Domain Name System Operations (dnsop) Working Group S. Bortzmeyer
Internet-Draft AFNIC
Intended status: Experimental June 7, 2015
Expires: December 9, 2015
DNS query name minimisation to improve privacy
draft-ietf-dnsop-qname-minimisation-03
Abstract
This document describes one of the techniques that could be used to
improve DNS privacy (see [I-D.ietf-dprive-problem-statement]), a
technique called "QNAME minimisation", where the DNS resolver no
longer sends the full original QNAME to the upstream name server.
REMOVE BEFORE PUBLICATION Discussions of the document should take
place on the DNSOP working group mailing list [dnsop].
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on December 9, 2015.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction and background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. QNAME minimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Possible issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Operational considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Performance considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Implementation status - REMOVE BEFORE PUBLICATION . . . . . . 6
9. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
10.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Appendix A. An algorithm to find the zone cut . . . . . . . . . 9
Appendix B. Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1. Introduction and background
The problem statement is exposed in
[I-D.ietf-dprive-problem-statement] TODO: add a reference to the
specific section when ietf-dprive-problem-statement will be published
as RFC. The terminology ("QNAME", "resolver", etc) is also defined
in this companion document. This specific solution is not intended
to fully solve the DNS privacy problem; instead, it should be viewed
as one tool amongst many.
It follows the principle explained in section 6.1 of [RFC6973]: the
less data you send out, the fewer privacy problems you'll get.
Under current practice, 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 the full QNAME to the authoritative name server is a
tradition, not a protocol requirement. This tradition
comes[mockapetris-history] from a desire to optimize the number of
requests, when the same name server is authoritative for many zones
in a given name (something which was more common in the old days,
where the same name servers served .com and the root) or when the
same name server is both recursive and authoritative (something which
is strongly discouraged now). Whatever the merits of this choice at
this time, the DNS is quite different now.
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2. QNAME minimisation
The idea is to minimise the amount of data sent from the DNS resolver
to the authoritative name server. In the example in the previous
section, sending "What are the NS records for .com?" would have been
sufficient (since it will be the answer from the root anyway). The
rest of this section describes the recommended way to do QNAME
minimisation, the one which maximimes privacy benefits (other
alternatives are discussed in appendixes).
A resolver which implements QNAME minimisation, and which does not
have already the answer in its cache, instead of sending the full
QNAME and the original QTYPE upstream, sends a request to the name
server authoritative for the closest known parent of the original
QNAME. The request is done with:
the QTYPE NS,
the QNAME which is the original QNAME, stripped to just one label
more than the zone for which the server is authoritative.
For example, a resolver receives a request to resolve
foo.bar.baz.example. Let's assume it already knows that
ns1.nic.example is authoritative for .example and the resolver does
not know a more specific authoritative name server. It will send the
query QTYPE=NS,QNAME=baz.example to ns1.nic.example.
To do such minimisation, the resolver needs to know the zone cut
[RFC2181]. Zone cuts do not necessarily exist 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 whether
the request should be sent to the name servers of bar.example or to
those of example. [RFC2181] suggests a method to find the zone cut
(section 6), 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).
3. Possible issues
QNAME minimisation is legal, since the original DNS RFC do not
mandate sending the full QNAME. So, in theory, it should work
without any problems. However, in practice, some problems may occur
(see an analysis in [huque-qnamemin]).
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Some broken name servers do not react properly to qtype=NS requests.
For instance, some authoritative name servers embedded in load
balancers reply properly to A queries but send REFUSED to NS queries.
REMOVE THIS SENTENCE BEFORE PUBLICATION: As an example of today, look
at www.ratp.fr (not ratp.fr). This behaviour is a gross protocol
violation, and there is no need to stop improving the DNS because of
such brokenness. However, QNAME minimisation may still work with
such domains since they are only leaf domains (no need to send them
NS requests). Such setup breaks more than just QNAME minimisation.
It breaks negative answers, since the servers don't return the
correct SOA, and it also breaks anything dependent upon NS and SOA
records existing at the top of the zone.
