[DNSOP] DNS over TCP *currently* does not scale

2008-08-18 Thread bert hubert
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 11:42:39PM -0400, Dean Anderson wrote:

 TCP isn't susceptible to this kind of attack at all. TCP spoofing is

While this is true, it turns out the current crop of authoritative
nameservers, including mine, is not up to serving thousands of
requests/second over TCP. Or at least not thousands of new sessions/second.

I'm working on in-place spoofing countermeasures and I've already had to
stop my tests because I ended up overloading the authentic authoritative
servers with TCP queries.

So TCP is not the end-all to our worries. Nor is DNSSEC however - the
current crop of auth servers doesn't have that enabled or working either.

Bert

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Re: [DNSOP] A different question (was Re: Kaminsky on djbdns bugs (fwd))

2008-08-18 Thread Andrew Sullivan
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 04:07:03PM -0700, David Conrad wrote:

 intervention) or they'll turn off DNSSEC.  So, in the worst case, they'll 
 get bitten and revert back to the same level of security (or lack thereof) 
 they have today.

 Is this worth blocking DNSSEC deployment?

It seems to me that that story is the one by which DNSSEC becomes
permanently hobbled on the Interned, as various overworked or
semi-incompetent system administrators make a mistake of this sort and
cause sites to go dark for significant portions of the Internet.  When
the CTO receives the incident report, the CTO is going to say, So if
we never turned on DNSSEC, this wouldn't have happened?  Ok.  New
policy: no DNSSEC.

At least, that's the way it would have worked in most large
institutions I ever worked in/around.

A

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Re: [DNSOP] A different question (was Re: Kaminsky on djbdns bugs (fwd))

2008-08-18 Thread Dean Anderson
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Paul Wouters wrote:

 I wouldn't be using starbucks resolver, since i just installed my
 own DNSSEC-aware resolver?

Ordinarilly , when you get a DHCP-supplied nameserver from starbucks,
your stub resolver directs its requests to that caching server.  It is
indeed possible that your stub resolver could make its own queries,
including to the root and TLD servers, but putting this non-cached
end-user load on those servers is yet another unanticpated operational
problem.  No one has accounted for such increased load for DNSSEC.

  When the internal representation is updated, it is often done one RR at
  a time. So two responses updating the same two records could be
  interleaved.  This is a simple database problem called a race condition.
 
 However, we have TTL's and signature life times, so older entries will only
 get updated with newer entries, so this race is not a problem.

I don't think you understand the programming issues.  This has nothing
to do with TTLs or signature lifetimes.  The point is that DNS servers
don't currently perform transactions internally; normally, records don't
depend tightly on other records (hence the term 'loosely coherent').  
BTW, adding transaction capability greatly slows down database servers.
This is probably one of the reasons people like to put stuff in DNS
instead of databases.  DNS is fast because of its stateless nature.
DNSSEC changes that, and imposes speed-reducing demands on server
architecture.  Or else, won't work right.  This change alters DNS from 
being loosely coherent to tightly coherent, with corresponding 
performance impacts to get correct operation.

  You lost me here.
 
  Sorry.  When the RR isn't the same as the one for which the RRSIG was
  computed, the DNSSEC-aware stub resolver will reject the record. If it
  asks the caching server again, it gets the same records. So the resolver
  will fail, and will continue to fail until the TTL expires.  The bad guy
  just creates two records with long TTL, and you have the DOS attack.
 
 Mark and Roy already explained why this is not the case.

Who do you mean by 'Mark and Roy'? Mark Andrews and Roy Arends? When?

  If the caching server checks the signature of all records, its
  susceptible to a DOS attack by lots of DNSSEC queries that take a
  lot of computation to check.  Seems to be no-win.
 
  That's not a DOS attack. That's the price of cryptogrpahically signing
  the DNS.
 
  When your server can't handle the load of all these calculations on
  millions of queries sent by the attacker, its a DOS attack.
 
 So is not getting any traffic because you lost .com due to cache
 poisoning.

True enough. Same problem continues after all the DNSSEC effort, and now
we have created the additional problems of the other DDOS attacks using
the signed records.  Seems to be a giant step backward, with no step
forward.

 In fact, what I understood is that resolvers mostly have problems
 switching to DNSSEC not due to DNSSEC but due to DNSSEC requiring
 EDNS0. And mind you, the EDNS0 was released in what? 1999?
 
 It's not the crypto that's the resolvers issue. That's easilly solved
 by adding a cpu or a box.

