DNSSEC Tutorial; USENIX LISA 2013

1
Shumon Huque
University of Pennsylvania
USENIX LISA Conference
Washington, DC, November 3rd 2013
DNSSEC Tutorial

[DNSSEC Tutorial, USENIX LISA 13]
2
DNSSEC Tutorial
© 2013,2014 Shumon Huque.
This tutorial is being presented at the LISA 2013
Conference held in Washington, DC on Nov 3rd
2013.
Feedback, critique, suggestions on these slides gladly
received at <shuque @ upenn.edu>
Reminder: Please ﬁll out the
evaluation forms for this course!

3
Course blurb from LISA conference brochure:
This class will provide system administrators with a detailed
understanding of the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). It will
provide practical information about conﬁguring DNSSEC using the
popular ISC BIND DNS software and will cover both using DNSSEC
to cryptographically sign your own DNS zones and conﬁguring DNS
resolvers to validate DNSSEC signatures. Many examples of DNS/
DNSSEC querying and debugging using the "dig" tool and other
diagnostic tools and programs will also be covered.The last part of
the course will cover prospects for newer and more exciting uses of
the DNSSEC by application protocols that are in the pipeline, such as
DANE and TLSA records.

Who am I?
•An I.T. Director at the University of Pennsylvania
•Have also been:
• Programmer (C, Perl, Python, Lisp)
• UNIX Systems Administrator
• Network Engineer
•Education: B.S. and M.S. (Computer Science) from Penn
•Also teach a Lab course on Network Protocols at Penn’s
School of Engineering & Applied Science
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Who am I?
•Website: http://www.huque.com/~shuque/
•Blog: http://blog.huque.com/
•Twitter: https://twitter.com/shuque
•Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/+ShumonHuque
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@shuque

Course Topics
6
1. DNSSEC Tutorial
2. Live queries using ‘dig’
3. Conﬁguring DNSSEC in BIND
4.Application uses of DNSSEC
5. DNSSEC deployment status

DNSSEC Tutorial
7

For review
•Assuming familiarity with the basic DNS protocol
•If you need a review, a detailed treatment is provided in
Appendix A of this slide deck
•However, we’ll repeat a few main slides from that section
now just to make sure everyone’s on the same page ...
8

DNS
•Domain Name System
•Base specs in RFC 1034 & 1035 (obs 882 & 883)
•Distributed global database
•Indexed by “domain names” (together with a type and class)
•A domain name is a sequence of labels, eg.
•www.amazon.com.
•Domain Names are case insensitive, but case preserving
9
•Transport protocol: UDP and TCP port 53

DNS
•DNS can be represented as a tree of labels
•Sibling nodes must have unique labels
•Domain name at a particular label can be formed by the
sequence of labels traversed by walking up the tree from
that label to the root
•Zone - autonomously managed subtree
•Delegations: boundaries between zones
10

11
.
org edu net arpa
in-addr ip6
128
91
ietf upenn
130
com
amazon
www
91.130.in-addr.arpa
Zone
upenn.edu Zone
smtp
root Zone
www smtp
amazon.com
Zone

DNS main components
•Server Side:
• Authoritative Servers
• Resolvers (Recursive Resolvers)
•Client Side:
• Stub resolvers (usually on DNS client machines)
12

Authoritative Server
•A server that directly serves data for a particular zone
•Said to be “authoritative” for that zone
•These servers are the ones speciﬁed in NS records
13

Resolver
•Aka “Recursive Resolver”,“Cache” etc
•Used by endsystems (stub resolvers) to query (“resolve”)
arbitrary domain names
•Receives “recursive” queries from these endsystems
•Resolvers query authoritative servers, following DNS
delegations until they obtain the answer they need (this
process is called “iterative” resolution)
•Resolvers “cache” (remember) query results for the
speciﬁed “TTL” (also some negative results are cached)
14

Stub Resolver
•The DNS client software component that resides on most
endsystems
•Commonly implemented by the Operating System as a set of
library routines
•Has a conﬁgured set of addresses of the Recursive Resolvers
that should be used to lookup (“resolve”) domain names
• usually by manual conﬁguration, or dynamically learned via DHCP
•Some stub resolvers also cache results
15

16
. (root)
.edu
upenn.eduwww.upenn.edu
referral to .edu
recursive
resolver
endstation
(uses DNS stub resolver)
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
7
referral to upenn.edu
answer 1.2.3.4
www.upenn.edu
Recursive Resolver is
prepopulated with
root DNS server
addresses

Parts of a DNS query
•Each DNS query needs a query name, type, and class
•qname: a domain name, eg. www.upenn.edu
•qtype:A,AAAA, MX, CNAME, PTR, SRV,TXT, NS, SOA, ...
•qclass: IN, CH, HS (only “IN” is commonly used)
•Various ﬂags: QR, RD, EDNS Opt, DO etc
17

Resource Records (RR)
18
www.example.com. 86400 IN A 10.253.12.7
name, or
owner name
ttl class type rdata
•The fundamental unit of data in the DNS database
•A grouping of a {domain name, type, class}, a TTL (time-to-
live), and the associated “resource data”
•Has a deﬁned text “presentation format”

Resource Record Sets
19
www.ucla.edu. 300 IN A 169.232.33.224
www.ucla.edu. 300 IN A 169.232.55.224
www.ucla.edu. 300 IN A 169.232.56.224
•A set of RRs with the same name, class, and type
•The rdata (resource data) associated with each RR in the set
must be distinct
•The TTL of all RRs in the set also must match
•RR sets are treated atomically when returning responses

Back to DNSSEC
20

DNSSEC at a glance
•“DNS Security Extensions”
•A system to verify the authenticity of DNS “data” using
public key signatures
• Specs: RFC 4033, 4034, 4035, 5155 (and more)
•Helps detect DNS spooﬁng, misdirection, cache poisoning ..
•Recall the “Kaminsky attack”
•Additional beneﬁts:
• Ability to store and use cryptographic keying material in the DNS, eg.
SSHFP, IPSECKEY, CERT, DKIM,TLSA, etc ..
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DNSSEC at a glance
• Each zone has a public and private key pair
• The zone owner uses the private key to sign the zone data,
producing digital signatures for each resource record set
• Public key is used by others (DNS resolvers) to validate the
signatures (proof of authenticity)
• Public key is published in the zone itself so that resolvers can ﬁnd it
• Zone public keys are organized in a chain of trust following the
normal DNS delegation path
• DNS resolvers authenticate DNS signatures from root to leaf zone
containing name.
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DNSSEC Records
23
DNSKEY Contains zone public key
RRSIG Contains DNSSEC signature
NSEC Points to next name in zone
(used for authenticated denial of existence)
DS Delegation Signer
(certiﬁes public key for subordinate zone)
NSEC3 Enhanced version of NSEC
(provides zone enumeration protection and opt-out)
NSEC3PARAM NSEC3 parameters

Signed zone additions
•One or more DNSKEY at the zone apex
•One or more NSEC for every DNS name
•One or more RRSIG for every RR set
•One or more DS records for every secure delegation
•Exceptions: non-authoritative data like delegation NS
records and glue have no signatures (RRSIG)
24

Gory details ...
• RFC 4033: DNSSEC Introduction
• RFC 4034: Resource Records for DNSSEC
• RFC 4035: DNSSEC - Protocol modiﬁcations
• RFC 5155: Hashed Authenticated Denial of Existence (NSEC3)
• RFC 6781: DNSSEC Operational Practices
• RFC 6840: Clariﬁcations & Implementation Notes for DNSSEC
• (and a few other related ones ...)
25

. (root)
.edu
referral to .edu
recursive
resolver
endstation
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
7
answer 1.2.3.4
www.upenn.edu
prepopulated with
root DNS server
addresses

. (root)
.edu
referral to .edu
+ DS, RRSIG
recursive
resolver
endstation
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
7
+ DS, RRSIG
answer 1.2.3.4
+ RRSIG
www.upenn.edu
set DO bit
root’s pubkey
(has root’s pubkey)
edu pubkey
upenn pubkey
prepopulated with
root DNS server
addresses and the
root’s public key
answer
+ AD bit
(Also queries for DNSKEY
and DS records as needed)

EDNS0
•DNS messages larger than 512 bytes requires:
• Use of TCP (typically truncated UDP response followed by TCP retry)
• EDNS0 - a DNS extension mechanism allowing negotiation of larger
UDP message buffers
• RFC 6891 “Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)
•For DNSSEC, EDNS0 does:
• Negotiation of larger UDP payload sizes
• Flag to indicate querier is able to process DNSSEC records: the
“DNSSEC OK” or “DO” bit
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Opt “pseudo” RR
•OPT resource record (RR type code 41)
•Pseudo RR (doesn’t exist as data in a zone)
•Appears in the “Additional Section” of a DNS message
•Contains maximum UDP Payload Size, extended RCODEs
and flags
•Only flag defined to date: DNSSEC OK (DO)
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New Header Flags: CD, AD
•AD - “Authenticated Data”
•CD - “Checking Disabled”
30

AD Flag
•AD - “Authenticated Data”
•Resolver sets this flag in responses when the queried record
is signed with a valid, unexpired signature and an
authenticated chain of trust all the way to a configured trust
anchor (which could be the preconfigured/tracked root key)
•All data in the included answer and authority sections has
been appropriately authenticated by the resolver
•Can also be set in a DNS query - to indicate querier
understands responses with AD bit (eg. if it wants
authenticated state but not necessarily DNSSEC RRs)
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CD Flag
•CD - “Checking Disabled”
•Querier sets CD ﬂag to indicate that “pending” (non-
authenticated data) is acceptable to it, eg. because it is willing
to do its own cryptographic validation of the signatures.
•DNSSEC enabled servers must not return “bad” data (eg.
that have bad signatures) though (*)
•A conceivable use is that of a validating stub resolver.
32

