DNS Abuse Responses

DNS Abuse Responses are the various tools, methods, collaboration, and philosophies spawning from DNS Abuse itself.

Objectives

What are the goals of DNS abuse responses?

Overview

There are four time-related categories of responses to DNS Abuse:

1. reactionary detection and removal of sources of abuse (necessarily after the fact),
2. cotemporal efforts to mitigate the amount and likelihood of abuse or its impact,
3. future-focused work on stopping abuse before it can happen, and
4. ongoing allowance of abuse for ideological or jurisdictional reasons.

Points of View

Every type of Internet user has worries over DNS Abuse and the responses to it. For instance, there is an ongoing multistakeholder debate over where to draw the line between technical abuse and content abuse.

Governments/Intergovernmental Organizations

IGO responses generally see DNS Abuse as a facet of Cybercrime. Government responses tend to focus on what can be adjudicated; include content abuse, such as child pornography; and outline how and when electronic evidence can be collected.

Objectives

Pro-Mitigation

• Budapest Convention

Pro-Privacy

• Pro-privacy legislation, such as the GDPR, limits access to natural persons' data.

Government Responses

Domestic Legislation

In the U.S., cybersecurity legislation thus far has focused on standardizing and formalizing preventative measures. Congress passed

• the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 (CEA)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018

Case Type

Responding to State-Sponsored Cyberattacks

• SolarWinds Hacking Attack
• Microsoft Email Systems Hacking Attack On July 19, 2021, the Biden administration formally condemned but did not inflict sanctions against the Chinese government for working with hackers to breaching Microsoft email systems.

Internet Governance Organizations

ICANN

So far, ICANN has been steadfast in its focus on technical DNS abuse and avoidance of policymaking around content abuse. ICANN's determination of the org's definition for DNS Abuse is based on the work product of GAC and the base gTLD Registry Agreement. Thus, ICANN considers DNS security threats to be limited to attacks involving phishing, malware, botnet command and control, pharming, and spam as a vector. As recently as ICANN 71, the ICANN board was criticized by members of the ALAC, the BC, and other Internet Governance bodies for not doing enough to steward contracted parties and non-contracted parties toward involvement in reducing abuse. However, ICANN and SSAC, in particular, have begun pointing to SAC115 and DAAR as evidence of their work on addressing DNS abuse.

DNS Abuse Institute

Currently, this newcomer is entirely focused on creating an interoperable framework to reduce DNS abuse. The DNSAI acknowledges there are two options for reducing security threats: proactive and reactive methods. The institute is currently putting more of its energy into developing reactive tools because they can be used by anti-abuse or compliance personnel without requiring integration in registration platforms and thus, broad buy-in should be easier to secure.

Private Sector

BC

The business community wants

IP

Intellectual property lawyers

ISPCP

Internet Service and Connectivity providers

End Users

End users, even those who work in the DNS industry, need help managing DNS Abuse mainly because of the timeless effectiveness of Social Engineering Attacks. For instance, at the end of 2020, GoDaddy notoriously tested its workers to see if they would share sensitive information after clicking on dubious links from a spoofed email.