Network Working Group                                        W. Hardaker
Internet-Draft                                                   USC/ISI
Intended status: Best Current Practice                       V. Dukhovni
Expires: 14 March 2022                                   Bloomberg, L.P.
                                                       10 September 2021


                 Guidance for NSEC3 parameter settings
                   draft-ietf-dnsop-nsec3-guidance-00

Abstract

   NSEC3 is a DNSSEC mechanism providing proof of non-existence by
   promising there are no names that exist between two domainnames
   within a zone.  Unlike its counterpart NSEC, NSEC3 avoids directly
   disclosing the bounding domainname pairs.  This document provides
   guidance on setting NSEC3 parameters based on recent operational
   deployment experience.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 14 March 2022.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.











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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text
   as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Recommendation for zone publishers  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Algorithms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.3.  Iterations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.4.  Salt  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.1.  Best-practice for zone publishers . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.2.  Recommendation for validating resolvers . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.3.  Recommendation for Primary / Secondary relationships  . .   6
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Operational Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Appendix B.  Github Version of this document  . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Appendix C.  Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     C.1.  OpenDNSSEC  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     C.2.  PowerDNS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     C.3.  Knot DNS and Knot Resolver  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   As with NSEC [RFC4035], NSEC3 [RFC5155] provides proof of non-
   existence that consists of signed DNS records establishing the non-
   existence of a given name or associated Resource Record Type (RRTYPE)
   in a DNSSEC [RFC4035] signed zone.  In the case of NSEC3, however,
   the names of valid nodes in the zone are obfuscated through (possibly
   multiple iterations of) hashing via SHA-1. (currently only SHA-1 is
   in use within the Internet).






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   NSEC3 also provides "opt-out support", allowing for blocks of
   unsigned delegations to be covered by a single NSEC3 record.  Use of
   the opt-out feature allow large registries to only sign as many NSEC3
   records as there are signed DS or other RRsets in the zone - with
   opt-out, unsigned delegations don't require additional NSEC3 records.
   This sacrifices the tamper-resistance proof of non-existence offered
   by NSEC3 in order to reduce memory and CPU overheads.

   NSEC3 records have a number of tunable parameters that are specified
   via an NSEC3PARAM record at the zone apex.  These parameters are the
   Hash Algorithm, processing Flags, the number of hash Iterations and
   the Salt.  Each of these has security and operational considerations
   that impact both zone owners and validating resolvers.  This document
   provides some best-practice recommendations for setting the NSEC3
   parameters.

1.1.  Requirements notation

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

2.  Recommendation for zone publishers

   The following sections describe recommendations for setting
   parameters for NSEC3 and NSEC3PARAM.

2.1.  Algorithms

   The algorithm field is not discussed by this document.

2.2.  Flags

   The NSEC3PARAM flags field currently contains no flags, but
   individual NSEC3 records contain the "Opt-Out" flag [RFC5155], which
   specifies whether or not that NSEC3 record provides proof of non-
   existence or not.  In general, NSEC3 with the Opt-Out flag enabled
   should only be used in large, highly dynamic zones with a small
   percentage of signed delegations.  Operationally, this allows for
   fewer signature creations when new delegations are inserted into a
   zone.  This is typically only necessary for extremely large
   registration points providing zone updates faster than real-time
   signing allows.  Smaller zones, or large but relatively static zones,
   are encouraged to use a Flags value of 0 (zero) and take advantage of
   DNSSEC's proof-of-non-existence support.




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2.3.  Iterations

   NSEC3 records are created by first hashing the input domain and then
   repeating that hashing algorithm a number of times based on the
   iterations parameter in the NSEC3PARM and NSEC3 records.  The first
   hash is typically sufficient to discourage zone enumeration performed
   by "zone walking" an NSEC or NSEC3 chain.  Only determined parties
   with significant resources are likely to try and uncover hashed
   values, regardless of the number of additional iterations performed.
   If an adversary really wants to expend significant CPU resources to
   mount an offline dictionary attack on a zone's NSEC3 chain, they'll
   likely be able to find most of the "guessable" names despite any
   level of additional hashing iterations.

   Most names published in the DNS are rarely secret or unpredictable.
   They are published to be memorable, used and consumed by humans.
   They are often recorded in many other network logs such as email
   logs, certificate transparency logs, web page links, intrusion
   detection systems, malware scanners, email archives, etc.  Many times
   a simple dictionary of commonly used domain names prefixes (www, ftp,
   mail, imap, login, database, etc) can be used to quickly reveal a
   large number of labels within a zone.  Because of this, there are
   increasing performance costs yet diminishing returns associated with
   applying additional hash iterations beyond the first.

   Although Section 10.3 of [RFC5155] specifies upper bounds for the
   number of hash iterations to use, there is no published guidance for
   zone owners about good values to select.  Because hashing provides
   only moderate protection, as shown recently in academic studies of
   NSEC3 protected zones [GPUNSEC3][ZONEENUM], this document recommends
   that zone owners SHOULD use an iteration value of 0 (zero),
   indicating that only the initial hash value should be placed into a
   DNS zone's NSEC3 records.

   TODO: discuss the authoritative overhead of needing to find the right
   range for new random strings coming in.  Note white-lies online
   signing differences.

2.4.  Salt

   Salts add yet another layer of protection against offline, stored
   dictionary attacks by combining the value to be hashed (in our case,
   a DNS domainname) with a randomly generated value.  This prevents
   adversaries from building up and remembering a dictionary of values
   that can translate a hash output back to the value that it derived
   from.





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   In the case of DNS, it should be noted that the hashed names placed
   in NSEC3 records already include the fully-qualified domain name from
   each zone.  Thus, no single pre-computed table works to speed up
   dictionary attacks against multiple target zones.  An attacker is
   required to compute a complete dictionary per zone, which is
   expensive in both storage and CPU time.

