Worldwide security and resiliency of cyber infrastructures: The role of the Domain Name System

The pervasiveness of Information and Communication Technologies in the control and governance of Critical Infrastructures (CIs) (e.g. power plants, energy grids, oil pipelines etc.) makes the Cyber Security problem a matter of citizen protection and safety. Today, CIs are exposed not only to traditional safety and availability problems, but also to new kinds of security threats related to the inevitable use of IP networks (and related routing protocols) and the Domain Name System (DNS). While these two worldwide infrastructures have been generally operated in a reliable and robust fashion for decades, the pervasiveness problem above mentioned and the growing number of cyber threats and attacks raise new challenges at political, governance and technical level. In this work we concentrate our attention on the core role of the DNS in the secure and resilient operation of CIs.