33
DNS Header (12 bytes)
Question Section
Answer Section
Authority Section
Additional Section
DNS Packet Format
new AD, CD ﬂags
new DNSSEC RRs can
appear here (DNSKEY,
RRSIG, NSEC, NSEC3,
etc)
OPT RR with EDNS0 ﬂags in the
additional section, setting DO bit

34
16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID
QR OpCode AA TC RD RA Z AD CD RCODE
QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)
ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)
NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)
ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)
DNS Header
0 08 15
12-bytes

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DNS Response Codes
Common Response codes:
0 NOERROR No Error
1 FORMERR Format Error
2 SERVFAIL Server Failure
3 NXDOMAIN Not existent domain name
4 NOTIMPL Function not implemented
5 REFUSED Query Refused, usually by policy
Standard response code for DNSSEC responses that
fail to authenticate (validate) properly, eg. bad
signature, expired signature etc is SERVFAIL

36
Extended RCodes
Extended RCODES do not appear in the DNS header (since there isn’t
enough space there). They instead appear in the OPT pseudo RR, which
has a special format designed to accommodate them.
Extended RCodes used by EDNS0, TSIG, TKEY, etc:
16 BADVERS Bad OPT version
16 BADSIG TSIG Signature Failure
17 BADKEY Key not recognized
18 BADTIME Signature out of time window
19 BADMODE Bad TKEY Mode
20 BADNAME Duplicate Key Name
21 BADALG Algorithm not supported
22 BADTRUNK Bad Truncation

Multiple DNSKEYs
•Typically, a 2-level hierarchy of DNSKEYs is employed
•KSK: Key Signing Key
• Signs other keys (can be larger, ie. stronger, and kept ofﬂine; used as
the trust anchor and certiﬁed by the parent zone in the DS)
•ZSK: Zone Signing Key
• Signs all data in the zone (can be lower strength and impose less
computational overhead; can be changed without co-ordination with
parent zone)
37

Protection of signing keys
•Keep ofﬂine? Problems with dynamic signing
•Keep only KSK ofﬂine? But need to bring them online for
key rollovers (even only ZSK rollovers)
•If keeping online, lock down housing server rigorously, as you
might do a critical authentication server, like a KDC
•Physically secured machine room & racks
•Tamper resistant HSM (Hardware Security Module)
38

$ dig jabber.upenn.edu AAAA
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 337
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;jabber.upenn.edu. IN AAAA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
jabber.upenn.edu. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:468:1802:101::805b:2ac
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
upenn.edu. 86400 IN NS dns2.udel.edu.
upenn.edu. 86400 IN NS noc2.dccs.upenn.edu.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
noc2.dccs.upenn.edu. 86400 IN A 128.91.254.1
noc2.dccs.upenn.edu. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:468:1802:102::805b:fe01
noc3.dccs.upenn.edu. 86400 IN A 128.91.251.158
dns1.udel.edu. 86400 IN A 128.175.13.16
dns2.udel.edu. 86400 IN A 128.175.13.17
39

$ dig jabber.upenn.edu AAAA +dnssec
;; flags: qr aa rd ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 5, ADDITIONAL: 7
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 4096
;jabber.upenn.edu. IN AAAA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
jabber.upenn.edu. 86400 IN RRSIG AAAA 5 3 86400 20090719232941 (
20090619232159 23382 upenn.edu.
26bOACMMoojfX/zVW1AfhWZ/LSuvn5Fo8iHxVqV/NBzT
JJb0LitaOQVqKCxxswH0TDQgmQiayaL6xGk0yfHo7T32
i1pEFbJdkbNvd4M7GQktB22lBY12Uzrd+/FmAA2xqJ2P
ZDBNbIjkd41oRD098BAmYfGGGDdb8Dyectx8L/Q= )
upenn.edu. 86400 IN RRSIG NS 5 2 86400 20090719232217 (
20090619223616 23382 upenn.edu.
WWpT4uD9p5zORM+2O7pRZ46+Qo3cHj9tnjxH62Xt9QBR
yu9V7+3ihlIM1HCd9kjsddskT8GJ+5hEzykB8fPIjSli
bqG6hCnCccGdTsGzmPoGdlz95H7Nf2yfrlGLAcSCix6I
EJb8Aj4+OW9Zq1dmeZrnJDXSzm8joQg5+IlkzR4= )
DNSSEC Ok
Authenticated Data
Answer &
Signature

;; ANSWER SECTION:
jabber.upenn.edu. 86400 IN RRSIG AAAA 5 3 86400 20090719232941 (
20090619232159 23382 upenn.edu.
26bOACMMoojfX/zVW1AfhWZ/LSuvn5Fo8iHxVqV/NBzT
JJb0LitaOQVqKCxxswH0TDQgmQiayaL6xGk0yfHo7T32
i1pEFbJdkbNvd4M7GQktB22lBY12Uzrd+/FmAA2xqJ2P
ZDBNbIjkd41oRD098BAmYfGGGDdb8Dyectx8L/Q= )
Cryptographic Signature
Signature
Inception
(YYYYMMDDHHmmSS)
Signature
Expiration
(YYYYMMDDHHmmSS)
Original
TTL
RRSIG
Record
Type
Covered
Algorithm
#Labels
(minus root)
Key Tag
Zone name

DNSKEY record
42
example.com. 7200 IN DNSKEY 256 3 5 (
AwEAAfdhCwSImS/vqlPV7nQMPCCjd7P8za38PFH606zh
! ! ! ! z7zc7lirVewUphYijpDTeeX2nEfq3leFKmHqQw4Oc7Jx
! ! ! ! p7/Bdfr2uZfeCws0zwal2kZDJX/O+wBNqtIltc6tdwzX
! ! ! ! tGU21VEvDsFdl3xiQpRHkXt9PclVIqnGv39hK9mimx7b
! ! ! ! ) ; ZSK; alg = RSASHA1; key id = 50475
•Contains zone’s DNSSEC public key and associated flags
Flags (16 bits)
Bit 7: zone flag
Bit 1: SEP flag
Bit 8: Revoke
Public Key
(Base 64 encoded)Zone Name
Protocol
Must be 3
(DNSSEC)
Algorithm

Common DNSSEC algs
43
Algorithm# Algorithm
5 RSA/SHA1 (default in BIND 9)
6 DSA-NSEC3-SHA1
7 RSA-NSEC3-SHA1
8 RSA/SHA256
10 RSA/SHA512
12 ECC-GOST
13 ECDSA Curve P-256 SHA256
14 ECDSA Curve P-384 SHA384
http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-sec-alg-numbers/dns-sec-alg-numbers.xml

$ dig upenn.edu DNSKEY
;; ANSWER SECTION:
upenn.edu. 7200 IN DNSKEY 256 3 5 (
AwEAAcDt107stSjvoBA/YVPr+2gvB3v33tXr7ROZ/Jqm
WtNLraxQPzgXM1AhwjtdEqwCAnk01V7+Fw7K94sh6jpI
5bFofS7MGtd0VvNyq52bgRnusgbm1ME2Lx9+o3fy9ppv
7C6bahGrV3aiq9wNVPj/ccJn5AnZCOsi3grVsj6izCYH
) ; key id = 46752
AwEAAfAHsS33kJEImVk09yFJY5hXumAo+JVVJMJpJUaj
l/rh0fFkdikS2oatVvxHHHqKN9Kg3DoKQss/CzCZa4zn
KlqYGvSl7RefKR3QLyPBGQN2aOUWxshDgOWLmOtqNpmP
+6Drfn8LJVTOjuwmU80laQcdA/AoOGVPE3zP16G/F+qp
) ; key id = 43248
AwEAAek95gyBF2nurdIE2Q63VVcMlazOlQEnz0N4Ce89
SB4Juw2eEBerLmEanuGJbrs0oGx3SKCMyhOYL9q1ZrmC
NCf6PnACwv88NtrYOjHAOmOlLAvKAQv8MTBbEwTWBBw5
K8jUwzcaGyDjo3U+Hai+ow8Tiev0By+hrcT4DegsbEB8
MEQIgEUO/Kw9wbJLEdpvVXtuV2l78G75FUwmrA8jzEka
M7bKg/HSTIMupbwfs4IHYgbG/PkqOZYL3uxm9gncVjbh
4YYd4OG6koVoWteWTS8JdYq4gr9b9AEjhwAzbe7bd7pX
+qD70CCbh0jSOVhPvhRpCHIYZAJIwEAWs711HHM=
) ; key id = 29242
algorithm
ﬂags proto
encoded public key

Negative answers
•“Authenticated Denial of Existence”
•NSEC or NSEC3 records (and their signatures)
•Chain together DNS records in a zone; can think of them
and their signatures as spanning the gaps between names in
the zone
•Canonical ordering of names in signed zones needed (RFC
4034, Section 6.1)
•Needed because of the pre-computed signature model of
DNSSEC (computational concerns & signing key security)
45

Canonical Order
46
Sort DNS names in order of most significant (rightmost)
labels first. Then within each label, sort them as octet
strings, case-folding ASCII letters to lowercase.
example.com
a.example.com
blah.a.example.com
Z.a.example.com
zABC.a.EXAMPLE.com
z.example.com
001.z.example.com
*.z.example.com
200.z.example.com
(See RFC 4034, Section 6.1)

NSEC3 differences
•NSEC3 instead of NSEC records
•Owner name is a cryptographic hash of the name (ﬂattened)
rather than the actual name - provides zone enumeration
defense
•Some names may not have an NSEC3 (the “opt-out” feature)
•Additional apex record: NSEC3PARAM
•Increased CPU usage implications
•See RFC 5155 (Hashed Authenticated Denial of Existence)
for details
47

NSEC record
48
a.example.com. 300 IN NSEC d.example.com. A MX RRSIG NSEC
•“Next Secure” record
•Describes interval between consecutive names in a zone
•Type-bitmap deﬁnes RRtypes available at owner
•Side Effect: allows enumeration of zone contents
Next Owner Name Type Bitmap
(List of Types deﬁned
at Owner Name)
Owner Name SOA min TTL

