Securing The Root: A Proposal For Distributing Signing Authority

Management of the Domain Name System (DNS) root zone file is a uniquely global policy problem. For the Internet to connect everyone, the root must be coordinated and compatible. While authority over the legacy root zone file has been contentious and divisive at times, everyone agrees that the Internet should be made more secure. A newly standardized protocol, DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), would make the Internet's infrastructure more secure. In order to fully implement DNSSEC, the procedures for managing the DNS root must be revised. Therein lies an opportunity. In revising the root zone management procedures, we can develop a new solution that diminishes the impact of the legacy monopoly held by the U.S. government and avoids another contentious debate over unilateral U.S. control. In this paper we describe the outlines of a new system for the management of a DNSSEC-enabled root. Our proposal distributes authority over securing the root, unlike another recently suggested method, while avoiding the risks and pitfalls of an intergovernmental power sharing scheme

Can NSEC5 be practical for DNSSEC deployments?

NSEC5 is proposed modification to DNSSEC that simultaneously guarantees two security properties: (1) privacy against offline zone enumeration, and (2) integrity of zone contents, even if an adversary compromises the authoritative nameserver responsible for responding to DNS queries for the zone. This paper redesigns NSEC5 to make it both practical and performant. Our NSEC5 redesign features a new fast verifiable random function (VRF) based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), along with a cryptographic proof of its security. This VRF is also of independent interest, as it is being standardized by the IETF and being used by several other projects. We show how to integrate NSEC5 using our ECC-based VRF into the DNSSEC protocol, leveraging precomputation to improve performance and DNS protocol-level optimizations to shorten responses. Next, we present the first full-fledged implementation of NSEC5—extending widely-used DNS software to present a nameserver and recursive resolver that support NSEC5—and evaluate their performance under aggressive DNS query loads. Our performance results indicate that our redesigned NSEC5 can be viable even for high-throughput scenarioshttps://eprint.iacr.org/2017/099.pdfFirst author draf

Evaluation of Anonymized ONS Queries

Electronic Product Code (EPC) is the basis of a pervasive infrastructure for the automatic identification of objects on supply chain applications (e.g., pharmaceutical or military applications). This infrastructure relies on the use of the (1) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to tag objects in motion and (2) distributed services providing information about objects via the Internet. A lookup service, called the Object Name Service (ONS) and based on the use of the Domain Name System (DNS), can be publicly accessed by EPC applications looking for information associated with tagged objects. Privacy issues may affect corporate infrastructures based on EPC technologies if their lookup service is not properly protected. A possible solution to mitigate these issues is the use of online anonymity. We present an evaluation experiment that compares the of use of Tor (The second generation Onion Router) on a global ONS/DNS setup, with respect to benefits, limitations, and latency.Comment: 14 page

NSEC5, DNSSEC authenticated denial of existence

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) introduced two resource records (RR) for authenticated denial of existence: the NSEC RR and the NSEC3 RR. This document introduces NSEC5 as an alternative mechanism for DNSSEC authenticated denial of existence. NSEC5 uses verifiable random functions (VRFs) to prevent offline enumeration of zone contents. NSEC5 also protects the integrity of the zone contents even if an adversary compromises one of the authoritative servers for the zone. Integrity is preserved because NSEC5 does not require private zone-signing keys to be present on all authoritative servers for the zone, in contrast to DNSSEC online signing schemes like NSEC3 White Lies.https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-vcelak-nsec5/First author draf

Library and Tools for Server-Side DNSSEC Implementation

Tato práce se zabývá analýzou současných open source řešení pro zabezpečení DNS zón pomocí technologie DNSSEC. Na základě provedené rešerše je navržena a implementována nová knihovna pro použití na autoritativních DNS serverech. Cílem knihovny je zachovat výhody stávajících řešení a vyřešit jejich nedostatky. Součástí návrhu je i sada nástrojů pro správu politiky a klíčů. Funkčnost vytvořené knihovny je ukázána na jejím použití v serveru Knot DNS.This thesis deals with currently available open-source solutions for securing DNS zones using the DNSSEC mechanism. Based on the findings, a new DNSSEC library for an authoritative name server is designed and implemented. The aim of the library is to keep the benefits of existing solutions and to eliminate their drawbacks. Also a set of utilities to manage keys and signing policy is proposed. The functionality of the library is demonstrated by it's use in the Knot DNS server.