A problem can also appear when a name server does not react properly
to ENT (Empty Non-Terminals). If ent.example.com has no resource
records but foobar.ent.example.com does, then ent.example.com is an
ENT. A query, whatever the qtype, for ent.example.com must return
NODATA (NOERROR / ANSWER: 0). However, some broken name servers
return NXDOMAIN for ENTs. REMOVE THIS SENTENCE BEFORE PUBLICATION:
As an example of today, look at com.akadns.net or www.upenn.edu with
its delegations to Akamai. If a resolver queries only
foobar.ent.example.com, everything will be OK but, if it implements
QNAME minimisation, it may query ent.example.com and get a NXDOMAIN.
See also section 3 of [I-D.vixie-dnsext-resimprove] for the other bad
consequences of this brokenness.
Another way to deal with such broken name servers would be to try
with QTYPE=A requests (A being chosen because it is the most common
and hence a qtype which will be always accepted, while a qtype NS may
ruffle the feathers of some middleboxes). Instead of querying name
servers with a query "NS example.com", we could use "A _.example.com"
and see if we get a referral.
Other strange and non-conformant practices may pose a problem: there
is a common DNS anti-pattern used by low-end web hosters that also do
DNS hosting that exploits the fact that the DNS protocol (pre-DNSSEC)
allows certain serious misconfigurations, such as parent and child
zones disagreeing on the location of a zone cut. Basically, they
have a single zone with wildcards for each TLD like:
*.example. 60 IN A 192.0.2.6
(It is not known why they don't just wildcard all of "*." and be done
with it.)
This lets them turn up many web hosting customers without having to
configure thousands of individual zones on their nameservers. They
just tell the prospective customer to point their NS records at the
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hoster's nameservers, and the Web hoster doesn't have to provision
anything in order to make the customer's domain resolve. NS queries
to the hoster will therefore do not give the right result, which may
endanger QNAME minimisation (it will be a problem for DNSSEC, too).
4. Discussion
QNAME minimisation is compatible with the current DNS system and
therefore can easily be deployed; since it is a unilateral change to
the resolver, it does not change the protocol. (Because of that,
resolver implementers may do QNAME minimisation in slightly different
ways, see the appendices for examples.).
One should note that the behaviour suggested here (minimising the
amount of data sent in QNAMEs from the resolver) is NOT forbidden by
the [RFC1034] (section 5.3.3) or [RFC1035] (section 7.2). As said in
Section 1, the current method, sending the full QNAME, is not
mandated by the DNS protocol.
It may be noticed that many documents explaining the DNS and intended
for a wide audience, incorrectly describe the resolution process as
using QNAME minimisation, for instance by showing a request going to
the root, with just the TLD in the query. As a result, these
documents may confuse the privacy analysis of the users who see them.
5. Operational considerations
The administrators of the forwarders, and of the authoritative name
servers, will get less data, which will reduce the utility of the
statistics they can produce (such as the percentage of the various
QTYPEs) [kaliski-minimum].
DNS administrators are reminded that the data on DNS requests that
they store may have legal consequences, depending on your
jurisdiction (check with your local lawyer).
6. Performance considerations
The main goal of QNAME minimisation is to improve privacy by sending
less data. However, it may have other advantages. For instance, if
a root name server receives a query from some resolver for A.example
followed by B.example followed by C.example, the result will be three
NXDOMAINs, since .example does not exist in the root zone. Under
query name minimisation, the root name servers would hear only one
question (for .example itself) to which they could answer NXDOMAIN,
thus opening up a negative caching opportunity in which the full
resolver could know a priori that neither B.example or C.example
could exist. Thus in this common case the total number of upstream
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queries under QNAME minimisation would be counter-intuitively less
than the number of queries under the traditional iteration (as
described in the DNS standard).
QNAME minimisation may also improve look-up performance for TLD
operators. For a typical TLD, delegation-only, and with delegations
just under the TLD, a 2-label QNAME query is optimal for finding the
delegation owner name.