The transition issue you speak of is a different problem.  The DOS 
attack I speak of is when your caching server gets lots of requests for 
DNSSEC records, which it then must verify. These requests aren't 
'legitimate' in the sense that users made these queries genuinely trying 
to get information.  These requests are bogus, generated only with the 
purpose of creating load on the server.  Verifying the crypto keys is 
not easy.  Verifying millions is impossible. 

  Now imagine the target spoofed IP's are the nameservers of, say
  yourdomain.com.  When the roots (or TLDs, etc) get millions of
  forged UDP packets, the roots can't block the incoming
  packets---that would severely harm the target IP addresses. On the
  other end, the target IP addresses can't block the root
  servers---that would also seriously harm the target IP addresses.
  The target just has to 'take it'.
 
  The greater the amplification factor (Response size / request size--
  perhaps only 64 bytes), the more damaging this attack is.  Since
  there are (or may be--probably will be)  a number of additional (and
  large) DNSSEC records in a response, the response could get quite
  large, causing significant damage. So yes, that is a reason not to
  deploy DNSSEC.
 
 This has also been explained earlier. Just get a botnet that's 100x
 the size to accomplish the same. This argument amounts to something
 like let's not do HDTV because the home user DSL might not be able to
 download it in real time anyway.

No, actually, it isn't like that at all.  If there is no amplification,
the botnet will simply use ICMP or something it already has a program to
do. When there is amplification (perhaps up to 100x in this case) a very
small botnet can do a very great deal of damage, for a much longer time.  
A great deal of effort 

Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread Brian Dickson

bert hubert wrote:

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 04:34:30PM +, Paul Vixie wrote:
  

and let's also make explicit that TCP is not to be used unless UDP returns
TC or unless QTYPE=AXFR or unless UDP QTYPE=IXFR returned only one SOA.



This means disabling one of the more widely used MTAs.


Could you please elaborate on this? Which MTA, how does it use DNS, and 
is the way it uses it intractable?



It may require some work to beef up TCP support though,


The problem, I think, is TCP itself, not TCP support within 
implementations. E.g. resource limits per IP address (16 bits of port 
number) don't scale to current-size Internet scale.


So, short of dramatic changes to TCP that support better scalability and 
performance, it's kind of out of scope for DNS itself.


Brian
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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread bert hubert
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 05:27:24PM +, Paul Vixie wrote:

 TCP/53 a redheaded stepchild and its uses are all dangerous or unscalable.
 (that initiators do the close, and that responders have a minimum 2-minute
 timeout, says that any conformant implementation can be slapped down hard
 with a three line perl script running anywhere on the internet.)

DNS over TCP is a damn sight easier than WWW over TCP. Ask the webserver
guys about their query rates..

We've just had it easy over the past years, and it shows.

The server I mean by the way is microsoft exchange, which likes to do DNS
over TCP.

Bert

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Re: [DNSOP] Pointless FUD and confusion about DNSSEC deployment

2008-08-18 Thread Dean Anderson
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Jim Reid wrote:

 On 18 Aug 2008, at 05:11, Dean Anderson wrote:
 
  Ok, I agree that totally DNSSEC-oblivious servers won't be a problem
  for DOS, but of course remain susceptible to poisoning even if the
  stub resolver and the authority server both implement DNSSEC.
 
 Kindly explain how is this any different from when poisoning occurs  
 when stub resolver and authority server don't implement DNSSEC.

Its not any different; its exactly the same problem.  And DNSSEC creates 
more problems, without solving any.

 The fact is DNSSEC is the *only* game in town for preventing cache  
 poisoning. 

TCP is another 'game in town'.  We may also be able to invent other
'games', as DJB suggests.

 So to go back to David's original question: will deploying DNSSEC
 break anything that's already in use that doesn't support DNSSEC?

Yes: DNSSEC enables DDOS attacks that didn't exist before, and doesn't
eliminate any attacks that previously existed.

  Now if that resolving server does pay attention to the DO bit, it
  will set it on the query it makes to the authoritative server. That
  makes the authoritative server return an answer which will contain
  the new RRSIG and the resolving server's cache is updated
  accordingly.
 
  Ok. So what about caching servers that do understand the DO bit but
  don't actually verify the responses? They just cache the response
  for the stub resolver to verify?  These servers can still be
  poisoned with invalid record combinations that they pass on to stub
  resolvers, resulting in the DOS.  Such servers may still be subject
  to the race condition I described.
 
 How is this different from a resolving server not getting the correct
 answer because it queried an authoritative server that hasn't seen the
 latest version of the zone on the master?

In that scenario, the old data is consistent. In my scenario, poisoning
has created inconsistent data on the non-verifying DNSSEC cache.

