DNS Resolver Information
draft-ietf-add-resolver-info-09

ADD                                                             T. Reddy
Internet-Draft                                                     Nokia
Intended status: Standards Track                            M. Boucadair
Expires: 10 August 2024                                           Orange
                                                         7 February 2024

                        DNS Resolver Information
                    draft-ietf-add-resolver-info-09

Abstract

   This document specifies a method for DNS resolvers to publish
   information about themselves.  DNS clients can use the resolver
   information to identify the capabilities of DNS resolvers.  How such
   an information is then used by DNS clients is out of the scope of the
   document.

Discussion Venues

   This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

   Discussion of this document takes place on the Adaptive DNS Discovery
   Working Group mailing list (add@ietf.org), which is archived at
   https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/add/.

   Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
   https://github.com/boucadair/add-resolver-information.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 10 August 2024.

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Retrieving Resolver Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Format of the Resolver Information  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Resolver Information Keys/Values  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     7.1.  RESINFO RR Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     7.2.  DNS Resolver Information Key Registration . . . . . . . .   6
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9

1.  Introduction

   Historically, DNS stub resolvers communicated with upstream resolvers
   without needing to know anything about the features supported by
   these recursive resolvers.  As more and more recursive resolvers
   expose different features that may impact delivered DNS services,
   means to help stub resolvers to identify the capabilities of
   resolvers are valuable.  Typically, stub resolvers can discover and
   authenticate encrypted DNS resolvers provided by a local network, for
   example, using the Discovery of Network-designated Resolvers (DNR)
   [RFC9463] and the Discovery of Designated Resolvers (DDR) [RFC9462].
   However, these stub resolvers need a mechanism to retrieve
   information from the discovered recursive resolvers about their
   capabilities.

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   This document fills that void by specifying a method for stub
   resolvers to retrieve such information.  To that aim, a new resource
   record (RR) type is defined for stub resolvers to query the recursive
   resolvers.  The information that a resolver might want to expose is
   defined in Section 5.

   Retrieved information can be used to feed the server selection
   procedure.  However, that selection procedure is out of the scope of
   this document.

2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   This document makes use of the terms defined in [RFC8499].  The
   following additional terms are used:

   Encrypted DNS:  Refers to a DNS scheme where DNS exchanges are
      transported over an encrypted channel between a DNS client and
      server (e.g., DNS over HTTPS (DoH) [RFC8484], DNS over TLS (DoT)
      [RFC7858], or DNS over QUIC (DoQ) [RFC9250]).

   Encrypted DNS resolver:  Refers to a DNS resolver that supports any
      encrypted DNS scheme.

3.  Retrieving Resolver Information

   A stub resolver that wants to retrieve the resolver information may
   use the RR type "RESINFO" defined in this document.

   The content of the RDATA in a response to a RESINFO RR type query is
   defined in Section 5.  If the resolver understands the RESINFO RR
   type, the RRSet in the Authority section MUST have exactly one
   record.  The RESINFO in the Authority section reflects that the
   RESINFO is a property of the resolver and is not subject to recursive
   resolution.

   A DNS client can retrieve the resolver information using the RESINFO
   RR type and the QNAME of the domain name that is used to authenticate
   the DNS resolver (referred to as the Authentication Domain Name (ADN)
   in DNR [RFC9463]).

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   If the Special-Use Domain Name "resolver.arpa", defined in [RFC9462],
   is used to discover an encrypted DNS resolver, the client can
   retrieve the resolver information using the RESINFO RR type and QNAME
   of "resolver.arpa".  In this case, a client has to contend with the
   risk that a resolver does not support RESINFO.  The resolver might
   pass the query upstream, and then the client can receive a positive
   RESINFO response either from a legitimate upstream DNS resolver or an
   attacker.  If a client sees the RESINFO in the Answer section, it can
   detect that the response is not provided by the resolver and discards
   the response.

4.  Format of the Resolver Information

   The resolver information uses the same format as DNS TXT records.
   The motivation for using the same format as TXT records is to convey
   a small amount of useful information about a DNS resolver.  As a
   reminder, the format rules for TXT records are defined in the base
   DNS specification (Section 3.3.14 of [RFC1035]) and further
   elaborated in the DNS-based Service Discovery (DNS-SD) specification
   (Section 6.1 of [RFC6763]).  The recommendations to limit the TXT
   record size are discussed in Section 6.1 of [RFC6763].