$ dig +dnssec +multi bozo.upenn.edu A
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 7708
;; ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
[SOA and RRSIG(SOA) records omitted for brevity]
upenn.edu.! ! 3600 IN! NSEC _kerberos.upenn.edu. NS SOA MX RRSIG NSEC DNSKEY TYPE65534
upenn.edu.! ! 3600 IN! RRSIG NSEC 5 2 3600 (
! ! ! ! 20120508051318 20120408042226 50475 upenn.edu.
! ! ! ! ZzTYjeHECy5xLo+wrXq1VwmtNI3Wz7cpNLBdg+3xM9ph
! ! ! ! H9jOndAViCKwsDa4uLBYBcKss9qbbYjVtMp5w0lmVpwm
! ! ! ! cwxYheAyEN+w2VPBhLZ9qjfib8Q6Lfi3r3lC8EDJciL0
! ! ! ! 1LSQwP2gyFx7V6VG08z11W6fuB6A/6/3/55xwW0= )
cagrid.bmif.upenn.edu.! 3600 IN! NSEC BRYNMAWR-GW.upenn.edu. CNAME RRSIG NSEC
cagrid.bmif.upenn.edu.! 3600 IN! RRSIG NSEC 5 4 3600 (
! ! ! ! 20120507190845 20120407181400 50475 upenn.edu.
! ! ! ! yn4Au0Q4EViYu0LonWlWviTUn6kLYfyMMERajl2Jdaob
! ! ! ! CYLfwnWMrXYPh6IZu03dYSkIRg7WEoyEGckk5J5Gudok
! ! ! ! ikdFEEuuBjV4cdUCMp67lvUjCGVclFWnKhb5ni/FmieH
! ! ! ! q7yFeztBt/IsKxtbcFSX0Isjt5mtNqt5is+UNpY= )
An authenticated negative answer (nxdomain)
*.upenn.edu would
have been between
upenn.edu and
_kerberos.upenn.edu
bozo.upenn.edu would
have been between
cagrid.bmif.upenn.edu &
brynmawr-gw.upenn.edu

$ dig +dnssec upenn.edu A
[SOA and RRSIG(SOA) records omitted for brevity]
upenn.edu.! ! 3600 IN! NSEC _kerberos.upenn.edu. NS SOA MX RRSIG NSEC DNSKEY TYPE65534
upenn.edu.! ! 3600 IN! RRSIG NSEC 5 2 3600 (
! ! ! ! 20120508051318 20120408042226 50475 upenn.edu.
! ! ! ! ZzTYjeHECy5xLo+wrXq1VwmtNI3Wz7cpNLBdg+3xM9ph
! ! ! ! H9jOndAViCKwsDa4uLBYBcKss9qbbYjVtMp5w0lmVpwm
! ! ! ! cwxYheAyEN+w2VPBhLZ9qjfib8Q6Lfi3r3lC8EDJciL0
! ! ! ! 1LSQwP2gyFx7V6VG08z11W6fuB6A/6/3/55xwW0= )
An authenticated negative answer (nodata)
NOERROR (nodata) responses can be authenticated with one signed NSEC record,
which just reports all available RRTYPEs at that name

NSEC3 record
51
N3O3HKFAKV0FDU4OMHFEHT0FROFG6RQL.example.com. 3600 IN
NSEC3 1 0 5 9EBA4228 Q9T0VRM5S6EEF2N72RPCC5ENOF4IGV3O A
MX RRSIG
• New version of NSEC that provides defense against zone
enumeration (see RFC 5155 for details)
• Hashed owner names (base 32 with extended hex alphabet)
• Optional “opt-out” feature
• rdata: nsec3 parameters (hash alg, ﬂags, iterations), hashed next owner
name, type bitmap
hashed owner name
nsec3 params
hashalg, ﬂags, iterations, salt
next hashed owner
SOA min TTL

NSEC3PARAM record
52
lsu.edu.! ! 0! IN! NSEC3PARAM 1 0 10 6F772A6B
•NSEC3PARAM record at zone apex also holds the
parameters
•Hash algorithm, Flags, #Iterations, Salt
•This is used by secondary nameservers for the zone, to
choose an appropriate set of NSEC3 RRs for responses
Zone Name alg#
ﬂags
iters Salt

Authenticated negative answer (NSEC3 nxdomain)
(Example taken from RFC 5155 Appendix B. Consult for details)
Question: a.c.x.w.example. IN A
0p9mhaveqvm6t7vbl5lop2u3t2rp3tom.example. NSEC3 1 1 12 aabbccdd (
2t7b4g4vsa5smi47k61mv5bv1a22bojr MX DNSKEY NS
SOA NSEC3PARAM RRSIG )
0p9mhaveqvm6t7vbl5lop2u3t2rp3tom.example. RRSIG NSEC3 7 2 3600 (
20150420235959 20051021000000 40430 example.
OSgWSm26B+cS+dDL8b5QrWr/dEWhtCsKlwKL
IBHYH6blRxK9rC0bMJPwQ4mLIuw85H2EY762
BOCXJZMnpuwhpA== )
b4um86eghhds6nea196smvmlo4ors995.example. NSEC3 1 1 12 aabbccdd (
gjeqe526plbf1g8mklp59enfd789njgi MX RRSIG )
b4um86eghhds6nea196smvmlo4ors995.example. RRSIG NSEC3 7 2 3600 (
20150420235959 20051021000000 40430 example.
ZkPG3M32lmoHM6pa3D6gZFGB/rhL//Bs3Omh
5u4m/CUiwtblEVOaAKKZd7S959OeiX43aLX3
pOv0TSTyiTxIZg== )
35mthgpgcu1qg68fab165klnsnk3dpvl.example. NSEC3 1 1 12 aabbccdd (
b4um86eghhds6nea196smvmlo4ors995 NS DS RRSIG )
35mthgpgcu1qg68fab165klnsnk3dpvl.example. RRSIG NSEC3 7 2 3600 (
20150420235959 20051021000000 40430 example.
g6jPUUpduAJKRljUsN8gB4UagAX0NxY9shwQ
Aynzo8EUWH+z6hEIBlUTPGj15eZll6VhQqgZ
XtAIR3chwgW+SA== )
covers “next closer name”
matches closest encloser
covers wildcard at
closest encloser

$ dig +dnssec blah.huque.com. MX
[SOA and RRSIG(SOA) omitted for brevity]
Q9T0VRM5S6EEF2N72RPCC5ENOF4IGV3O.huque.com. 3284 IN RRSIG NSEC3 8 3 3600 (
! ! ! ! 20121114122449 20121015121429 14703 huque.com.
! ! ! ! lSu/WBJb3rBsU8ObV4bChPIMWcK93ac1B4b0Pq14m+Zo
! ! ! ! XOkgu+PAqWLbM8FFeWwnT74XOWMXe+jvNMLSQ/nWfEjE
! ! ! ! s+l51Wsm4XJma0Pl+SoSHdIq1vJ9KfeEiWD8xLbpKH/N
! ! ! ! 3qwjnf4p4Fcma8LB6va4niZiJulMGNFzgRmtFDE= )
Q9T0VRM5S6EEF2N72RPCC5ENOF4IGV3O.huque.com. 3284 IN NSEC3 1 0 5 9EBA4228 (
! ! ! ! 1M2GGNB8TPSI4SPF73V8RJS95FLHBNCO! TXT RRSIG )
Authenticated negative answer (NSEC3 nodata)
NOERROR (nodata) responses can be authenticated with one signed NSEC record,
which just reports all available RRTYPEs at that name (for qtype != DS)
In the example below blah.huque.com exists (TXT) but not for the MX record type.
Hash of blah.huque.com.
Next hashed name Type bitmap

Secure Delegations
•Indicated by DS (Delegation Signer) record
•Appears in the delegating (ie. parent) zone
•Contains a hash of the public key of the child zone’s
•Validating resolvers use the presence of the DS record and
its corresponding signature (RRSIG) to securely authenticate
the delegation
55

magpi.net. 3587 IN DS 15462 5 2 (
9EFD691150378921179A5408F04E6EA93CBA2488B221
96493142E47D1AD24C3A )
magpi.net. 3587 IN DS 15462 5 1 (
C020FB9E09EE30568F250E2086D52E62F2B4FA17 )
magpi.net. 3587 IN RRSIG DS 5 5 3600 20090812170009 (
20090713170009 64263 dlv.isc.org.
M+09bX9XP79yfDhWDUNuDEg9KOEHV2eV33/dEYnutVpD
iZYGqJ6BWLhWZYE8Y8megYozfa5UJv/AVcdIZ51JCPI4
k/jlRDj60kRaWRlfCBgqOR2WPL+F20vhg3wS57bIjmRW
To0r/HpXemnJVdXLbrzWD5WdpYGFy1UVX+15N4o= )
DS contains hash (digest) of the public key of
delegated domain. 2 DS records are shown here
because 2 different hashing algorithms were used
Signature of DS record set
keytag
dnskey algorithm
hash algorithm
hash algorithms
1 - SHA-1
2 - SHA256