 In fact in the somewhat contrived scenario you pose, the stub resolver
 gets a validation failure. So they at least know something has gone
 wrong. Which has to be a great leap forward from getting bad
 (poisoned) data and not having the slightest clue that has happened.

The resolver 'knows' perhaps, but the user doesn't know anything. They
just know that they typed in 'www.yahoo.com' and got no IP address.  
That's a DOS.

And its no leap forward. In the original cache poisoning case, the user
either gets, nothing, a non-working IP or they get the wrong server. If
they get the wrong server, their SSL verification and trust procedure
will exclude that server from use.  That's a DOS, too. 

 Ahhh. I see it now. Someone will deploy DNSSEC in their stub resolver.  
 But then they'll make that query a resolving server that doesn't speak  
 DNSSEC whenever their stub resolver wants to do a DNSSEC-aware lookup.  
 Right. Makes perfect sense. [Add scarcasm to taste.]

No, I already agreed that a totally DNSSEC-oblivious wasn't going to
pose a DNSSEC problem.  Your sarcasm is misplaced.

--Dean


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Re: [DNSOP] Pointless FUD and confusion about DNSSEC deployment

2008-08-18 Thread Dean Anderson
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Paul Hoffman wrote:

 At 1:27 PM +0100 8/18/08, Jim Reid wrote:
 The fact is DNSSEC is the *only* game in town for preventing cache poisoning.
 
 Note the subject of this particular thread. A more carefully-worded 
 sentence would be The fact is DNSSEC is the *only* game in town for 
 completely preventing cache poisoning. We have methods to reduce an 
 attacker's ability to poison caches effectively.

If the DNSSEC cache doesn't verify the records it caches, it is still 
suceptible to poisoning.

DNSSEC caches that verify are subject to a crypto-overload attack by 
large numbers of queries.

Both kinds of attacks ultimately result in a DOS

--Dean

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[DNSOP] Fwd: Pointless FUD and confusion about DNSSEC deployment

2008-08-18 Thread Joe Baptista
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 12:02 PM, Paul Hoffman [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:

 At 1:27 PM +0100 8/18/08, Jim Reid wrote:

 The fact is DNSSEC is the *only* game in town for preventing cache
 poisoning.


 Note the subject of this particular thread. A more carefully-worded
 sentence would be The fact is DNSSEC is the *only* game in town for
 completely preventing cache poisoning. We have methods to reduce an
 attacker's ability to poison caches effectively.


No it is not so little grasshopper.  The best way to secure DNS recursive
servers is to integrate a smart IDS and firewall solution.  Commerce needs
solutions - not more patches to patch the patches that should have been
patched years ago.

cheers
joe baptista

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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread bert hubert
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 07:20:16PM +, Paul Vixie wrote:
  We've just had it easy over the past years, and it shows.
 
 it *can't* scale.  laws of physics.

'When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is
impossible, he is very probably wrong.'

Consider this a compliment.

  The server I mean by the way is microsoft exchange, which likes to do DNS
  over TCP.
 
 so what does microsoft exchange do when it tries to talk to a tinydns service
 like everydns.net who doesn't implement TCP/53 at all?

It doesn't need to - it speaks to resolvers.

Bert

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Re: [DNSOP] Fwd: Pointless FUD and confusion about DNSSEC deployment

2008-08-18 Thread Ted Lemon

On Aug 18, 2008, at 12:51 PM, Joe Baptista wrote:
No.  I was thinking more of a smart porcupine with attitude.  At  
least use the IDS to notify the system administrator an attack is in  
progress.  I've attached a document that uses snort to log the  
event.  That could be used to notify the system administrator.


You can call it whatever you want, but whether the exterior is hard or  
spiny, if you depend on that for network security, you don't have much  
security.   I mean, if you really think that's the way to go, tell me  
this: do you still use rsh to log into your servers?   Because really  
that's what you're saying when you say that the security in DNSSEC or  
some other DNS security protocol isn't important.   You're saying that  
authentication based on IP address is sufficient.


If you really hate DNSSEC, I could be sympathetic to the idea of using  
TSIG to protect your resolvers.   That's what started this whole long  
thread, if you remember.   But what you're talking about is snake oil  
security.   There's a lot of money in it, don't get me wrong.   But  
it's not a solution the IETF should be promoting.


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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread Paul Vixie
 Paul's original proposal, C (if I interpret it correctly) applies to 
 resolver-authority-server communications, not stub-resolver 
 communications.

no, i was pretty much ruling them out period.  especially (RA=1 AND RD=0).
however, i could accept a SHOULD NOT for ADNS vs. a SHOULD for RDNS on
TCP/53 as long as we also add a SHOULD on RDNS for accept only
transactions from intended clients, most likely from within the same LAN,
campus, or ISP.  SHOULD is great since people who don't do it are still
compliant.  opendns wouldn't be in trouble.  but vendors would become
advised to set their defaults to a non-global ACL and then TCP/53 is
safer.

