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Global Accelerated Learning • Est. 1999
Glossary Term Recursive Resolver

Training Camp • Cybersecurity Glossary

What is Recursive Resolver?

A recursive resolver fully resolves DNS queries by walking root, TLD, and authoritative servers, caching answers and serving as a key attack target.

Glossary > Network Security > Recursive Resolver

Understanding Recursive Resolver

A recursive resolver is a DNS server that accepts a client's query and performs the full resolution process on the client's behalf, querying root, top-level domain, and authoritative name servers until it obtains and returns the final answer. It typically caches responses to improve performance and is a frequent target for attacks such as cache poisoning, DNS spoofing, and DDoS amplification, which DNSSEC and response validation help mitigate.

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