upenn.edu.! ! 86247 IN DS 18463 5 2 (
! ! ! ! 6003992326DA06785C9E30B259750FAB0960BF57054B
! ! ! ! DDFFDEEE1188977DABB8 )
! ! 86247 IN DS 18463 5 1 (
! ! ! ! 0C45B3D090B221E0E33BBEB5A619D89416BAF197 )
! ! 86247 IN RRSIG DS 8 2 86400 (
! ! ! ! 20131004044110 20130927033110 21638 edu.
! ! ! ! piBkiV626itFwzUdoKk81l7ljbN2+EUcNYESuKShN2kw
! ! ! ! 7GapeS0gTW5kafTtFlB7AjNN8AR85YrfH56XKwEvRoo1
! ! ! ! yN2Tz1EE0eLtiQnMEwAi0FZ7NKz7eb2IMezGtFvUUqHm
! ! ! ! x0gf2B5r4JHFhyB74M10+BY16LWyeoujUsezDOw= )
upenn.edu.! ! 7200 IN! DNSKEY 257 3 5 (
! ! ! ! AwEAAf02wZZMtX2ofTKfJ/xoQffn17NFJV0Y5s4F3tMd
! ! ! ! kktC/abDax+SB0MJWRAcznigKoirdVL7ZbVS2DYRoUvJ
! ! ! ! v44VLRtLlbggxDnhpP4fCJ88Yu33/5GFZwmgxco4OA6y
! ! ! ! xhwEniIveQ5B7LJ0Vh8KyfqU6obu7wFR7pSV1UVybLZf
! ! ! ! F3n1Kb+6KRWtave5JLbhfYfXYxhUpVWlbeKYmoroO9SH
! ! ! ! sQaoR3vr7L168MEe4VRE+SKcuNRkzLBG5XQDnImYanv6
! ! ! ! Pf4tYaNTGYPgkXSVJKeGUdncJOxZ8NrAqOncGDgQML3x
! ! ! ! ALGWHWlrpmeN6EQdf7+qv1vm7uHxN1L0MhS7B4U=
! ! ! ! ) ; KSK; alg = RSASHA1; key id = 18463
! ! ! ! [ ... other DNSKEYs and RRSIGs omitted ...]
edu zone
upenn.edu zone
A DS record in a parent zone refers to a speciﬁc DNSKEY record in a child zone

Parent unsigned?
•What if you want to deploy DNSSEC, but ...
•Your parent zone isn’t signed
•Or it is signed, but you are unable to get a secure delegation
installed in it because your domain registrar can’t do it
58

DNSSEC Lookaside Validation (DLV)
• A mechanism to securely locate DNSSEC trust anchors “off path”
• Intended as an early deployment aid until top-down deployment of
DNSSEC is completed
• DLV Registry operated by Internet Systems Consortium (https://
www.isc.org/solutions/dlv)
• If you can’t ﬁnd a DS record for example.com, look for a DLV
record for example.com.<dlv-domain>
59
magpi.net.dlv.isc.org. IN! DLV 15463 5 2
(9EFD691150378921179A5408F04E6EA93CBA
2488B22196493142E47D1AD24C3A )

Live DNS queries with dig
60

61
In this section, we’ll look at some live DNS
queries with the “dig” tool, widely available
on most UNIX/Linux platforms.
Common invocations:
dig <qname>
dig <qname> <qtype>
dig @server <qname> <qtype>
dig -x <ipaddress>
dig +trace <qname> <qtype>

62
Useful additional ﬂags for DNSSEC related
operations ...
+dnssec request DNSSEC RRs via DO=1
+multi pretty print output across
multiple lines with annotation
+adflag set AD flag
+cdflag set CD flag
+sigchase obsolete. Use “drill” instead

Conﬁguring DNSSEC in
BIND
63

General advice
•Use the latest possible version of BIND (current is v9.9)
•Many more features that make DNSSEC conﬁguration much
much easier, and almost automated ...
64

Additional details
•The BIND ARM (Administrator’s Reference Manual)
•http://www.isc.org/software/bind/documentation
•For latest BIND version (9.9):
• http://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/cur/9.9/doc/arm/Bv9ARM.html
•Essential reading for the BIND DNS operator
65

Summary of steps
•DNS Resolver Operator
• Conﬁgure resolver to perform DNSSEC validation
•DNS Zone operator
• Sign zone(s) with DNSSEC
• Secure zone transfers (typically with TSIG)
• Obtain secure delegation (DS record) at parent zone
66

Validating Resolver
67
In named.conf:
options {
[...]
dnssec-enable yes;
dnssec-validation auto;
dnssec-lookaside auto;
[...]
};
This will use BIND’s built-in keys for the root
and the ISC DLV registry, and will automatically
rollover keys as they are detected.

Validating Resolver
68
# named.conf Validating recursive resolver example
acl trusted {
192.0.2.0/24; # my clients IPv4 address block
2001:db8:f470::/48; # my clients IPv6 address block
}
options {
max-cache-size 1024M;
listen-on-v6 { any; };
dnssec-enable yes;
dnssec-validation auto;
dnssec-lookaside auto;
allow-query-cache { trusted; };
allow-recursion { trusted; };
};
zone "." {
type hint;
file "named.root";
};
root nameserver addresses. latest version at
www.internic.net/domain/named.root
who’s allowed to use the recursive resolver.
(note: some people run open servers)

Validating Resolver
69
Manually configured keys (if needed):
# manually configured static key
trusted-keys {
. 257 3 8 “AwE...jlsdjfld=”;
};
# managed keys (with automated rollover)
managed-keys {
“.” initial-key 257 3 8 “Awlsdjflkdjfl”;
};

Generating keys
70
Generating Keys:
dnssec-keygen <zone>
dnssec-keygen -f KSK <zone> # KSK generation
dnssec-keygen -3 <zone> # NSEC3 compat alg
Creates files:
K<zone>+mmm+nnnn.key and
K<zone>+mmm +nnnn.private

Signing zones
71
Signing Zone:
dnssec-signzone -o <origin> -S <zonefile>
-o origin: zone origin
-S: smart signing
-N [keep|increment|unixtime] # serial number
-3: NSEC3 signing
-g: generate DS records for children from dsset-
or keyset- files
-l domain: generate DLV records at domain
-s YYYYMMDDHHMMSS # sig start time
-e YYYYMMDDHHMMSS # sig end time
-T ttl: ttl for DNSKEY, default from SOA

Signing zones
72
Signing Zone with NSEC3:
dnssec-signzone -o <origin> -3 <salt>
-H <iterations> -S <zonefile>
-3 <salt>: hex-encoded salt
-H <iterations>: num of hash iterations (def 10)
-A: set opt-out flag

73
options {
[...]
dnssec-enable yes;
[...]
};

74
# List of authorized secondary/slave servers
acl transferlist {
192.0.2.2/32;
192.0.2.3/32;
2001:db8:f470:1234:2/128;
2001:db8:f470:1234:3/128;
}
options {
[...]
allow-transfer {
transferlist;
};
[...]
};
The master (primary master) authoritative server should define an access
control list to limit the servers (usually only its slave servers) which can
perform zone transfers of the DNS database. Note however, that this is a
policy decision. Some folks allow anyone to transfer the contents of their
zone.

75
Authoritative Servers, need zone definitions for the zones they are serving.
They should also disable recursion if not also providing recursive resolver
service to endusers.
options {
[ ... various options ...];
recursion no;
};
zone "example.com" {
type master;
file "zone.example.com";
};
type slave;
file "zone.example.com";
masters { 10.2.2.2; };
};
on master server
on slave server
if authoritative only

zone xfr with TSIG
76
Authenticating Zone Transfers with TSIG:
On primary master server:
Generate TSIG key with (example):
$ dnssec-keygen -a HMAC-MD5 -b 128 -n HOST slave1.example.com.
File: zonetransfer.key:
key "slave1.example.com." {
algorithm "hmac-md5";
secret "xjlsjdlfdfhfhdfldfljdflsjdljsdlfjdlkf=";
};
File: named.conf:
include "/usr/local/bind/zonetransfer.key"
options {
[...]
allow-transfer { key slave1.example.com.; };
[...]
};
secret key taken from K*
ﬁles produced by dnssec-keygen
can also be used within
individual zone stanzas

zone xfr with TSIG
77
Authenticating Zone Transfers with TSIG (continued):
On secondary (slave) server (use same key as configured on master):
File: named.conf:
include "/usr/local/bind/zonetransfer.key"
zone “example.com” {
type slave;
masters { 10.12.7.26 key slave1.example.com.; };
[...]
};
It is also possible to sign and authenticate all transactions with a master
server (not just AXFR/IXFR) with a “server” statement:
server 10.12.7.26 {
keys { slave1.example.com.; };
};

Dynamic Update + DNSSEC
78
The easiest way, in my opinion.
* Configure dynamic zones (ie. zones updated only
with the Dynamic Update protocol, eg. with the
nsupdate program)
* Make DNSSEC keys available to named
* When dynamic updates are made, named will
automatically sign the records and generate or
re-generate related DNSSEC metadata
* Latest BIND versions include special options to
make this really easy.

Other measures?
•Ideally, these shouldn’t be necessary but ...
•If needed, to workaround some types of ﬁrewalls and
middleboxes (on at least one server)
•Constrain EDNS0 payload size (< PMTU)
• eg.“edns-udp-size 1472”
•Conﬁgure minimal-responses (“minimal-responses yes”)
•Make sure DNS over TCP is allowed (see RFC 5966) - you
should always do this!
79

Accurate time
•DNSSEC has an important dependency on accurate time
• Validating resolvers need to check signature validity time
• Signing servers need to produce correct signature validity intervals
•Make sure your servers have accurate time
•I’d recommend conﬁguring them to get authenticated time
from an NTP server
80

Demo: signing a zone
81

82
Live example of signing a zone with DNSSEC
(Time permitting!)

Signing a zone
83
# Create zone for “example.com” and configure named
[...]
# Generate KSK and ZSK (in this example RSASHA256 2048/1024bit)
dnssec-keygen -a RSASHA256 -b 2048 -n ZONE -f KSK example.com
dnssec-keygen -a RSASHA256 -b 1024 -n ZONE example.com
# Sign zone (will generate “zonefile.signed”)
dnssec-signzone -o example.com -N increment -S zonefile
# Reconfigure named.conf to serve “zonefile.signed”
[...]
Steps for reference.

