At Sun, 10 Apr 2016 10:18:11 -0400,
Tim Wicinski <[email protected]> wrote:

> This starts a Call for Adoption for Aggressive use of NSEC/NSEC3
> draft-fujiwara-dnsop-nsec-aggressiveuse
>
> The draft is available here:
>
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-fujiwara-dnsop-nsec-aggressiveuse/
>
> Please review this draft to see if you think it is suitable for adoption
> by DNSOP, and comments to the list, clearly stating your view.  *Speak
> Up* if you have strong opposition to this work.
>
> *More Importantly*
> Please also indicate if you are willing to contribute text, review, etc.
> We will want several dedicated reviewers on this.

I've read previous and current versions of the draft.  I support the
adoption of this draft with one condition: IMO its "problem statement"
should be completely revised.  If adopted, I'm willing to review
future versions.

Regarding the problem statement, I believe my comments on a previous
version still stand:
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/dnsop/current/msg14865.html
(the point about wildcard may warrant more discussion, but that's
relatively minor in the whole context).  The latest version of the
draft seems to try to defend it in that scenario, thereby rather
making it fragile and unnecessarily complicated (see below for some
specific points).

So I think this draft should stop selling the idea as a counter
measure for random subdomain attacks on *recursive servers*.  It may
still have other benefits, such as:

- general possible performance improvement for recursive servers (but,
  as I commented for the cheese-shop draft, I'd like to see measured
  evidence about that).
- possible counter measure for random subdomain attacks on
  *authoritative servers* (and encourage the authoritative operators
  to sign their zones)
- reducing garbage (though not attack) traffic to authoritative
  servers, especially higher level ones such as root.

And I see these are at least worth discussing, and I therefore support
the adoption in that context.

Some specific comments on the 03 version

- Abstract: I suggest revising this on this point (see above):

   responses as well as some level of mitigation of random sub-domain
   attacks (referred to as "Water Torture" attacks).

  by either simply removing it or clarifying that it's mitigation for
  authoritative servers.

- Section 3: IMO this section will have to be completely revised in
  terms of the selling point.  Even if my point about the effect for
  recursive server is refused, this section looks still quite awkward
  since it reads as if this is *the* problem this proposal tries to
  address, while in (e.g.) abstract it rather sounds a weak subset of
  the goals.

- Section 4.2: this may also depend on the goal of the proposal, but
  at this moment I don't think this "SHOULD" is fully justified:

   A full-service resolver implementation SHOULD support aggressive use
   of NSEC and enable it by default.  It SHOULD provide a configuration
   knob to disable aggressive use of NSEC.

  If it's just a possible performance improvement for recursive
  servers, it should be totally up to the implementors choice.  For
  other purposes such as (helping) attack mitigation for authoritative
  servers or reduce garbage traffic to the root, some stronger
  requirement level may make sense, but I'd like to see more empirical
  evidence before making the requirement.

- Section 4.5

   Even if a wildcard is cached, it is necessary to send a query to an
   authoritative server to ensure that the name in question doesn't
   exist as long as the name is not in the negative cache.

   When aggressive use is enabled, regardless of description of
   Section 4.5 of [RFC4035], it is possible to send a positive response
   immediately when the name in question matches a NSEC/NSEC3 RRs in the
   negative cache.

  I don't understand the second paragraph.  I also don't understand
  how the first paragraph is related to the second.  I'm not sure if
  it's only me, but I'd like to see more explanation here.

- Section 5.1: IMO, this is an example that makes the document fragile
  by trying to defend it as an attack mitigation.  If we say something
  like this:

   This draft proposes that the CD bit may be ignored to support
   aggressive negative caching when the full-service resolver is under
   attacks with CD bit set.

  It's useless unless we also specify how to detect the resolver is
  under an attack.  And, if we can reasonably detect that (which I
  guess is possible) we might not necessarily need nsec-aggressiveuse
  for mitigation.  When it's under an attack, other general counter
  measures such as rate limiting can be justified and probably
  sufficient.  My personal suggestion is to stop the idea of defending
  it as an attack mitigation, and simply note the implication of the
  CD bit as a fact.  It will not immediately make this proposal
  useless for other general cases, since such queries would be
  relatively much rare.

- Section 5.2: ditto.  I suggest simply removing this section.

- Section 9: I don't understand this:

   Aggressive use of NSEC/NSEC3 resource records without DNSSEC
   validation may cause security problems.

  Specifically what does "without DNSSEC validation" mean?  Something
  like a case where a validating resolver receives an NSEC/NSEC3 and
  uses that information without DNSSEC-validating it?  If so, it's
  simply invalid per protocol whether the use is "aggressive" or not.
  So I don't see the need for stating that here.  If this means
  something else, I didn't get it and would like to see more
  explanation.

--
JINMEI, Tatuya

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