In-Depth Evaluation of the Impact of National-Level DNS Filtering on DNS Resolvers over Space and Time

DNS filtering is the practice of blocking access to certain sites for a specific purpose, often content-based filtering. Unlike previous studies that focused on the behavior of national-level DNS filtering itself (e.g., location of filtering devices), we demonstrate and evaluate in depth the impact of DNS filtering on different types (public, ISP, and open) of DNS resolvers in the censored networks. In particular, we actively send DNS queries for 83 well-selected domain names to three types of DNS resolvers and keep track of the resolvers' responses changing over time and space in China. Here, we present the results of our system running for 40 days, during which we obtained a total of 1.7 billion DNS records. Using these collected data, we found that specific DNS resolvers are unaffected by DNS filtering devices and can respond with the correct IP addresses for particular blocked domains. Furthermore, we revealed that three factors should be considered to evaluate the impact of a country-level DNS filtering mechanism: DNS resolver, client location, and blocked domain. Finally, we propose and implement a system to identify the correct IP addresses of blocked domain names in censored networks based on the characteristics of country-level DNS filtering.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates and evaluates the impact of DNS filtering on different types of DNS resolvers in censored networks, and proposes a system to identify the correct IP addresses of blocked domain names based on the characteristics of country-level DNS filtering.