   Similar to DNS-SD, the RESINFO RR type uses "key/value" pairs to
   convey the resolver information.  Each "key/value" pair is encoded
   using the format rules defined in Section 6.3 of [RFC6763].  Using
   standardized "key/value" syntax within the RESINFO RR type makes it
   easier for future keys to be defined.  If a DNS client sees unknown
   keys in a RESINFO RR type, it MUST silently ignore them.  The same
   rules for the keys as those defined in Section 6.4 of [RFC6763] MUST
   be followed for RESINFO.

   Keys MUST either be defined in the IANA registry (Section 7.2) or
   begin with the substring "temp-" for names defined for local use
   only.

5.  Resolver Information Keys/Values

   The following resolver information keys are defined:

   qnamemin:  If the DNS resolver supports QNAME minimisation [RFC9156]
      to improve DNS privacy, the key is present.  Note that, as per the
      rules for the keys defined in Section 6.4 of [RFC6763], if there
      is no '=' in a key, then it is a boolean attribute, simply
      identified as being present, with no value.

      This is an optional attribute.

   exterr:  If the DNS resolver supports extended DNS errors (EDE)

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      option [RFC8914] to return additional information about the cause
      of DNS errors, the value of this key lists the possible extended
      DNS error codes that can be returned by this DNS resolver.  When
      multiple values are present, these values MUST be comma-separated.

      This is an optional attribute.

   infourl:  An URL that points to the generic unstructured resolver
      information (e.g., DoH APIs supported, possible HTTP status codes
      returned by the DoH server, how to report a problem) for
      troubleshooting purposes.

      The server MUST support the content-type 'text/html'.  The DNS
      client MUST reject the URL if the scheme is not "https".  The URL
      SHOULD be treated only as diagnostic information for IT staff.  It
      is not intended for end user consumption as the URL can possibily
      provide misleading information.  A DNS client MAY choose to
      display the URL to the end user, if and only if the encrypted
      resolver has sufficient reputation, according to some local policy
      (e.g., user configuration, administrative configuration, or a
      built-in list of respectable resolvers).

      This is an optional attribute.  For example, a DoT server may not
      want to host an HTTPS server.

   New keys can be defined as per the procedure defined in Section 7.2.

   Figure 1 shows an example of a published resolver information record:

     resolver.example.net. 7200 IN RESINFO qnamemin exterr=15,16,17
                           infourl=https://resolver.example.com/guide

            Figure 1: An Example of Resolver Information Record

6.  Security Considerations

   DNS clients communicating with DNS resolvers discovered MUST employ
   one of the following measures to prevent DNS response forgery
   attacks:

   1.  Establish an authenticated secure connection to the DNS resolver.

   2.  Implement local DNSSEC validation (Section 10 of [RFC8499]) to
       verify the authenticity of the resolver information.

   It is important to note that, of these two measures, only the first
   one can apply to queries for 'resolver.arpa'.

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   An encrypted resolver may return incorrect information in RESINFO.
   If the client cannot validate the attributes received from the
   resolver, which will be used for resolver selection or display to the
   end-user, the client should process those attributes only if the
   encrypted resolver has sufficient reputation according to local
   policy (e.g., user configuration, administrative configuration, or a
   built-in list of reputable resolvers).  This approach limits the
   ability of a malicious encrypted resolver to cause harm with false
   claims.

7.  IANA Considerations

      Note to the RFC Editor: Please update "RFCXXXX" occurences with
      the RFC number to be assigned to this document.

7.1.  RESINFO RR Type

   This document requests IANA to update this entry from the "Resource
   Record (RR) TYPEs" registry of the "Domain Name System (DNS)
   Parameters" registry group available at [RRTYPE]:

   Type: RESINFO
   Value: 261
   Meaning: Resolver Information as Key/Value Pairs
   Reference: RFCXXXX

7.2.  DNS Resolver Information Key Registration

   This document requests IANA to create a new registry entitled "DNS
   Resolver Information Keys" under the "Domain Name System (DNS)
   Parameters" registry group ([IANA-DNS]).  This new registry contains
   definitions of the keys that can be used to provide the resolver
   information.

   The registration procedure is Specification Required (Section 4.6 of
   [RFC8126]).

   The structure of the registry is as follows:

   Name:  The key name.  The name MUST conform to the definition in
      Section 4 of this document.  The IANA registry MUST NOT register
      names that begin with "temp-", so these names can be used freely
      by any implementer.

   Description:  A description of the registered key.

   Specification:  The reference specification for the registered
      element.

