dprive                                                      A. Edmundson
Internet-Draft                                                P. Schmitt
Intended status: Experimental                                N. Feamster
Expires: January 3, 2019                            Princeton University
                                                               A. Mankin
                                                              Salesforce
                                                            July 2, 2018


             Oblivious DNS - Strong Privacy for DNS Queries
                  draft-annee-dprive-oblivious-dns-00

Abstract

   Recognizing the privacy vulnerabilities associated with DNS queries,
   a number of standards have been developed and services deployed that
   that encrypt a user's DNS queries to the recursive resolver and thus
   obscure them from some network observers and from the user's Internet
   service provider.  However, these systems merely transfer trust to a
   third party.  We argue that no single party should be able to
   associate DNS queries with a client IP address that issues those
   queries.  To this end, this document specifies Oblivious DNS (ODNS),
   which introduces an additional layer of obfuscation between clients
   and their queries.  To accomplish this, ODNS uses its own
   authoritative namespace; the authoritative servers for the ODNS
   namespace act as recursive resolvers for the DNS queries that they
   receive, but they never see the IP addresses for the clients that
   initiated these queries.  The ODNS experimental protocol is
   compatible with existing DNS infrastructure.

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 January 3, 2019.





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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 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 Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  ODNS Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Sending and Receiving ODNS Queries  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Replication and Privacy-Preserving Key Distribution . . . . .   6
     5.1.  Scalability and Performance Using Anycast . . . . . . . .   6
     5.2.  Key Distribution  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.3.  QNAME Length  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Backward Compatibility  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  IANA considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   9.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   10. Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   11. Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   12. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     12.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     12.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  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.

   Privacy terminology is as described in Section 3 of [RFC6973].






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   DNS terminology is as described in [I-D.ietf-dnsop-terminology-bis]
   with one modification: we use the definition of Privacy-enabling DNS
   server taken from [RFC8310]:

2.  Introduction

   Recognizing the privacy vulnerabilities associated with DNS queries,
   a number of specifications and services have been developed that
   encrypt a user's DNS queries to the recursive resolver and thus
   obscure them from some network observers and from the user's Internet
   service provider.  However, these systems merely transfer trust to a
   third party.  We argue that no single party should be able to
   associate DNS queries with a client IP address that issues those
   queries, that there should be obfuscation between the client and its
   queries.

   DNS queries can reveal significant information about the Internet
   destinations that a user or device is communicating with.  For
   example, the domain names themselves may reveal the websites that a
   user is visiting.  In the case of smart-home Internet of Things (IoT)
   devices, the DNS queries may reveal the types of devices in user
   homes.  Previous work has also demonstrated that DNS lookups can
   identify the websites that a user is visiting, even when they are
   using an anonymizing service such as Tor [Tor-DNS].  The operator of
   a DNS resolver may also retain information about DNS queries and
   responses---including the IP addresses that query the domains and the
   DNS names that are queries.

   Other approaches have layered encryption on top of the DNS query
   stream.  For example, DNS-over-TLS [RFC7858], DNS-over-DTLS
   [RFC8094], and DNS-over-HTTPS [I-D.ietf-doh-dns-over-https] all send
   DNS queries over an encrypted channel, which prevents an eavesdropper
   from learning the contents of a DNS lookup but does not prevent the
   operator of the recursive resolver from linking queries and IP
   addresses.  DNSCurve (ref to be added) uses elliptic curve
   cryptography to encrypt DNS requests and responses; it also
   authenticates all DNS responses and eliminates any forged responses.
   DNSCrypt (ref to be added) encrypts and authenticates DNS traffic
   between a client and a recursive resolver.  None of the approaches
   prevent the recursive resolver from observing DNS queries and
   responses.  Note: a new draft is under development, targetted to for
   BCP, that n would offers a policy and best-practices approach to the
   problem of recursive resolvers's observation of this data.

   ODNS (1) obfuscates the queries that a recursive resolver sees from
   the clients that issue DNS queries; and (2) obfuscates the client's
   IP address from upper levels of the DNS hierarchy that ultimately
   resolve the query (that is, the authoritative servers).  ODNS



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   operates in the context of the existing DNS protocol, allowing the
   existing deployed infrastructure to remain unchanged.  A client sends
   an encrypted query to a recursive resolver, which then forwards the
   query to an authoritative DNS server that can resolve ODNS queries.
   The recursive resolver never sees the DNS domain that the client
   queries, and the ODNS server never sees the IP address of the client.

