Mitigation Options against Centralization in DNS Resolvers – Jari Arkko
slides-interim-2021-dinrg-01-sessa-mitigation-options-against-centralization-in-dns-resolvers-jari-arkko-00

Network Working Group                                           J. Arkko
Internet-Draft                                                  Ericsson
Intended status: Informational                               18 May 2021
Expires: 19 November 2021


       Mitigation Options against Centralization in DNS Resolvers
                draft-arkko-dinrg-centralization-dns-00

Abstract

   Centralization and consolidation of various Internet services are
   major trends.  While these trends have some benefits - for instance
   in deployment of new technology - they also have serious drawbacks in
   terms of resilience, privacy, and other aspects.

   This extended abstract is a submission to the Decentralized Internet
   Infrastructure Research Group (DINRG) workshop on Centralization in
   the Internet.

   The extended abstract focuses on the question of centralization
   related to DNS resolver services.

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
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 19 November 2021.

Copyright Notice

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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.



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   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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Table of Contents

   1.  Abstract  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7

1.  Abstract

   Centralization and consolidation of various Internet services are
   major trends.  While these trends have some benefits - for instance
   in deployment of new technology - they also have serious drawbacks in
   terms of resilience, privacy, and other aspects.  This extended
   abstract focuses on the question of centralization related to DNS
   [RFC1035] resolver services.

   DNS resolver services are also a good example of centralization and
   approaches to dealing with it.  The approaches may be applicable in
   other contexts as well.

   DNS resolver services have evolved in recent years largely due to two
   trends:

   *  Availability of new technology protect the communications relating
      to queries with TLS [RFC7858] [RFC8484]
      [I-D.ietf-dprive-dnsoquic].

   *  Introduction of general-purpose resolver services in the Internet,
      such as Google's 8.8.8.8 and Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 service.

   It is interesting that privacy of DNS queries has only surfaced as an
   issue in recent years [RFC7626] [RFC8324].  The original DNS
   protocols had no support whatsover for security, and later designs
   such as DNSSEC addressed another problem, reliability of the
   information, but not privacy.  Yet, DNS queries reveal potentially
   the users' entire browsing histories.

   However, even when DNS queries are hidden inside communications, any
   DNS resolvers still have the potential too see the users' actions.
   This is particularly problematic, given that commonly used large
   public or operator resolver services are an obviously attractive
   target, for both attacks and for commercial or other use of
   information visible to them of the users.  The use of information



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   garnered from centralized services is particularly concerning in
   light of possible pervasive surveillance [RFC7258].

   While these services are run by highly competent organizations and
   for the benefit of users, in general, it is undesirable to create
   Internet architectures or infrastructure that collects massive amount
   of information about users in few locations.  Over longer time
   scales, the danger is that it will not be possible to withstand legal
   or commercial pressures to employ such information base in a way that
   is actually not in line with the interests of the users.

   The full paper for the workshop will discuss the reasons for
   centralization in the DNS case, the problems it causes, and outlines
   a number of directions for solutions.

   Solutions address the privacy problems either by reducing the
   centralization, reducing the information given to the centralized
   solutions, or make it hard to use the information collected in the
   centralized solutions.  The solution directions include:

   *  Avoidance of centralized resolvers, and the introduction of
      sufficiently large number of resolvers (e.g., in ISP networks).

   *  Improved practices, expectations, and contracts (e.g., [RFC8932],
      Mozilla's trusted recursive resolver requirements [MozTRR])

   *  Discovery mechanisms.  These may enable a bigger fraction of DNS
      query traffic to move to encrypted protocols, and may also help
      distributed queries to different parties to avoid concentrating
      all information in one place.  The IETF working group ADD is
      addressing these mechanisms.

   *  Service distribution through making users employ several services
      such that only part of information is available in each service
      (e.g,, [I-D.arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-selection]).

   *  Splitting information generated by queries into parts that are
      handled by different parties in a way that either part is useless
      for data collection (unless the parties co-operate).  Oblivious
      DNS ([Oblivious]) is an example of this.

   *  Confidential computing mechanisms that set up technical boundaries
      for even service or server hardware owners to peek into the DNS
      resolver process (e.g., [PDoT] [I-D.arkko-dns-confidential]).  For
      the base confidential computing technology, see, e.g., [CC]
      [CCC-Deepdive] [SGX] [Efficient] [Innovative] [Mem]
      [I-D.ietf-rats-architecture] [I-D.ietf-rats-eat].




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   Addressing the resiliency problems associated with centralization is
   harder.  This further discussed in
   [I-D.arkko-arch-infrastructure-centralisation].

2.  Informative References

   [CC]       Rashid, F.Y., "What Is Confidential Computing?", IEEE
              Spectrum, https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/
              what-is-confidential-computing , May 2020.

