Securing DNS:

Doing DNS As If DNS Actually Mattered

An Educause Security Professionals Conference
Pre-Conference Seminar
1:00-4:30PM, Monday, April 12th, 2010
International E (6th Floor), Westin Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta
Joe St Sauver, Ph.D. ([email protected])
Internet2 and University of Oregon Computing Center
http://www.uoregon.edu/~joe/secprof10-dns/
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent the opinions of any other entity.

Welcome to the Security Professionals

Conference and to Atlanta, Georgia!
Let me be among the first to welcome you to this year's Security
Professionals Conference, and to welcome you back to Atlanta if
you were also here at Security Professionals in 2009.
Let me also specifically thank you for coming to this
preconference seminar on securing the domain name system.
I'd like to begin by taking a minute to introduce myself, and then
having each of you introduce yourself to the group... if you would,
please mention:
-- your name and the school you're with
-- where you're at when it comes to DNS issues (beginner?
highly skilled? somewhere in between?)
-- and if you want to, please mention one DNS-related issue,
concern or question you'd like to see us discuss during the
2
course of this seminar

Format and Mechanics

We'll go till 2:30 or so, take a break from 2:30 to 3:00 at the
International Foyer area on the 6th floor, and then finish up. If we
don't get done by 4:30, I'm happy running later, and conversely, if
we finish up ahead of time, I'm okay with that too.
Because this is a seminar, and we only have a comparatively small
number of attendees, I'd like you all to feel free to speak up at any
time, whether that's to share your expertise or opinion, or to ask a
question. I've prepared some material, but I don't mean for the
prepared material to be the only thing we cover today.
Also note that some topics we'll cover in depth, other topics we
only allude to, perhaps providing a link for more information.
Speaking of links, copies of these slides are available online at
http://www.uoregon.edu/~joe/secprof10-dns/ in PowerPoint and
PDF formats.
3

1. Why Worry About DNS?

DNS is powerful, ubiquitous and largely ignored.
That's a very dangerous combination.

Virtually All Applications Rely on DNS

Email
The world wide web
Peer to peer applications
Instant messaging
Voice over IP, etc., etc., etc.

Virtually ALL applications are built on top of DNS, and rely on

DNS to function. This puts DNS in a radically different role than
an application such as FTP if FTP doesn't work, everything else
will continue to function, but that's not true of DNS! If DNS is
down, everything else also tends to come to a screeching halt.
DNS is the foundation technology (or at least DNS is one of just a
handful of particularly key foundation technologies I'll certainly
5
concede that BGP is equally as important as DNS, for example).

If I Can Control Your DNS

I can control your world.
Going to eBay? Doing some online banking? Sending important
email? Maybe, maybe not, depending on what sort of DNS
resolution occurs. If a bad guy controls your DNS, he can send
you to a convincing alternative site under his control
"But, but even if the bad guys hijack my DNS, the fake website
they might have set up won't have the right SSL certificate!"
In my experience, SSL certificate issues are not enough to
flag DNS misdirection as an issue -- users just don't get the
whole certificate thing, and will just blindly accept any
self-signed certificate they've been handed for a "secure" site.
6

Users Really Don't "Get" DNS, Either

Just as most non-technical users don't "get" subtle SSL certificaterelated issues, most non-technical users also don't "get" DNS.
Because DNS is, or can be, complex, and because non-technical
users generally don't need to understand DNS to use the Internet
(at least when everything is working the way it is supposed to),
many people never bother to learn anything about DNS -- it just
works, and they blindly and trustingly rely on it.
Unfortunately, because DNS usually "just works," users are not
sensitized to the ways that DNS can be perverted or corrupted by a
miscreant, and DNS-related areas are not the focus of most
consumer-grade system security review tools.
This increases the need for technically-oriented security
professionals -- you folks! -- to pay attention to DNS on behalf of
your non-technical users.
7

The Bad Guys and Gals Are Interested in

DNS & Do Understand DNS-Related Vuln's
Miscreants can (and have!) attacked the trustworthiness of
DNS data on a variety of levels, including:
-- doing cache poisoning, where misleading results are seeded
into the DNS data that many DNS servers save locally,
eventually getting provided to local users even though it's
inaccurate
-- releasing malware that tweaks host file entries and/or DNS
registry entries on the PC, so the bad guys send you directly
to the wrong web site rather than the web site you'd intended
Some hacker/crackers also view DNS as a convenient mechanism
whereby they can limit user access to key resources, such as
antivirus updates needed for the remediation of infections
The bad guys also recognized DNS is a key enabling technology
for botnet command and control survivability
8

DNS: A City Vaporizing Death Ray?

Sometimes security guys are accused of sowing fear, uncertainty
and doubt (FUD), but truly, DNS is potentially an incredibly
potent "death ray." Why do I say that?
-- There are millions of DNS servers deployed on the Internet.
-- DNS uses UDP. Because of that, DNS has issues when it
comes to accepting and responding to spoofed query
sources.
-- Because DNS accepts a tiny query as input, and (potentially)
generates a huge response as output, DNS operates as a
high-gain online traffic amplifier.
There's also the simple reality: we've seen DNS servers used to
conduct some of the largest DDoS attacks we've seen to date.
We'll talk more about this later in this talk.

Speaking of DDOS, DNS Servers

Are A Prime Target for DDoS, Too
Name servers aren't just a tool for conducting distributed denial of
service attacks, customer-facing recursive DNS servers are also a
target for distributed denial of service attacks: if I can kill the
DNS servers your customers are using, you are off the network
even if your transit links aren't flooded with traffic.

10

DNS Services Have Been Broadly Neglected

DNS has traditionally not been a focus of institutional
love and investment. When it comes to DNS, lots of people are
running:
-- old code,
-- on old gear,
-- with crude operational tools,
-- a low level of redundancy,
-- poor service monitoring and
-- part time or student (rather than fulltime) DNS administrators.
DNS isn't "cool."
11

"When I Grow Up,

I Want to Be A DNS Administrator!"
Doing DNS for a university is not a particularly glamorous or high
prestige job (few novices aspire to some day become a DNS
administrator they all want to work in Marketing, instead. :-))
To the best of my knowledge, there are no routinely scheduled
reoccurring conferences devoted exclusively to DNS-related
research or operational praxis, with the exception of ISC's OARC
meetings (see https://www.dns-oarc.net/ )
An effort by ICANN staff to create a DNS-CERT has not exactly
been enthusiastically embraced (see
http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#dns-cert )
DNS is thus simultaneously operationally critical and managerially
insignificant to the point of often being obscure/unknown.
Are you paying attention to YOUR DNS servers?
12

DNS Is No Longer Just for Translating

Domain Names to IP Addresses
DNS has become a general-purpose distributed database.
DNS block lists, as used to block spam, are one example of nontraditional data distributed via DNS, and RouteViews IP-to-ASN
data is another, and ENUM data (see www.enum.org) is a third.
A comment from Eric A. Hall, ca. April 16, 2001, which I'd like to
note in passing:
"The current DNS will only keep working if it is restrained to
lookups, the very function that it was designed to serve. It will
not keep working if the protocol, service, tables and caches
are overloaded with excessive amounts of data which doesn't
benefit from the lookup architecture."
http://www.ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/
namedroppers.2001/msg00247.html
13
That comment notwithstanding, people are now doing wild stuff.

Some Personal Favorites

in the "no,-this-is-not-what-we-intended DNS to be used for"
category relate to DNS-based "covert channel" apps such as
-- "DnsTorrent" (see http://www.netrogenic.com/dnstorrent/ )
-- "IP over DNS" (see http://thomer.com/howtos/nstx.html or
"DNS cat" (see http://tadek.pietraszek.org/projects/DNScat/ ), or
-- "Tunneling Arbitrary Content in DNS" (part of Dan Kaminski's
"Attacking Distributed Systems: The DNS Case Study,"
www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-europe-05/BH_EU_05-Kaminsky.pdf )
Two other great Kaminski DNS-related talks are "Black Ops
2004@LayerOne," see http://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-12/
dc-12-presentations/Kaminsky/dc-12-kaminsky.ppt
and "Black Ops of TCP/IP 2005," see http://www.blackhat.com/
presentations/bh-jp-05/bh-jp-05-kaminsky/bh-jp-05-kaminsky.pdf
14
Note well: sites may view "atypical" DNS usage as hostile/illegal.

Always Keep Your Hair Cut, Your Shoes

Shined and Your Tie Carefully Knotted
Your DNS (or, more precisely, your rDNS) may determine how
some people decide to treat your email and other network
traffic. For example, some ISPs check that rDNS exists for a host
that is attempting to send mail. No rDNS? For a growing number
of sites that means, "Sorry, we won't be able to accept email from
that dotted quad" For instance, see
http://postmaster.aol.com/guidelines/standards.html and
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/basics/postmaster-15.html

Other sites may also be on the lookout for dynamic-looking rDNS

host names when deciding whether to accept or reject direct-to-MX
email. Have rDNS which looks dynamic? Again, for many sites,
that means "Sorry, but we won't be accepting email directly from
you, send it via your provider's official SMTP servers"
15

Examples of "Dynamic Looking" rDNS

adsl.nuria.telefonica-data.net
cable.mindspring.com
dhcp.vt.edu
dialup.hawaii.edu
dorm.ncu.edu.tw
dsl.telesp.net.br
dyn.columbia.edu
dynamic.hinet.net
dynamicip.rima-tde.net
fios.verizon.net
resnet.purdue.edu
student.umd.edu
user.msu.edu
wireless.indiana.edu
See Steve Champeon's rDNS-based list at http://enemieslist.com/
16

Standardizing rDNS Nomenclature

There are efforts underway in the IETF to encourage consistent
use of rDNS, and to standardize rDNS naming practices. Two
drafts you should be aware of:
-- Considerations for the Use of DNS Reverse Mapping
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
draft-ietf-dnsop-reverse-mapping-considerations-06.txt
(expired)
-- Suggested Generic DNS Naming Schemes for Large
Networks and Unassigned hosts
http://tools.ietf.org/id/
draft-msullivan-dnsop-generic-naming-schemes-00.txt
(also now expired)
What do your campus rDNS naming conventions look like?17

DNS Interacts With Lots of Other Things

For example, how do hosts learn which DNS servers they should
be using? Users of static IP addresses may be given static DNS
server configuration information, but most users who are using
dynamic addresses will get their DNS server information from
DHCP at the same time they receive an IP address to use.
Thus, if you care about the security of DNS, you really want to
pay attention to the security of DHCP, too. Why? If you don't pay
attention to the security of DHCP, the bad guys and gals can attack
the security of your DNS indirectly, by attacking DHCP.
The attack would not have to be hard: for example, imagine a
rogue DHCP server sitting on the wire and listening for DHCP
requests first server to respond to a DHCPDISCOVER with a
DHCPOFFER typically "wins
Sample DHCP malware: isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6025
Nice tool: http://www.net.princeton.edu/software/dhcp_probe/18

DNS Also Interacts With NTP (Time)

Just as DNS and DHCP are tightly coupled, you should also know
that DNS can also rely critically on accurate system clocks (so
you're heavily pushing NTP on your campus, right?)
Two examples:
-- From the the BIND FAQ
( http://www.isc.org/software/bind/faq ):
"Q: I'm trying to use TSIG to authenticate dynamic updates or
zone transfers. I'm sure I have the keys set up correctly, but the
server is rejecting the TSIG. Why?
"A: This may be a clock skew problem. Check that the clocks on
the client and server are properly synchronised (e.g., using ntp)."
-- If you're trying to identify who was using a dynamic IP address
at a given time, it can be critical to have accurate time stamps
(including time zone information!)
19

DNS May Control Access To Resources

Consider, for example, a site-local resource, like a USENET News
server, or a site-licensed database. Access to those resources may
be controlled by password, or by limiting access to a particular
network range, but many times access is controlled by limiting
access to a particular domain, e.g., "If the connection is coming
from an IP address which has the rDNS of *.uoregon.edu, allow
access to that resource."
Of course, it is entirely possible that a bad guy or bad gal might
create a bogus in-addr for a non-institutional address, thereby
pretending to be part of a domain to which they really don't
belong; checking to make sure that the forward address and the
reverse addresses seen agree helps reduce the magnitude of this
issue, but this is still a fundamentally weak approach to the
problem of controlling access.
Relying on rDNS means that location can be a replacement for
20
identity (all I need is an open jack somewhere and I'm "okay").

