Internet DRAFT - draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-privacy-sol
draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-privacy-sol
Network Working Group S. Bortzmeyer
Internet-Draft AFNIC
Intended status: Informational December 17, 2013
Expires: June 20, 2014
Possible solutions to DNS privacy issues
draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-privacy-sol-00
Abstract
This document describes some possible solutions to the DNS privacy
issues described in [I-D.bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy].
Discussions of the document should currently take place on the dnsop
mailing list [dnsop].
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction and background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Possible technical solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1. On the wire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.1. Reducing the attack surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.2. Encrypting the DNS traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. In the servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2.1. In the resolvers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2.2. In the authoritative name servers . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2.3. Rogue servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction and background
The problem statement is exposed in
[I-D.bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy]. The terminology here is also
defined in this companion document.
2. Possible technical solutions
We mention here only the solutions that could be deployed in the
current Internet. Disruptive solutions, like replacing the DNS with
a completely new resolution protocol, are interesting but are kept
for a future work. Remember that the focus of this document is on
describing the threats, not in detailing solutions. This section is
therefore non-normative and is NOT a technical specification of
solutions. For the same reason, there are not yet actual
recommendations in this document.
Raising seriously the bar against the eavesdropper will require
SEVERAL actions. Not one is decisive by itself but, together, they
can have an effect. The most important suggested here are:
qname minimization,
encryption of DNS traffic,
padding (sending random queries from time to time).
We detail some of these actions later, classified by the kind of
observer (on the wire, in a server, etc). Some actions will help
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against several kinds of observers. For instance, padding, sending
gratuitous queries from time to time (queries where you're not
interested in the replies, just to disturb the analysis), is useful
against all sorts of observers. It is a costly technique, because it
increases the traffic on the network but it seriously blurs the
picture for the observer.
2.1. On the wire
2.1.1. Reducing the attack surface
See Section 2.2.1 since the solution described there apply against
on-the-wire eavesdropping as well as against observation by the
resolver.
2.1.2. Encrypting the DNS traffic
To really defeat an eavesdropper, there is only one solution:
encryption. But, from the end user point of view, even if you check
that your communication between your stub resolver and the resolver
is encrypted, you have no way to ensure that the communication
between the resolver and the autoritative name servers will be.
There are two different cases, communication between the stub
resolver and the resolver (no caching but only two parties so
solutions which rely on an agreement may work) and communication
between the resolver and the authoritative servers (less data because
of caching, but many parties involved, so any solution has to scale
well). Encrypting the "last mile", between the user's stub resolver
and the resolver may be sufficient since the biggest danger for
privacy is between the stub resolver and the resolver, because there
is no caching involved there.
The only encryption mechanism available for DNS which is today an
IETF standard is IPsec in ESP mode. Its deployment in the wide
Internet is very limited, for reasons which are out of scope here.
Still, it may be a solution for "the last mile" and, indeed, many VPN
solutions use it this way, encrypting the whole traffic, including
DNS to the safe resolver. In the IETF standards, a possible
alternative could be DTLS [RFC6347]. It enjoyed very little actual
deployment and its interaction with the DNS has never been
considered, studied or of course implemented. There are also non
standard encryption techniques like DNScrypt [dnscrypt] for the stub
resolver <-> resolver communication or DNScurve [dnscurve] for the
resolver <-> authoritative server communication. It seems today that
the possibility of massive encryption of DNS traffic is very remote.
A last "pervasive encryption" solution for the DNS could be the
promising [I-D.wijngaards-dnsop-confidentialdns].
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Another solution would be to use more TCP for the queries, together
with TLS [RFC5246]. DNS can run over TCP and it provides a good way
to leverage the software and experience of the TLS world. There have
been discussions to use more TCP for the DNS, in light of reflection
attacks (based on the spoofing of the source IP address, which is
much more difficult with TCP). For instance, a stub resolver could
open a TCP connection with the resolver at startup and keep it open
to send queries and receive responses. The server would of course be
free to tear down these connections at will (when it is under stress,
for instance) and the client could reestablish them when necessary.
Remember that TLS sessions can survive TCP connections so there is no
need to restart the TLS negociation each time. This DNS-over-TLS-
over-TCP is already implemented in the Unbound resolver. It is safe
only if pipelining multiple questions over the same channel. Name
compression should also be disabled, or CRIME-style [crime] attacks
can apply.
Encryption alone does not guarantee perfect privacy, because of the
available metadata. For instance, the size of questions and
responses, even encrypted, provide hints about what queries have been
sent. (DNScrypt uses random-length padding, and a 64 bytes block
size, to limit this risk, but this raises other issues, for instance
during amplification attacks. Other security protocols use similar
techniques, for instance ESPv3.) Observing the periodicity of
encrypted questions/responses also discloses the TTL, which is yet
another hint about the queries. Non-cached responses are disclosing
the RTT between the resolver and authoritative servers. This is a
very useful indication to guess where authoritative servers are
located. Web pages are made of many resources, leading to multiple
requests, whose number and timing fingerprint which web site is being
browsed. So, observing encrypted traffic is not enough to recover
any plaintext queries, but is enough to answer the question "is one
of my employees browsing Facebook?". Finally, attackers can perform
a denial-of-service attack on possible targets, check if this makes a
difference on the encrypted traffic they observe, and infer what a
query was.
2.2. In the servers
2.2.1. In the resolvers
It does not seem there is a possible solution against a leaky
resolver. A resolver has to see the entire DNS traffic in clear.
