DNSSEC: What a Registrar Needs to Know

transcript

DNSSEC Industry Coalition Webinar Series

Brought to you by .ORG, The Public Interest Registry and

Afilias

Lauren Price, DNSSEC Industry Coalition Chair◦ Sr. Product Marketing Manager, .ORG The Public

Interest Registry◦ lprice@pir.org

Jim Galvin, Afilias◦ Director, Strategic Relationships & Technical

Standards◦ jgalvin@afilias.info

Sadik Chandiwala, Afilias◦ Technical Account Manager◦ sadik@ca.afilias.info

The Vulnerability of DNS Quick Intro to DNSSEC PIR and DNSSEC Timeline Friends and Family Program Some DNSSEC Terminology OT&E Functionality and Changes◦ EPP◦ Etc.

Resources Questions

When you visit a web site, send an email, or download software, can you be sure you are communicating with the server that you think you are?

The answer is ‘no’, at least not with certainty.

DNSSEC (short for Domain Name System Security Extensions) adds security to the Domain Name System.

DNSSEC is designed to protect Internet resolvers (clients) from forged DNS data, such as that created by DNS cache poisoning.

Currently, a DNS resolver sends a query out to the Internet and then accepts the first response it receives, without question.

If a malicious system were to send back an incorrect response, the resolver would use this address until its cache expired.

This is bad enough if a single user's computer gets this bad data, but it is much worse if it's another name server that answers queries for an ISP –affecting thousands of users.

It provides proof that DNS data has not been modified in transit to the end-user

It does this by providing additional information, something like a “seal of origin”, that can be verified as being correct or not.

It is a set of extensions to DNS, which provide: a) origin authentication of DNS data, b) data integrity, and c) authenticated denial of existence.

Each piece of a domain’s DNS information has a digital signature attached to it.

When a user enters the domain in a browser, the resolver verifies the signature.

If it does not match, the resolver discards the response and waits for another.

Only a response with a verified signature will be accepted by the resolver

The description above is a common scenario. Please note that different resolvers may take different actions

** Note: DNSSEC only adds signatures to DNS data. It does not encrypt anything. It has no effect on increasing the privacy of the DNS, and information in the DNS is still public information.

End User Benefits Ensures you are communicating to the correct

website End Users that are not DNSSEC aware will not see

any adverse effect.

Registrant Benefits Mitigates the risk of possible fraud Greater protection of brand ◦ Significantly decreases the threat of domain hijacking

Registrar Benefits Ability to meet Registrant demands for increase

security of their domain Ability to continue to sell domains that are not

secured by DNSSEC for those registrants who are not interested.

Complying with new industry standards

Registry Benefits Meeting new industry standards Ability to meet Registrar demands for increase

security of their portfolio of domains

Top five perceptions of the .ORG Brand*◦ Informative◦ Well-Intentioned◦ Trustworthy◦ Valuable Information◦ Reliable

We expect to keep it that way!

* Source: e5 Marketing Survey of over 10,000 respondents in an electronic form, November 2008

.ORG zone signed June 2, 2009

Registrars can participate in the testing phase Registrars are encouraged to test in OTE A certification test will be required 2 registrars have passed their certification test to date

We have selected small set of domains and have manually inserted the DS records at the Registry

Successful scheduled Key Rollovers

Additional mandatory .ORG DNSSEC OT&E Test required

Registrars must pass the OT&E Test to become DNSSEC Aware

PIR will enable DNSSEC functionality for the Registrar after successful completion of the OT&E test.

We expect to be done with our internal testing by Q409

Estimated full production timeframe first half of 2010 meaning registrars can submit live delegations

A DNS resolver is the program on a user’s computer that sends the query to the DNS.

Once a response is received, the resolver returns the response back to the end user’s application.

User’s PCResolver

domain.org?

192.0.5.4

A key pair contains two digital keys — a private key (held only by the .ORG registry) and a public key (distributed to the public).

The .ORG registry uses the .ORG private key pair to sign the zone.

End users' validators (or the validators at their ISPs) use the .ORG public key to validate the signature once they've asked for it.

If I trust a public key from someone, I can use that key to verify the signature … and authenticate the source

Make sure the root zone key can be trusted◦ Pointers in the root zone point to lower zones

(org/com/info/de etc)◦ Each pointer is validated with the previous validated

zone key

When DNSSEC is fully deployed, only the key for the root zone is needed to validate all the DNSSEC keys on the Internet

Root Servers

Local cache

Resolver

.org authoritative NS

domain.org authoritative NS

Local Cache

RecursiveDNS Server

Root Servers

Resolver

.ORG authoritative NS

domain.ORG authoritative NS

RecursiveDNS Server

DNSSEC

Local cache

DNSSEC

A key rollover will occur when the .ORG registry needs to change its side of a key pair.

This means that the entire pair needs to be changed◦ The .ORG zone will need to be re-signed with a

new private keyAND

◦ The public will need to update their validating resolvers with the new public portion of the .ORG zone key.

PIR will be required to do Key Rollovers on a regular basis:

1. If one of the .ORG private keys were compromised (i.e., stolen) and had to be immediately revoked.

2. For prevention of compromise (see next question for further information), where a key rollover would be scheduled at regular intervals.