DNS May Play An Infrastructural Role

For example, DNS can be used for traffic management and load
balancing, perhaps with DNS selectively returning different dotted
quads based on a query's geographical or organizational source.
Yes, for most of us this is inconsistent with the goal of having
consistent information returned regardless of query source, but
highly tailored non-uniform DNS operation is highly valued by
some commercial sites which may want to do things like:
-- send users to a topologically "close" server farm
-- serve a internationalized, language appropriate version of their
web site, perhaps in German for users coming from IP's known
to be located in Germany, French for users coming from IP's
known to be in France, etc.
-- display a specially tailored version of their web site for
particularly important customers, or a version that has had
unacceptable content removed for particular cultural venues21

Round Robin DNS vs. Load Balancers

Another example of how DNS may be used to manage traffic can
be seen in the use of round robin DNS, where multiple IPs are
bound to a single fully qualified domain name (FQDN).
When doing round robin DNS, name servers sequentially return
each defined dotted quads in turn, providing a sort of crude (and
potentially multi-site) alternative to dedicated load balancers such
as Ultramonkey (see http://www.ultramonkey.org/ )
The down side to doing round robin DNS instead of something
more sophisticated? Potentially many things, including:
-- caching can screw things up (delay changes in configurations)
-- load division is crude at best, and not load aware in any way
-- if you "lose" a host in an N-host round robin, every 1-in-N
times someone tries to access that site, there will be a failure
-- failed hosts do not get automatically removed from the rotation
22
-- debugging round robin DNS issues can be a real pain

DNS Can Affect Network Planning

How much load will your DNS servers (and network) see? Choice
of DNS TTLs (time to live) may directly impact that
Speaking of DNS TTLs, if your DNS servers are temporarily
down, how long will sites on the network continue to use cached
values? (And is this caching good, or does it just help us conceal
(rather than fix) substandard DNS infrastructure?)
Still thinking about DNS TTLs, if you experience a disaster and
need to move servers, how long will it take for cached values to
"cook down" so that new DNS values can be noticed?
What about dynamic addresses? How long should dynamic
address leases be? How big should DHCP pools be?
Planning on doing IPv6? How you handle DNS is an integral
part of that, whether that's numbering plans, provisioning quad A
records, making local DNS servers available via IPv6, etc. 23

DNS Can Interact With And Impact Policy

DNS can interact with policy issues in myriad interesting ways.
For example, what does your campus privacy policy say about
DNS server logs? Has your site even thought about why DNS
server logs may be sensitive? (Perhaps some member of your
community has an embarrassing health condition, and the DNS
server logs expose that condition by documenting visits to a site for
those suffering from chronic hemorrhoids (or acute leukemia)).
Or what if a key employee is suddenly resolving domain names
associated with executive recruiters or online job sites?
A second, completely unrelated DNS policy example: will you
allow non-campus domains to be registered and pointed at campus
IP addresses? Will you allow campus domains to be hosted on
non-campus IP addresses? Why or why not? Does it matter if your
campus "official athletics" site has a non-institutional domain name
and uses a non-institutional IP address? (think about searching!)
24

Some DNS Policy Areas

Who/what organization does DNS for the campus?

Who can get DNS service from that organization?
Is there a charge for this service?
What's an acceptable DNS name?
What if the FQDN I want is already taken? Can I bump them?
Can I get a subdomain?
What determines if I get a static or dynamic address?
Can institutional FQDNs point at non-institutional IPs?
Can non-institutional FQDNs point at institutional IPs?
Does it matter if a domain is a .edu instead of a .com or .org or .net
or .us or something else?

And many more areas

25

Does Your Campus Have a DNS Policy?

Quite a few colleges and universities now have DNS policies.
Some sample policies (by no means an exhaustive list!) include:
Arkansas:
Berkeley:
Cincinnati:
Cornell:

http://www.uark.edu/~uarkinfo/CAC/CAC4-4-00_DNS.html
http://net.berkeley.edu/policy_review/DNS.new.shtml
http://www.uc.edu/ucomm/web/dns.html
http://www.dfa.cornell.edu/dfa/cms/treasurer/policyoffice/policies/
volumes/informationtech/upload/vol5_6.pdf
Florida:
http://www.webadmin.ufl.edu/policies/domain_name/
Indiana:
http://kb.iu.edu/data/aqeo.html
Iowa:
http://cio.uiowa.edu/Policy/domain-name-policy.shtml
Iowa State:
http://policy.iastate.edu/policy/dns
KS State:
http://www.k-state.edu/cns/policy/dns_policy.html
Michigan:
http://spg.umich.edu/pdf/601.15-1.pdf
Nevada Reno: http://www.it.unr.edu/pages/policy-domain-name.aspx
Oregon State: http://oregonstate.edu/net/info/policy/domain_policy.php
NYU:
http://www.nyu.edu/its/policies/dnsserv.html
Penn State:
http://tns.its.psu.edu/networking/psuDNS.cfm
Vanderbilt:
http://its.vanderbilt.edu/dns_policy
26
WU St Louis: http://www.wustl.edu/policies/domain.html

Another Int'l Policy Example: IDN

Since we're westerners and use a Roman alphabet, we probably
give scant thought to all the folks abroad who may wish they could
use accented characters, or Greek letters, or Kanji, or Hangul, or
Cyrillic letters as part of domain names
Surely accommodating the diverse needs of those with non-Roman
character sets can only be good, right? Why would that raise policy
issues? There are many reasons, including:
-- can all name servers technically accommodate non-Roman
names?
-- what representation should be used for foreign character sets?
Choices are potentially legion (and sometimes highly political)
-- what about internationalized names which look *almost* the
same as already registered names belonging to banks or other
phishing targets? (this is often called a homographic attack;
see http://www.shmoo.com/idn/homograph.txt for more info)27

Internationalized Domain Names Today

IDNs have come a long way in the last few years.
Most web browsers now support for IDNs, and 19 internationalized
TLDs representing 11 languages have been requested as of April
2010 (see http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/ and
http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-en.htm)
IDNs are currently available for some existing TLDs (e.g., in dot
com one can register punycoded domains: http://xn--hq1bp8p1yi.com/ )

28

Some Additional Reasons Why You Will

Also Want to Pay Attention To DNS
DNS is on the Research Radar as a Big Deal: CoDNS is a perfect
example in that space (see http://codeen.cs.princeton.edu/codns/ )
but there are plenty of others.
DNS is on the Federal Radar as a Big Deal: DNSSEC is
receiving significant federal interest (see for example DHS's
http://www.dnssec-deployment.org/ and NIST SP 800-81)...
DNS is on the Corporate Radar as a Big Deal: VeriSign Site
Finder (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder ) is a nice
example of some commercial folks who expected to make big
money via DNS
So... bottom line, I think DNS is a very important and timely
area that "punches through" a lot of background noise.
What characteristics should DNS have?
29

Important DNS Characteristics

Be available (remember, if the domain name system is
unavailable, for most users, the "Internet is down")
Be trustworthy (if the domain name system returns untrustworthy
values, you may be sent to a site that will steal confidential data, or
to a site that could infect your computer with malware)
Be fast (rendering even a single web page may require tens -- or
hundreds! -- of domain name system queries; can you imagine
waiting even a second for each of those queries to get resolved?)
Be scalable (there are billions of Internet users who rely on DNS,
all around the world)
Be flexible (different sites may have different DNS requirements)
Be extensible (there are still many things that DNS will be called
upon to do, but we don't know what all those things are yet!
We need to have the flexibility to evolve DNS as time goes by)
30
Let's begin by talking a little about how DNS currently works.

2. A Quick Hand
Waving DNS Tutorial
We don't want to turn you into
DNS administrators, but we do need to
agree on some terminology and provide
a little historical background.

What The Domain Name System Does

Pretty much everyone here conceptually understands how the
Domain Name System (DNS) works, but just for the sake of
completeness, or those who may look at this talk after the fact, let
me begin with a brief (and very incomplete) functional definition:
"DNS is the network service that translates a fully
qualified domain name, such as www.uoregon.edu, to a
numeric IP address, such as 128.223.142.89. DNS can also
potentially do the reverse, translating a numeric IP address
to a fully qualified domain name."
Whenever we use the Internet we're using DNS, and without
DNS, using the Internet would become very inconvenient. Can
you imagine having to remember to go to http://66.102.7.147/
instead of http://www.google.com/ for example?
32

How Does the DNS System Currently Work?

While the fine points can vary, the basic process is:
1) An application (such as a web browser) requests resolution of a
fully qualified domain name, such as www.uoregon.edu
2) If the desktop operating systems includes a caching DNS client,
the DNS client checks to see if that FQDN recently been resolved
and cached (stored locally) -- if yes, it will use that cached value.
3) If not, the desktop DNS client forwards the request for
resolution to a recursive DNS server which has been manually
pre-configured (or to a recursive DNS server which may have been
designated as part of DHCP-based host configuration process)
4) If the recursive DNS server doesn't have a recently cached value
for the FQDN, the recursive DNS server will begin to make
queries, if necessary beginning with the DNS root zone, until it has
resolved a top level domain (e.g., .edu), primary domain name
(uoregon.edu), and finally a FQDN (such as www.uoregon.edu)
33

We can simulate that process with dig.

The process begins by bootstrapping via pre-specified name
servers for the root ("dot"):
% dig +trace www.uoregon.edu
.
417141 IN
NS
B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.
417141 IN
NS
A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
;; Received 436 bytes from 128.223.32.35#53(128.223.32.35) in 0 ms

34

Next, one of the root servers identifies the NS's for the .edu TLD:
edu.
172800 IN NS
L3.NSTLD.COM.
edu.
172800 IN
NS
M3.NSTLD.COM.
edu.
172800 IN
NS
A3.NSTLD.COM.
edu.
172800 IN
NS
C3.NSTLD.COM.
edu.
172800 IN
NS
D3.NSTLD.COM.
edu.
172800 IN
NS
E3.NSTLD.COM.
edu.
172800 IN
NS
G3.NSTLD.COM.
edu.
172800 IN
NS
H3.NSTLD.COM.
;; Received 306 bytes from 192.228.79.201#53(B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET) in 30 ms

One of those TLD name servers then identifies the NS's for
uoregon.edu:
uoregon.edu. 172800 IN NS
ARIZONA.edu.
uoregon.edu.
172800 IN
NS
RUMINANT.uoregon.edu.
uoregon.edu.
172800 IN
NS
PHLOEM.uoregon.edu.
;; Received 147 bytes from 192.41.162.32#53(L3.NSTLD.COM) in 85 ms

35

And then finally, via one of the name servers for uoregon.edu,
we can then actually resolve www.uoregon.edu:
www.uoregon.edu. 900 IN
A
128.223.142.89
uoregon.edu.
86400 IN
NS
phloem.uoregon.edu.
uoregon.edu.
86400 IN
NS
arizona.edu.
uoregon.edu.
86400 IN
NS
ruminant.uoregon.edu.
uoregon.edu.
86400 IN
NS
dns.cs.uoregon.edu.
;; Received 228 bytes from 128.196.128.233#53(ARIZONA.edu) in 35 ms

36

DNS is An Inherently Distributed Service

What you should glean from that example is that DNS is
inherently distributed every sites doesn't need to store a copy of
the the complete Internet-wide mapping of FQDN's to IP addrs.
This differs dramatically from pre-DNS days, when mappings of
host names to IP addresses happened via hosts files, and each
server would periodically retrieve updated copies of the hosts file.
(Can you imagine trying to maintain and distribute a hosts file with
hundreds of millions, or billions, of records each day?)
Fortunately, because DNS is distributed, it scales very well, far
better than replicating host files!
Unfortunately, because DNS is distributed, it is more complex than
the conceptually simple (if practically unworkable) hosts file
solution, and there can be substantial variation in how, and how
well, sites and DNS administrators do DNS-related activities.
37
There are a few things we can generally note, however.