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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread bert hubert
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 01:45:43PM -0400, Brian Dickson wrote:
 The problem, I think, is TCP itself, not TCP support within 
 implementations. E.g. resource limits per IP address (16 bits of port 
 number) don't scale to current-size Internet scale.

It is possible to host 10 connections on 1 IP address and 1 port, and
this happens in practice. Think, again, of webservers, which all have to
listen on port 80, yet support lots of clients simultaneously.

Bert

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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread bert hubert
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 07:49:20PM +, Paul Vixie wrote:
   so what does microsoft exchange do when it tries to talk to a tinydns
   service like everydns.net who doesn't implement TCP/53 at all?
  
  It doesn't need to - it speaks to resolvers.
 
 what would it do if it had a TCP-forbidding firewall between it and its RDNS?

Dunno, but when PowerDNS had TCP bugs in its resolver code, all the
complaints I got were from Exchange users.

What's the rush with deprecating DNS/TCP btw? It languished in the shade for
25 years..

I worry because it turns out a single multiplexed connection between a
resolver and an authoritative server is just the ticket for doing almost
unspoofeable queries while under attack.

It serves as a semi-persistent channel (few seconds, minutes perhaps) over
which all the queries triggering the questions that are under attack can
safely be answered.

So I care about DNS over TCP as part of the entropy raising arsenal that is
(mostly) available today.

I'd hate to see it taken away!

Bert

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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread Paul Vixie
  what would it do if it had a TCP-forbidding firewall between it and its
  RDNS?
 
 Dunno, but when PowerDNS had TCP bugs in its resolver code, all the
 complaints I got were from Exchange users.

they'll cope.

 What's the rush with deprecating DNS/TCP btw? It languished in the shade for
 25 years..

that's what we said about udp port randomization after bernstein invented it.

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Re: [DNSOP] Fwd: Pointless FUD and confusion about DNSSEC deployment

2008-08-18 Thread Paul Wouters

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Joe Baptista wrote:


No.  I was thinking more of a smart porcupine with attitude.  At least use the 
IDS to notify the system
administrator an attack is in progress.  I've attached a document that uses 
snort to log the event.  That could be
used to notify the system administrator.

But the vision I have is of an integrated DNS - IDS - Firewall solution with an 
appropriate rules base for known
attack vectors.


Okay. So now an attack is going on, and your pager told you. What are you going 
to do?

1) nothing
2) clean the cache every 5 minutes hoping the race won't do damage in between 
cleanups
3) drop all incoming DNS packets for the spoofed domain, effectively DOS'ing 
the domain under attack
4) enable DNSSEC to deal with the situation

Paul
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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread Paul Wouters

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, bert hubert wrote:


On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 01:45:43PM -0400, Brian Dickson wrote:

The problem, I think, is TCP itself, not TCP support within
implementations. E.g. resource limits per IP address (16 bits of port
number) don't scale to current-size Internet scale.


It is possible to host 10 connections on 1 IP address and 1 port, and
this happens in practice. Think, again, of webservers, which all have to
listen on port 80, yet support lots of clients simultaneously.


Bad example. One of the reasons we don't see more crypto per default on
web browsing is precisely the limitations of SSL/CA's on using SSL with
virtual host web sites. I'd hardly call the lack of port 443 a success
story.

Paul
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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread bert hubert
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 06:11:14PM -0400, Paul Wouters wrote:
 It is possible to host 10 connections on 1 IP address and 1 port, and
 this happens in practice. Think, again, of webservers, which all have to
 listen on port 80, yet support lots of clients simultaneously.
 
 Bad example. One of the reasons we don't see more crypto per default on
 web browsing is precisely the limitations of SSL/CA's on using SSL with
 virtual host web sites. I'd hardly call the lack of port 443 a success
 story.

I must be more stupid than normal - care to elaborate how limitations (I
wasn't aware of, btw) on virtual webhosting authenticated and encrypted
using SSL certificates have any bearing on the suitability of TCP/IP for DNS
levels of performance?

Bert

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Re: [DNSOP] deprecating dangerous bit patterns and non-TC non-AXFR non-IXFR TCP

2008-08-18 Thread Paul Vixie
 Bad example. One of the reasons we don't see more crypto per default on
 web browsing is precisely the limitations of SSL/CA's on using SSL with
 virtual host web sites. I'd hardly call the lack of port 443 a success
 story.

we don't need a reason to deprecate tcp/53 beyond what's written in rfc1035.

