Transparency in the New gTLD Era: Evaluating the DNS Centralized Zone Data Service

Abstract

The centralized zone data service (CZDS) was introduced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to facilitate sharing and access to zone data of the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). CZDS aims to improve the security and transparency of the naming system. In this paper, we investigate CZDS's transparency by measurement. By requesting access to zone data of all gTLDs listed in the CZDS portal, we analyze various aspects of CZDS, including access status, responsiveness and provided reasons for granting access or denial. Among other findings, we find that while a large percent of the gTLD admins respond within reasonable time, more than 10% of them have a long request-to-decision waiting time, and sometimes requests go unanswered even after 6 months of a request. Furthermore, we find that denial cases were for unjustified reasons, requesting information that was provided in the request forms. We discuss implications, and how to enforce better outcomes of CZDS using insight from our measurement.