DNS Efficiencies
Most common DNS queries do not require re-resolving the TLD
(.edu, .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .ca, .de, .uk, etc.) name servers,
or even the name servers for 2nd level domains such as
google.com or microsoft.com -- those name servers change rarely
if ever, and will typically be statically defined via "glue" records,
and cached by the local recursive name server. (Glue records assist
with the DNS bootstrapping process, providing a static mapping of
name server's FQDNs to its associated dotted quad.)
Cached data which has been seen by a DNS server will be reused
until it "cooks down" or expires; cache expiration is controlled by
the TTL (time to live) associated with each data element. TTL
values are expressed in seconds.
Negative caching (the server may remember that a FQDN doesn't
exist) may also help reduce query loads; see "Negative Caching of
DNS Queries (DNS NCACHE)," RFC2308.
38

A Few More DNS Notes

The DNS entries for domains are contained in zones. For example,
there would normally be one zone for uoregon.edu and another
zone for oregonstate.edu
The primary or "master" DNS server for a given domain normally
is augmented by a number of secondary (or "slave") DNS servers.
Secondary servers are deployed to help insure domains remains
resolvable even if a primary server becomes unreachable.
Secondary DNS servers periodically retrieve updated zone data for
the zones they secondary from the primary DNS server. Most sites
limit who can download a complete copy of their zone file because
having a definitive listing of all hosts in a given domain may be
useful for cyber reconnaissance and attack purposes.
It is common for universities to agree to provide secondary DNS
service for each other, e.g., Arizona does runs a secondary for UO.
But ALSO see the excellent http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/
39
ripe-52/presentations/ripe52-plenary-perils-transitive-trust-dns.pdf

Some Are Becoming Interested in DNS

Because of New Potential Roles, Including
as a new way of identifying infected systems (see, e.g.,
http://aharp.ittns.northwestern.edu/talks/bots-dns.pdf )
as a new way of mitigating infected systems
as a new way of "monetizing" typos and other domain
name resolution "misses"
as something which will needs to be fixed after
miscreant name servers get taken off the air.
And then there's everyone else, who just wants DNS to keep
working
Let's talk about one of the biggest threats to DNS, spoofed traffic
used as a denial of service attack tool
40

3. Spoofed (DNS and Other) Traffic and

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
First Important Job:
Please check that your network is
configured to prevent spoofed traffic
from leaving your network.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

As discussed in my May 3, 2005 Internet2 Member Meeting talk,
"Explaining Distributed Denial of Service Attacks to Campus
Leaders," http://www.uoregon.edu/~joe/ddos-exec/ddos-exec.pdf ),
in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack network traffic
from thousands of hacked computer systems -- often systems
located all over the Internet -- gets used in a coordinated way to
overwhelm a targeted network or computer, thereby preventing the
target from doing its normal work.
Unlike that earlier general talk, today we do need to talk a little
about a specific technical vulnerability. We need some quick
background, first.

42

TCP and UDP Traffic

There are basically two types of network application traffic: TCP
and UDP.
TCP traffic is associated with relatively persistent connections
(such as ssh sessions, web traffic, email, etc.), and has a variety of
characteristics which are desirable from a network application
programmer's point of view, including retransmission of lost
packets, congestion control, etc.
UDP traffic, on the other hand, is designed for "send-it-and-forgetit" applications where you don't want to/can't afford to maintain
state or you don't want a lot of connection setup overhead.
DNS, NFS, and IP video traffic all normally run as UDP.

43

The Spoofability of UDP Connections

Unlike a fully established TCP connection (which only gets
established after a bidirectional handshake is negotiated and
which is therefore robust to spoofing attempts),* UDP traffic
can be created with virtually any apparent source address -including IP addresses which have no relationship to the
traffic's actual origin.
Network traffic that's intentionally created with a bogus source
address is said to be "spoofed."
If allowed to reach the global Internet, spoofed traffic is
generally indistinguishable from legitimate traffic.
* Yes, of course, naked TCP SYNs are also spoofable.

44

Why Would Anyone Bother to Spoof Traffic?

If you don't spend time "thinking like an attacker," you might not
immediately "get" why an attacker would be interested in
spoofing his attack traffic. The answer is actually quite simple:
the attacker wants the systems he's using as part of his attack to
stay online and unblocked as long as possible.
Spoofing the source of the attack traffic
-- hinders backtracking/identification/cleanup of the system that's
sourcing the traffic; and
-- makes it harder for the attack victim to filter the attack traffic
(the spoofed source addresses may be constantly changed by the
attacker, and thus do not provide any sort of stable "filterable
45
characteristic").

"So Why Not Just Block All UDP Traffic?"

Given that UDP can be easily spoofed by the bad guys/bad
gals, sometimes you'll hear folks naively propose simply
blocking all inbound or outbound UDP traffic (or at least
heavily rate limiting all UDP traffic).
Unfortunately, because some pretty basic services (like DNS)
require support for UDP, blocking (or heavily rate limiting) all
inbound or outbound UDP traffic is generally not a good idea.
:-;
Warts and all, you have no choice but to learn to to live with
UDP traffic. :-;
46

"Well, Can We Block SOME UDP Traffic?"

For once, the answer is positive: yes, you can block some UDP
traffic.
For example, if you're the University of Oregon and your
school has been assigned the IP address range 128.223.0.0128.223.255.255 there's no reason for systems on your
network to be sourcing packets that pretend to be from some
other IP address range. We'd filter that spoofed traffic before it
leaves our campus.
This is a pretty basic sanity check, but you'd be surprised how
many sites don't bother with even this trivial sort of filter.

47

Subnet-Level Filtering
While it is great to prevent spoofing at the university-wide
level, that sort of border router anti-spoofing filter does not
prevent a miscreant from forging an IP address taken from one
of your subnets for use on another of your subnets.
Cue subnet-level anti-spoofing filters.
You KNOW that hosts on each subnet should ONLY be
originating packets with IP addresses legitimately assigned to
that subnet, so at the uplink from each subnet, drop/block
outbound packets that appear to be "from" any other IP
address another very basic sanity check.

48

Filtering at Other Levels of Granularity

Although we've talked about filtering at your border and at
each subnet uplink, you could also filter all the way upstream
at the regional optical network (RON) level/the gigapop
level, or all the way downstream at the host level.
Obviously, the closer you get to the traffic source, the more
effective the anti-spoofing filter will be.
That said, catching at least some problematic traffic at the
RON/gigapop level is better than nothing if you can't get your
downstream customers to do the right thing closer to the traffic
source (but the larger your gigapop, the harder it will be to
keep accurate track of all the prefixes that may be in use).
49

BCP38/RFC2827
Let me be clear that ingress filtering of traffic with spoofed IP
addresses is not new and is not my idea it is Best Current
Practice (BCP) 38/RFC2827, written by Ferguson and Senie in
May 2000.
Unfortunately, despite being roughly ten years old, many sites
still do NOT do BCP38 filtering -- currently 15-24% Internet
wide depending on whether you count netblocks, dotted quads
or ASNs (see http://spoofer.csail.mit.edu/summary.php)
Does YOUR university do BCP38 filtering?

50

"So Why Doesn't Everyone

Do BCP38 Filtering?"
"Too hard given the complexity of my network"
Asymmetric costs/benefits: filtering my network protects you
(which is nice), but filtering that traffic "costs" me w/o any
tangible/economic "benefits." So what are these horrible
"costs?"
-- engineer time to configure and maintain the filters (one
time/negligible for most relatively static .edu networks)
-- overhead on the routers (but if that overhead
is material enough to be a "show stopper," you
should be upgrading your hardware anyway)
"Too busy" (or other (frankly sort of lame) excuses)

51

"What's It To You Anyhow,

Bub? Butt Out"
Some may question why others should care what they do with
their networks your network, your rules, right? Well,
generally yes.
However in this case, remember that if you're NOT doing
BCP38 filtering, your network may be getting used to generate
spoofed attack traffic that's pretending to be "from" someone
else's network, and that's the point at which what you do (or
don't do) potentially affects a lot of other people including the
attack target itself, the entity whose IP addresses are being
spoofed, etc.]
52

"So How Should I Be

Doing This Filtering?"
Only you and your network engineering colleagues can make
the final decision about the best approach for your network,
but you may want to see BCP84/RFC3704, March 2004.
I would note, however, that strict mode unicast reverse path
forwarding ("strict uRPF") is not a good idea for the
multihomed environment typical of I2 universities due to route
asymmetry issues. I would also urge you to review
Experiences from Using Unicast RPF (January 23rd, 2008)
tools.ietf.org/html/draft-savola-bcp84-urpf-experiences-03
Quoting RFC3704, "Ingress Access Lists require typically
manual maintenance, but are the most bulletproof when done
properly"
53

4. Open Recursive DNS Servers and

DNS Amplification Attacks

Second Important Job:

Please make sure your name servers aren't
answering recursive DNS queries for random
domains for random users.

A Specific Example of UDP Spoofing

Since we just got done covering UDP spoofing, talking a
little about open recursive domain name servers and DNS
amplification attacks seems like a "nice" segue/practical
example of why BCP38 filtering is important, while also
pointing out another specific vulnerability you should be
addressing.
Again, let's begin with a little more background, however,
first.

55

Authoritative and Recursive

DNS Servers
There are different types of name servers, with "authoritative" and
"recursive" DNS servers being the two most important types:
-- Authoritative servers are definitive for particular domains, and
should provides information about those domains (and ONLY
those domains) to anyone.
-- Recursive servers are customer-facing name servers that should
answer DNS queries for customers (and ONLY for customers)
concerning any domain.
DNS servers that aren't appropriately limited can become abused.
56

For Example
Consider a situation where a DNS server is recursive AND is
open for use by anyone (a server that's cleverly termed an
"open recursive DNS server").
While it might seem sort of "neighborly" to share your name
server with others, in fact it is a really bad idea (the domain
name system equivalent of running an open/abusable SMTP
relay, in fact).
The problem? Well, there are actually multiple problems, but
one of the most important ones is associated with spoofed
UDP traffic (see how this all ties together? :-;)
57

Spoofed DNS Attack Scenario

Dramatis personae:
Attacker, who's working from non-BCP38 filtered network. Let's
call him/her "A"
Attack target let's refer to that entity as "T"
Open recursive domain name server on large, high bandwidth pipe,
denoted below as "NS"
Act 1, Scene 1:
"A" generates spoofed DNS queries with "T"'s address as the
"source" address of the queries
"NS" receives the spoofed queries and dutifully returns the
"responses" for those queries to "T"
"A" repeats as desired, thereby DoS'ing "T" via "NS"
58

Some Spoofed DNS Attack Scenario Notes

-- From "T"'s point of view, the attack comes from "NS" not
from "A"
-- DNS queries are small and use UDP, so an attacker can
readily generate a "large" query volume
-- DNS response traffic is also UDP, which means that it is
insensitive to net congestion.
-- DNS responses can be large relative to size of DNS queries
(output/input ratios can run over 8X on most DNS servers,
and on servers supporting RFC2671 EDNS0 extensions,
observed amplification can exceed 70X).
-- "A" can employ multiple spoofed query sources, and use
59
multiple NS's for more traffic (oh boy!)

This Is A Well Known Vulnerability

I'm not letting the "cat out of the bag" about a big secret; this is a
well known/documented threat:
-- "The Continuing Denial of Service Threat Posed by DNS
Recursion, " see http://www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/
DNS-recursion121605.pdf
-- "DNS Amplification Attacks," see http://www.isotf.org/news/
DNS-Amplification-Attacks.pdf
-- "DNS Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks,"
see http://www.icann.org/committees/security/
dns-ddos-advisory-31mar06.pdf
60

Open Domain Name Servers Worldwide

Unfortunately, despite this being a well known problem, at one
point it was estimated that 75% of all name servers worldwide
run as open recursive name servers (see
http://dns.measurement-factory.com/surveys/sum1.html )
Kristoff and Monnier estimated that 45% of .edu name servers
were open recursive (see "Explorations in the .edu DNS
Namespace," http://www.internet2.edu/presentations/
jt2007feb/20070213-kristoffmonnier.pdf at slide 5)
And in a spirit of self-criticism, feel free to note that even
UO's name servers were open until we secured them in
February 2006. See, for example:
http://cc.uoregon.edu/cnews/winter2006/recursive.htm
If our domain name servers were open recursive, how
about yours? You NEED to get them secured if you haven't
already done so!
61

Many Other Schools Have Also Fixed

Their Open Recursive DNS Servers

Berkeley: Access to Caching DNS Servers to Be Restricted - Details,

http://net.berkeley.edu/DNS/recursion-detail.shtml

Merit Networks: "Merit Network DNS Service Change,"

http://www.merit.edu/news/newsarchive/article.php?article=20060516_recursive

Northwestern University: "NUIT Discontinues Recursive Queries on Central

DNS Servers," http://www.it.northwestern.edu/transitions/2006/dns-queries.html

Penn State: Restrict Recursive Lookups on Central DNS Servers,

http://tns.its.psu.edu/networking/recursivedns.cfm

UAlbany: Non-Ualbany Recursive Access to Ualbany DNS Servers will End

Monday, March 12, http://www.albany.edu/its/news_DNS_access.htm
62

How Can I Find Open Recursive

DNS Servers At My Campus?
Team Cymru will happily send you notifications about open
recursive DNS resolvers on your campus; to sign up to receive
these notifications: http://www.team-cymru.org/Services/Resolvers/
If youd rather test things yourself, one tool which you can use to
scan your network for open recursive DNS servers is dnsscan, see
http://monkey.org/~provos/dnsscan/
NOTE: Please do NOT scan for open recursive DNS servers on any
network unless you are explicitly authorized by that networks
owner/administrator to do so. Unauthorized scans will likely be
considered hostile/illegal and may be treated as a computer
intrusion and result in legal action against you.
63

What About Googles Public DNS Servers?