Signing a zone (dynamic)
84
# Generate KSK and ZSK as before, but don’t use dnssec-signzone
[...]
# Setup named.conf with the “auto-dnssec” option for the zone
type master;
update-policy local; # allow-update for expl key
auto-dnssec allow; # also see “maintain”
file "zones/example.com/zonefile";
key-directory "zones/example.com";
};
# Instruct nameserver to sign the zone.
rndc sign example.com
# From now, use dynamic update (eg. via nsupdate) to update
# zone contents.

“auto-dnssec maintain”
85
Will automatically do initial signing (no need to issue “rndc
sign <zone>”), re-sign records periodically, and handle key
rollovers by examining timing metadata in key files set with
“dnssec-settime”
type master;
update-policy local;
auto-dnssec maintain;
file "zones/example.com/zonefile";
key-directory "zones/example.com";
};

NSEC3 dynamic zone
86
Use “rndc signing” command
signing -nsec3param hash flags iterations salt zone
[class [view]]
Add NSEC3 chain to zone if already signed.
Prime zone with NSEC3 chain if not yet signed.
eg. rndc signing -nsec3param 1 0 5 9EBA4228 example.com
Alternatively, use dynamic update (eg. via nsupdate) to add an
NSEC3PARAM record to the zone apex.

Updating a zone (dynamic)
87
# Example of using dynamic update to add an ldap.example.com
# A RR to the zone .. This will cause named to automatically
# compute and add RRSIGs and NSEC/NSEC3s as needed, and install
# them in the zone.
$ nsupdate -l
ttl 86400
zone example.com.
update add ldap.example.com. A 10.4.4.4
send
^D
$

Other methods
88
Newest versions of BIND have some other ways that might make it
easier to deploy DNSSEC in some environments where it’s not easy
to modify the master server ...
* Inline Signing (BIND 9.9)
This feature greatly simplifies the deployment of DNSSEC by allowing
completely automatic, fully transparent signing of zones. Using the new
'inline-signing' option in a master server allows named to switch on DNSSEC in
a zone without modifying the original zone file in any way. Using it in a
slave server allows a zone to be signed even if it's served from a master
database that doesn't support DNSSEC.
Some example configurations may be found at
https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-00626/0/Inline-Signing-in-ISC-BIND-9.9.0-
Examples.html

Key Rollover
89

Key Rollover
• Conventional wisdom is that DNSSEC keys should be changed
(“rolled over”) at regular intervals. However, not everyone agrees,
including some noted security experts
• If you choose strong enough keys, there is no cryptographic reason
to routinely roll them
• There are good operational reasons to change keys after speciﬁc
events, eg. turnover of a staff member who had access to the private
keys, or a system compromise of the server
• Some argue routine key rollover instills practice & conﬁdence that
you’ll be able to do it properly when you really need to. However,
do we do this for other applications (Kerberos, PKI/CAs, SSL)?
90

Key Rollover
• However, most sites do routinely change DNSSEC keys
• Typically, ZSKs are rolled over more frequently (eg. a few times per
year, this can be done transparently, and with no co-ordination with
the parent zone)
• KSKs are rolled less frequently (typically once per year or less).This
does require co-ordinating with the parent zone to sign and install
new DS records for the KSKs.
• Note: ICANN is planning a rollover of the root KSK
• http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/root-zone-
consultation-08mar13-en.htm
91

Key Rollover
•RFC 6781: DNSSEC Operational Practices (v2)
• Covers general practices, procedures, recommendations
•Most commonly used:
• KSK rollover: double signature policy
• ZSK rollover: pre-publish policy
92

KSK: Double signature
•Generate new KSK; publish (public part) in zone
•Sign DNSKEY RRset with both keys
•Publish additional DS record in parent for new key
•Wait until DS is propagated and TTL of the old DS record
•Remove the old KSK and re-sign DNSKEY RRset with only
new key, and remove old DS record from parent
93

ZSK: Pre-publish
•Generate new ZSK, and publish the DNSKEY in the zone,
but do not yet sign zone data with it
•Wait zone propagation time + TTL of the DNSKEY RRset
•Use new ZSK for signing zone records instead of old ZSK,
but leave the old ZSK published in the zone
•Wait zone propagation time + largest TTL of all records in
the zone
•Remove old key & re-sign DNSKEY RRset
94

dnssec-settime
95
(with “auto-dnssec maintain”)
$ dnssec-settime -p all Kexample.com.+008+04065
Created: Fri Apr 19 21:16:43 2013
Publish: Fri Apr 19 21:16:43 2013
Activate: Fri Apr 19 21:16:43 2013
Revoke: UNSET
Inactive: UNSET
Delete: UNSET
-L ttl default TTL for this key
# timing params: args are of form:
# YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
# YYYYMMDDHH
# +/- <seconds> (or w/ suffix y/mo/w/d/h/mi)
# none -> to unset
-P date/offset publication time
-A date/offset active time
-R date/offset revoke time
-I date/offset inactive time
-D date/offset delete time

Re-signing Records
•Regardless of key rollover, DNS records in a zone need to
be re-signed periodically
•Limiting signature validity period reduces susceptibility to
replay attacks in the event the data changes (ie. ability for an
attacker to replay a previously valid response)
96

Trust Anchor Updates
•RFC 5011:Automated Trust Anchor updates by resolvers
•A method to keep track of trust anchors (eg. the root key)
and automatically reconﬁgure resolvers as those trust
anchors are updated (eg. as a result of a scheduled key
rollover)
97

Other DNSSEC caveats
98

General DNSSEC Caveats
• Zone size increases signiﬁcantly when signed
• Memory and CPU usage increase
• DNSSEC answers are larger
• Server side & query side impacts
• Interference by ﬁrewalls, proxies, and other middlebox, eg. botching
EDNS0, large packets, DNSSEC meta data , not passing all UDP
fragments, etc
• Fallback to TCP increases
• Many modern resolvers already ask for DNSSEC by default (ie. set
the DNSSEC-OK bit in their queries)
99

Amplification Attacks
• Increased susceptibility to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
attacks, using DNS response amplification
• http://blog.huque.com/2013/04/dns-amplification-attacks.html
• Look at Response Rate Limiting and other countermeasures
• http://www.redbarn.org/dns/ratelimits
100

Securing the last hop
•How do we protect the stub resolver?
•Employ a channel security mechanism between stub and the
upstream recursive resolver:
• TSIG, SIG(0), IPSEC, etc
•Have the stub validate DNSSEC responses? Set CD bit and
authenticate signatures directly?
•Run a full service validating DNS Resolver on clients?
101

. (root)
.edu
referral to .edu
+ DS, RRSIG
recursive
resolver
endstation
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
7
+ DS, RRSIG
answer 1.2.3.4
+ RRSIG
www.upenn.edu
set DO bit
root’s pubkey
(has root’s pubkey)
edu pubkey
upenn pubkey
Stub to Recursive
Resolver channel
102

Channel Security
• For stub channel security, simple symmetric key TSIG won’t work
• Can’t distribute same TSIG key to many clients, because that allows
any of them to forge answers to all others
• Need per client keys and thus a key management infrastructure
• GSS-TSIG has a chicken-egg problem, because DNS is often used to
locate Kerberos servers
• SIG(0) may be better - distribute single public key to clients
• Microsoft has an implementation of IPsec (GSS authenticated)
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee649124%28v=ws.
10%29.aspx
103

DNSCurve
• http://dnscurve.org/
• Some people think this is a competitor to DNSSEC, but it really isn’t
• Encrypts/authenticates packets between resolvers and authoritative
servers
• Uses very fast elliptic curve crypto
• DNS caching model better suited to object security, where response
can come from any entity (authority, forwarder, intermediate cache,
etc), but we can still authenticate the “data” inside the response
• But, we may need transport security as well (we live in the PRISM
world of mass surveillance now!)
104

Other tools
105

Zone/validation testers
• Checking correct operation/deployment:
• DNSviz: http://dnsviz.net/
• http://dnssec-debugger.verisignlabs.com/
• DNSCheck: http://dnscheck.iis.se/
• DNSSECValidation testing
• http://dnssectest.sidn.nl/
• http://test.dnssec-or-not.com/
106

DNSSEC Trigger
• DNSSEC Trigger
• http://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/dnssec-trigger/
• Local resolver hack; probe for DNSSEC capable servers and
instruct local resolver to use/validate
• Last resort: tunnel over SSL to open DNSSEC validator elsewhere
107

Zone maintenance
• 3rd party tools that some folks use to deploy/manage DNSSEC with
BIND (mostly everything can be done in BIND itself these days):
• OpenDNSSEC
• zkt
• http://www.dnssec-tools.org/
• Microsoft DNSSEC deployment guide
• http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15204
108

dnsviz
109
http://dnsviz.net/
DNSSEC zone and trust
chain visualizer/debugger

Application use of DNSSEC
110

• One of the more exciting prospects for DNSSEC
• DNSSEC allows applications to securely obtain (authenticate)
cryptographic keying material stored in the DNS
• A variety of existing and proposed record types have been designed
to store crypto material:
• SSHFP, IPSECKEY, CERT
• DKIM _domainkey TXT record (p=... public key data)
• TLSA (upcoming, see IETF DANE working group)
111

• Securely obtaining other assertions from the DNS
• DKIM/ADSP
• Route Origination Authorizations (controversial - see RPKI, the
standardized mechanism to do this, which will allow BGP path
validation also)
112

SSHFP record
113
grodd.magpi.net.!86400!IN!SSHFP!(1 1
F60AE0994C0B02545D444F7996088E9EA7359CBA)
•SSH Host Key Fingerprint (RFC 4255)
•Allows you to validate SSH host keys using DNS (securely
using DNSSEC)
algorithm
number
ﬁngerprint
type (1= SHA-1)
ﬁngerprint
In OpenSSH, you can use the client configuration directive
“VerifyHostKeyDNS” to use this.

