On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 10:14:50AM -0700, Vincent Danen wrote:
> 
> From where I sit, the only thing djbdns 
> doesn't do is DNSSEC and DDNS, neither of which are useful to me.  
> DNSSEC can be avoided by using tcprules to protect access to zone 
> transfers.

Vincent, I am sure you are aware of this, but for the benefit of those
following along, DNSSEC is about _a_lot_ more than just securing who
can zone transfer from you.  It the infrastructure needed to make DNS
a PKI.  It also adds integrity to a system that lacks any right now.

UDP packets are trivial to forge (much more so trivial than TCP
packets), so it is relatively easy to cause all kinds of security
problems by means of forging DNS replies.  People rely on the accuracy
of DNS replies all the time (much more than they should).  DNSSEC adds
authenticity to DNS replies so that answers can be relied on to the
extent that people (blindly) rely on them today.

On the PKI front, have you seen FreeSWAN's Opportunisitc Encryption
proposal?  It uses the DNS to distribute and authenticate encryption
and authorization keys.  This can only be done with any reliability
with DNSSEC.

b.

-- 
Brian J. Murrell

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