Analysis of DNS Dependencies and their Security Implications in Australia: A Comparative Study of General and Indigenous Populations

TL;DR

This study assesses how DNS centralization affects Australia’s government services, comparing domains serving Indigenous communities with those serving the general population. It builds DNS dependency graphs by collecting domains, retrieving authoritative name servers, and analyzing direct and indirect provider chains, supplemented by IP geolocation of DNS servers. The findings reveal a pronounced digital divide: Indigenous domains exhibit higher single-provider dependence and greater reliance on domestic non-leading providers, along with limited geographic diversity, increasing vulnerability to outages and attacks. The authors discuss attacker models from lone actors to global-state actors and recommend multi-provider strategies, geographic diversification, and government-operated DNS as practical mitigations with implications for policy and resilience of essential services.

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of internet centralization on DNS provisioning, particularly its effects on vulnerable populations such as the indigenous people of Australia. We analyze the DNS dependencies of Australian government domains that serve indigenous communities compared to those serving the general population. Our study categorizes DNS providers into leading (hyperscaler, US-headquartered companies), non-leading (smaller Australian-headquartered or non-Australian companies), and Australian government-hosted providers. Then, we build dependency graphs to demonstrate the direct dependency between Australian government domains and their DNS providers and the indirect dependency involving further layers of providers. Additionally, we conduct an IP location analysis of DNS providers to map out the geographical distribution of DNS servers, revealing the extent of centralization on DNS services within or outside of Australia. Finally, we introduce an attacker model to categorize potential cyber attackers based on their intentions and resources. By considering attacker models and DNS dependency results, we discuss the security vulnerability of each population group against any group of attackers and analyze whether the current setup of the DNS services of Australian government services contributes to a digital divide.

Figures (13)

• Figure 1: FQDN.
• Figure 2: DNS resolution process.
• Figure 3: DNS Dependencies: lines represent name servers.
• Figure 4: Flowchart for identifying and categorizing Australian government domains by general and indigenous population.
• Figure 5: Dependency on various DNS provider types: general vs. indigenous domains.