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   The initial content of this registry is provided in Table 1.

    +==========+=====================================+===============+
    |   Name   | Description                         | Specification |
    +==========+=====================================+===============+
    | qnamemin | The presence of the key name        |    RFCXXXX    |
    |          | indicates that QNAME minimization   |               |
    |          | is enabled                          |               |
    +----------+-------------------------------------+---------------+
    |  exterr  | Lists the set of supported extended |    RFCXXXX    |
    |          | DNS errors.  It must be an INFO-    |               |
    |          | CODE decimal value in the "Extended |               |
    |          | DNS Error Codes" registry.          |               |
    +----------+-------------------------------------+---------------+
    | infourl  | Provides an URL that points to an   |    RFCXXXX    |
    |          | unstructured resolver information   |               |
    |          | that is used for troubleshooting    |               |
    +----------+-------------------------------------+---------------+

                    Table 1: Initial RESINFO Registry

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC1035]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
              specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035,
              November 1987, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1035>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC6763]  Cheshire, S. and M. Krochmal, "DNS-Based Service
              Discovery", RFC 6763, DOI 10.17487/RFC6763, February 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6763>.

   [RFC8126]  Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
              Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
              RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8126>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

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   [RFC8914]  Kumari, W., Hunt, E., Arends, R., Hardaker, W., and D.
              Lawrence, "Extended DNS Errors", RFC 8914,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8914, October 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8914>.

   [RFC9156]  Bortzmeyer, S., Dolmans, R., and P. Hoffman, "DNS Query
              Name Minimisation to Improve Privacy", RFC 9156,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9156, November 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9156>.

   [RFC9462]  Pauly, T., Kinnear, E., Wood, C. A., McManus, P., and T.
              Jensen, "Discovery of Designated Resolvers", RFC 9462,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9462, November 2023,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9462>.

   [RFC9463]  Boucadair, M., Ed., Reddy.K, T., Ed., Wing, D., Cook, N.,
              and T. Jensen, "DHCP and Router Advertisement Options for
              the Discovery of Network-designated Resolvers (DNR)",
              RFC 9463, DOI 10.17487/RFC9463, November 2023,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9463>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.pp-add-resinfo]
              Sood, P. and P. E. Hoffman, "DNS Resolver Information
              Self-publication", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-pp-add-resinfo-02, 30 June 2020,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-pp-add-
              resinfo-02>.

   [IANA-DNS] IANA, "Domain Name System (DNS) Parameters",
              <http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/dns-
              parameters.xhtml#dns-parameters-4>.

   [RFC7858]  Hu, Z., Zhu, L., Heidemann, J., Mankin, A., Wessels, D.,
              and P. Hoffman, "Specification for DNS over Transport
              Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 7858, DOI 10.17487/RFC7858, May
              2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7858>.

   [RFC8484]  Hoffman, P. and P. McManus, "DNS Queries over HTTPS
              (DoH)", RFC 8484, DOI 10.17487/RFC8484, October 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8484>.

   [RFC8499]  Hoffman, P., Sullivan, A., and K. Fujiwara, "DNS
              Terminology", BCP 219, RFC 8499, DOI 10.17487/RFC8499,
              January 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8499>.

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   [RFC9250]  Huitema, C., Dickinson, S., and A. Mankin, "DNS over
              Dedicated QUIC Connections", RFC 9250,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9250, May 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9250>.

   [RRTYPE]   IANA, "Resource Record (RR) TYPEs",
              <https://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/dns-
              parameters.xhtml>.

Acknowledgments

   This specification leverages the work that has been documented in
   [I-D.pp-add-resinfo].

   Thanks to Tommy Jensen, Vittorio Bertola, Vinny Parla, Chris Box, Ben
   Schwartz, Tony Finch, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Eric Rescorla, Shashank
   Jain, Florian Obser, Richard Baldry, and Martin Thomson for the
   discussion and comments.

   Thanks to Mark Andrews, Joe Abley, Paul Wouters, Tim Wicinski, and
   Steffen Nurpmeso for the discussion on the RR formatting rules.

   Special thanks to Tommy Jensen for the careful and thoughtful
   Shepherd review.

   Thanks to Johan Stenstam for the dns-dir review and Ray Bellis for
   the RRTYPE allocation review.

Authors' Addresses

   Tirumaleswar Reddy
   Nokia
   India
   Email: kondtir@gmail.com

   Mohamed Boucadair
   Orange
   35000 Rennes
   France
   Email: mohamed.boucadair@orange.com

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