Some in the audience may be aware that Google announced that it
would be running publicly available recursive DNS servers that
anyone could use by changing their name servers to point to 8.8.8.8
and/or 8.8.4.4 (see http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/ )
Google is explicitly aware of the risks associated with the service
that theyre offering, and you can read the discussion of how they
address/plan to address that issue at
http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/security.html
I should mention that Google is NOT the only site intentionally
making recursive name servers available; other examples include:
-- http://www.opendns.com/ (free and paid versions are available)
-- https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/services/odvr (intended for those
64
who want to try using a DNSSEC-enabled name server)

Coming Back to The General Problem of

Open Recursive DNS Servers, The Problem
Isn't "Just" About DDoS, Either
If you aren't yet sufficiently motivated to "bite the bullet" and
fix your DDoS-exploitable domain name servers by the
discussion Ive provided about DNS amplification, let me add
a little more thrust to help launch that hog: if you're not
controlling access to your domain name servers, you may also
be leaving yourself vulnerable to DNS cache poisoning
attacks, whereby vulnerable caching name servers can be
made to return bogus results for a user's name service queries:
www.secureworks.com/research/articles/dns-cache-poisoning

65

What's a Cache Poisoning Attack?

In a nutshell, in cache poisoning attacks, the attacker "primes"
the caching name server to respond to queries with an IP
address of his/her choice, rather than the real/normal IP
address for that site.
An innocent victim then asks the caching name server for the
IP address of a site of interest, such as the IP address of their
bank's website.
If the domain name of that site happens to be one that the
attacker has poisoned, the victim is automatically and
transparently misdirected to a website of the attacker's choice,
rather than to their bank's real web site, and confidential data
can then end up being lost.
66

Another Cache Poisoning Scenario

Another cache poisoning scenario uses cache poisoning to
redirect queries for popular sites (such as google.com or
hotmail.com) to a site that contains a virus or other malware.
If your caching name server has been poisoned, when you try
to visit one of these popular sites, you can unknowingly be
redirected to another site that stealthily tries to infect your PC
with malware.
Blocking open access to your recursive name servers won't
completely eliminate the possibility of your servers
participating in such attacks, but it will reduce the likelihood
of that sort of abuse.
67

Recommendations to Deal With

Open Recursive DNS Servers
Insure that you're running a current version of BIND
(or whatever DNS software you use)
Insure that you've separated your Internet-facing authoritative
name server from your customer-facing recursive name server
Protect your customer-facing recursive name server from
access by non-customers
Consider implementing the additional DNS server hardening
measures described in the Team Cymru BIND Template (see
http://www.cymru.com/Documents/secure-bind-template.html)

68

5. Malware and DNS

It's time to start thinking about how malware
interacts with DNS, and what will happen when
DNS hijacking malware gets disrupted.

Spam-Related Malware Relies on DNS

Much of the most virulent malware out there has been deployed to
facilitate spamming, and spam-related malware is notorious for
generating large numbers of DNS queries for MX host
information (so the spamware can determine where it should
connect to deliver its spam).
Spam related malware may also refer to its upstream command
and control hosts using their FQDNs, thereby making it possible
for the miscreants to repoint their malware's command and control
host from one dotted quad to another should the systems currently
"hosting" their C&Cs get filtered or cleaned up.
At the same time that malware critically relies on DNS, ironically
other malware may also be actively working to block or interfere
with legitimate DNS uses.
70

Why Would Malware Interfere With DNS?

Authors of viruses, trojan horses and other malware may interfere
with user DNS for a variety of reasons, including:
-- attempting to block access to remediation resources (such as
system patches, AV updates, malware cleanup tools)
-- attempting to redirect users from legitimate sensitive sites
(such as online banks and brokerages) to rogue web sites run
by phishers
-- attempting to redirect users from legitimate sites to
malware-tainted sites where the user can become (further)
infected
-- attempting to redirect users to pay-per-view or pay-per-click web
71
sites in an effort to garner advertising revenues

Examples of Malware Interfering with DNS

Trojan.Qhosts (discovered 10/01/2003)
http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.qhosts.html
"Trojan.Qhosts is a Trojan Horse that will modify the TCP/IP
settings to point to a different DNS server."
MyDoom.B (published 1/28/2004)
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/virus.aspx?id=38114
The worm modifies the HOSTS files every time it runs to
prevent access to the following sites [list of sites deleted]
JS/QHosts21-A (11/3/2004)
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/jsqhosts21a.html
JS/QHosts21-A comes as a HTML email that will display the
Google website. As it is doing so it will add lines to the
Windows Hosts file that will cause requests for the following
websites to be redirected: www.unibanco.com.br,
72
www.caixa.com.br, www.bradesco.com.br

Another Example
Win32.Netmesser.A (published 2/1/2005):
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/virus.aspx?id=41618
"[the trojan] then enumerates the following registry entry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\
Parameters\Adapters
checking for references to dial up adapters. If found, the
adapters'DNS servers are changed by altering the value
'NameServer' in the referenced key."
[]
"Computer Associates have seen the following DNS server
IPs used by these trojans in the wild: 69.50.166.94,
69.50.188.180, 69.31.80.244, 195.225.176.31"
[you can do the whois on all the dotted quads :-)]
73

More Examples of Malware Tweaking DNS

Trojan.Flush.A (discovered 3/4/2005)
http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.flush.a.html
'Attempts to add the following value []:
"NameServer" = "69.50.176.196,195.225.176.37"'
DNSChanger.a (added 10/20/2005)
http://vil.mcafeesecurity.com/vil/content/v_136602.htm
"Symptoms: [] Having DNS entries in any of your network
adaptors with the values: 85.255.112.132, 85.255.113.13"
DNSChanger.c (added 11/04/2005)
http://vil.nai.com/vil/Content/v_136817.htm
"This program modifies registry entries pertaining to DNS
servers to point to the following IP address: 193.227.227.218"
74

ZLOB Trojan (9/3/2006)

ZLOB is a piece of "fake video codec" DNS-tinkering malware,
see http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?
VName=TROJ_ZLOB.ALF&VSect=Sn and
http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/secadvisories/default6.asp?
VNAME=The+ZLOB+Show%3A+Trojan+poses+as+fake+
video+codec%2C+loads+more+threats&Page= , which notes:
TROJ_ZLOB.ALF, for instance, modifies an affected system's registry to
alter its DNS (Domain Name System) settings, such that it connects to a remote
DNS server that is likely controlled by a remote malicious user. Thus, using this
setup, the said remote user can decide what IP address the affected system
connects to when the affected user tries to access a domain name.
At the time when it was first detected, TROJ_ZLOB.ALF redirects users to
adult-themed sites. Of course, by now the DNS server could have been changed
already -- perhaps by the highest bidder it was rented to -- so that connections
75
are redirected to other, possibly malicious, sites instead.

Trojan.Flush.K (1/18/2007)
http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/
writeup.jsp?docid=2007-011811-1222-99&tabid=2 states:
'The Trojan then creates the following registry entries: []
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\[RANDOM
CLSID]\"DhcpNameServer" = "85.255.115.21,85.255.112.91"
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\[RANDOM
CLSID]\"NameServer" = "85.255.115.21,85.255.112.91"'

76

DNSChanger.F (3/27/2007)
http://vil.mcafeesecurity.com/vil/content/v_141841.htm states that
"the main objective of this trojan is to change the default DNS
entries to its own [preferred] DNS server."
#HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\Tcpip\Parameters\NameServer: "85.255.115.46
85.255.112.154" (This is just an example and IP can vary)
#HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\Tcpip\Parameters\DhcpNameServer: "85.255.115.46
85.255.112.154" (This is just an example and IP can vary)
And there are many, many more The bad guys ARE attempting
to accomplish their goals via your users' reliance on DNS.
77

DNS Tinkering Malware Is Driving

an Architectural Change Among ISPs
Confronted with malware that's targeting user DNS settings,
providers are forced to think about scalable (network-centric)
ways to deal with those threats.
Coming up with a solution requires understanding the mechanics
of how DNS is transported across the network.

78

The Mechanics: 53/UDP and 53/TCP

Most DNS queries are made over port 53/UDP, but some queries
may return more data than would fit in a normal single DNS UDP
packet (512 bytes). When that limit is exceeded, DNS will
normally truncate, and retry the query via 53/TCP.
Occasionally you may run into a site where either 53/UDP or
53/TCP has been blocked outright for all IP addresses (including
real name servers!) at a site. That's a really bad idea.
Blocks on all 53/TCP traffic sometimes get temporarily imposed
because of the misperception that "all" normal DNS (at least all
traffic except for zone transfers) happens "only" via UDP; that is
an incorrect belief. Real DNS traffic (other than zone transfers)
can, may and will actually use 53/TCP from time to time.
Blocks on all 53/UDP may sometimes get installed because of
concerns about spoofed traffic, or worries about the non-rate
adaptive nature of UDP traffic in general, or simply by mistake.
79

(Less?) Crazy Tweaks to User DNS Traffic

Because of the high cost of handling user support calls, some ISPs
may attempt to avoid user support calls (and associated costs) by
actively "managing" user DNS traffic at the network level.
What does "managing" mean?
-- blocking/dropping all port 53 traffic, except to/from the DNS
server(s) that the ISP provides for their customers (this will often
be implemented via router or firewall filters)
-- redirecting some or all user DNS traffic that isn't destined for the
ISP's customer DNS servers at Layer 4 (e.g., see:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/routers/10000/10008/
configuration/guides/ancp/isbl4rdt.pdf at PDF pages 12-13)
80

"Fixing" Some DNS-Related Things May

Make Other DNS-Related Things Worse
Some approaches to dealing with DNS insecurities (such as DNSrewriting network middleboxes) may negatively impact Internet
end-to-end transparency, and ironically, foreclose other approaches
to securing DNS (such as DNSSEC). The IAB noted in an IETF
technical plenary:
"DNSSEC deployment may be hampered by transparency
barriers."
[]
"DNS Namespace Mangling
" Recursive forwarders modifying responses are
incompatible with DNSSEC."
Reflections on Internet Transparency
http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/06nov/slides/plenaryt-2.pdf
81

We ARE Coming To A Crossroads Again

Do you remember
-- the good old days before everything was behind a firewall (or
NAT box, or other middlebox), and transparent end-to-end
connectivity was still possible?
-- simpler times when you had the ability to manage your own
desktop, and configuration and management of your desktop
wasn't controlled by a desktop domain admin for security's sake?
-- when you could store content locally, taking responsibility for
the management of that data, including its backup and its
definitive deletion?
-- when you could even run your own mail or web server?
As a result of the increasing interest in DNS, you may soon be able
to add to that list, "Do you remember when you could directly
access domain name servers other than just those provided for
your use by your provider?"
82

Just "For the Record"

I am generally not a big fan of redirecting or rewriting all
customer DNS traffic, or limiting users to just their provider's
DNS servers as a "solution." Why?
-- doing DNS filtering/redirection breaks Internet transparency in
a very fundamental and bad way, as I've mentioned
-- if the provider's designated DNS servers end up having issues,
DNS filtering/redirection substantially reduces customer options
-- port-based filtering/redirection can be surmounted by
technically clued people thru use of non-standard ports for DNS
-- port-based filtering/redirection (or even deep packet inspection
approaches) can be overcome by VPN-based approaches
-- some services (such as commercial DNSBLs) may be limited to
just subscribing DNS servers; the DNS server that you redirect
me through may not be allowed to access that data.
I would encourage you to consider passive DNS monitoring as
83
an alternative way of identifying systems which need attention.