IPSECKEY record
114
38.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 7200 IN IPSECKEY ( 10 1 2
192.0.2.38
AQNRU3mG7TVTO2BkR47usntb102uFJtugbo6BSGvgqt4AQ== )
•RFC 4025: method for storing IPSEC keying material in DNS
•rdata format: precedence, gateway-type, algorithm, gateway
address, public key (base64 encoded)

Public CA model problems
• Applications need to trust a large number of global certificate
authorities, and this trust appears to be unfounded
• No namespace constraints! Any of them can issue certificates for
any entity on the Internet, whether you have a business relationship
with them or not
• Least common denominator security: our collective security is
equivalent to weakest one
• Furthermore, many of them issue subordinate CA certificates to
their customers, again with no naming constraints
• Most are incapable of issuing certs with any but the most basic
capabilities (eg. alternate name forms or other extensions)
115

Public CA model problems
• Analysis of the HTTPS Certiﬁcate Ecosystem:
• http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2013/papers/imc257-
durumericAemb.pdf
• Approximately 1,800 separate entities are capable of issuing
certiﬁcates for anyone!
116

DANE/TLSA record
• RFC 6698:The DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities
(DANE) Protocol for Transport Layer Security (TLS)
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6698
• Use DNSSEC for better & more secure ways to authenticate SSL/
TLS certiﬁcates:
• by specifying authorized public CAs, allowable end entity certs,
authorizing new non-public CAs, or even directly authenticating
certs without involving CAs!
• New record type: TLSA
117

TLSA record example
118
_443._tcp.www.example.com. IN TLSA (
0 0 1 d2abde240d7cd3ee6b4b28c54df034b9
7983a1d16e8a410e4561cb106618e971 )
port, transport proto &
server domain name
TLSA rrtype
certiﬁcate association data
usage
selector matching
type

TLSA rdata parameters
119
Usage field:
0 CA Constraint
1 Service Certificate Constraint
2 Trust Anchor Assertion
3 Domain Issued Certificate
Selector field:
0 Match full certificate
1 Match only SubjectPublicKeyInfo
Matching type field:
0 Exact match on selected content
1 SHA-256 hash of selected content
2 SHA-512 hash of selected content
Certificate Association Data: raw cert data in hex

TLSA record example
120
_443._tcp.www.example.com. IN TLSA (
1 1 2 92003ba34942dc74152e2f2c408d29ec
a5a520e7f2e06bb944f4dca346baf63c
1b177615d466f6c4b71c216a50292bd5
8c9ebdd2f74e38fe51ffd48c43326cbc )
Usage type 1: Service certiﬁcate constraint; match an
end-entity certiﬁcate

TLSA record example
121
$ dig +dnssec +multi _443._tcp.www.huque.com. TLSA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
_443._tcp.www.huque.com. 7200 IN TLSA 3 0 1 (
! ! ! ! 7EF4BD014E9A4F302FC1EE74FB2D29718C5B0F4CB23B
! ! ! ! 25B267A1D92F0410890B )
_443._tcp.www.huque.com. 7200 IN RRSIG TLSA 8 5 7200 (
! ! ! ! 20131028121743 20130928111915 14703 huque.com.
! ! ! ! rjF6V1stQO50zG08s8m8DfBfqDvjqqzW3Im0Jc04HEDG
! ! ! ! fyvzQlCDX7Dxnbk7ZBofFGtNsVlx5XGS57k0ZLURsRWt
! ! ! ! wY+pqzcJ1ELVol6iOwNs0v+h9ZDyCa1GF7gL4k3DyKVe
! ! ! ! 6cLquFa7RlywORqLYF32+adUP88/j63MmehR2VA= )
(my own website; full cert assoc, no CA required)

TLSA record (SMTP e.g.)
122
$ dig +dnssec +multi _25._tcp.nlnetlabs.nl. TLSA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
_25._tcp.nlnetlabs.nl.! 10200 IN CNAME
3.1.1._dane.nlnetlabs.nl.
_25._tcp.nlnetlabs.nl.! 10200 IN RRSIG CNAME 8 4 10200 (
! ! ! ! 20130529005004 20130501005004 42393 nlnetlabs.nl.
! ! ! ! SNKS6Bo8SsqRxDuxF9dRiwqom4YqOArpLAWjv1WHf5fr
! ! ! ! aURdyssZ3V/R8jBRwMNhQNqIQVlDc4i84OsBs2Vpolil
! ! ! ! j0Gy5mfqgnxRCh5b6TtLDE5t4lcFg0k5FgaqtLXCd0an
! ! ! ! f8zdv8nQM/9UOaXgnQLXuUDv4ZpDPXkxPuokKIE= )
3.1.1._dane.nlnetlabs.nl. 10200!IN TLSA! 3 1 1 (
! ! ! ! 0D1FCBD71686199607A132744A4918FC209565C91FA8
! ! ! ! E9FFEEA0AAFD6B9305F6 )
3.1.1._dane.nlnetlabs.nl. 10200!IN RRSIG TLSA 8 6 10200 (
! ! ! ! 20130529005004 20130501005004 42393 nlnetlabs.nl.
! ! ! ! mE8cSI5wCbx4lsQTHoWZTweh1Jo+A0ZDETnNDGKJvafL
! ! ! ! 2Q7cMhoqq9J5mvaKFm1MN8qgiaRbt56c9OcahFA3xkO3
! ! ! ! loDljLlcUlXpVoRDzWe73MjjyuU76UrsyqNdxmHKB6xR
! ! ! ! mEFxkvcQ5EM6b1fDGRHOfnMFVl5ezi9GwkB7DcI= )

DANE/TLSA tools
• TLSA record generation:
• swede, hash-slinger, ...
• https://www.huque.com/bin/gen_tlsa
• TLSA validators:
• Browser enhancements in progress by some
• Bloodhound Mozilla fork https://www.dnssec-tools.org/download/
• ﬁrefox plugin? http://people.redhat.com/pwouters/
• http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/resources/dane/
123

DNSSEC Deployment Status
124

Deployment status
• DNSSEC Root signed (July 2010)
• Many TLDs signed:123 of 318 (39%) as of Sept 2013 (112 w/ DS):
• GTLD: edu gov com net org biz info arpa
• ccTLD: many, including a number of IDNs
• See http://stats.research.icann.org/dns/tld_report/
• Also http://www.huque.com/app/dnsstat/category/tld/
• Reverse trees: in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa
• Note: not all TLD registrars support DNSSEC yet (ie. ability to
install a DS record in the TLD)
125

Registrar support
• Note: not all TLD registrars support DNSSEC yet (ie. ability to
install a DS record in the TLD)
• Situation is gradually improving
• ICANN maintains a list at:
• http://www.icann.org/en/news/in-focus/dnssec/deployment
126

Deployment status
• Below the TLDs is where most of the work remains
• Not so encouraging a picture here, but some pockets have
signiﬁcant deployment ...
• .NL - 1.5 million signed zones!
127

CDNs and Hosting Services
• Content Delivery Networks and DNS hosting services are lagging
• Akamai has announced support:
• http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2010/
press_080910.html
128

Validator status
• Measuring the extent of deployment of DNSSEC validating resolvers
is much more difﬁcult, but there have been some attempts:
• http://validator-search.verisignlabs.com/
• http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2012-10/counting-dnssec.html
• http://www.iepg.org/2013-07-ietf87/2013-07-28-dnssec.pdf
129

Deployed validators
• Heard at ICANN’45 (Oct 2012): US gov now requiring DNSSEC
validation in all systems operated in that space
• Many universities use validation
• Allegedly Mac OS X 10.9 has validation on by default (conﬁrm)
• Comcast (large US ISP) has DNSSEC validation turned on for their
customers
• Google public DNS deployed validation in May 2013:
• http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.nl/2013/03/google-public-dns-
now-supports-dnssec.html
130

131
27th%Large%Installa/on%System%Administra/on%Conference%
November%3–8,%2013%•%Washington,%D.C.%
A"en%on'Tutorial'A"endees!'
Please'don’t'forget'to'ﬁll'out'your'Tutorial'Surveys.'
Your%feedback%is%very%important%to%us%%
and%helps%us%shape%the%future%%
of%the%LISA%training%program.%%
Please%visit%www.usenix.org/lisa13/training/survey%
and%ﬁll%out%the%appropriate%surveys.%%
Thanks%for%your%help!'

Thank you!
132
Shumon Huque
shuque -@- upenn.edu
@shuque
Reminder: Please ﬁll out the
evaluation forms for this course!