   ODNS requires a modified client stub resolver, and a modified
   authoritative DNS server.  The stub resolver must take an existing
   DNS name, encrypt it, and append the ODNS domain to ensure that the
   query is forwarded to the ODNS authoritative DNS server.  The
   authoritative DNS server for ODNS must also act as a recursive DNS
   resolver; it must not only reply for the ODNS namespace but also
   ultimately retrieve the DNS record that corresponds to the client's
   initial query.

3.  ODNS Overview

   ODNS operates similarly to conventional DNS, but adds two components:
   (1)each client runs a modified stub resolver; and (2) ODNS runs an
   authoritative name server that also acts as a recursive DNS resolver
   for the original DNS query:

   o  The client's stub resolver obfuscates the domain that the client
      is requesting (via symmetric encryption), resulting in the
      client's configured recursive resolver being unaware of the
      requested domain.

   o  The authoritative name server for ODNS separates the clients'
      identities from their corresponding DNS requests, such that the
      name servers cannot learn who is requesting specific domains.

   As detailed in [RFC7626], operators of recursive DNS resolvers see
   individual IP addresses along with the fully qualified domain name
   those IPs request.  Operators of authoritative resolvers may also be
   able to learn information about the client by using one of the
   extensions to DNS, notably EDNS0 Client Subnet (ECS) [RFC7871].  ECS
   can reveal information about the user's IP address or subnet to
   authoritative DNS servers higher in the DNS hierarchy (not only
   recursive DNS resolvers).  ODNS hides a client's IP address from the
   authoritative name servers at different levels of the DNS hierarchy.

   The configured (non-ODNS) recursive DNS resolver knows the client IP
   address but never sees the domain that it queries.  ODNS requires the
   client to use a custom local stub resolver, which hides the requested
   domain from the recursive resolver.  The ODNS stub resolver, which
   runs at the client, encrypts the original DNS query for the ODNS
   authoritative DNS server before it appends the domain for the ODNS



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   namespace to the query, which causes the recursive resolver to
   forward the encrypted domain name on to the ODNS authoritative
   server.  NOTE: for simplicity, we sometimes say that this
   authoritative server is for .odns, but any authoritative DNS domain
   can run an ODNS server.  Even if there was a TLD, there would be
   leakage of information, because the IP addresses of clients and
   recursive resolvers would be seen at the root.  Experiments can be
   done to avoid leakage about queries of this nature through adaptation
   of [RFC7706].

   When an ODNS authoritative DNS server receives a DNS query, it
   removes any client information from the request (e.g., the client IP
   address, EDNS0 client subnet information) before performing
   additional DNS lookups.  The ODNS name server then switches to acting
   as a recursive resolver.  The authoritative server forwards any
   response to the original recursive DNS resolver, which in turn sends
   the response to the client.

   The recursive DNS resolver receives the request from the client, but
   cannot identify the genuine domain.  It parses the TLD (.odns) and
   forwards the request onto the .odns authoritative server.  Because
   the session key was originally encrypted with the authoritative
   server's public key, the authoritative server can decrypt the session
   key with its private key, and subsequently decrypt the domain with
   the session key.  The authoritative server then acts as a recursive
   resolver and contacts the necessary name servers to resolve the
   domain.  Once an answer is obtained, the authoritative server
   encrypts the domain with the session key, appends the .odns TLD and
   forwards the response to the recursive DNS resolver.  As explained by
   the use of session keys, the recursive resolver cannot learn the
   domains a client requests, despite being able to learn who the client
   is.

   TODO (in -01 or later): Create an ASCII diagram form of Figure 1 from
   odns.cs.princeton.edu

4.  Sending and Receiving ODNS Queries

   TODO (in -01 or later): Create an ASCII diagram form of Figure 2 from
   odns.cs.princeton.edu

   o  When a client generates a DNS request, the local stub resolver
      generates a symmetric session key, encrypts the domain name with
      the session key, encrypts the session key with the authoritative
      server's public key, and appends the .odns TLD to the encrypted
      domain. (www.example.com_k.odns.)  The stub also appends the
      session key encrypted under the ODNS authoritative server's public
      key k_PK)



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   o  The client sends the query in the Additional Information portion
      of the DNS query to the recursive resolver, which then sends it to
      the authoritative name server for ODNS.

   o  The authoritative server for ODNS queries decrypts the session
      key, which it uses to decrypt the domain in the query.

   o  The authoritative server forwards a recursive DNS request to the
      appropriate name server for the original domain, which then
      returns the answer to the ODNS server.

   o  The ODNS server returns the answer to the client's recursive
      resolver.