Digital signatures are not secure all of the time. They are subject to cryptanalysis.

It is possible for an attacker to learn the private key in a key pair even though that key has never been disclosed, either through "brute force" or other types of attacks.

Since every attack requires time to complete, periodically changing the key decreases the length of time an attacker has to attempt the compromise.

What would happen if end users do not update their validating resolvers with the new .ORG zone key?

Once the old key is purged, domains in the .ORG zone that were signed would no longer resolve for those people who did not use the new .ORG key.

It would not affect people that are not using DNSSEC – they would continue to see the domain name.

A key rollover will be announced on the PIR Web site prior to the scheduled event

Anyone using DNSSEC will have to watch for these announcements, specially ISPs, registrars, and people using DNSSEC in applications.

Changes have been made to support the DNS protocol.

Built New Registrar Tool Kit for DNSSEC◦ Adds DNSSEC EPP transactions (RFC 4310)

EPP server has been modified for DNSSEC Adds DNSSEC EPP transactions (as per RFC 4310)

Changes to the Registry Database to now Store DS Information

DNSSEC

Covered in the ORG manual: Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) v1.0 ORG DNSSEC Registrar Acceptance Criteria

Registrars must test the basic operations that their client application can perform in the ORG DNSSEC registry environment including:◦ Create Domain◦ Create Domain with Optional Key Data◦ Query Domain◦ Query Domain with Optional Key Data◦ Update Domain – Adding DS Data◦ Update Domain – Changing DS Data◦ Update Domain – Change to Include Optional Data◦ Update Domain – Removing DS Data

DNSSEC adds four new resource record types: 1. Resource Record Signature (RRSIG) Signature over RRset made using private key

2. DNS Public Key (DNSKEY) Public key, needed for verifying a RRSIG

3. Delegation Signer (DS) ‘Pointer’ for building chains of authentication

4. Next Secure (NSEC, NSEC3) As an alternative to NSEC, NSEC3 (defined in RFC 5155) can

prevent walking of DNSSEC zones and permits optional gradual expansion of delegation-centric zones. NSEC: Indicates which name is the next one in the zone and which

type-codes are available for the current name

Keytag • Contains the key tag value of the DNSKEY RR that validates this signature, in network byte order• Provides a mechanism for selecting a public key efficiently.

Algorithm • Identifies the public key's cryptographic algorithm and determines the format of the Public Key field

Digest Type • Identifies the algorithm used to construct the digest

Digest • The DS record refers to a DNSKEY RR by including a digest of that DNSKEY RR.

Maximum Signature Life

• Specifies a validity period for the signature

Flags • Identifies whether or not the DNSKEY record holds a DNS zone key

Protocol • The Protocol Field MUST have value 3, and the DNSKEY RR MUST be treated as invalid during signature verification if it is found to be some value other tan 3.

Public Key • Holds the public key material

The DNSSEC Data Fields

The following EPP commands will now contain the optional DNSSEC data:

1. Session Mgmt.<login> <logout>

3. Object Transform

2. Object Query<check><info><poll ><transfer>

Create Domain is changed because a DNSSEC secure domain must be created with a DS record attached to it

Registrar needs to be accredited for creating domain names with DS records

If they are not, the system will reject the domain create command and throw a validation error – You are not authorized to perform this action.

If the maxSigLife is not entered for a <create> domain name with DS records, the system will set it to the default value (40 days)

If the user provides empty tags for the following parameters, the domain will not be created and an error message will be returned: ◦ secDNS:keyTag◦ secDNS:alg◦ secDNS:digestType

<update> domain command is now changed as DS information can be added or changed for each domain

If the Registrar is not accredited for creating domain names with DS records and attempts to add DS data to an existing domain name, the system will reject the domain update command and return an error

If the domain name already has 10 DS records and the sponsoring Registrar attempts to add another, the system will reject the domain update command and return an error per EPP RFC 3730.

If the maxSigLife is not entered for a domain name with DS records, the system will set it to the default value (40 days)

The following fields will be appended to the WHOIS output for a domain name with DS records –◦ DNSSEC (Can be Signed or Unsigned) – To denote if the

domain name is digitally signed. ◦ DS Created – Time stamp that the record was created in

UTC◦ DS Maximum Signature Life - Maximum Signature Life

associated with this DS record

If a domain name has more than one DS record associated with it, the DS record information for all the records will be displayed one after the other as displayed in the screenshot (above) If a domain name does not have any DS records associated with it, the DNSSEC value displayed will be Unsigned

.ORG OT&E Test Criteria General FAQ ORG manual: Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)

v1.0 ORG DNSSEC Registrar Acceptance Criteria Registrar Tool Kit (RTK – Addon) including the

DNSSEC extensions is available for download from:◦ https://registrars.pir.org/registrar_relations/dns_

security◦ www.sourceforge.net

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC are described in these IETF documents:◦ RFC 4033: DNS Security Introduction and Requirements◦ RFC 4034: Resource Records for the DNS Security

Extensions◦ RFC 4035: Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security

Extensions

.ORG website◦ http://www.pir.org/dnssec

DNSSEC related information websitewww.dnssec-deployment.orgwww.dnssec.net

Questions?

DNSSEC: What a Registrar Needs to Know

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