Appendix A
Review of basic DNS
133

DNS
•Domain Name System
•Base specs in RFC 1034 & 1035 (obs 882 & 883)
•Distributed global database
•Indexed by “domain names” (together with a type and class)
•A domain name is a sequence of labels, eg.
•www.amazon.com.
•Domain Names are case insensitive, but case preserving
•Transport protocol: UDP and TCP port 53
134

DNS
•DNS can be represented as a tree of labels
•Sibling nodes must have unique labels
•Domain name at a particular label can be formed by the
sequence of labels traversed by walking up the tree from
that label to the root
•Zone - autonomously managed subtree
•Delegations: boundaries between zones
135

136
.
org edu net arpa
in-addr ip6
128
91
ietf upenn
130
com
amazon
www
91.130.in-addr.arpa
Zone
upenn.edu Zone
smtp
root Zone
www smtp
amazon.com
Zone

Root and TLDs
• Root of the DNS (“empty label”)
• Next level of names are called Top Level Domains (TLDs)
• Until recently 3 primary classes of TLDs
• GTLD: Generic Top Level Domains (.com, .net, .edu, .org etc)
• CCTLD: Country Code TLD (2 letter codes for each country,
eg. .us, .fr, .jp, .de, ...)
• Infrastructure: eg. .arpa etc (uses: reverse DNS e164, etc)
• IDN cctld (Internationalized domain name ccTLD)
• The new gTLDs - the wild west? (newgtlds.icann.org)
137

DNS main components
•Server Side:
• Authoritative Servers
• Resolvers (Recursive Resolvers)
•Client Side:
• Stub resolvers (usually on DNS client machines)
138

•A server that directly serves data for a particular zone
•Said to be “authoritative” for that zone
•These servers are the ones speciﬁed in NS records
139

Resolver
•Aka “Recursive Resolver”,“Cache” etc
•Used by endsystems (stub resolvers) to query (“resolve”)
arbitrary domain names
•Receives “recursive” queries from these endsystems
•Resolvers query authoritative servers, following DNS
delegations until they obtain the answer they need (this
process is called “iterative” resolution)
•Resolvers “cache” (remember) query results for the
speciﬁed “TTL” (also some negative results are cached)
140

Stub Resolver
•The DNS client software component that resides on most
endsystems
•Commonly implemented by the Operating System as a set of
library routines
•Has a conﬁgured set of addresses of the Recursive Resolvers
that should be used to lookup (“resolve”) domain names
• usually by manual conﬁguration, or dynamically learned via DHCP
•Some stub resolvers also cache results
141

Stub resolver conﬁguration
142
$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
search finance.example.com example.com
;;
nameserver 10.12.3.1
;;
options timeout:1 attempts:2 rotate

143
. (root)
.edu
referral to .edu
recursive
resolver
endstation
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
7
answer 1.2.3.4
www.upenn.edu
prepopulated with
root DNS server
addresses

Parts of a DNS query
•Each DNS query needs a query name, type, and class
•qname: a domain name, eg. www.upenn.edu
•qtype:A,AAAA, MX, CNAME, PTR, SRV,TXT, NS, SOA, ...
•qclass: IN, CH, HS (only “IN” is commonly used)
•Various ﬂags: QR, RD, EDNS Opt, DO etc
144

Life of a typical DNS query
•Type “www.amazon.com” into browser
•Browser calls a name lookup function (eg. getaddrinfo())
•DNS may not be the only name lookup service in use.The
lookup function might consult a nameservice switch table to
figure out what order of services to consult (eg. /etc/
nsswitch.conf -- flat file, LDAP, NIS, DNS etc)
•If/when DNS is used, then call DNS specific calls in stub
resolver
• res_ninit(), res_nquery(), res_nsearch()
145

•Stub resolver formulates and makes DNS query:
• qname www.amazon.com, qtype=A, qclass=IN
• Note: IPv6 enabled resolvers might try AAAA, then A
•Sends query to DNS servers (resolvers) specified in stub
resolver configuration (eg. /etc/resolv.conf) in the order
specified until it gets a successful response, failure, or times
out
•If a “search” domain list is configured, on lookup failure, the
stub retries queries with domain suffixes from this list
appended to the original query
146

•DNS resolvers will get the answer:
• from their authoritative zones if they have any relevant ones
• from their cache if the answer is already there
• by iterative queries of the DNS tree, as necessary, eg.
• root servers, amazon.com servers, ...
147

Resource Records (RR)
148
name, or
owner name
ttl class type rdata
•The fundamental unit of data in the DNS database
•A grouping of a {domain name, type, class}, a TTL (time-to-
live), and the associated “resource data”
•Has a deﬁned text “presentation format”

Resource Record Sets
149
www.ucla.edu. 300 IN A 169.232.33.224
www.ucla.edu. 300 IN A 169.232.55.224
www.ucla.edu. 300 IN A 169.232.56.224
•A set of RRs with the same name, class, and type
•The rdata (resource data) associated with each RR in the set
must be distinct
•The TTL of all RRs in the set also must match
•RR sets are treated atomically when returning responses

Resource Record types
150
for full list, see
www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters
Type Description
SOA marks Start Of a zone of Authority
NS NameServer record
A IPv4 Address record
AAAA IPv6 Address record
CNAME Canonical name (ie. an alias)
MX Mail Exchanger record
SRV Service Location record
PTR Pointer (most commonly for reverse DNS)
TXT Text record (free form text with no semantics)
NAPTR Naming Authority Pointer Record

Other special RRtypes
151
for full list, see
www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters
Type Description
TSIG Transaction Signature (RFC 2845)
TKEY Transaction Key (RFC 2930) - estab secret keys
AXFR Zone Transfer
IXFR Incremental Zone Transfer (RFC 1995)
OPT Opt pseudo RR (RFC 2671 - EDNS0)

SOA record
152
google.com.! ! 86400 IN SOA ns1.google.com. (
dns-admin.google.com.
! ! ! ! 2012042000 ; serial number
! ! ! ! 7200 ; refresh (2 hours)
! ! ! ! 1800 ; retry (30 minutes)
! ! ! ! 1209600 ; expire (2 weeks)
! ! ! ! 300 ; minimum (5 minutes)
! ! ! ! )
• Deﬁnes the start of a new zone; and important parameters for the
zone
• Always appears at the apex of the zone
• Serial number should be incremented on zone content updates

NS record
153
upenn.edu.!! 86400!IN!NS!noc3.dccs.upenn.edu.
upenn.edu.!! 86400!IN!NS!noc2.dccs.upenn.edu.
upenn.edu.!! 86400!IN!NS!dns2.udel.edu.
upenn.edu.!! 86400!IN!NS!dns1.udel.edu.
upenn.edu.!! 86400!IN!NS!sns-pb.isc.org.
• Name Server record: owner is the zone name
• Delegates a DNS subtree from parent (ie. create new zone)
• Lists the authoritative servers for the zone
• Appears in both parent and child zones
• rdata contains hostname of the DNS server

A record
154
www.example.com.! 86400! IN! A! 192.0.43.10
•IPv4 Address Record
•rdata contains an IPv4 address

AAAA record
155
www.example.com.! 86400! IN! AAAA! 2001:500:88:200::10
•IPv6 Address Record
•rdata contains an IPv6 address
•Note: there was another record called A6, which didn’t catch
on, and which has now been declared historic (RFC 6563)

CNAME record
156
www.example.com.! 86400! IN!CNAME! worf.example.com.
•An “alias”, ie. maps one name to another (regardless of type)
•Put another way,“this is another name for this name”
•rdata contains the mapped domain name (“canonical name”)
•CNAME records have special rules

CNAME special rules
157
[from RFC 1034, Section 3.6.2]
>>> CNAME and no other data rule:
A CNAME RR identifies its owner name as an alias, and
specifies the corresponding canonical name in the RDATA section of the
RR. If a CNAME RR is present at a node, no other data should be
present; this ensures that the data for a canonical name and its aliases
cannot be different. This rule also insures that a cached CNAME can be
used without checking with an authoritative server for other RR types.
[Note: there is now an exception to this because of DNSSEC metadata records,
which are allowed to appear with CNAMEs]
>>> CNAME special action processing:
CNAME RRs cause special action in DNS software. When a name server
fails to find a desired RR in the resource set associated with the
domain name, it checks to see if the resource set consists of a CNAME
record with a matching class. If so, the name server includes the CNAME
record in the response and restarts the query at the domain name
specified in the data field of the CNAME record. The one exception to
this rule is that queries which match the CNAME type are not restarted.

CNAME special rules
158
Illustration of special action processing of CNAMEs:
$ dig www.sas.upenn.edu A
;www.sas.upenn.edu.!! IN! A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.sas.upenn.edu.! 300! IN! CNAME! virgo.sas.upenn.edu.
virgo.sas.upenn.edu.! 900! IN! A! 128.91.55.21

PTR record
159
•Pointer record
•The most common use is to map IP addresses back to
domain names (reverse DNS mappings)
•IPv4 uses in-addr.arpa, and IPv6 uses ip6.arpa subtrees

IPv4 PTR records
•Uses “in-addr.arpa” subtree
•The LHS of the PTR record (“owner name”) is constructed
by the following method:
• Reverse all octets in the IPv4 address
• Make each octet a DNS label
• Append “in-addr.arpa.” to the domain name
160

IPv4 PTR example
161
host1.example.com. IN A 192.0.2.17
192.0.2.17 (orig IPv4 address)
17.2.0.192 (reverse octets)
17.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. (append in-addr.arpa.)
Resulting PTR record:
17.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR host1.example.com.

IPv6 addresses
•128-bits (four times as large)
•8 ﬁelds of 16 bits each (4 hex digits) separated by colons (:)
•[Hex digits are: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f]
•2128 possible addresses (an incomprehensibly large number)
162
2001:0db8:3902:00c2:0000:0000:0000:fe04
(2128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463, 463,374,607,431,768,211,456)

IPv6 addresses
•Zero suppression & compression for more compact format
• Suppress (omit) leading zeros in each field
• Replace consecutive fields of all zeros with a double colon (::) - only
one sequence of zero fields can be compressed this way
163
2001:db8:3902:c2::fe04
2001:0db8:3902:00c2:0000:0000:0000:fe04

IPv6 PTR records
•Uses “ip6.arpa” subtree
•The LHS of the PTR record (“owner name”) is constructed
by the following method:
• Expand all the zeros in the IPv6 address
• Reverse all the hex digits
• Make each hex digit a DNS label
• Append “ip6.arpa.” to the domain name (note: the older “ip6.int” was
formally deprecated in 2005, RFC 4159)
164

IPv6 PTR example
165
host1.example.com. IN AAAA 2001:db8:3902:7b2::fe04
2001:db8:3902:7b2::fe04 (orig IPv6 address)
2001:0db8:3902:07b2:0000:0000:0000:fe04 (expand zeros)
20010db8390207b2000000000000fe04 (delete colons)
40ef0000000000002b7020938bd01002 (reverse digits)
4.0.e.f.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.2.b.7.0.2.0.9.3.8.b.d.
0.1.0.0.2 (make DNS labels)
4.0.e.f.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.2.b.7.0.2.0.9.3.8.b.d.
0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. (append ip6.arpa.)
4.0.e.f.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.2.b.7.0.2.0.9.3.8.b.d.
0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN PTR host1.example.com.