   Other authoritative DNS servers see incoming DNS requests, but these
   only see the IP address of the ODNS authoritative resolver, which
   effectively proxies the DNS request for the original client.  The
   client's original recursive resolver can learn the client's IP
   address, but cannot learn the domain names in the client's DNS
   queries.

5.  Replication and Privacy-Preserving Key Distribution

5.1.  Scalability and Performance Using Anycast

   To achieve scalability the authoritative server is replicated in a
   variety of geographical locations and all replicas are assigned to
   both an anycast IP address as well as a unique unicast IP address.
   Using anycast, all servers that share the IP address are able to
   answer a query.  When a recursive sends a DNS query to the ODNS
   authoritative server, the query will be routed by BGP to the
   ``nearest'' authoritative server.  And because the recursive resolver
   (an open resolver) is also anycast, both the recursive and the ODNS
   authoritative server should be the optimal choices based on the
   client's network connectivity {\it without revealing the client's
   location}. This results in maximizing the performance of ODNS by
   minimizing the network path that queries must traverse.

5.2.  Key Distribution

   Use of anycast and multiple authoritative replicas introduce a key
   distribution challenge for ODNS.  The ODNS stub server uses the
   public key of the authoritative server to encrypt session keys in
   ODNS queries.  Based on best practices, we cannot share public /
   private keypairs across all of the replicated authoritative servers.
   Likewise, in order to preserve user identity privacy the key
   distribution must be done in a way that the authoritative server
   never learns the identity (i.e., IP address) of a stub.  This



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   disqualifies out-of-band key exchange as in EncDNS.  Instead, we
   leverage the DNS infrastructure itself to distribute keys while
   maintaining privacy.  We have defined a ``special'' query (e.g.,
   special.odns) that we use to select a specific authoritative server
   as well as distribute the appropriate public key.

   The client's stub resolver sends a special ODNS query to the
   recursive resolver, which will in turn use the anycast address to
   locate the nearest authoritative server.  The authoritative that
   receives the query responds with an OPT record that includes a self-
   certifying name (e.g., ABC.odns), such that the name of the server is
   derived from the public key itself and is associated with an instance
   of the authoritative nameserver listening on the unique unicast IP
   address, and the authoritative server's public key; this response is
   returned to the client's stub resolver via the recursive.  Subsequent
   ODNS queries at the stub append the unique name of the authoritative
   that responded to the special query, which means that the requests
   will all reach the same server and the client encrypt using the
   appropriate public key.

5.3.  QNAME Length

   In principle, a query could include the encrypted query and / or
   session key in a special Resource Record (RR) in the ``Additional
   Information'' section of a DNS message (known as an OPT), but we
   discovered that, in practice, most open resolvers strip all OPT
   records before forwarding the query on to the authoritative
   nameserver.  In this case, ODNS cannot simply use an OPT to
   communicate the session key.  ODNS overcomes this challenge by
   placing the encrypted key in the QNAME field of the DNS message; the
   QNAME field consists of 4 sets of 63 bytes, which limits both the key
   size and encryption scheme used.  For this reason, ODNS uses 16-byte
   AES session keys and encrypts the session keys using the Elliptic
   Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES)~.  Once the session key is
   encrypted, the resulting value takes up 44 bytes of the QNAME field.
   In the future, we envision an ODNS-specific OPT code that would cause
   recursive resolvers to maintain and forward the ODNS OPT record
   intact to the authoritative nameserver.  Such a mechanism allows for
   the use of larger encryption keys as OPT records can be much larger
   (typically 4096 bytes) that the space alloted for QNAMEs.