What About Blocking *JUST* Malicious

DNS Servers at the Network Level?
Assume you succeed in identifying one or more malicious name
servers being used by your users. Most security folks would then
be inclined to do the "logical" thing and block access to those name
servers. Good, right? You're protecting your users by blocking
access to just those servers, eh? Well yes, you are, but when you
do so, when you block those malicious name servers, ALL name
resolution for those infested users (crumby though it may be), will
typically suddenly cease. "The Internet is down!"
Suggestion: IF you DO decide to block specific malicious DNS
servers, and I CAN sympathize with the desire to do that, be
SURE to notify your support staff so that they can add DNS
checks to their customer troubleshooting processes.
84

Note: You May End Up Blocking Bad DNS

Servers W/O Knowing You're Doing That
For example, assume you're using the Spamhaus DROP (Do Not
Route or Peer list, see http://www.spamhaus.org/DROP/ ), an
excellent resource you should all know about and consider using.
Some of those DROP listings may happen to cover bad DNS
servers which will no longer be reachable by infected clients
once you begin using DROP.
Thus, even though you may not be focused on blocking bad DNS
servers, by filtering some prefixes at the network level, you may
inadvertently end up filtering name servers your users may be
using.
Isn't this all just so much "fun?"
85

Users May Tinker With The Hosts File, Too

Remember those old host files I mentioned earlier? Well, you can
still statically define FQDN to dotted quad relationships using a
hosts file, and some folks take advantage of that, particularly in an
effort to thwart adware or spyware or online advertising (when
that's the objective, unwanted sites are generally mapped to
127.0.0.1, a special address that always maps to the local system).
Examples of hosts files that are in circulation for that sort of
purpose include:
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
http://www.hosts-file.net/
Features in Vista/Windows 7 may attempt to deter this, but
workarounds exist, (e.g., see support.microsoft.com/kb/923947 )
Speaking of Microsoft and hosts files, note that Microsoft
sometimes intentionally ignores hosts files (see
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/431032/30/0/threaded86)

Interesting Things Can Happen to DNS on

An Application-by-Application Basis, Too
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/DnsHijack.aspx
"Here's what DnsHijack enables you to do:
-- It allows you to rewrite DNS requests for a single Windows
process (in this case, it's hard-coded to firefox.exe, but the
technique works equally well for any standard Winsock-using
application).
-- You can rewrite to another DNS name instead of to just an IP
address. There's no need to manually perform DNS lookups when
creating the configuration file.
-- It supports Perl-compatible regular expressions (using the PCRE
library and some C++ wrapper classes I created for my xp_pcre
library). This means you can rewrite multiple DNS names using a
87
single line in the configuration file. [continues]"

MS Windows and DNS Cache Pollution

While we're talking about DNS and Windows, some early versions
of MS Windows, such as Windows NT and pre-SP1 versions of
Windows 2000, are vulnerable to what Microsoft refers to as
"cache pollution" (for Microsoft's description of this vulnerability,
see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316786). While Windows NT
and Windows 2000 users should be used at this time (and even
Windows Server 2003 R2 loses mainstream support 7/13/2010), if
you do happen to have someone running an early version of MS
Windows, make sure they upgrade or see: "How to prevent DNS
cache pollution," http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q241352/
What about Windows 2003? With 2003 you'll be protected by
default but make sure that Windows Server 2003 admins
do NOT uncheck the pre-checked "prevent cache pollution" box!
For a listings of some sites known as attempting to do poisoning
see: dns.measurement-factory.com/cgi-bin/poison_browser.pl88

6. Hardening DNS

If you're running a DNS server, what steps can

you take to help harden or protect it?

A True Factoid About BIND 9

Appropos of nothing, a true factoid: the "security considerations"
section of the BIND 9 manual runs just a tiny bit more than two
pages. See: http://www.isc.org/files/Bv9.6ARM.pdf at page 91
As you now know, I'm a bit more verbose. :-)
In fairness, BIND does offer detailed discussions of all the
vulnerabilities theyve detected and patched, see
http://www.isc.org/advisories/bind , and many security related
topics are handled in other sections of the documentation

90

Basic DNS Sanity Check

If you do NOTHING else recommended in this talk, I
strongly encourage everyone to at least go to
http://dnscheck.iis.se/
and conduct a basic test of your university's DNS.
That free DNS check will do many basic tests, reporting many
DNS-related inconsistencies and DNS-related security issues.
The output is easy to understand, and once you know an issue
exists, you can then work on getting it fixed.
There are also other online DNS checking tools you can use -- try
several and see which works best for you.
91

Example Output

92

One Other Test You Should Do Back Home

https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/services/dnsentropy

93

DNS Server Software Versions

Unless you have compelling reason to do otherwise, run the
latest version of the DNS server software you're using.
For BIND users, as of April 10th, 2010, this means 9.7.0-P1
-- If you're on an earlier version, it is highly desirable that you
upgrade to the current version
-- Updated versions of BIND can be downloaded from
http://www.isc.org/downloads
Note: some vendors may not do a great job of keeping their
vendor customized versions up to date. If you are using a vendorsupplied version of Bind, you need to carefully weigh the
convenience of running an older vendor supported version of
94
BIND against the strong desirability of running the latest version.

BTW It Isn't Just The Name Server Software

If/when you upgrade BIND, you may notice that BIND isn't the
only thing that may needs upgrading how about the status of
OpenSSL, for example? Problems with stale versions of OpenSSL
are so common that BIND explicitly checks OpenSSL as part of the
build process! Note that OpenSSL-1.0.0 was released March 29th,
2010, for example. Updated versions of OpenSSL are available
from http://www.openssl.org/source/
Are you periodically running a package management tool to check
for ALL the software that may need updating?
yum or apt-get can be your friend

95

Determining the Version of BIND in Use

% dig @ns1.uoregon.edu version.bind chaos txt
version.bind.
0
CH TXT "9999.9.9"
options {
directory "/var/named";
version "whatever";
};

If you have shell access to the name server, try: % named v

(you may also want to use the unix find command to look for
multiple/additional installations of named)
If you don't have local access, you may also be able to fingerprint a
name server using fpdns (see http://code.google.com/p/fpdns/ ), but
it may not always be able to distinguish dot release versions.
Of course, once they've identified your name server(s), the bad guys
can also just try each and every exploit they know, regardless of
whether or not they know the version of the code you're running!
96

OS Hardening
It does little good to run a secure version of the name server
software if the operating system that system is running is insecure.
Making sure that you're running current versions of OS software
and applications are part (but not all) of that picture.
OS hardening is generally beyond the scope of this tutorial,
however a few good starting points include:
-- Center for Internet Security Benchmarks (checklists), see
http://cisecurity.org/en-us/?route=downloads.benchmarks
(some sites tailor their own recommendations from that, e.g.,
see http://security.utexas.edu/admin/redhat-linux.html )
-- See als the National Security Agencys Operating System
Guides, http://www.nsa.gov/snac/
In addition to hardening your name server OS, you may also want
to consider running a tool (such as tripwire) which checksums
critical executables, related libraries, and key configuration files.
97

The Art of Securely Configuring

and Operating BIND
Even if you're running a current version of BIND, it is still
possible to configure it in more (or less secure) ways.
A nice secure template to use for configuring BIND is the
Team Cymru Secure BIND Template, available from
http://www.cymru.com/Documents/secure-bind-template.html
That configuration template will improve the security of BIND in
a number of ways, including handling the open recursion problem,
appropriately limiting zone transfers, and coaching you through
running BIND in a chroot jail.
Caution: do not "configure and forget" if you use the Team Cymru
template since it includes some things (like lists of bogon IP
space!) which *will* evolve over time.
98

Digression: Name Servers Other Than BIND

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that there are name
servers other than BIND, both free/open source and commercial
products, some of which I discuss in the DNSSEC part of this talk.
A great topic for discussion over beers sometime is the question of
which name server software is better, faster, more secure, has the
best/most appropriate set of features, etc.
For the most part, however, because of BIND's empirical
dominance in the market place, that's what we'll (continue to)
focus on.
Noted for the record: there may be survivability value to running
more than one name server software product (arguably, however,
you're just complicating your support load and increasing your
exposure to bugs in two, three or N products, rather than just
picking one product and developing true expertise with it)
99

DNS Monitoring
You should graphically monitor DNS query traffic just as you
monitor things like transit bandwidth. A nice tool for this is DNS
Stats Collector (DSC), see
http://dns.measurement-factory.com/tools/dsc/ (sample below)
You can see samples of some other possible graphs at
http://dns.measurement-factory.com/tools/dsc/sample/index.html

100

Additional DNS Tools

Beyond doing graphical DNS monitoring with DSC, there are
additional DNS tools that you may find helpful listed at
-- https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/tools
-- http://dns.measurement-factory.com/tools/
-- http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/tools.html

101

A Potential Op Sec Issue: Zone Transfers

Zone transfers allow an entity to obtain a complete copy of a DNS
zone. In some cases this may just be a small vanity domain, but in
other cases it may be a complete ccTLD. For example:
% dig pk @ns.pknic.net.pk axfr
pk.
38400 IN
SOA
1137374758 14400 7200 1664000 21600
pk.
38400
IN
NS
pk.
38400
IN
NS
pk.
38400
IN
NS
pk.
38400
IN
NS
ns1.0000.pk. 38400
IN
A
ns2.0000.pk. 38400
IN
A
01net.pk.
38400
IN
NS
01net.pk.
38400
IN
NS
0321.pk.
38400
IN
NS
0321.pk.
38400
IN
NS
0322.pk.
38400
IN
NS
0322.pk.
38400
IN
NS
[etc]

ns.pknic.net.pk. ashar.pknic.net.pk.
ns.pknic.net.pk.
m-2.pknic.net.pk.
AUTH51.NS.UU.NET.
AUTH101.NS.UU.NET.
74.117.232.51
74.117.232.51
ns1.mailclub.fr.
ns2.mailclub.fr.
nm.thebighosting.com.
cobalt.thebighosting.com.
nm.thebighosting.com.
cobalt.thebighosting.com.
102

Why Are Zone Transfers An Issue?

Zone transfers are a security issue because the first step in an attack
is often reconnoitering the target, whether we're talking about a
physical attack or an online attack.
Having a copy of a target's zone file allows a miscreant to easily do
a thorough and exhaustive review of the target's systems or
domains, looking for vulnerabilities or exploitable weaknesses.
For that reason, zone transfers should be strictly limited to just the
sites that need to be able to transfer the zone files for legitimate
purposes, such as those who provide secondary service for the zone.
You may even want to consider blocking all conventional zone
transfers, doing zone synchronization via rsync over ssh instead
(see http://www.seebq.com/dns-replication-using-rsync/ ).
Rsync over ssh has the additional advantage of eliminating the
possibility of miscreants attempting zone file denial of service
attacks via RFC1996 NOTIFY messasges, too.
103

Security-As-Availability:
Avoid Single Points of Failure
A key step to hardening your DNS service is to look at your
architecture with an eye to any single points of failure:
-- Do you have multiple physical DNS servers, or just one?
-- Assuming you have multiple servers, are they on different
subnets?
-- Are at least some of your name servers at a different physical
location, preferably in a different part of the country?
-- If your site uses a border firewall, have you taken steps to make
sure all your name servers are not behind a single common
firewall?
-- Are all of your servers running the same operating system and
the same name server software?
-- Don't forget your DNS admin, either do you have at least two
people who can handle DNS responsibilities at your site? 104

Network and System Capacity

Because DNS servers may be the target of a denial of service
attack, you may want to insure that those systems and the
connectivity that services them are overprovisioned. While
normal traffic loads may require trivial levels of connectivity,
if your name server is the target of an attack, you'll find that fast
ethernet is better than regular ethernet, and gigabit ethernet is
better still. Similarly, a server class system with redundant
power supplies an redundant power sources, running as multicore
system with plenty of RAM, is also a good idea.
Run your name servers on dedicated hardware. No other services
should be delivered from the name servers your name servers
should be dedicated to just delivering name service!
Try to run your customer facing recursive caching name servers
and your Internet-facing authoritative servers on separate systems.
105

A Brief Digression: Name Server

Architectures and Anycasting
If you're like most network folks, you're probably familiar with
unicast traffic, broadcast traffic, and maybe even IP multicast
traffic, but anycast traffic is sort of an odd bird that may be less
familiar. In a nutshell, anycasting involves advertising the *same*
network prefix (typically a /24) from multiple locations. When
someone attempts to query a name server which resides in an
anycast range, they automagically use the closest server.
A number of the root name servers are currently using Anycast to
scale the number of servers available, and to improve performance
among other reasons. See: http://www.root-servers.org/ and
http://www.icann.org/meetings/vancouver/jlc-anycasting.pdf
106

Dynamic DNS (Commercial and RFC2135)

"Dynamic DNS" can refer to two completely different things:
-- commercial dynamic DNS service provided by a third party,
designed to allow a user to map a vanity domain name or other
hostname to a dynamic (rather than static) IP address
-- RFC 2135 "Dynamic Updates in the Domain Name System"
either as implemented by BIND or Microsoft
Commercial dynamic DNS service should generally not be needed
at most universities (if someone wants a static IP address, they
should generally be able to request and receive one from the
school); some universities/some commercial providers actually
forbid use of 3rd party commercial dynamic DNS services
107

RFC2135 Dynamic Updates

RFC2135 dynamic updates can cause issues with unnecessary
traffic under some circumstances, particularly when they occur in
conjunction with NAT'd users, see Section 2.8 of "Observed DNS
Resolution Misbehavior" (RFC4697, October 2006). CAIDA also
has an excellent page on disabling dynamic updates at:
http://www.caida.org/research/dns/disable_dns_updates.xml or see
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q246/8/04.asp
While it is quite tempting to simply recommend avoiding dynamic
DNS updates for philosophical reasons, dynamic updates can have
a role in some special circumstances (IPv6, IP mobility, and Active
Directory come to mind). If you decide that you do need dynamic
updates (e.g., for ActiveDirectory-related reasons, I'd encourage
you to review Yale's excellent web page on this at
http://amtweb.its.yale.edu/yalead/ddns.asp
108
Note that dynamic updates and DNSSEC are also incompatible.

