when registering a domain, as many reset operations rely on the registered email address.

At the DNS service level, taking appropriate measures can also significantly improve security. Use cloud-based DNS services instead of the registrar's default DNS; these professional services usually have stronger anti-attack capabilities and richer monitoring functions. Enabling the DNSSEC protocol can effectively prevent DNS cache poisoning attacks and ensure the authenticity of resolution results. Regularly checking DNS records is a good operational practice; any abnormal changes should be detected and handled promptly.

The security of servers and local environments should not be neglected either. Ensure that server systems have security patches installed in a timely manner to prevent attackers from gaining modification privileges through server vulnerabilities. Within the company, employees should receive security awareness training to prevent them from clicking on phishing emails and thus compromising their credentials. Reliable security software should be installed on personal devices, and hosts files should be regularly scanned for malicious modifications.

Developing an emergency response plan is equally important. Prepare contact information for your registrar's customer service in advance and understand the procedures for handling emergencies. While regularly backing up website data is crucial, don't forget to back up DNS records; this saves valuable time during recovery. Consider registering related variant domains to prevent attackers from using similar domains for phishing attacks.

Domains serve as a company's online identity, and their security must be given sufficient attention. By building a comprehensive security system from registration and resolution to endpoint protection, the risk of domain hijacking can be minimized. Protecting domains is not just a technical issue, but a responsibility—responsible to users and to the future of your own business.