6.  Backward Compatibility

   For a new extension to DNS such as ODNS to be widely adopted it must
   be backward-compatible with existing infrastructure, as changes to
   the DNS system occur over long time scales.  Our design must not rely
   upon changes made at recursive resolvers, root nameservers, or TLD
   nameservers.  We engineer the ODNS stub and authoritative



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   functionality with this in mind as these two locations in the DNS
   hierarchy are readily controlled.

7.  IANA considerations

   For initial experimental deployment of this protocol, the name
   obliviousdns.com has been registered.  Its length is a drawback, for
   the reasons discussed in Section 5.3 and a shorter privately
   registered name may be chosen for future larger-scale
   experimentation.  An infrastructure related zone would be more
   advantageous choice.  Therefore discussion should resolve the
   appropriateness and conditions of a request for a special use domain
   name, e.g. odns.arpa.  This falls under the considerations in
   [RFC3172].  Notes: because of restrictions on TLD registration,
   following the example of .onion [RFC7686] is infeasible.  Traffic for
   ODNS traverses normal Internet paths, therefore the IANA special use
   registry recently established for Locally-Served DNS Zones, in which
   home.arpa has recently been registered [RFC8375], is also not a model
   for IANA considerations for the ODNS Namespace.

8.  Security considerations

   TODO (some questions to consider): what are residual risks in the
   ODNS scheme and additional mitigations?  Is there any increase in
   attack surface for the users and operators in ODNS?  Are systems
   depending on ODNS vulnerable to DoS in specific ways that should be
   mitigated?

9.  Acknowledgements

10.  Contributors

   The following contributed significantly to the document:

11.  Changelog

   draft-annee-dprive-oblivious-dns-00

   o  Initial commit

12.  References

12.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-dnsop-terminology-bis]
              Hoffman, P., Sullivan, A., and K. Fujiwara, "DNS
              Terminology", draft-ietf-dnsop-terminology-bis-10 (work in
              progress), April 2018.



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   [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/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC3172]  Huston, G., Ed., "Management Guidelines & Operational
              Requirements for the Address and Routing Parameter Area
              Domain ("arpa")", BCP 52, RFC 3172, DOI 10.17487/RFC3172,
              September 2001, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3172>.

   [RFC6973]  Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
              Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
              Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6973>.

   [RFC7871]  Contavalli, C., van der Gaast, W., Lawrence, D., and W.
              Kumari, "Client Subnet in DNS Queries", RFC 7871,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7871, May 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7871>.

   [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/info/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8310]  Dickinson, S., Gillmor, D., and T. Reddy, "Usage Profiles
              for DNS over TLS and DNS over DTLS", RFC 8310,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8310, March 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8310>.

12.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-doh-dns-over-https]
              Hoffman, P. and P. McManus, "DNS Queries over HTTPS
              (DoH)", draft-ietf-doh-dns-over-https-12 (work in
              progress), June 2018.

   [RFC7626]  Bortzmeyer, S., "DNS Privacy Considerations", RFC 7626,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7626, August 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7626>.

   [RFC7686]  Appelbaum, J. and A. Muffett, "The ".onion" Special-Use
              Domain Name", RFC 7686, DOI 10.17487/RFC7686, October
              2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7686>.







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   [RFC7706]  Kumari, W. and P. Hoffman, "Decreasing Access Time to Root
              Servers by Running One on Loopback", RFC 7706,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7706, November 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7706>.

   [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/info/rfc7858>.

   [RFC8094]  Reddy, T., Wing, D., and P. Patil, "DNS over Datagram
              Transport Layer Security (DTLS)", RFC 8094,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8094, February 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8094>.

   [RFC8375]  Pfister, P. and T. Lemon, "Special-Use Domain
              'home.arpa.'", RFC 8375, DOI 10.17487/RFC8375, May 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8375>.

   [Tor-DNS]  Reschbach, G., Pulls, B., Roberts, L., Winter, P., and N.
              Feamster, "The Effect of DNS on Tor's Anonymity", 2016.

Authors' Addresses

   Annie Edmundson
   Princeton University
   Princeton, NJ
   United States

   Email: annee@cs.princeton.edu


   Paul Schmitt
   Princeton University
   Princeton, NJ
   United States

   Email: pschmitt@cs.princeton.edu


   Nick Feamster
   Princeton University
   Princeton, NJ
   United States

   Email: nfeamster@cs.princeton.edu





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   Allison Mankin
   Salesforce

   Email: allison.mankin@gmail.com















































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