AS112 Project
Speaking of dynamic updates, do you all know about the
AS112 Project, the "Nameservers at the end of the universe?"
As noted at public.as112.net:
"Because most answers generated by the Internet's root name
server system are negative, and many of those negative answers
are in response to PTR queries for RFC1918, dynamic DNS
updates and other ambiguous addresses, as follows:
-- 10.0.0.0/8
-- 172.16.0.0/12
-- 169.254.0.0/16
-- 192.168.0.0/16
There are now separate (non-root) servers for these queries"
Nice paper, "The Windows of Private DNS Updates," at
http://www.caida.org/publications/papers/2006/
private_dns_updates/private_dns_updates.pdf
109

7. DNSSEC: What Is It?

DNSSEC "By the [RFC] Numbers"

DNSSEC is defined by three RFC's:
-- RFC4033, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements,"
-- RFC4034, "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions,"
-- RFC4035, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security
Extensions"
If you really want to know about DNSSEC, read those RFCs.
A couple of other RFC's you may also find useful along the way:
-- RFC3833, "A Threat Analysis of the Domain Name System"
-- RFC5155, "DNSSEC Hashed Authenticated Denial of
Existence"
RFCs can make for rather dry reading, however, so let me just dive
right in with my personal take on DNSSEC
111

DNSSEC in a Nutshell
DNSSEC uses public key asymmetric cryptography to guarantee
that if a DNS resource record (such as an A record, or an MX
record, or a PTR record) is received from a DNSSEC-signed zone,
and checks out as valid on a local DNSSEC-enabled recursive
name server, then we know:
-- it came from the authoritative source for that data
-- it has not been altered en route
-- if the server running the signed zone says that a particular host
does not exist, you can believe that assertion
But what about other things, like insuring that no one's sniffing
your DNS traffic, or making sure that DNS service is always
available?
112

DNSSEC Intentionally Focuses on Only One of The

Three Traditional Information Security Objectives
While there are three "C-I-A" information security objectives:
-- Information Confidentiality
-- Information Integrity, and
-- Information Availability
DNSSEC is intentionally NOT designed to keep DNS data
confidential, and it is also intentionally NOT designed to improve
the availability of DNS data -- it's sole focus is on insuring the
integrity of DNS data.
And, to the extent that DNSSEC is not an end-to-end protocol, its
ability to even insure information integrity is imperfect.
113

DNSSEC As A Non-"End-to-End" Protocol

To understand the difference between an end-to-end protocol and
one that works only along part of a complete path (e.g., to or from
some intermediate point), consider the difference between using
SSH and using a typical VPN.
SSH secures traffic all the way from one system (such as your
laptop) to the other system you're connecting to (perhaps a server
running Linux) it is "end-to-end."
A VPN, however, may terminate on a hardware firewall or VPN
concentrator, and from that point to the traffic's ultimate
destination, traffic may travel unsecured. This is NON end-to-end.
DNSSEC is more like the VPN example than the SSH example:
DNSSEC only secures traffic to the local recursive name
server, it typically cannot and will not secure traffic all the way
down to the desktop. Thus, a bad guy can still attack DNS traffic
that is in flight from the local recursive name server to the endhost.
114

Non-End-to-End and End-to-End Protocols

115

What About Using TSIG To Secure

The Last Hop for DNSSEC?
TSIG is defined by RFC2845, and was originally created to
improve the security of zone transfers, and to provide a secure
way by which trusted clients could dynamically update DNS.
For the purpose of providing DNSSEC with last hop integrity,
TSIG has a number of potential shortcomings, including:
-- it uses a form of symmetric cryptography, so all clients need to
be given a copy of a shared secret key (yuck)
-- the only hashing mechanism defined for TSIG in the RFC is
HMAC-MD5, which is no longer particularly robust
-- clocks need to be roughly in sync (user laptops or desktops
often have system clocks which aren't very well synchronized)
The DNSSEC data validation check could be moved from the local
recursive DNS server all the way down to the laptop or desktop
itself, IF the DNS server running on the laptop or desktop knew
116
how to do DNSSEC (but that would probably be painful).

Windows DNS Client Support for DNSSEC

Quoting http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/
264820c4-55c7-42d6-9747-432af9556acc1033.mspx?mfr=true
"Client support for DNSSEC
"The DNS client does not read and store a key for the trusted zone
and, consequently, it does not perform any cryptography,
authentication, or verification. When a resolver initiates a DNS
query and the response contains DNSSEC resource records,
programs running on the DNS client will return these records and
cache them in the same manner as any other resource records. This
is the extent to which WindowsXP DNS clients support DNSSEC.
When the DNS client receives the SIG RR relating to the RRset, it
will not perform an additional query to obtain the associated KEY
record or any other DNSSEC records."
117

Speaking of Client Layer Stuff, What Would a

DNSSEC User See If a DNS Resource Record
Failed DNSSEC Validation?
Answer: nothing. Users would see nothing that would indicate a
DNSSEC validation failure had occurred. Such a failure is normally
"silent" and indistinguishable (to the user) from many other types of
DNS failures. It is probably just me, but I've got mixed feelings
about DNSSEC validation failures being opaque to users.
Instinctively, we know that DNSSEC validation might fail due to:
-- operational error: it would be good to make sure that's noticed
and corrected, and users could act as "canaries in the coal mine"
-- an active attack; it would be REALLY good to know that's
happening!
-- something completely unrelated to DNSSEC might be busted
Silent failure modes that confound several possible issues just strike
118
me as a bad idea.

What Would a DNSSEC User See If a DNS Admin

Screws Up Signing DNSSEC Signing Their Zone?
The zone wouldnt resolve. Thus web pages under that zone would
be inaccessible to user doing DNSSEC, although users who
ARENT doing DNSSEC would still be just fine.
Example: try to access www.medicare.gov on 4/10/2010 from UO:

119

www.medicare.gov on 4/10/2010
% dig www.medicare.gov @ns1.uoregon.edu [does DNSSEC]
[snip]
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 65323
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0,
ADDITIONAL: 0
[snip]
% dig www.medicare.gov @149.20.64.20
[same result as for ns1.uoregon.edu]

[does DNSSEC]

% dig www.medicare.gov @8.8.8.8

[does NOT do DNSSEC]
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 48657
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0,
ADDITIONAL: 0
[snip]
120
www.medicare.gov.
541 IN A
146.123.140.204

DNSSEC and Application Layer Visibility

DNSSEC needs application layer visibility for all the times when
it works, kin to the little padlock icon for SSL encrypted secure
web sessions (or certificate failure notices for when things are self
signed, expired, or otherwise not trustworthy).
In this, DNSSEC is potentially like Internet2 itself. I'm convinced
that one of the biggest (and best!) things about Internet2 AND one
of the biggest problems with Internet2 is that it "just works."
People use Internet2 all the time with no idea that they're doing so.
If DNSSEC similarly "just works" (except for when it silently
breaks attempts to do bad things, or someone screws up and it
breaks attempts to do legitimate things), will people even know
they're using DNSSEC?
Contrast invisible DNSSEC protection with the anti-phishing
protection that Firefox delivers, something that's FAR more "in
121
your face" and visible

What A Firefox User Sees When

Attempting to Visit A Phishing Site

122

Another Issue: The DNSSEC Trust Model

Talking about phishing makes me think about trust models.
Trust models focus on the question of, "Why should I believe
you're really you?" "Why should I accept 'your' credentials as
being authentic?" This is a pivotal question in cryptography.
Some crypto protocols, such as GPG/PGP, are decentralized, and
employ a "web-of-trust" trust model where I trust your public key
because it has been signed by other keys which I recognize/trust.
Other crypto protocols, such as PKI, are more centralized or "top
down." In the PKI model, I trust a particular PKI certificate
because it has been signed by a trusted certificate authority ("CA")
DNSSEC was originally intended to use a centralized
top-down trust model, with a signed root. The trusted signed
root would then sign immediately subordinate TLDs; those TLDs
would sign second level domains immediately below them, etc.
One slight problem: the root still hasn't been fully signed.123

Signing The Root (".")

All the DNS root servers are supposed to be signed by July, 2010.
As part of a phased deployment, currently seven root servers are
A (Verisign), D (U Maryland), E (NASA Ames), I (Autonomica/
Nordunet), K (RIPE), L (ICANN) and M (WIDE). For example:
% dig . +dnssec @k.root-servers.net
[snip]
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
.
86400 IN
SOA
a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2010041001
1800 900 604800 86400
.
86400 IN
RRSIG SOA 8 0 86400 20100417000000 20100409230000
55138 . wflJAzJQaVrNedJSJrtE8yYsBUsygr1V8iqsJdhvOkiq99ZswiMED5dN
rVI3N56pnPfwCVbejdK1c3JFfJjHYU9fAGMR0mbvL3fVq/MMoIMIgipB
fm4dsZ48ULCt6Jg5lcWMQSMlwsb8S/PViBaHwXGdyGkbCz1RGh8ZxAGa gvQ=
.
86400 IN NSEC ac. NS SOA RRSIG NSEC DNSKEY
.
86400 IN RRSIG NSEC 8 0 86400 20100417000000 20100409230000 55138
. E/1kHbUWunXPv5KK/Jb6iIRZfe172m5OsFBtTCHylzTnYFMC5NEigjjA
LBu1NjTrTctu7MfCyh7cPfjJrft+72G3zWPE102ihz9D2PvlN2NUrtMP
Yn0meWMi+FphIFy5rjR1ihS6aNgkieE5Q9RuKoCVRHGURY4cKnDS2Ej4 4bw=
124

What About The TLDs? Are The TLDs At

Signed and Supporting DNSSEC?
A limited number are, see https://itar.iana.org/anchors/anchors.mf
(if you download that file, save it as a text file despite the weird
file extension)
Signed TLD domains include .arpa (the in-addrs), .bg (Bulgaria),
.br (Brasil), .cz (Czech Republic), .gov, .li (Liechtenstein),
.na (Namibia), .nu (Niue), .org, .pr (Puerto Rico), .se (Sweden), .th
(Thailand), .tm (Turkmenistan), .uk (the United Kingdom) and .us
There are also trust anchors for a number of IDNd TLDs.
Most other TLDs (including .edu, .com, .net, .info, .mil, .biz, .int,
.ca, .cn, .de, .fr, .jp, etc.) are still NOT signed at this time.
This does not prevent domains under those TLDs from doing
DNSSEC, but when a domain under one of those TLDs does do
DNSSEC, they exist as an "island of trust."
125

Islands Of Trust
Remember, DNSSEC was designed to work using a centralized,
top-down trust model. If the root isn't signed, or the TLD above
them isnt signed, all the stuff below that point must establish
alternative trust anchors. In some cases (such as .se), the trust
anchor may be the TLD, but in other cases, the trust anchor may be
2nd-level domain (such as nanog.org).
If there is no central trust anchor, unless you can come up with an
alternative way of establishing a chain of trust, you must obtain
trustworthy keys for each of those individual islands of trust.
(Key management is the 2nd thing, after trust models, to always
scrutinize when considering about a crypto effort!)
If each site that wants to do DNSSEC has to do a "scavenger hunt"
for each island of trust's DNSSEC keys, that's rather inconvenient
particularly if (1) trust islands periodically rekey, (2) there are
thousands of domains, and (3) given that if a site fails to keep each
126
trust island's keys current, then that zone will do a medicare.gov

DLV
To avoid these problems, ISC has proposed DLV (Domain
Lookaside Validation) as a temporary/transitional model.
In the DLV model, even if the root or a TLD isn't ready to support
DNSSEC and sign its zone, perhaps a trusted third party can
collect, authenticate and deliver the required keys. Someone
attempting to do DNSSEC then has only to configure the DLV
server or servers as an anchor of trust, thereafter automatically
trusting domains that are anchored/validated via the DLV.
DLV is described at http://www.isc.org/solutions/dlv
DLV is supported in current versions of BIND
DLV is the most popular approach to dealing with the problem of
maintaining trust anchors until the root and TLDs are signed.
If you dont want to rely on DLV, and youre willing to use ONLY
TLD-level trust anchors, you can also use the IANA interim trust
anchors ( https://itar.iana.org/anchors/anchors.mf )
127

The Zone Enumeration Issue And NSEC3

As originally fielded, DNSSEC made it possible to exhaustively
enumerate, or "walk," a zone, discovering all known hosts. An
example of such as tool is Zonewalker, http://josefsson.org/walker/
Zone enumeration give miscreants a real "boost up" when it comes
to reconnoitering a domain, and this was a real problem for some
TLDs in countries with strong privacy protections.
NSEC3 as defined by RFC5155, addresses the zone enumeration
issue through use of salted hashes, which handles both the zone
enumeration concern as well as the problem that "the cost to
cryptographically secure delegations to unsigned zones is high for
large delegation-centric zones and zones where insecure
delegations will be updated rapidly."
For our purposes, it is sufficient to know that NSEC3 effectively
eliminates the zone enumeration problem.
128

Are Name Servers (the Software

Programs) DNSSEC-Ready?
Another potential stumbling block might be the name server
software. If the name server software you use doesn't support
DNSSEC, your ability to do DNSSEC will obviously be limited.
First, what name server products do people run?

