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DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

status.denic.de

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Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple enough to get a secondary DNS server somewhere and put it on $5/month VPS. I use BIND and DNS replication (AXFR/IXFR) handles it.

Have you ANY clue about the size of .DE's name server infrastructure?

Are you following the thread? We're talking about redundancy for a single domain here.

Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe? I'm using PiHole and 8.8.8.8/1.1.1.1 as upstream, and both options show "DNSSEC" next to their options in settings, so I assumed DNSSEC was enabled (unless I have to enable this somewhere else as well?)

That's weird cause 8.8.8.8/1.1.1.1 will already answer with SERVFAIL right now, unless the domain is still in the cache.

[dead]

Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#403
post #58

How come I have zero problems with any .de domain I tried accessing in the last half hour?

cache

unlikely, as I have also successfully tried domains that I never visited before (at least not in the last 12 months) and according to my PiHole log they were successfully retrieved from 1.1.1.1. and/or 8.8.8.8, which should use DNSSEC

Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#405
post #339
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody had to hack it. A system at DENIC broke, and so Cloudflare turned off DNSSEC validation for all of their users accessing .de. If DNSSEC was actually important for the security model of those users, that would be a huge deal.

If DNSSEC is part of your security model, you want local validation. Not relying on third party resolver that you don't have a contract with. Beyond that, DNS has the AD bit. If you need DNSSEC secure data (for example for the TLSA record), then when Cloudflare turns off DNSSEC validation, the AD bit will be clear and things will stop working.

Am I the only one who thinks that the AD bit is about as useful as the RFC 3514 evil bit?

We have this elaborate, complex, and extremely fragile cryptographic system behind DNSSEC and we distill it down to one single bit that we carry over unauthenticated links. Why?

At least WebPKI answers the right question: should I trust a particular claim to represent host.domain at the time in the following range? (Of course it defers determining the current time to some unspecified other mechanism.) DNSSEC tries to do everything and cannot survive an upstream error even within the downstream validity window. And yet, despite the fact that most of the spec leans heavily toward failing secure, the actual communication of validation status is entirely unprotected.

Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#406
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A complex thing where making a mistake makes your domains drop off the internet seems like a pretty big "only problem".

There is no more complexity other than what is inherent to the task.

It's not clear to me what you're trying to say.

Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#407

Looks like a DNSSEC issue, not a nameserver outage. Validating resolvers SERVFAIL on every .de name with EDE: RRSIG with malformed signature found for a0d5d1p51kijsevll74k523htmq406bk.de/nsec3 (keytag=33834) dig +cd amazon.de @8.8.8.8 works, dig amazon.de @a.nic.de works. Zone data is intact, DENIC just published an RRSIG over an NSEC3 record that doesn't validate against ZSK 33834. Every validating resolver therefor…

So a single configuration mistake in a single place wiped out external reachability of a major economy. It happened in the evening local time and should be fixable, modulo cache TTLs, by morning. This will limit the blast radius somewhat. Still, at this level, brittle infrastructure is a political risk. The internet's famous "routing around damage" isn't quite working here. Should make for an interesting post mortem.

The more interesting question is, could a political adversary do this to a country on purpose, and how hard would that be?

Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNS is a centralization risk, yes. Somehow we've decided this is fine. DNSSEC isn't the only issue - your TLD's nameservers could also be offline, or censored in your country.

DNS is barely centralized. Is there an alternative global name lookup system that is less centralized without even worse downsides?

The blockchain.

The only thing a blockchain is good for is achieving decentralized consensus on what value a key points to, which is what DNS is.

An alternative way of looking at this is that acquiring domains must be somewhat expensive by definition; either you enforce it at the system level, or you make it free, but then somebody will inevitably grab all the interesting ones and re-sell them to others. A blockchain is the only way to make decentralized financial infrastructure viable.

Re: DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

#410
post #405
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If DNSSEC is part of your security model, you want local validation. Not relying on third party resolver that you don't have a contract with. Beyond that, DNS has the AD bit. If you need DNSSEC secure data (for example for the TLSA record), then when Cloudflare turns off DNSSEC validation, the AD bit will be clear and things will stop working.

Am I the only one who thinks that the AD bit is about as useful as the RFC 3514 evil bit? We have this elaborate, complex, and extremely fragile cryptographic system behind DNSSEC and we distill it down to one single bit that we carry over unauthenticated links. Why? At least WebPKI answers the right question: should I trust a particular claim to represent host.domain at the time in the following range? (Of course it…

I can answer that! Because when DNSSEC was designed, it was believed that serverside compute could not keep up with per-request cryptography. DNSSEC contorts itself in several ways to maintain affordances for offline cryptography, which has been retconned into a security mechanism but was in reality just a bunch of non-cryptography-engineers making a terrible prediction about the feasability of cryptography.

(Source: I'm one of the few weirdos on Earth who has read the mailing lists all the way back to when DNSSEC was a TIS project).

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