Network Working Group                                        F. Valsorda
Internet-Draft                                            O. Gudmundsson
Intended status: Standards Track                         CloudFlare Inc.
Expires: September 22, 2016                               March 21, 2016


            Compact DNSSEC Denial of Existence or Black Lies
                   draft-valsorda-dnsop-black-lies-00

Abstract

   This document describes a technique to generate valid DNSSEC answers
   on demand for non-existing names by claiming the name exists and
   returning a NSEC record for it.  These answers require only one NSEC
   record and allow live-signing servers to minimize signing operations,
   packet size, disclosure of zone contents and required knowledge of
   the zone layout.

Status of This Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 22, 2016.

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   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Black Lies  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Side Effects of Sacrificing the NXDOMAIN RCODE  . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5

1.  Introduction

   Authenticated denial of existence went through several revisions
   [RFC4034] [RFC5155] [RFC7129] with NSEC and NSEC3 currently deployed
   in the wild.  Both are designed to make offline signing possible, at
   a time at which there is no knowledge of what names will be queried.
   This leads to potentially unwanted disclosure of the zone contents.
   NSEC3 tries to mitigate the disclosure by hashing the names, but zone
   contents can still be recovered by a determined attacker.

   Servers capable of generating signatures on demand (online signing)
   instead have access to the name being queried when crafting the
   denial of existence and can therefore produce answers that leak zero
   information about the rest of the zone.  Such a technique to be used
   with NSEC records is presented in [RFC4470] ("Minimally Covering NSEC
   Records") and one to be used with NSEC3 is documented in [RFC7129],
   Appendix B ("NSEC3 White Lies").

   The "Minimally Covering NSEC Records" technique involves dynamically
   generating a NSEC record on a close predecessor and specifying a
   close successor as the next name.  A NSEC covering the wildcard name
   must also be included, leading to two signed NSEC records (of which
   one might be cached).

   The "NSEC3 White Lies" technique involves dynamically generating a
   NSEC3 record on the hash of the QNAME minus one and specifying the
   hash of the QNAME plus one as the next name.  NSEC3 matching the
   closest encloser and covering the wildcard must also be included,
   leading to three signed NSEC3 records (of which two might be cached).

   There is a second type of secure negative answer, as opposed to a
   NXDOMAIN: a NODATA, where the name queried for exists, but the type



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   does not.  Common clients exhibit similar behaviors Such an answer
   requires only one NSEC(3): the one with owner matching the QNAME, and
   no QTYPE in the bitmap.

   The technique in this document exploits this observation and improves
   on the efficiency of existing live-signing schemes, by answering
   NODATA in place of NXDOMAIN, saving 1 or 2 NSEC(3) and their
   signatures.

1.1.  Requirements

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

2.  Black Lies

   Whenever a request for a non-existing name in a signed zone the
   server would be authoritative for is received, a NSEC record is
   generated with owner name matching the QNAME.

   The next name SHOULD be set to the immediate lexicographic successor
   of the QNAME.  Using a perfect epsilon function, such as the one in
   Section 3.1.2. of [RFC4471], allows the server not to require
   knowledge of any other names in the zone, as no other names are
   covered by the proof.  This is particularly useful for servers that
   don't have or want a complete view of the zone, like signing
   middlemen or key-value database backed servers.

   The generated NSEC record's type bitmap MUST have the RRSIG and NSEC
   bits set and SHOULD NOT have any other bits set.  This mirrors
   [RFC4470] style ephemeral NSEC records.

   For example, a request for the non-existing name a.example.com would
   cause the following NSEC record to be generated:

      a.example.com. 3600 IN NSEC \000.a.example.com. ( RRSIG NSEC )

   The answer MUST have RCODE NOERROR, as opposed to NXDOMAIN, since a
   record matching the QNAME is being returned.

   Naturally, generated NSEC record MUST have corresponding RRSIGs
   generated.

   A black lie requires only one signing operation, generates a single
   NSEC+RRSIG pair (which can commonly fit with a SOA+RRSIG in < 512
   bytes), leaks no information on the rest of the zone and can be




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   generated knowing nothing else than the fact that the QNAME does not
   exist.

3.  Side Effects of Sacrificing the NXDOMAIN RCODE

   The main tradeoff of this technique is that NXDOMAIN answers are
   turned into NODATA, hiding the fact that the name does not exist.  An
   intelligent client can recover part of this information by noticing
   the bitmap only carries ( RRSIG NSEC ), which indicates either a
   black lie or an empty non-terminal.

   Large scale empirical observations suggest that clients behave in the
   same way faced with NXDOMAIN or NODATA, as they are usually
   uninterested in the DNS topology of the zone, but are only after a
   specific QNAME+QTYPE pair.

   A server CAN decide to only turn NXDOMAIN into NODATA when the DO bit
   is set, so that older clients and clients interested in the topology
   of the zone for debugging purposes would still receive NXDOMAIN
   answers.  This technique has been found not to cause any major issues
   in a large scale deployment.  Otherwise, the server CAN decide to
   also turn NXDOMAIN into NODATA with DO=0 for consistency.

   Never answering NXDOMAIN has the advantage that the server can drop
   empty non-terminal logic, as empty non-terminals would look the same
   as missing names.  This again is useful for servers without a
   comprehensive view of the entire zone they are authoritative for.

   Black lies effectively reverse the benefits of
   [I-D.ietf-dnsop-nxdomain-cut], unless a signaling system to
   distinguish black lies from empty non-terminals is agreed upon (TBD).

4.  Security Considerations

   The Security Considerations from [RFC4470] on online signing apply.

5.  Acknowledgements

   Dani Grant, Marek Majkowski, Vicky Shrestha, Nick Sullivan and Marek
   Vavrusa provided valuable comments.

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References







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   [RFC4034]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions",
              RFC 4034, DOI 10.17487/RFC4034, March 2005,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4034>.

   [RFC4470]  Weiler, S. and J. Ihren, "Minimally Covering NSEC Records
              and DNSSEC On-line Signing", RFC 4470, DOI 10.17487/
              RFC4470, April 2006,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4470>.

   [RFC4471]  Sisson, G. and B. Laurie, "Derivation of DNS Name
              Predecessor and Successor", RFC 4471, DOI 10.17487/
              RFC4471, September 2006,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4471>.

   [RFC5155]  Laurie, B., Sisson, G., Arends, R., and D. Blacka, "DNS
              Security (DNSSEC) Hashed Authenticated Denial of
              Existence", RFC 5155, DOI 10.17487/RFC5155, March 2008,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5155>.

   [RFC7129]  Gieben, R. and W. Mekking, "Authenticated Denial of
              Existence in the DNS", RFC 7129, DOI 10.17487/RFC7129,
              February 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7129>.

6.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-dnsop-nxdomain-cut]
              Bortzmeyer, S. and S. Huque, "NXDOMAIN really means there
              is nothing underneath", draft-ietf-dnsop-nxdomain-cut-01
              (work in progress), March 2016.

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

Authors' Addresses

   Filippo Valsorda
   CloudFlare Inc.
   25 Lavington Street
   London  SE1 0NZ
   UK

   Email: filippo@cloudflare.com






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   Olafur Gudmundsson
   CloudFlare Inc.
   101 Townsend St.
   San Francisco  94107
   USA

   Email: olafur@cloudflare.com












































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