129

BIND Dominates The DNS Server Market

http://dns.measurement-factory.com/surveys/200910.html
Using dataset II, authoritative 2nd level com/net/org servers:
Recent BIND 9
Other versions of BIND

173,590
11,583

69.23%
4.62% (73.85% total)

Using dataset I, nameservers found on random IPv4 addresses:

Recent BIND 9
Other versions of BIND

235,358
16,828

31.44%
2.26% (33.70% total)

130

Current Versions of BIND Support DNSSEC

The good news for folks interested in deploying DNSSEC is that
the current version of BIND supports DNSSEC, and BIND has the
lion's share of the current DNS server market, as shown by the table
on the proceeding page.
I must admit that I am a little disconcerted to see ancient versions of
BIND still in use are people REALLY running BIND 4? (Yes,
unfortunately, people are!)
You really don't want to be running ancient versions of anything
on systems exposed to the Internet these days! Job one is to get
current!
131

What About Microsoft's DNS Servers?

Quoting technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/
264820c4-55c7-42d6-9747-432af9556acc1033.mspx?mfr=true
(updated January 31st, 2005):
"Windows Server2003 DNS provides basic support of the DNS
Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol as defined in RFC 2535."
[however, note that RFC2535 dated March 1999, was made
obsolete by RFC4033, RFC4034, and RFC4035 ca. March 2005]
"The current feature support allows DNS servers to perform as
secondary DNS servers for existing DNSSEC-compliant, secure
zones. DNS supports the storing and loading of the DNSSECspecific resource records (RRs). Currently, a DNS server is
not capable of signing zones and resource records (creating
cryptographic digital signatures) or validating the SIG RRs.
The DNSSEC resource records are KEY, SIG, and NXT." [the
132
March 2005 RFC's deprecated those earlier DNSSEC record types]

DNSSEC and Windows Server 2008 R2

The situation is less dire for Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows
Server 2008 R2 now provides at least basic DNSSEC support, and
an 87 page guide to Windows DNSSEC deployment guide released
in October 2009 is now available from Microsoft (see
http://tinyurl.com/windows-and-dnssec ).
The current Microsoft DNSSEC implementation has not exactly
won universal acclimation, unfortunately. See, for example,
DNSSEC: Will Microsoft Have Enough Time?, Jan 29, 2010,
www.circleid.com/posts/dnssec_will_microsoft_have_enough_time/
See also NIST SP 800-81r1 Checklist Items and Microsoft
Windows Server 2008 R2, http://www.dnsops.gov/vendors/
MS-Win2008R2-SP800-81r1-Checklist.pdf (note, for example,
133
that NSEC3 support is still lacking)

What About DJBDNS aka TinyDNS?

If you're considering doing DNSSEC and you're currently using
DJBDNS or TinyDNS, you should note that the author of those
products explicitly does NOT support DNSSEC in
DJBDNS/TinyDNS, and to the best of my knowledge has no plans
to change that stance. You can see his discussion and rationale at:
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/blurb/security.html and at
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/forgery.html

134

EDNS0
You should know that name servers doing DNSSEC requires a
feature known as EDNS0, as defined in RFC2671, "Extension
Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)," August 1999.
Normally, DNS UDP responses are limited to just 512 bytes, a size
that's too small for the much larger DNSSEC records. To better
handle delivery of DNSSEC records, EDNS0 allows clients and
servers to negotiate the maximum size datagram which they can
handle, with the expectation that at least some hosts might
negotiate datagram sizes as high as 4KB. Name servers doing
DNSSEC must also do EDNS0.
Why's that a problem? Well some firewalls may be configured
to block UDP DNS traffic > 512 bytes. If you've got a firewall in
front of your DNS server, please test to see if youre broken:
https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/services/replysizetest
135

Sample Results from an EDNS0 Test

% dig +short rs.dns-oarc.net txt @ns1.uoregon.edu
rst.x996.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x1956.x996.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x2442.x1956.x996.rs.dns-oarc.net.
"128.223.32.36 sent EDNS buffer size 4096
"128.223.32.36 DNS reply size limit is at least 2442
"Tested at 2010-04-10 23:21:41 UTC
% dig +short rs.dns-oarc.net txt @8.8.8.8
rst.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x485.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
rst.x490.x485.x476.rs.dns-oarc.net.
"74.125.154.94 DNS reply size limit is at least 490
"74.125.154.94 lacks EDNS, defaults to 512
"Tested at 2010-04-10 23:25:21 UTC"

136

EDNS0 In Some MS Windows Environments

137

One View of DNSSEC Penetration:

UCLA's SecSpider Project
SecSpider: The DNSSEC Monitoring Project
http://secspider.cs.ucla.edu/ reports (as of Saturday, April 10th,
2010) that there are now 12,961 production zones doing DNSSEC
(although some of those zones may be zones from non-US
ccTLDs or zones from obscure signed 2nd level domains)
Signed 2nd level edu zones include:
-- berkeley.edu
-- internet2.edu (and ucaid.edu)
-- merit.edu
-- penn.edu (and upenn.edu)
-- psc.edu
There are also a fair number of signed 3rd level edu zones such as
netsec.colostate.edu, lcs.mit.edu, cs.rpi.edu, engr.wisc.edu, etc.
138

Why Aren't Folks Currently Using DNSSEC?

Do people simply not know DNSSEC exists? Well at least that's
no longer an excuse for the folks at this SecProf2010 session. :-)
Are people willing to try DNSSEC, but simply don't know the
"recipe" to get going? If so, let me recommend three resources:
-- Olaf Kolkman/NLNet Lab's "DNSSEC HOWTO, a tutorial in
disguise," see http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/dnssec_howto/
-- Geoff Huston's three part exploration of DNSSEC:
http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2006-08/dnssec.html
http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2006-09/dnssec2.html
http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2006-10/dnssec3.html and
-- The RIPE NCC's DNSSEC Training Course:
http://www.ripe.net/training/dnssec/material/dnssec.pdf
Are people waiting for the root zone (or major TLDs) to be
signed? Or are people waiting for more of their peers to take the
plunge and report back, first? (EDU land is prone to herd behavior!)
139

Or Are There More

Fundamental Problems?
Are people just really busy, with slow uptake just the normal
resistance to yet one more thing ANYTHING MORE! to handle
without substantial additional resources?
Does DNSSEC solve what's perceived by the community to be a
"non-existent" or "unimportant" problem?
Are there critical administrative tools missing? (if that's the
issue, then see http://www.dnssec-tools.org/ and
http://www.ripe.net/disi/dnssec_maint_tool/ )
Are people waiting to see what the other folks do w.r.t. DNSSEC?
140

Something to Note: DNSSEC Adoption

Doesn't Need to Be Symmetric
When deploying DNSSEC (just as when deploying SPF or
DK/DKIM for email), adoption doesn't need to be symmetric:
-- you can sign your own zones with DNSSEC on your
authoritative name servers, yet not check DNSSEC on your
recursive customer-facing name servers, or
-- you can check DNSSEC on your recursive customer-facing
facing name servers, yet not publish DNSSEC records for your
own domains on your authoritative name servers
Most sites will eventually want to "take the whole plunge" (or skip
the technology entirely), but sometimes different people have
decision making authority for different parts of the organization,
and you should recognize that asymmetric adoption is a possibility.
141

8. DNS Case Studies

Applying What We've Talked About

Given that we're a small group, and this is a meeting of
practitioners, what do we see if we actually look at DNS and
related areas at some sites?
We could pick arbitrary sites, but since we're a small group, let's
look at the sites of the folks who've actually signed up for the
seminar. (My apologies to you if you're a last minute walk in
participant we'll try to "do" your site in at the end on the fly if we
have the opportunity)
Please note that if we find issues with your site (and I think I could
find issues with any site I'll ever look at if I look hard enough!),
please do not take that as a criticism that's not how it is intended.
When we flag things that seem odd, our goal is solely to help you
(and others) harden their sites. Sometimes sites only show issues
for a brief period, and it is just luck that I happened to check during
at just the wrong time the important thing is that issues get fixed!
143

7.1 Penn State University

Penn State Routing

AS3999 (Pennsylvania State University)
Upstream ASNs:
AS5050 (Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) and
AS174 (Cogent Communications)
whois.radb.net knows about AS3999
IPv4 Network blocks advertised via AS3999:
66.71.0.0/17
75.102.64.0/18
128.118.0.0/16
130.203.0.0/16
146.186.0.0/16
150.231.0.0/16
IPv6 Netblocks advertised via AS3999:
2610:8::/32
145

Penn State Name Servers

Potential name server-related issues:
-- Name servers are open for psu.edu zone transfers
(e.g.,f0fs03.cac.psu.edu, isengard.cse.psu.edu, ns1.ems.psu.edu
(IPv4 and IPv6), otc2.psu.edu (IPv4 and IPv6),
psu-ns.acns.msu.edu, sodium.tns.its.psu.edu (IPv4 and IPv6)
-- Some name servers may be running older versions of BIND
(9.4.3-P3 and 9.6.1-P3)
-- While IPv4 psu.edu name servers are advertised by multiple
ASNs, IPv6 name servers are only advertised by a single ASN
-- psu.edu is not DNSSEC signed
146

Penn State Miscellaneous

abuse.net knows about: [email protected]

No SPF record defined
Reasonable looking sending pattern on senderbase.org
Domain whois updated 09-Jul-2007
ASN whois all updated 24-Jun-2005
wpad.psu.edu and wpad.la.psu.edu are NOT defined
isatap.psu.edu and isatap.la.psu.edu are NOT defined
Some indication that blog/guestbook/wiki spam is occurring
(google for cheap phentermine site:psu.edu )

147

7.2 North Carolina State University

NCSU Routing

AS11442 (NCSU)
Upstream: AS81 (NCREN)
No whois.radb.net entry for 11442, but whois.radb.net has interesting entries for AS81:
[whois.radb.net]
aut-num:
AS81
<== this is really MCNC/NCREN.NET per ARIN
as-name:
RoadRunner
descr:
RR-RC-Rockingham County Schools-Greensboro
import:
from AS-ANY accept ANY
export:
to AS-ANY announce AS-ROADRUNNER
admin-c:
IPADDREG
tech-c:
IPADDREG
notify:
[email protected]
mnt-by:
MAINT-RR
changed:
[email protected] 20080805
source:
RADB
[RADB also has an entry for AS81 ASN-NCREN from SAVVIS ~1995]
149

NCSU Address Space

Network block advertised via AS11442:

152.1.0.0/16
152.7.0.0/16
152.14.0.0/16
204.84.244.0/22 (part of NCRENs 204.84.0.0/15)

NCSU.EDU domain whois last updated 07/2007

AS11442 whois last updated 09/2008
Some netblock whois entries last update 09/1998

NCREN-B14 and NCSU3 cover exactly overlapping ranges:

[whois.arin.net]
North Carolina Research and Education Network NCREN-B14
(NET-152-14-0-0-1)
152.14.0.0 - 152.14.255.255
North Carolina State University NCSU3 (NET-152-14-0-0-2)
152.14.0.0 - 152.14.255.255

150

NCSU Name Servers

Superfluous name server listed at parent: uni00ns.unity.ncsu.edu
and uni10ns.unity.ncsu.edu
Additional name server listed at child: ns1.ncsu.edu, ns2.ncsu.edu
No IPv6 name servers found.
No DNSSEC

151

NCSU Miscellaneous

Abuse.net knows about: [email protected]

No SPF record
NCSU.EDU has some blocklisted hosts on Senderbase.org
wpad.ncsu.edu is NOT defined
Isatap.ncsu.edu is NOT defined
Domain is showing material signs of guestbook/blog/wiki spam
(google for site:ncsu.edu cheap phentermine and ask to see all
results)

152

7.3 Indiana University

Indiana University Routing

AS87
upstreams:
-- AS19872 (Indiana Gigapop)
-- AS11069 (Egix, Inc.)
Whois.radb.net knows about AS87
Originates
129.79.0.0/16
134.68.0.0/16
140.182.0.0/16
149.159.0.0/16
149.160.0.0/14
149.165.0.0/17
149.166.0.0/16
156.56.0.0/16
198.49.177.0/24

154

Indiana University Name Servers

Actual/potential name server related issues:
-- open recursive name servers on IPv6
(2001:18e8:3:220:0:0:0:6, 2001:18e8:2:8:0:0:0:6)
-- SOA MNAME for indiana.edu (ns.indiana.edu) not listed as NS.
-- No answer received from 129.79.1.1 when querying for
indiana.edu/IN/SOA.
-- IPv6 name servers announced from only one ASN

