On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 11:51 AM Dave Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote:

> Shumon Huque writes:
> >     Section 8, para 4:  Is there a reference for the 'so-called Water
> Torture
> >     attacks'?  As a native English speaker, I know what that means, but
> it
> >     isn't
> >     clear to me that others will understand.
> >
> > Let me see if I can find one. I did request a reference from the DNSOP
> > colleague who originally suggested that we cite this attack - I don't
> think he
> > was able to find one.
>
> Personally I've never liked the "water torture" moniker, or its
> alternative "slow drip" appellation, as they don't feel particularly
> apt as a metaphor.  I prefer the more descriptive "pseudorandom
> subdomain attack".
>

Agreed.


> That said, I believe it was first publicly described as Slow Drip /
> Water Torture in a presentation by Kei Nishida at APRICOT 39 in 2015,
> though the first observations of the resolver exhaustion technique
> were made by Ziqian Liu in a presentation to DNS-OARC in 2009 (though
> without calling out the random subdomain component, which maybe wasn't
> in play at the time).
>
> Kei Nishida presentation:
>
> https://conference.apnic.net/data/39/dnswatertortureonqtnet_1425130417_1425507043.pptx
>
> https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/dnswatertortureonqtnet-1425130417-1425507043/45445438
>
> Ziquian Liu presentation:
> https://www.dns-oarc.net/files/workshop-200911/Ziqian_Liu.pdf
>
> For an academic reference with a durable URL that describes it, Xi
> Luo, et al, published "A Large Scale Analysis of DNS Water Torture
> Attack " with the ACM in 2018,
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3297156.3297272
>
> Personally I think I'd reference the Kei Nishida work as the first
> indication of the method for resolver resource exhaustion by using
> random non-existent subdomains, but use the pseudorandom subdomain
> attack term.
>

Thanks Tale! Your suggestion sounds good to me.

Shumon.
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