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How does DNSSEC prevent spoofing or hijacking?

DNSSEC anti-spoofing mechanism:

Attack scenario without DNSSEC:

Attacker intercepts DNS query

Returns forged response with malicious IP

Victim connects to attacker's server

No way to detect forgery

With DNSSEC:

Forged response lacks valid signature

Resolver checks signature against published key

Invalid signature = rejected response

Attack fails

What it prevents:

Cache poisoning attacks

Man-in-the-middle DNS manipulation

Rogue DNS server responses

Limitation: Only works if both sender and resolver support DNSSEC.

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