Intended Status: Informational O. Gudmundsson
Network Working Group OGUD Consulting LLC
Internet-Draft J. Ihren
Expires: August 21, 2008 AAB
February 18, 2008
Names of States in the life of a DNSKEY
draft-gudmundsson-life-of-dnskey-00
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Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).
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Abstract
This document recommends a specific terminology to use when
expressing the state that a DNSKEY is in at particular time. This
does not affect how the protocol operates in any way.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. DNSKEY timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Life stages of a DNSKEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Generated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Published . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2.1. Pre-Publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2.2. Out-Of-Band Publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Active . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.4. Retired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.5. Removed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.5.1. Lame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.5.2. Stale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.6. Revoked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. IANA considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 11
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1. Introduction
When the editors of this document where comparing their DNSSEC key
management projects they discovered that they where discussing
roughly the same thing but using different terminology.
This document presents a unified terminology to use when describing
the current state of a DNSKEY.
The DNSSEC standards documents ([1], [2] and [3]) do not address the
required states for the key management of a DNSSEC key. The DNSSEC
Operational Practices [4] document does propose that keys be
published before use but uses inconsistent or confusing terms. This
document assumes basic understanding of DNSSEC and key management.
The terms proposed in this document attempt to avoid any confusion
and make the states of keys to be as clear as possible. The terms
used in this document are intended as a operational supplement to the
terms defined in Section 2 of [1].
To large extent this discussion is motivated by Trust anchor keys but
the same terminology can be used for zone signing keys.
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2. DNSKEY timeline
The model in this document is that keys progress through a state
machine along a one-way path, keys never move to an earlier states.
GENERATED----------> PUBLISHED ---> ACTIVE ---> RETIRED --> REMOVED
| ^ | | | ^
| | | | v |
+--> Pre-PUBLISHED--+ +--------+---------> REVOKED ---+
DNSKEY time line.
There are few more states that are defined below but these apply only
to the publisher of TA's and the consumer of TA's. Two of these are
sub-sets of the Published state, the other two are error states.
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3. Life stages of a DNSKEY
3.1. Generated
Once a key is generated it enters state Generated and stays there
until the next state. While in this state only the owner of the key
is aware of its existence and can prepare for its future use.
3.2. Published
Once the key is added to the DNSKEY set of a zone the key is there
for the world to see, or published. The key needs to remain in this
state for some time to propagate to all validators that have cached
the prior version of the DNSKEY set. In the case of KSK the key
should remain in this state for a longer time as documented in DNSSEC
Timers RFC [5].
3.2.1. Pre-Publication
In certain circumstances a zone owner may want to give out a new
Trust Anchor before exposing the actual public key. In this case the
zone can publish a DS record of the key. This allows others to
configure the trust anchor but will not be able to use the key until
the key is published in the DNSKEY RRset.
3.2.2. Out-Of-Band Publication
In certain circumstances a domain may want to give out a new Trust
Anchor outside DNS to give others a long lead time to configure the
new key as trust anchor. The reason people may want to do this is to
keep the size of the DNSKEY set smaller and only add new trust anchor
just before the key goes into use. One likely use for this is the
DNS "." root key as it does not have a parent that can publish a DS
record for it. The publication mechanism does not matter it can be
any one of web-site, advertisement in Financial Times and other
international publication, e-mail to DNS related mailing lists, etc..
3.3. Active
The key is in ACTIVE state while it is actively signing data in the
zone it resides in. It is one of the the keys that are signing the
zone or parts of the zone.
3.4. Retired
When the key is no longer used for signing the zone it enters state
Retired. In this state there may still be signatures by the key in
cached data from the zone available at recursive servers, but the
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authoritative servers for the zone do no longer carry any signatures
generated by the key.
3.5. Removed
Once the key is removed from the DNSKEY RRset it enters the state
Removed. At this point all signatures by the key that may still be
temporarily valid will fail to verify once the validator refreshes
the DNSKEY RRset in its memory.
Therefore "removal" of a key is typically not done until all the
cached signatures have expired. Entering this state too early may
cause number of validators to end up with STALE Trust Anchors.
3.5.1. Lame
A Trust Anchor is Lame if the parent continues to publish DS pointing
to the key after it has been removed from the DNSKEY RRset. A Trust
Anchor is arguably Lame if there are no signatures by a Retired KSK
in the zone.
3.5.2. Stale
A Stale Trust Anchor is an old TA that remains in a validators list
of active key(s) after the key has been removed from the zone's
DNSKEY RRset.
3.6. Revoked
There are times when a zone wants to signal that a particular key
should not be used at all. The mechanism to do this is to set the
REVOKE bit [5]. Any key in any of the while the key is the DNSSKEY
set can be exited to Revoked state. After some time in the Revoke
state the key will be Removed.
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4. Security considerations
TBD
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5. IANA considerations
This document does not have any IANA actions.
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6. References
6.1. Normative References
6.2. Informative References
[1] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose,
"DNS Security Introduction and Requirements", RFC 4033,
March 2005.
[2] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose,
"Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions", RFC 4034,
March 2005.
[3] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose,
"Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security Extensions",
RFC 4035, March 2005.
[4] Kolkman, O. and R. Gieben, "DNSSEC Operational Practices",
RFC 4641, September 2006.
[5] StJohns, M., "Automated Updates of DNS Security (DNSSEC) Trust
Anchors", RFC 5011, September 2007.
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Authors' Addresses
Olafur Gudmundsson
OGUD Consulting LLC
3821 Village Park Drive
Chevy Chase, MD 20815
USA
Email: ogud@ogud.com
Johan Ihren
Automatica, AB
Bellmansgatan 30
Stockholm, SE-118 47
Sweden
Email: johani@automatica.se
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