Evaluating the Impact of Name Resolution Dependence on the DNS

Abstract

In the process of resolving domain names to IP addresses, there exist complex dependence relationships between domains and name servers. This paper studies the impact of the resolution dependence on the DNS through constructing a domain name resolution network based on large-scale actual data. The core nodes of the resolution network are mined from different perspectives by means of four methods. Then, both core attacks and random attacks on the network are simulated for further vulnerability analysis. The experimental results show that when the top 1% of the core nodes in the network are attacked, 46.19% of the domain names become unresolved, and the load of the residual network increases by nearly 195%, while only 0.01% of domain names fail to be resolved and the load increases with 18% in the same attack scale of the random mode. For these key nodes, we need to take effective security measures to prevent them from being attacked. The simulation experiment also proves that the resolution network is a scale-free network, which exhibits robustness against random failure and vulnerability against intentional attacks. These findings provide new references for the configuration of the DNS.