MX record
166
example.com. 86400 IN MX 10 mail1.example.com.
example.com. 86400 IN MX 20 mail2.example.com.
•Mail Exchanger: deﬁnes the host receiving mail
•rdata consists of a preference ﬁeld and the hostname of the
mail receiver
•Lower preference = higher priority
preference mailserver name

SRV record
167
•Service Location record (RFC 2782)
•Allows designation of server(s) providing service for a
particular application and transport at a domain name
•Owner name has special form: _service._transport.<domain>
•rdata contains priority, weight, port and server hostname
•Some applications using SRV records include: LDAP,
Kerberos, XMPP, SIP,Windows Active Directory, ...

SRV record
168
_ldap._tcp.example.com 600 IN SRV 1 0 389 ldap1.example.com
•Priority deﬁnes the order in which to query servers (lower
number = higher priority)
•Weight deﬁnes the proportion in which to send queries to
servers at the same priority level (load distribution)
service name transport priority weight port server name

TXT record
169
blah.example.com. 300 IN TXT “Hello World” “Goodbye”
•free form descriptive text strings, with no deﬁned semantics
•Although some applications have deﬁned their own meanings
(eg. DKIM, SPF, ...)
•rdata: one or more character strings

NAPTR record
170
*.freenum IN NAPTR (100 10 "u" "E2U+sip"
"!^+*([^*]*)!sip:1@sip.magpi.org!" .)
•Naming Authority Pointer Record (RFC 3403 - DDDS)
•Very complex record, and induces additional complex
processing on resolver (lookup and rewrite)
•Uses: URL resolver discovery service, E164, SIP, ...

Wildcards
171
mail.example.com. 300 IN A 10.1.1.1
*.example.com. 300 IN A 10.1.1.7
Here, query for blah.example.com returns:
blah.example.com. 300 IN A 10.1.1.7
• RRs with owner names starting with the label “*” (asterisk)
• When the wildcard is matched, the DNS server returns a response
with:
• query name returned as owner name
• rest of RR content taken from the wildcard record

ANY query type
172
• A pseudo record type used in DNS queries only
• Used to match any record type for the queried domain name
• Server will return all records of all types for that domain name that it
possesses (note: caches may return incomplete data; to obtain all
data for the name, you need to issue ANY query to authoritative
servers)
• For debugging and troubleshooting purposes only; do not use in
production code

Master Zone ﬁle format
•RFC 1035, Section 5 for details
•Entries in the master zone ﬁle are DNS resource records in
their textual “presentation format”
173

[TCOM 504, Spring 2012]
Zone ﬁle example
Zone: example.com
@ 3600 IN SOA master.example.com. hostmaster.example.com. (
1001514808 ; serial
10800 ; refresh (3 hours)
3600 ; retry (1 hour)
604800 ; expire (1 week)
3600 ; minimum (1 hour)
)
86400 IN NS ns1.example.com.
86400 IN NS ns2.example.com.
86400 IN MX 10 mail1.example.com.
86400 IN MX 20 mail2.example.com.
ns1 86400 IN A 10.1.1.1
ns2 86400 IN A 10.1.1.2
www 900 IN A 10.1.2.2
mail1 3600 IN A 10.3.3.3
mail2 3600 IN A 10.3.3.4
174

Master Zone ﬁle format
175
@ Denotes current origin; defaulting to zone name
Appended to any domain name not ending in a period.
() Parens used to group data that crosses a line boundary
; Starts a comment
$ORIGIN Resets the origin for subsequent relative names
RRs beginning with whitespace implicitly inherit last owner name.
TTL and Class fields are optional (default to last explicitly stated)
Extensions usable in BIND master files:
$TTL Define TTL parameter for subsequent records
$GENERATE Programmatically generate records, eg.
eg. $GENERATE 10-90 client-$ A 10.4.4.$
$GENERATE 0-62 blah-${0,3,x} A 192.168.154.${+64,0,d}

Size restrictions
•Label: 63 octets max
•Domain Name: 255 octets max
•TTL: positive signed 32-bit integer
•Entire DNS message: 512 bytes (UDP) - plain DNS
•Messages larger than 512 bytes requires:
• Use of TCP (often truncated UDP response followed by TCP retry)
• EDNS0 - a DNS extension mechanism allowing negotiation of larger
UDP message buffers
176

Textual vs wire format
•The human readable “textual representation” or
“presentation format” of a domain name is different from
the the domain name as it actually appears in DNS protocol
messages (“on the wire” or “wire format”)
•Text format: labels written in ASCII delimited by periods
•Wire format: label bytes one after the other, always ending
with the empty label. each label is composed of a label length
followed by the label bytes
177

.
www . upenn edu.
www . upenn edu.
Labels (<=63 octets)
Domain Name (<= 255 octets)
Wire format of this domain name:
(hex) 03777777057570656e6e0365647500
4 Component labels:
www 0x 03 77 77 77
upenn 0x 05 75 70 65 6e 6e
edu 0x 03 65 64 75
. 0x 00
label length in 1st octet (lower 6-bits)
.
178

IDNs and punycode
•IDN: Internationalized Domain Name
•Uses an ASCII encoding called “Punycode” to represent non-
english characters in domain names
•See RFC 3492: Punycode:A Bootstring encoding of Unicode
for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
• xn--80ao21a. (A Kazakh TLD)
179

180
DNS Header (12 bytes)
Question Section
Answer Section
Authority Section
Additional Section
DNS Packet Format

181
16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID16-bit Query ID
QR OpCode AA TC RD RA R AD CD RCODE
QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)QDCOUNT (#records in query)
ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)ANCOUNT (#records in answer)
NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)NSCOUNT (#records in authority)
ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)ARCOUNT (#records in additional)
DNS Header
0 08 15
12-bytes

182
DNS Header
QR: set to 1 in DNS response messages
OpCode:
0 Standard Query
1 Inverse Query (deprecated)
2 Status request (undefined and unused?)
4 Notify
5 Update
3,6-15 Undefined
AA = Authoritative answer (ie. not from cache)
TC = message was truncated (exceeded 512 byte UDP limit)
RD = Recursion desired
RA = Recursion available
R = Reserved/Unused
AD = Authenticated Data (DNSSEC)
CD = Checking Disabled (DNSSEC)

183
DNS Response Codes
Common Response codes:
0 NOERROR No Error
1 FORMERR Format Error
2 SERVFAIL Server Failure
3 NXDOMAIN Not existent domain name
4 NOTIMPL Function not implemented
5 REFUSED Query Refused, usually by policy
Used by DNS Dynamic Update (RFC 2136):
6 YXDomain Name Exists when it should not
7 YXRRSet RR Set Exists when it should not
8 NXRRSet RR Set that should exist does not
9 NotAuth Server not authoritative for zone
10 NotZone Name not contained in zone
11-15 Unassigned

184
Extended RCodes
Extended RCODES do not appear in the DNS header (since there isn’t
enough space there). They instead appear in the OPT pseudo RR, which
has a special format designed to accommodate them.
Extended RCodes used by EDNS0, TSIG, TKEY, etc:
16 BADVERS Bad OPT version
16 BADSIG TSIG Signature Failure
17 BADKEY Key not recognized
18 BADTIME Signature out of time window
19 BADMODE Bad TKEY Mode
20 BADNAME Duplicate Key Name
21 BADALG Algorithm not supported
22 BADTRUNK Bad Truncation

185
NAME
(variable length, upto 255 octets)
TYPE (16 bits)
CLASS (16 bits)
TTL (32 bits)
RDLENGTH (16 bits)
RDATA
(variable length)
DNS RR common format
0 08 15

Zone Data Synchronization
• Authoritative server operators can synchronize zone data on their
servers in a number of ways
• However, DNS provides a way to do this using the DNS protocol
itself: Zone Transfers, and it’s widely used
• Full zone transfers: AXFR: slaves send period transfer requests to
masters (SOA refresh interval)
• Incremental zone transfers: IXFR, usually in combination with the
NOTIFY mechanism (see RFC 1995 and 1996)
• Commonly used in conjunction with Dynamic Update
• A good idea to authenticate zone transfers with TSIG
186

187
master
1. Dynamic Update
slave1 slave2 slave3
2. NOTIFY messages

188
master
slave1 slave2 slave3
3.SOA Query/Response
4. IXFR Request/Response

Zone Delegation
•Decentralized administration of DNS subtrees
•Delegations cause new zones to be created, that are
(typically) served by different servers, run by different people
•Boundaries between zones (sometimes called zone cuts)
•An NS record set is needed in both the parent and child
zones; these indicate the delegation, and the set of new
nameservers involved in serving the child zone
•“Glue records” may be needed in the parent zone in order
to ﬁnd the addresses of the servers
189

Zone Delegation
190
Example of delegation of google.com in .com zone:
;; NS Record Set for google
google.com.! ! 172800! IN!NS ns2.google.com.
google.com.! ! 172800! IN!NS! ns1.google.com.
;; Glue records for google nameservers
ns2.google.com.!! 172800!IN! A! 216.239.34.10
ns1.google.com.!! 172800!IN! A! 216.239.32.10
ns3.google.com.!! 172800!IN! A! 216.239.36.10
ns4.google.com.!! 172800!IN! A! 216.239.38.10
The glue records in the .COM zone are needed because
the google DNS servers are inside the child google.com
zone, otherwise they couldn’t be found.

191
.
org edu net arpa
in-addr ip6
128
91
ietf upenn
130
com
amazon
www
91.130.in-addr.arpa
Zone
upenn.edu Zone
smtp
root Zone
www smtp
amazon.com
Zone

DNSSEC Tutorial; USENIX LISA 2013

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DNSSEC Tutorial; USENIX LISA 2013