   To protect against a dictionary being built and used for a target
   zone, an additional salt field can be included and changed on a
   regular basis, forcing a would-be attacker to repeatedly compute a
   new dictionary (or just do trial and error without the benefits of
   precomputation).

   Changing a zone's salt value requires the construction of a complete
   new NSEC3 chain.  This is true both when resigning the entire zone at
   once, or incrementally signing it in the background where the new
   salt is only activated once every name in the chain has been
   completed.

   Most users of NSEC3 publish static salt values that never change.
   This provides no added security benefit (because the complete fully
   qualified domain name is already unique).  If no rotation is planned,
   operators are encouraged to forgo the salt entirely by using a zero-
   length salt value instead (represented as a "-" in the presentation
   format).

3.  Recommendations

   The following subsections describe recommendations for the different
   operating realms within the DNS.

3.1.  Best-practice for zone publishers

   In short, for all zones, the recommended NSEC3 parameters are as
   shown below:

   ; SHA-1, no extra iterations, empty salt:
   ;
   bcp.example. IN NSEC3PARAM 1 0 0 -

   For small zones, the use of opt-out based NSEC3 records is NOT
   RECOMMENDED.

   For very large and sparsely signed zones, where the majority of the
   records are insecure delegations, opt-out MAY be used.






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   Since the NSEC3PARAM RR is not used by validating resolvers (see
   [RFC5155] section 4) the iterations and salt parameters can be
   changed without the need to wait for RRsets to expire from caches.  A
   complete new NSEC3 chain needs to be constructed and the zone
   resigned.

3.2.  Recommendation for validating resolvers

   Because there has been a large growth of open (public) DNSSEC
   validating resolvers that are subject to compute resource constraints
   when handling requests from anonymous clients, this document
   recommends that validating resolvers should change their behavior
   with respect to large iteration values.  Validating resolvers SHOULD
   return an insecure response when processing NSEC3 records with
   iterations larger than 100.  Validating resolvers MAY return SERVFAIL
   when processing NSEC3 records with iterations larger than 500.  Note
   that this significantly decreases the requirements originally
   specified in Section 10.3 of [RFC5155].

   Note that a validating resolver MUST still validate the signature
   over the NSEC3 record to ensure the iteration count was not altered
   since record publication (see [RFC5155] section 10.3).

   Validating resolvers returning an insecure or SERVFAIL answer in this
   situation SHOULD return an Extended DNS Error (EDE) {RFC8914} EDNS0
   option of value [TBD].

3.3.  Recommendation for Primary / Secondary relationships

   Primary and secondary authoritative servers for a zone that are not
   being run by the same operational staff and/or using the same
   software and configuration must take into account the potential
   differences in NSEC3 iteration support.

   Operators of secondary services should advertise the parameter limits
   that their servers support.  Correspondingly, operators of primary
   servers need to ensure that their secondaries support the NSEC3
   parameters they expect to use in their zones.  To ensure reliability,
   after primaries change their iteration counts, they should query
   their secondaries with known non-existent labels to verify the
   secondary servers are responding as expected.

4.  Security Considerations

   This entire document discusses security considerations with various
   parameters selections of NSEC3 and NSEC3PARAM fields.





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5.  Operational Considerations

   This entire document discusses operational considerations with
   various parameters selections of NSEC3 and NSEC3PARAM fields.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document requests a new allocation in the "Extended DNS Error
   Codes" of the "Domain Name System (DNS) Parameters" registration
   table with the following characteristics:

   *  INFO-CODE: [TBD]

   *  Purpose: Unsupported NSEC3 iterations value

   *  Reference: [this document]

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC4035]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security
              Extensions", RFC 4035, DOI 10.17487/RFC4035, March 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4035>.

   [RFC5155]  Laurie, B., Sisson, G., Arends, R., and D. Blacka, "DNS
              Security (DNSSEC) Hashed Authenticated Denial of
              Existence", RFC 5155, DOI 10.17487/RFC5155, March 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5155>.

7.2.  Informative References

   [GPUNSEC3] Wander, M., Schwittmann, L., Boelmann, C., and T. Weis,
              "GPU-Based NSEC3 Hash Breaking", DOI 10.1109/NCA.2014.27,
              2014, <https://doi.org/10.1109/NCA.2014.27>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [ZONEENUM] Wang, Z., Xiao, L., and R. Wang, "An efficient DNSSEC zone
              enumeration algorithm", n.d..



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Appendix A.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank the dns-operations discussion
   participants, which took place on mattermost hosted by DNS-OARC.

   Additionally, the following people contributed text or review
   comments to the draft: Tony Finch and Florian Obser.

Appendix B.  Github Version of this document

   While this document is under development, it can be viewed, tracked,
   issued, pushed with PRs, ... here:

   https://github.com/hardaker/draft-ietf-dnsop-nsec3-guidance

Appendix C.  Implementation Notes

   The following implementations have implemented the guidance in this
   document.  They have graciously provided notes about the details of
   their implementation below.

C.1.  OpenDNSSEC

   The OpenDNSSEC configuration checking utility will alert the user
   about nsec3 iteration values larger than 100.

C.2.  PowerDNS

   PowerDNS 4.5.2 changed the default value of nsec3-max-iterations to
   150.

C.3.  Knot DNS and Knot Resolver

   Knot DNS 3.0.6 warns when signing with more than 20 NSEC3 iterations.
   Knot Resolver 5.3.1 treats NSEC3 iterations above 150 as insecure.

Authors' Addresses

   Wes Hardaker
   USC/ISI

   Email: ietf@hardakers.net


   Viktor Dukhovni
   Bloomberg, L.P.

   Email: ietf-dane@dukhovni.org



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