Fahad Hilal

Fahad Hilal

Address: Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Saarland Informatics Campus
Campus E1 4
66123 Saarbrücken
Location: E1 4 - 504
Phone: +49 681 9325 3524
Fax: +49 681 9325 5719
E-mail: Get email via email

Personal Information

I am a PhD student at the Internet Architecture group at the Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics.

Publications

2024

Hilal, F., Sattler, P., Vermeulen, K., & Gasser, O. (2024). A First Look At IPv6 Hypergiant Infrastructure. Proceedings of the ACM on Networking (Proc. CoNEXT 2024), 2(CoNEXT2). doi:10.1145/3656300

Sattler, P., Zirngibl, J., Hilal, F., Gasser, O., Vermeulen, K., Carle, G., & Jonker, M. (2024). ECSeptional DNS Data: Evaluating Nameserver ECS Deployments with Response-Aware Scanning. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08478

(arXiv: 2412.08478)

Abstract

DNS is one of the cornerstones of the Internet. Nowadays, a substantial fraction of DNS queries are handled by public resolvers (e.g., Google Public DNS and Cisco's OpenDNS) rather than ISP nameservers. This behavior makes it difficult for authoritative nameservers to provide answers based on the requesting resolver. The impact is especially important for entities that make client origin inferences to perform DNS-based load balancing (e.g., CDNS). The EDNS0 Client Subnet (ECS) option adds the client's IP prefix to DNS queries, which allows authoritative nameservers to provide prefix-based responses. In this study, we introduce a new method for conducting ECS scans, which provides insights into ECS behavior and significantly reduces the required number of queries by up to 97% compared to state-of-the-art techniques. Our approach is also the first to facilitate ECS scans for IPv6. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the ECS landscape, examining the usage and implementation of ECS across various services. Overall, 53% of all nameservers support prefix-based responses. Furthermore, we find that Google nameservers do not comply with the Google Public DNS guidelines. Lastly, we plan to make our tool, and data publicly available to foster further research in the area.

Links

Export

BibTeX

@online{Sattler_2412.08478, TITLE = {{{ECS}eptional} {DNS} Data: Evaluating Nameserver {ECS} Deployments with Response-Aware Scanning}, AUTHOR = {Sattler, Patrick and Zirngibl, Johannes and Hilal, Fahad and Gasser, Oliver and Vermeulen, Kevin and Carle, Georg and Jonker, Mattijs}, LANGUAGE = {eng}, URL = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08478}, EPRINT = {2412.08478}, EPRINTTYPE = {arXiv}, YEAR = {2024}, MARGINALMARK = {$\bullet$}, ABSTRACT = {DNS is one of the cornerstones of the Internet. Nowadays, a substantial fraction of DNS queries are handled by public resolvers (e.g., Google Public DNS and Cisco's OpenDNS) rather than ISP nameservers. This behavior makes it difficult for authoritative nameservers to provide answers based on the requesting resolver. The impact is especially important for entities that make client origin inferences to perform DNS-based load balancing (e.g., CDNS). The EDNS0 Client Subnet (ECS) option adds the client's IP prefix to DNS queries, which allows authoritative nameservers to provide prefix-based responses. In this study, we introduce a new method for conducting ECS scans, which provides insights into ECS behavior and significantly reduces the required number of queries by up to 97% compared to state-of-the-art techniques. Our approach is also the first to facilitate ECS scans for IPv6. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the ECS landscape, examining the usage and implementation of ECS across various services. Overall, 53% of all nameservers support prefix-based responses. Furthermore, we find that Google nameservers do not comply with the Google Public DNS guidelines. Lastly, we plan to make our tool, and data publicly available to foster further research in the area. }, }

Endnote

%0 Report %A Sattler, Patrick %A Zirngibl, Johannes %A Hilal, Fahad %A Gasser, Oliver %A Vermeulen, Kevin %A Carle, Georg %A Jonker, Mattijs %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T ECSeptional DNS Data: Evaluating Nameserver ECS Deployments with Response-Aware Scanning : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0011-117E-D %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08478 %D 2024 %X DNS is one of the cornerstones of the Internet. Nowadays, a substantial fraction of DNS queries are handled by public resolvers (e.g., Google Public DNS and Cisco's OpenDNS) rather than ISP nameservers. This behavior makes it difficult for authoritative nameservers to provide answers based on the requesting resolver. The impact is especially important for entities that make client origin inferences to perform DNS-based load balancing (e.g., CDNS). The EDNS0 Client Subnet (ECS) option adds the client's IP prefix to DNS queries, which allows authoritative nameservers to provide prefix-based responses. In this study, we introduce a new method for conducting ECS scans, which provides insights into ECS behavior and significantly reduces the required number of queries by up to 97% compared to state-of-the-art techniques. Our approach is also the first to facilitate ECS scans for IPv6. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the ECS landscape, examining the usage and implementation of ECS across various services. Overall, 53% of all nameservers support prefix-based responses. Furthermore, we find that Google nameservers do not comply with the Google Public DNS guidelines. Lastly, we plan to make our tool, and data publicly available to foster further research in the area. %K Computer Science, Networking and Internet Architecture, cs.NI

2023

Hilal, F., & Gasser, O. (2023). Yarrpbox: Detecting Middleboxes at Internet-Scale. Proceedings of the ACM on Networking (Proc. CoNEXT 2023), 1(CoNEXT1). doi:10.1145/3595290

2022

Hilal, F. (2022). Large-scale, Stateless, Load Distributive Middlebox Detection in the Internet. Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken.

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Research Interests

Internet Measurements
Network Security

Recent Positions

June 2022 - now
PhD student at Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics

Education

April 2019 - April 2022
Master of Science in Computer Science, Saarland University, Saarland

August 2014 - June 2018
Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science, National Institute of Technology, Srinagar