QNAME minimisation can decrease performance in some cases, for
instance for a deep domain name (like
www.host.group.department.example.com where
host.group.department.example.com is hosted on example.com's name
servers). For such a name, a cold resolver will, depending how QNAME
minimisation is implemented, send more queries. Once the cache is
warm, there will be no difference with a traditional resolver. A
possible solution is to always use the traditional algorithm when the
cache is cold and then to move to QNAME minimisation. This will
decrease the privacy a bit but will guarantee no degradation of
performance. Actual testing is described in [huque-qnamemin]. Such
deep domains are specially common under ip6.arpa.
7. Security considerations
QNAME minimisation's benefits are clear in the case where you want to
decrease exposure to the authoritative name server. But minimising
the amount of data sent also, in part, addresses the case of a wire
sniffer as well the case of privacy invasion by the servers.
(Encryption is of course a better defense against wire sniffers but,
unlike QNAME minimisation, it changes the protocol and cannot be
deployed unilaterally. Also, the effect of QNAME minimisation on
wire sniffers depend on whether the sniffer is, on the DNS path.)
QNAME minimisation offers zero protection against the recursive
resolver, which still sees the full request coming from the stub
resolver.
8. Implementation status - REMOVE BEFORE PUBLICATION
This section records the status of known implementations of the
protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of this
Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in [RFC6982].
The description of implementations in this section is intended to
assist the IETF in its decision processes in progressing drafts to
RFCs. Please note that the listing of any individual implementation
here does not imply endorsement by the IETF. Furthermore, no effort
has been spent to verify the information presented here that was
supplied by IETF contributors. This is not intended as, and must not
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be construed to be, a catalog of available implementations or their
features. Readers are advised to note that other implementations may
exist.
According to [RFC6982], "this will allow reviewers and working groups
to assign due consideration to documents that have the benefit of
running code, which may serve as evidence of valuable experimentation
and feedback that have made the implemented protocols more mature.
It is up to the individual working groups to use this information as
they see fit".
As of today, no production resolver implements QNAME minimisation but
it has been publically announced for the future Knot DNS resolver
[1]. For Unbound, see ticket 648 [2] and for PowerDNS [3].
The algorithm to find the zone cuts described in Appendix A is
implemented with QNAME minimisation in the sample code zonecut.go
[4]. It is also implemented, for a much longer time, in an option of
dig, "dig +trace", but without QNAME minimisation.
Another implementation was done by Shumon Huque for testing, and is
described in [huque-qnamemin].
9. Acknowledgments
Thanks to Olaf Kolkman for the original idea although the concept is
probably much older [5]. Thanks for Shumon Huque for implementation
and testing. Thanks to Mark Andrews and Francis Dupont for the
interesting discussions. Thanks to Brian Dickson, Warren Kumari,
Evan Hunt and David Conrad for remarks and suggestions. Thanks to
Mohsen Souissi for proofreading. Thanks to Tony Finch for the zone
cut algorithm in Appendix A. Thanks to Paul Vixie for pointing out
that there are practical advantages (besides privacy) to QNAME
minimisation. Thanks to Phillip Hallam-Baker for the fallback on A
queries, to deal with broken servers. Thanks to Robert Edmonds for
an interesting anti-pattern.
10. References
10.1. 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.
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[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.ietf-dprive-problem-statement]
Bortzmeyer, S., "DNS privacy considerations", draft-ietf-
dprive-problem-statement-05 (work in progress), May 2015.
10.2. Informative References
[RFC2181] Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Clarifications to the DNS
Specification", RFC 2181, July 1997.
[RFC6982] Sheffer, Y. and A. Farrel, "Improving Awareness of Running
Code: The Implementation Status Section", RFC 6982, July
2013.
[I-D.wkumari-dnsop-hammer]
Kumari, W., Arends, R., Woolf, S., and D. Migault, "Highly
Automated Method for Maintaining Expiring Records", draft-
wkumari-dnsop-hammer-01 (work in progress), July 2014.