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Re: [DNSOP] Cache poisoning on DNSSEC

2008-08-18 Thread Masataka Ohta
David Conrad wrote:

 If a caching server is required to perform public key computation to
 verify RRs before caching, it can't support much clients and will be
 a so easy victim of DDOS.
 
 
 Hence, one of the reasons for the desire to push DNSSEC towards the  end 
 user.

You mean all the DNSSEC clients should directly ask authoritative
nameservers and all the firewalls preventing so should be modified.

OK.

Let's assume all the clients agree with you and start using DNSSEC
and all the administrators of firewalls agree with you and perform
modification (though I don't know how NAT can be modified).

Then, the increased load is a very good reason for root servers not
support DNSSEC.

 I am curious what you propose as an alternative.

Abandon DNSSEC and accept the reality that, even with DNSSEC,
management of DNS is not very secure.

Masataka Ohta


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Re: [DNSOP] Cache poisoning on DNSSEC

2008-08-18 Thread Masataka Ohta
Paul Wouters wrote:

 (distributed) point to point encryption (or validation) is the future!

It's no future.

 I see no problem for port 53 through NAT's.

NAT often captures and modifies packet to port 53.

 But really, so many desktop applications
 do direct DNS now themselves with disregard of the OS,

Today, most of them are using a DHCP-supplied server.

 Then, the increased load is a very good reason for root servers not
 support DNSSEC.

 I believe 99% of the load of root servers is bogus queries anyway.

The amount of bogus queries will also increases, of course.

 Plus, I'm sure they wouldn't mind an increase to signal/noise ratio.
 Plus, those are addressed my things like anycast. It all scales fairly
 well, DNS being a distributed system and all. I'll take this argument
 as valid as soon as a root server operator comes forward and tells us
 this is a problem. For YOUR objections, let's stick to YOUR problems.

FYI, root server load was my problem and anycast is my thing.

More anycasting means more cost.

 Abandon DNSSEC and accept the reality that, even with DNSSEC,
 management of DNS is not very secure.

 That's not an alternative (nor correct)

That's the reality with no alternatives.

Masataka Ohta


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Re: [DNSOP] Cache poisoning on DNSSEC

2008-08-18 Thread David Conrad

On Aug 18, 2008, at 8:22 PM, Masataka Ohta wrote:

You mean all the DNSSEC clients should directly ask authoritative
nameservers


Yes.


and all the firewalls preventing so should be modified.


The vast majority of firewalls allow 'connections' (even UDP ones) to  
be initiated from the inside.  Those that prevent DNS from working  
correctly could be modified or upgraded or the administrators could  
trust in that firewall to protect the caching server used by multiple  
clients from the DDoS attacks you are concerned about.



Let's assume all the clients agree with you and start using DNSSEC
and all the administrators of firewalls agree with you and perform
modification (though I don't know how NAT can be modified).


NAT does not need to be modified.  As I type this, I am behind a  
commercial (relatively low end -- an Apple Airport Extreme  
basestation) NAT with firewalling enabled.  It works just fine.



Then, the increased load is a very good reason for root servers not
support DNSSEC.


The root server operators have demonstrated that they are quite  
capable of ramping capacity to meet demand (actually, the root servers  
are wildly over provisioned to try to deal with DDoS attacks so I  
doubt the increase in load caused by what I'm suggesting would even be  
an issue).


Alternatively, we could move to a more distributed model of DNS  
operations in which the caching servers that are doing DNSSEC cache  
the entire root zone, perhaps zone transferring the signed root zone  
from some authoritative and trusted place.  Since the root trust  
anchor would be published, the root zone data would be verifiable so  
fears of a corrupted root zone would be eliminated.


I suspect a combination of both would more than suffice.

What's more, recent studies have indicated that approximately 98% of  
the traffic hitting the root servers is pure crap.  Interestingly,  
when the L-root server was renumbered, it seems the quantity of  
traffic hitting that root server is significantly lower than the  
others.  One possible reason for this could be that people just don't  
like ICANN.  Another reason could be that a really tremendous amount  
of crap is being generated by servers that are so old that they don't  
notice a root server address change.  In the latter case, pushing  
caching servers out towards the edges would almost certainly entail  
upgrading those name servers.  As a result, the root servers might  
actually see a reduction in traffic.



I am curious what you propose as an alternative.

Abandon DNSSEC and accept the reality that, even with DNSSEC,
management of DNS is not very secure.


Ah.  The Math is hard.  Let's go shopping. alternative.  Not sure  
this is particularly helpful.


Regards,
-drc

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