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Investigations of Top-Level Domain Name Collisions in Blockchain Naming Services

Published: 13 May 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Traditionally, top-level domains (TLDs) are managed by the Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers (ICANN), and the domain names under them are managed by registrars. Against such a centralized management, a blockchain naming service (BNS) has been proposed to manage TLDs on blockchains without authority intervention. BNS users can register TLD strings as non-fungible tokens and manage the TLD root zone. However, such a decentralized management results in the introduction of a new security issue, BNS TLD name collision, wherein the same TLD is registered in several different BNSs. In this study, we investigated BNS TLD name collisions by analyzing TLDs registered on two BNSs: Handshake and Decentraweb. Specifically, we collected TLDs registered in Handshake and Decentraweb and the associated data, and analyzed the data registration status of BNS TLDs and BNS TLD name collisions. The analysis of 11,595,406 Handshake and 11,889 Decentraweb TLDs revealed 6,973 BNS TLD name collisions. In particular, lastname TLDs, which are intended for use as person names, yielded a large number of registered domain names. In addition, the analysis identified 10 name collisions between the BNS and operational ICANN TLDs. Further, the ICANN TLD candidates under review also had name collisions against the BNS TLDs. Consequently, based on the characteristics of these name collisions and discussions in BNS communities, we considered countermeasures against BNS TLD name collisions. For the further development of BNSs, we believe that it is essential to discuss with the existing Internet communities and coexist with the existing Internet.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Panning for gold.eth: Understanding and Analyzing ENS Domain DropcatchingProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3689009(731-738)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
  • (2024)Typosquatting 3.0: Characterizing Squatting in Blockchain Naming Systems2024 APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime)10.1109/eCrime66200.2024.00013(94-108)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024

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  1. Investigations of Top-Level Domain Name Collisions in Blockchain Naming Services

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      WWW '24: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024
      May 2024
      4826 pages
      ISBN:9798400701719
      DOI:10.1145/3589334
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Published: 13 May 2024

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      1. blockchain naming service
      2. name collision
      3. top-level domain

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      May 13 - 17, 2024
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      • (2024)Panning for gold.eth: Understanding and Analyzing ENS Domain DropcatchingProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3689009(731-738)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
      • (2024)Typosquatting 3.0: Characterizing Squatting in Blockchain Naming Systems2024 APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime)10.1109/eCrime66200.2024.00013(94-108)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024

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