[I-D.vixie-dnsext-resimprove]
Vixie, P., Joffe, R., and F. Neves, "Improvements to DNS
Resolvers for Resiliency, Robustness, and Responsiveness",
draft-vixie-dnsext-resimprove-00 (work in progress), June
2010.
[dnsop] IETF, , "The DNSOP working group of IETF", March 2014,
.
[mockapetris-history]
Mockapetris, P., "Private discussion", January 2015.
[kaliski-minimum]
Kaliski, B., "Minimum Disclosure: What Information Does a
Name Server Need to Do Its Job?", March 2015,
.
[huque-qnamemin]
Huque, S., "Query name minimization and authoritative
server behavior", May 2015, .
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[huque-qnamestorify]
Huque, S., "Qname Minimization @ DNS-OARC", May 2015,
.
10.3. URIs
[1] https://ripe70.ripe.net/presentations/121-knot-resolver-
ripe70.pdf
[2] https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/bugs-script/show_bug.cgi?id=648
[3] https://github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/issues/2311
[4] https://github.com/bortzmeyer/my-IETF-work/blob/master/draft-
ietf-dnsop-QNAME-minimisation/zonecut.go
[5] https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns-
operations/2010-February/005003.html
Appendix A. An algorithm to find the zone cut
Although a validating resolver already has the logic to find the zone
cut, other resolvers may be interested by this algorithm to follow in
order to locate this cut:
(0) If the query can be answered from the cache, do so, otherwise
iterate as follows:
(1) Find closest enclosing NS RRset in your cache. The owner of
this NS RRset will be a suffix of the QNAME - the longest suffix
of any NS RRset in the cache. Call this PARENT.
(2) Initialize CHILD to the same as PARENT.
(3) If CHILD is the same as the QNAME, resolve the original query
using PARENT's name servers, and finish.
(4) Otherwise, add a label from the QNAME to the start of CHILD.
(5) If you have a negative cache entry for the NS RRset at CHILD,
go back to step 3.
(6) Query for CHILD IN NS using PARENT's name servers. The
response can be:
(6a) A referral. Cache the NS RRset from the authority section
and go back to step 1.
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(6b) An authoritative answer. Cache the NS RRset from the
answer section and go back to step 1.
(6c) An NXDOMAIN answer. Return an NXDOMAIN answer in response
to the original query and stop.
(6d) A NOERROR/NODATA answer. Cache this negative answer and
go back to step 3.
Appendix B. Alternatives
Remember that QNAME minimisation is unilateral so a resolver is not
forced to implement it exactly as described here.
There are several ways to perform QNAME minimisation. The one in
Section 2 is the suggested one. It can be called the aggressive
algorithm, since the resolver only sends NS queries as long as it
does not know the zone cuts. This is the safest, from a privacy
point of view. Another possible algorithm, not fully studied at this
time, could be to "piggyback" on the traditional resolution code. At
startup, it sends traditional full QNAMEs and learns the zone cuts
from the referrals received, then switches to NS queries asking only
for the minimum domain name. This leaks more data but could require
fewer changes in the existing resolver codebase.
In the above specification, the original QTYPE is replaced by NS (or
may be A, if too many servers react incorrectly to NS requests),
which is the best approach to preserve privacy. But this erases
information about the relative use of the various QTYPEs, which may
be interesting for researchers (for instance if they try to follow
IPv6 deployment by counting the percentage of AAAA vs. A queries). A
variant of QNAME minimisation would be to keep the original QTYPE.
Another useful optimisation may be, in the spirit of the HAMMER idea
[I-D.wkumari-dnsop-hammer] to probe in advance for the introduction
of zone cuts where none previously existed (i.e. confirm their
continued absence, or discover them.)
Author's Address
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Stephane Bortzmeyer
AFNIC
1, rue Stephenson
Montigny-le-Bretonneux 78180
France
Phone: +33 1 39 30 83 46
Email: bortzmeyer+ietf@nic.fr
URI: http://www.afnic.fr/
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