A Survey on Privacy Protections in Secure DNS Alternatives

Literature Review for COMP0057 Research in Information Security at UCL

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Abstract

The traditional Domain Name System (DNS) protocol uses plaintext transmission over the Internet, which will leak sensitive information to third parties and resolution components. This literature review builds a threat model to the traditional DNS protocol. It evaluates the capabilities of the secure DNS alternatives for defending against passive and active adversaries based on this threat model. The finding of this review shows that none of these alternatives can fully protect user privacy in the entire resolver procedure. Finally, this review is concluded with a recommendation of using a combination scheme in the current stage and a few future research predictions.