   [CCC-Deepdive]
              Confidential Computing Consortium, ., "Confidential
              Computing Deep Dive v1.0",
              https://confidentialcomputing.io/whitepaper-02-latest ,
              October 2020.

   [Chautauquan]
              "The Chautauquan", Volume 3, Issue 9, p. 543 , June 1883.

   [Efficient]
              Suh, G.E., Clarke, D., Gasend, B., van Dijk, M., and S.
              Devadas, "Efficient memory integrity verification and
              encryption for secure processors", Proceedings. 36th
              Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on
              Microarchitecture, MICRO-36, San Diego, CA, USA, pp.
              339-350, doi: 10.1109/MICRO.2003.1253207 , 2003.

   [I-D.arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-selection]
              Arkko, J., Thomson, M., and T. Hardie, "Selecting
              Resolvers from a Set of Distributed DNS Resolvers", Work
              in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-arkko-abcd-distributed-
              resolver-selection-01, 9 March 2020,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-arkko-abcd-
              distributed-resolver-selection-01.txt>.

   [I-D.arkko-arch-infrastructure-centralisation]
              Arkko, J., "Centralised Architectures in Internet
              Infrastructure", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              arkko-arch-infrastructure-centralisation-00, 4 November
              2019, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-arkko-arch-
              infrastructure-centralisation-00.txt>.

   [I-D.arkko-dns-confidential]
              Arkko, J. and J. Novotny, "Privacy Improvements for DNS
              Resolution with Confidential Computing", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-arkko-dns-confidential-01, 10 March
              2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-arkko-dns-
              confidential-01.txt>.



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   [I-D.arkko-farrell-arch-model-t-redux]
              Arkko, J. and S. Farrell, "Internet Threat Model
              Evolution: Background and Principles", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-arkko-farrell-arch-model-t-redux-01,
              22 February 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-
              arkko-farrell-arch-model-t-redux-01.txt>.

   [I-D.iab-dedr-report]
              Arkko, J. and T. Hardie, "Report from the IAB Workshop on
              Design Expectations vs. Deployment Reality in Protocol
              Development", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-iab-
              dedr-report-01, 2 November 2020,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iab-dedr-report-
              01.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-dprive-dnsoquic]
              Huitema, C., Mankin, A., and S. Dickinson, "Specification
              of DNS over Dedicated QUIC Connections", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-dprive-dnsoquic-02, 22 February
              2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-dprive-
              dnsoquic-02.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-rats-architecture]
              Birkholz, H., Thaler, D., Richardson, M., Smith, N., and
              W. Pan, "Remote Attestation Procedures Architecture", Work
              in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-rats-architecture-
              12, 23 April 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-
              ietf-rats-architecture-12.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-rats-eat]
              Mandyam, G., Lundblade, L., Ballesteros, M., and J.
              O'Donoghue, "The Entity Attestation Token (EAT)", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-rats-eat-09, 7 March
              2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-rats-
              eat-09.txt>.

   [Innovative]
              Ittai, A., Gueron, S., Johnson, S., and V. Scarlata,
              "Innovative Technology for CPU Based Attestation and
              Sealing", HASP'2013 , 2013.

   [Mem]      Henson, M. and S. Taylor, "Memory encryption: a survey of
              existing techniques", ACM Computing Surveys volume 46
              issue 4 , 2014.

   [MozTRR]   Mozilla, ., "Security/DOH-resolver-policy",
              https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/DOH-resolver-policy ,
              2019.



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   [Oblivious]
              Schmitt, P., "Oblivious DNS: Practical privacy for DNS
              queries", Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies
              2019.2: 228-244 , 2019.

   [PDoT]     Nakatsuka, Y., Paverd, A., and G. Tsudik, "PDoT: Private
              DNS-over-TLS with TEE Support", Digit. Threat.: Res.
              Pract., Vol. 2, No. 1, Article 3,
              https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3431171 , February
              2021.

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

   [RFC7258]  Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
              Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
              2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.

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

   [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>.

   [RFC8324]  Klensin, J., "DNS Privacy, Authorization, Special Uses,
              Encoding, Characters, Matching, and Root Structure: Time
              for Another Look?", RFC 8324, DOI 10.17487/RFC8324,
              February 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8324>.

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

   [RFC8932]  Dickinson, S., Overeinder, B., van Rijswijk-Deij, R., and
              A. Mankin, "Recommendations for DNS Privacy Service
              Operators", BCP 232, RFC 8932, DOI 10.17487/RFC8932,
              October 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8932>.

   [SGX]      Hoekstra, M.E., "Intel(R) SGX for Dummies (Intel(R) SGX
              Design Objectives)", Intel,
              https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/
              blogs/protecting-application-secrets-with-intel-sgx.html ,
              September 2013.




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Author's Address

   Jari Arkko
   Ericsson

   Email: jari.arkko@ericsson.com













































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