Identifying Influential SLD Authoritative Name Servers on the Internet

Abstract

DNS plays an important role on the Internet. The addressing of most applications depends on the proper operation of DNS. The root servers and the top-level domain servers are relied upon by many domains on the Internet, and their security affects the whole Internet. As a result, more attention has been paid to the security of servers at these two levels. However, the security of second-level domains and their servers also needs to be brought to the forefront. This paper focuses on showing the complex resolving dependencies and identifying influential name servers for second-level domains. We start by detecting domain name resolution paths and building up a name dependency graph. Then we construct domain name resolution networks of different numbers and sizes, which are connected by a certain number of domain name resolution graphs. On this basis, the network is analyzed from the perspective of complex network analysis, and a multi-indicators node importance evaluation method based on partial order is proposed to identify the influential name servers of the network. Once these name servers are not properly configured and fail or are compromised by DDoS attacks, it will cause resolution failure for a wide range of domain names.