more on DNS inventor calls for security overhaul

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Michael Bacarella <mbac () netgraft com>
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 11:16:01 -0400
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] DNS inventor calls for security overhaul

Dan J. Bernstein, a long time critic of the DNS, has this to say
about DNSSEC and propsoses a different system.  Here's his
page on DNS forgery:

    http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/forgery.html

An excerpt:

DNSSEC: theory and practice

DNSSEC is a project to have a central company, Network Solutions, sign
all the .com DNS records. Here's the idea, proposed in 1993:

    * Network Solutions creates and publishes a key.

    * Each *.com creates a key and signs its own DNS records. Yahoo,
    for example, creates a key and signs the yahoo.com DNS records under
    that key.

    * Network Solutions signs each *.com key. Yahoo, for example, gives
    its key to Network Solutions through some secure channel, and Network
    Solutions signs a document identifying that key as the yahoo.com key.

    * Computers around the Internet are given the Network Solutions key,
    and begin rejecting DNS records that aren't accompanied by the
    appropriate signatures.

However, as of November 2002, Network Solutions simply isn't doing this.
There is no Network Solutions key. There are no Network Solutions *.com
signatures. There is no secure channel---in fact, no mechanism at all---for
Network Solutions to collect *.com keys in the first place.

Even worse, the DNSSEC protocol is still undergoing massive changes. As
Paul Vixie wrote on 2002.11.21:

    We are still doing basic research on what kind of data model will work
    for dns security. After three or four times of saying "NOW we've got it,
    THIS TIME for sure" there's finally some humility in the picture...
"wonder
    if THIS'll work?" ...

    It's impossible to know how many more flag days we'll have before
    it's safe to burn ROMs that marshall and unmarshall the DNSSEC related
    RR's, or follow chains trying to validate signatures. It sure isn't
plain
    old SIG+KEY, and it sure isn't DS as currently specified. When will it
    be? We don't know. What has to happen before we will know? We don't know
    that either. ...

    2535 is already dead and buried. There is no installed base. We're
    starting from scratch.

DNSSEC---for example, BIND 9's RFC 2535 implementation---has been falsely
advertised for years as a software feature that you can install to
protect your computer against DNS forgeries. In fact, installing DNSSEC
does nothing to protect you, and it will continue to do nothing for the
foreseeable future.

I'm not going to bother implementing DNSSEC until I see (1) a stable,
sensible DNSSEC protocol and (2) a detailed, concrete, credible plan
for central DNSSEC deployment.


> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>
> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 20:28:05 -0400
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: jo <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
> Subject: DNS inventor calls for security overhaul
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/30224.html
>
> DNS inventor calls for security overhaul
> By John Leyden
> Posted: 11/04/2003 at 21:06 GMT
> Web site impersonation could become as great a risk as ID theft, Paul
> Mockapetris, the co-inventor of DNS warns.
>
> Waiting in the wings is a better security standard for the Internet's
> Domain Name System. It's called DNSSec, and it uses digital signatures
> to guard against impersonation. But political wrangles are holding up
> adoption, Mockapetris claims.
>
> A denial of service attack last October which took out seven of the
> Internet's 13 DNS root-name servers last October, highlighted the
> fragility of the Internet's addressing system. Mockapetris, chief
> scientist at Internet infrastructure firm Nominum, reckons the threat
> has been overplayed: people are neglecting greater, related risks, he
> told us. 
>
> Since the data in root-name servers changes infrequently a denial of
> service attack has relatively little impact, unless it goes on for days,
> he argues. That's because key data is cached locally by large ISPs and
> enterprises. 
>
> However an attack against country level DNS, or worse, a successful
> attempt to counterfeit DNS data would have far greater impact.
>
> To date there have been few such attacks, apart from the recent
> onslaught against the Al-Jazeera network. But the current DNS system
> provides no guarantees against impersonation and must be updated,
> Mockapetris argues.
>
> The Internet Engineering Task Force has yet to ratify DNSSec, designed
> to underpin the system with security keys and certificates to create a
> "chain of trust" in some ways similar to extranet systems. According to
> Mockapetris, ratification of the standard, which has been in development
> for years, is still at least six months off.
>
> Politics, rather than technology issues, are the main reason for the
> delay, he claims. Holding up progress are arguments over whether or not
> to grant ICANN the role as a trusted third party signing root keys, and
> disagreements over where a company should make all its domains secure at
> the same time. 
>
> Public Key Infrastructure systems have failed to storm the market as
> forecast, largely because of deployment headaches and incompatibility
> between different vendors.
>
> Mockapetris believes a lightweight ("lean and mean") PKI infrastructure
> built into the DNS system through DNSSec has a much greater chance of
> becoming ubiquitous. The system could plug into browsers and provide for
> an automatic way to exchange keys. Cryptographic work would be done at
> the client by DNSSec-aware applications so DNS lookup speed will not
> suffer. This approach would allow secure DNS look-up by users - even if
> their own ISPs hadn't upgraded their DNS servers.
>
> Government and financial service institutions could be using DNS Sec
> within two years and the standard could become ubiquitous in five years
> time, Mockapetris believes.
>
> The system would mean surfers are guaranteed that they are taken to the
> Web site they intended to visit. DNS Sec would increase safeguards and
> detect attempts to impersonate sites, guarding against fraudulent Web
> scams. 
>
> Mockapetris sees the system as operating at a lower level than site
> certificates, which he described as a "complementary technology. I don't
> believe in the grand unification theory."
>
> He describes DNS Sec as a first level ID check, which is still vital to
> build trust on the Net. "If you don't have secure DNS, how can you trust
> higher level protocols?"
>
> A security model for DNS would bolster Web services and help secure IP
> telephony. Fraud and impersonation will run rampant without this
> security model, according to Mockapetris.
>
> The DNS system provides a means for domain names to be translated into
> Internet Protocol addresses. DNS underpins email delivery and Web
> browsing. 
>
> Mockapetris co-invented the domain name system (DNS) in collaboration
> with the late Jon Postel) in 1983. He received an IEEE Internet Award
> this year for this work. ®
>
> External Link
> Everything you ever wanted to know about DNSSec (but were too frightened
> to ask)
>
> -- 
> Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>

-- 
Michael Bacarella                  24/7 phone: 646 641-8662
Netgraft Corporation                   http://netgraft.com/
      "unique technologies to empower your business"

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