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The best approach to limit the problem is to have local resolvers
whose caching will limit the leak. Local networks should have a
local caching resolver (even if it forwards the unanswered questions
to a forwarder) and individual laptops can have their very own
resolver, too.
One mechanism to potentially mitigate on the wire attacks between
stub resolvers and caching resolvers is to determine if the network
location of the caching resolver can be moved closer to the end
user's computer (reducing the attack surface). As noted earlier in
[I-D.bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy], if an end user's computer is
configured with a caching resolver on the edge of the local network,
an attacker would need to gain access to that local network in order
to successfully execute an on the wire attack against the stub
resolver. On the other hand, if the end user's computer is
configured to use a public DNS service as the caching resolver, the
attacker needs to simply get in the network path between the end user
and the public DNS server and so there is a much greater opportunity
for a successful attack. Configuring a caching resolver closer to
the end user can also reduce the possibility of on the wire attacks.
2.2.2. In the authoritative name servers
A possible solution would be to minimize the amount of data sent from
the resolver. When a resolver receives the query "What is the AAAA
record for www.example.com?", it sends to the root (assuming a cold
resolver, whose cache is empty) the very same question. Sending
"What are the NS records for .com?" would be sufficient (since it
will be the answer from the root anyway). To do so would be
compatible with the current DNS system and therefore could be
deployable, since it is an unilateral change to the resolvers.
To do so, the resolver needs to know the zone cut [RFC2181]. There
is not a zone cut at every label boundary. If we take the name
www.foo.bar.example, it is possible that there is a zone cut between
"foo" and "bar" but not between "bar" and "example". So, assuming
the resolver already knows the name servers of .example, when it
receives the query "What is the AAAA record of www.foo.bar.example",
it does not always know if the request should be sent to the name
servers of bar.example or to those of example. [RFC2181] suggests an
algorithm to find the zone cut, so resolvers may try it.
Note that DNSSEC-validating resolvers already have access to this
information, since they have to find the zone cut (the DNSKEY record
set is just below, the DS record set just above).
It can be noted that minimizing the amount of data sent also
partially addresses the case of a wire sniffer.
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One should note that the behaviour suggested here (minimizing the
amount of data sent in qnames) is NOT forbidden by the [RFC1034]
(section 5.3.3) or [RFC1035] (section 7.2). Sending the full qname
to the authoritative name server is a tradition, not a protocol
requirment.
Another note is that the answer to the NS query, unlike the referral
sent when the question is a full qname, is in the Answer section, not
in the Authoritative section. It has probably no practical
consequences.
2.2.3. Rogue servers
Traditional security measures (do not let malware change the system
configuration) are of course a must. A protection against rogue
servers announced by DHCP could be to have a local resolver, and to
always use it, ignoring DHCP.
3. Security considerations
Hey, man, the entire document is about security!
4. Acknowledgments
Thanks to Olaf Kolkman and Francis Dupont for the interesting
discussions, specially about qname minimization. Thanks to Mohsen
Souissi for proofreading.
5. References
5.1. Normative References
[RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973, July
2013.
[I-D.bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy]
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Bortzmeyer, S., "DNS privacy problem statement", draft-
bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy-00 (work in progress),
November 2013.
5.2. Informative References
[RFC2181] Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Clarifications to the DNS
Specification", RFC 2181, July 1997.
[RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements", RFC
4033, March 2005.
[RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.
[RFC5936] Lewis, E. and A. Hoenes, "DNS Zone Transfer Protocol
(AXFR)", RFC 5936, June 2010.
[RFC6347] Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, January 2012.
[I-D.koch-perpass-dns-confidentiality]
Koch, P., "Confidentiality Aspects of DNS Data,
Publication, and Resolution", draft-koch-perpass-dns-
confidentiality-00 (work in progress), November 2013.
[I-D.vandergaast-edns-client-subnet]
Contavalli, C., Gaast, W., Leach, S., and E. Lewis,
"Client Subnet in DNS Requests", draft-vandergaast-edns-
client-subnet-02 (work in progress), July 2013.
[I-D.wijngaards-dnsop-confidentialdns]
Wijngaards, W., "Confidential DNS", draft-wijngaards-
dnsop-confidentialdns-00 (work in progress), November
2013.
[dnsop] IETF, , "The dnsop mailing list", October 2013.
[dagon-malware]
Dagon, D., "Corrupted DNS Resolution Paths: The Rise of a
Malicious Resolution Authority", 2007.
[dns-footprint]
Stoner, E., "DNS footprint of malware", October 2010.
[darkreading-dns]
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Lemos, R., "Got Malware? Three Signs Revealed In DNS
Traffic", May 2013.
[dnschanger]
Wikipedia, , "DNSchanger", November 2011.
[dnscrypt]
Denis, F., "DNSCrypt", .
[dnscurve]
Bernstein, D., "DNScurve", .
[prism] NSA, , "PRISM", 2007.
[crime] Rizzo, J. and T. Dong, "The CRIME attack against TLS",
2012.
[ditl] , "A Day in the Life of the Internet (DITL)", 2002.
[data-protection-directive]
, "European directive 95/46/EC on the protection of
individuals with regard to the processing of personal data
and on the free movement of such data", November 1995.
[passive-dns]
Weimer, F., "Passive DNS Replication", April 2005.
[tor-leak]
, "DNS leaks in Tor", 2013.
Author's Address
Stephane Bortzmeyer
AFNIC
Immeuble International
Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines 78181
France
Phone: +33 1 39 30 83 46
Email: bortzmeyer+ietf@nic.fr
URI: http://www.afnic.fr/
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