Open Access
ARTICLE
Blockzone: A Decentralized and Trustworthy Data Plane for DNS
Ning Hu1, Shi Yin1, Shen Su1, *, Xudong Jia1, Qiao Xiang2, Hao Liu3
1 Cyberspace Institute of Advanced Technology, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China.
2 Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, 06520-8241, USA.
3 Qianxin Technology Group Co., Ltd., Beijing, China.
* Corresponding Author: Shen Su. Email: .
Computers, Materials & Continua 2020, 65(2), 1531-1557. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2020.010949
Received 09 April 2020; Accepted 12 June 2020; Issue published 20 August 2020
Abstract
The domain name system (DNS) provides a mapping service between
memorable names and numerical internet protocol addresses, and it is a critical
infrastructure of the Internet. The authenticity of DNS resolution results is crucial for
ensuring the accessibility of Internet services. Hundreds of supplementary specifications
of protocols have been proposed to compensate for the security flaws of DNS. However,
DNS security incidents still occur frequently. Although DNS is a distributed system, for a
specified domain name, only authorized authoritative servers can resolve it. Other servers
must obtain the resolution result through a recursive or iterative resolving procedure,
which renders DNS vulnerable to various attacks, such as DNS cache poisoning and
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. This paper proposes a novel decentralized
architecture for a DNS data plane, which is called Blockzone. First, Blockzone utilizes
novel mechanisms, which include on-chain authorization and off-chain storage, to
implement a decentralized and trustworthy DNS data plane. Second, in contrast to the
hierarchical authentication and recursive query of traditional DNS, Blockzone
implements a decentralized operation model. This model significantly increases the
efficiency of domain name resolution and verification and enhances the security of DNS
against DDoS and cache poisoning attacks. In addition, Blockzone is fully compatible
with the traditional DNS implementation and can be incrementally deployed as a plug-in
service of DNS without changing the DNS protocol or system architecture. The
Blockzone scheme can also be generalized to address security issues in other areas, such
as the Internet of things and edge computing.
Keywords
Cite This Article
N. Hu, S. Yin, S. Su, X. Jia, Q. Xiang
et al., "Blockzone: a decentralized and trustworthy data plane for dns,"
Computers, Materials & Continua, vol. 65, no.2, pp. 1531–1557, 2020. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2020.010949