155

Indiana University Miscellaneous

Abuse.net knows about [email protected]
No SPF record defined (weird TXT record for indiana.edu:
"ReleaseWLIDNamespace=true)
Are all three MX records for indiana.edu on the same subnet?
external-relay.indiana.edu. 19075 IN A
129.79.1.61
belushi.uits.indiana.edu. 5030 IN A
129.79.1.188
hartman.uits.indiana.edu. 4820 IN A
129.79.1.194
wpad.indiana.edu is NOT defined
isatap.indiana.edu is NOT defined
Checking for cheap phentermine site:indiana.edu doesnt return
much indication of spamming

156

7.4 City University of New York

City University Routing

AS31822
Upstreams: AS3754 (Nysernet), AS209 (Qwest), AS3356 (Level3)
AS31822 is NOT registered in whois.radb.net

158

City University Address Blocks

128.228.0.0/16
134.74.0.0/16
146.95.0.0/16
146.96.0.0/16
146.111.0.0/16
146.245.0.0/16
148.84.0.0/16
149.4.0.0/16
150.210.0.0/16
163.238.0.0/16
198.61.16.0/20
198.83.28.0/22
198.83.112.0/20
198.180.141.0/24
199.219.128.0/18
199.219.192.0/20
199.219.208.0/21
199.219.216.0/24
207.159.192.0/18
209.2.54.0/23

159

City University Whois

Cuny.edu domain whois last updated Dec 2008
ASN whois information last updated Jan 2004
Some IP whois was last updated some time ago
(e.g., 146.111.0.0 was last updated September 1998)

160

City University Name Servers

No IPv6 name servers
No DNSSEC
Other than that, pretty sweet! :-)

161

City University Miscellaneous

Abuse.net knows about [email protected]
Weird cuny.edu txt record (like indiana.edu!),
"ReleaseWLIDNamespace=true"
Only one MX record
wpad.cuny.edu is NOT defined
isatap.cuny.edu is NOT defined
cuny.edu appears to be getting abused by guestbook/blog/wiki
spammers (as an example, google for cheap phentermine
site:cuny.edu although some of those pages may already be down)

162

7.5 Morehouse School of Medicine

MSM Routing and Netblocks

AS29972 (Morehouse Medical)
Upstreams:
AS10490 (SOX)
AS14745 (Internap)
AS3549 (GBLX)
(Routes heavily prepended in favor of AS10490 and against
AS14745 and AS3549; AS3549 only used for 204.246.192.0/21)
Netblocks:
70.42.183.0/24
192.83.232.0/24
204.246.192.0/21
Site also uses 174.46.102.16/28 for www.msm.edu, routed by
AS4323 (TWTelecom)
164

MSM Nameservers
Name server issues/notes:
-- saturn.msm.edu has old version of BIND
(8.4.7-REL-NOESW)
-- saturn.msm.edu open for zone transfers of msm.edu
-- name servers appear to be on consecutive Ips
(192.83.232.40, 192.83.232.41)
-- No offsite name server (for survivability)
-- No IPV6 name servers
-- No DNSSEC
-- superfluous name server listed at parent: ns2.twtelecom.net

165

MSM Miscellaneous
abuse.net has no entry for msm.edu (except the default of
[email protected])
Msm.edu has an SPF record
Msm.edus MXs route via Postini, except for
InFilter2.msm.edu (test anti-spam product?)
wpad.msm.edu doesn't exist
isatap.msn.edu doesnt exist
Msm.edu does NOT appear to have any entries touting cheap
phentermine web pages, good job keeping the blog/guestbook/wiki
spammers at bay!

166

7.6 Rochester Institute of Technology

RIT Routing and Netblocks

AS4385 (last updated 1/2002)
whois.radb.net doesn't know about AS4385
Upstreams AS3754 (Nysernet), AS3356 (Level3), and AS4323
(Time Warner Telecom)
129.21.0.0/16 (IP whois last updated 10/2002)
192.77.9.0/24 (IP whois last updated 10/2002)

168

RIT Name Servers

Actual/potential name server issues/notes:
-- accuvax.northwestern.edu open for zone transfer of rit.edu
-- different serial numbers found:
SOA at address 129.21.3.17 has serial 23648168
SOA at address 129.21.4.18 has serial 23648168
SOA at address 129.105.49.100 has serial 23647780
-- refresh and retry are somewhat short (3600 and 600 respectively
vs. 14400 and 3600)
-- No IPv6
-- No DNSSEC

169

RIT Miscellaneous
Abuse.net knows about
[email protected]
No SPF record for rit.edu
MX records appear to be on successive dotted quads:
mxgate02.rit.edu.
590 IN A
129.21.3.39
mxgate03.rit.edu.
593 IN A
129.21.3.40
mxgate01.rit.edu.
586 IN A
129.21.3.38
wpad.rit.edu is NOT defined
isatap.rit.edu is NOT defined
Some guestbooks/blogs/wikis appear to be getting abused;
google for cheap phentermine site:rit.edu to see examples

170

7.7 Ithaca College

Ithaca College Routing

147.129.0.0/16 is routed by AS4323 (Time Warner Telecom);
consider getting own ASN to enable eventual HPC connectivity?
Domain and IP whois both updated in 2010 (excellent!)

172

Ithaca College Name Servers

Actual/potential issues:
-- Superfluous name server listed at parent: resolver3.ithaca.edu
-- Additional name server listed at child: siren.ithaca.edu
-- ns1.ithaca.edu --> 209.51.64.22 --> dynamic.apogeenet.net -->
NXDOMAIN
-- ns2.ithaca.edu --> 66.152.113.102 --> NXDOMAIN
-- siren.ithaca.edu --> 147.129.56.13 --> NXDOMAIN
-- siren.ithaca.edu doesnt answer over TCP or UDP
(master name server mistakenly advertised publicly?)
-- MX servers on successive Ips (147.129.30.79 and
147.129.30.80)
-- SOA refresh and retry TTLs too low (1200 < 14400,
and 2400 < 3600m respectively)
-- No IPv6 name servers
-- No DNSSEC
173

Ithaca College Miscellaneous

Abuse.net knows about [email protected]

No SPF record
Senderbase looks fine for the ithaca.edu domain
wpad.ithaca.edu is NOT defined
isatap.ithaca.edu is NOT defined
No indication that guestbooks/blogs/wikis are currently being
spammed

174

7.8 University of San Francisco

(usfca.edu)

USFCA Routing

AS22700 (University of San Francisco)

Upstream AS2152 (Calren)
Netblock: 138.202.0.0/16
Also uses 208.88.129.81 (part of Websolutions Technologys
208.88.128.0/22) for web hosting

176

USFCA Name Servers

Real/potential name server issues/notes:
-- Uses ns2.cenic.org, which appears to be recursive
-- [email protected] not possible?
-- Refresh TTL is 7200 (recommended is 14400)
-- No IPv6 nameservers
-- No DNSSEC

177

USFCA Miscellaneous

Abuse.net has [email protected]

Does not have an SPF record
Usfca.edu looks fine at senderbase
wpad.usfca.edu is NOT defined
isatap.usfca.edu is NOT defined
A handful of usfca.edu pages are being hit by blog/guestbook/
wiki spam (google for cheap phentermine site:usfca.edu)

178

7.9 Union College

Union College Routing

AS19999 (Union College), cool ASN :-)
Upstreams are AS4323 (Time Warner) and AS11351
(RoadRunner), with prepending used to pref 11351 and deprioritze
4323
whois.radb.net thinks AS19999 is RoadRunner, even though ARIN
knows better :-)
Union has 192.52.218.0/24 (but note Sprint Rtech handle for that
netblock) plus 149.106.0.0/16. The Union /16 is being broken up
into a bunch of separately announced individual /19s in addition to
being announced as the /16.

180

Union College Name Servers

Real/potential name server issues/notes:
-- dutch.union.edu and eliphalet.union.edu appear to be open
recursive
-- dutch.union.edu and eliphalet.union.edu dont answer queries
via TCP
-- both name servers on same subnet? (149.106.160.{3,14})
-- [email protected] not accepting email
-- TTLs may need tweaking (900<3600, refresh is 10800 but
should be at least 14400, minimum is 172800, but should be no
more than 86400
-- no IPv6 name servers
-- no DNSSEC

181

Union College Miscellaneous

Abuse.net has no registered reporting address; using
[email protected] by default
No SPF record
Senderbase looks clean
wpad.union.edu is NOT defined
isatap.union.edu is NOT defined
4 union.edu pages being hit by blog/guestbook/wiki spam
(google for cheap phentermine site:union.edu )

182

7.10 McGill

McGill Routing and Netblocks

AS15318 (McGill University)
upstreams AS376 (RISQ) and AS17356 (Vermont Telephone)
whois.radb.net has point of contact info for AS15318 (from Bell),
but no routing policy
132.206.0.0/16
132.216.0.0/16
142.157.0.0/16
142.157.0.0/17
142.157.128.0/18
142.157.192.0/18
192.197.121.0/24
198.168.128.0/18
199.202.80.0/22
199.202.84.0/23
184
199.202.98.0/23

McGill Name Servers

Actual/potential name server issues/notes:
-- mcgill.edu: total parent/child glue mismatch -- mismatch
between name servers declared for domain (ns1.mcgill.edu and
ns2.mcgill.edu) and name servers reported by
ns1.mcgill.edu (moka.cc.mcgill.ca, ns1.cim.mcgill.ca,
ns1.mcgill.ca, kona.cc.mcgill.ca, oolong.cc.mcgill.ca)
-- moka.cc.mcgill.ca, ns1.mcgill.ca, kona.cc.mcgill.ca,
oolong.cc.mcgill.ca are open recursive
-- ns1.cim.mcgill.ca allows zone transfer of mcgill.edu
-- TTLs may need adjustment, 600<3600, refresh (3600<14400)
-- No IPv6 name servers
-- No DNSSEC

185

McGill Miscellaneous
Abuse.net knows about [email protected] for
mcgill.edu, but [email protected] and [email protected]
for mcgill.ca
No SPF record for mcgill.edu or mcgill.ca
no mx for mcgill.edu, one mx for mcgill.ca
wpad.mcgill.edu, wpad.mcgill.ca are NOT defined
isatap.mcgill.edu, isatap.mcgill.ca are NOT defined
Mcgill.ca has pages that are being hit by blog/guestbook/wiki spam
(google for cheap phentermine site:mcgill.ca)

186

7.11 Missouri State

Missouri State Routing

Missouri State has 146.7.0.0/16
That netblock is routed via AS2572 (more.net)
whois.radb.net has point of contact info for AS2572, but no routing
policy

188

Missouri State Name Servers

Real/potential name server issues/notes:
-- argus.more.net doesnt answer queries over UDP or TCP
-- Additional name server listed at child:
canopus.missouristate.edu
-- canopus.missouristate.edu --> 146.7.4.137 --> NXDOMAIN
-- sirius.missouristate.edu --> 146.7.4.136 --> NXDOMAIN
-- canopus.missouristate.edu doesnt answer over TCP
-- sirius.missouristate.edu doesnt answer over TCP
-- canopus and sirius use non-date-format serial numbers
-- No IPv6 nameservers
-- No DNSSEC

189

Missouri State Miscellaneous

Abuse.net has [email protected] and
[email protected]
Missouristate.edu has an SPF record
Senderbase is mostly good (one poor host, 146.7.213.11, listed on
NJABL; additional hosts sending mail but w/o in-addrs defined)
wpad.missourstate.edu is NOT defined
isatap.missouristate.edu is NOT defined
Bunch of missouristate.edu pages being hit by blog/guestbook/wiki
spam (google for cheap phentermine site:missouristate.edu )

190

7.12 Lancaster University

(www.lancs.ac.uk)

Lancaster University Routing

Netblock 148.88.0.0/16
Routed by AS786 (JANET, UK)

192

Lancaster University Name Servers

Real/potential name server issues/notes:
-- Additional name servers at child: dns.lancs.ac.uk and
dns2.lancs.ac.uk
-- SOA refresh TTL is 10800, smaller than recommended 14400
-- No offsite name servers?
-- No IPv6 name servers
-- No DNSSEC

193

Lancaster University Miscellaneous

Abuse.net has [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], and [email protected]
No SPF record
Senderbase looks okay
wpad.lancs.ac.uk IS defined (Gold star! I was hoping at least one
example domain would be taking care of this!)
isatap.lancs.ac.uk is NOT defined
Lancs.ac.uk does NOT appear to be getting hit with
blog/guestbook/wiki spam (e.g., googling for cheap phentermine
site:lancs.ac.uk finds nothing)

194