Securing DNS services through system self cleansing and hardware enhancements

Abstract

Domain name systems (DNS) provide the mapping between easily-remembered host names and their IP addresses. Popular DNS implementations however contain vulnerabilities that are exploited by frequent, targeted attacks. The software vulnerabilities of DNS together with the constant innovation and morphing of cyber attack techniques necessitate the consideration of the worst case scenarios: there will be successful but undetected attacks against DNS servers. In this work, we develop a secure DNS architecture that contains the damage of successful, undetected attacks. This formidable end is achieved by constantly cleansing the servers and rotating the role of individual servers. Moreover, the server rotation process itself is protected against corruption by hardware. We will show the advantages of our design in the following areas: (1) protection of the DNS master file and cryptographic keys, (2) incorruptible intrusion tolerance, (3) high availability, and (4) scalability, the support of using of high degrees of hardware/server redundancy to improve both system security and service dependability. Due to the critical importance of DNS, such a dependable and intrusion-resilient design contributes significantly to the overall security of the Internet.