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Starting TLS over DNS
draft-hzhwm-start-tls-for-dns-00

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Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Zi Hu , Liang Zhu , John Heidemann , Allison Mankin , Duane Wessels
Last updated 2014-02-14
Replaces draft-start-tls-over-dns
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draft-hzhwm-start-tls-for-dns-00
Network Working Group                                              Z. Hu
Internet-Draft                                                    L. Zhu
Intended status: Standards Track                            J. Heidemann
Expires: August 18, 2014                        USC/Information Sciences
                                                               Institute
                                                               A. Mankin
                                                              D. Wessels
                                                           Verisign Labs
                                                       February 14, 2014

                         Starting TLS over DNS
                    draft-hzhwm-start-tls-for-dns-00

Abstract

   This document describes a technique for upgrading a DNS TCP
   connection to use Transport Layer Security (TLS) over standard ports.
   Encryption provided by DNS-over-TLS eliminates opportunities for
   eavesdropping of DNS queries in the network.  The proposed mechanism
   is backwards compatible with clients and servers that are not aware
   of DNS-over-TLS.

Status of this Memo

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

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on August 18, 2014.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of

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   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.

1.  Introduction

   Today, nearly all DNS queries ([RFC1034] and [RFC1035]) are sent
   unencrypted, which makes them vulnerable to eavesdropping by an
   attacker that has access to the network channel, reducing the privacy
   of the querier.  Recent news reports have elevated these concerns,
   and ongoing efforts are beginning to identify privacy concerns about
   DNS ([draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy]).

   Prior work has addressed some aspects of DNS security, but none
   addresses privacy between a DNS client and server using standard
   protocols.  DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC, [RFC4033]) provide
   _response integrity_ by defining mechanisms to cryptographically sign
   zones, allowing end-users (or their first-hop resolver) to verify
   replies are correct.  DNSSEC however does nothing to protect request
   or response privacy.  Traditionally, either privacy was not
   considered a requirement for DNS traffic, or it was assumed that
   network traffic was sufficiently private, however these perceptions
   are evolving due to recent events.

   More recently, DNSCurve [draft-dempsky-dnscurve] defines a method to
   provide link-level confidentiality and integrity between DNS clients
   and servers.  However, it does so with a new cryptographic protocol
   and so does not take advantage of TLS.  ConfidentialDNS
   [draft-wijngaards-confidentialdns] and IPSECA
   [draft-osterweil-dane-ipsec] use opportunistic encryption to provide
   privacy for DNS queries and responses.  However, it is unclear how a
   client can locate an RR specific to its first-hop resolver.  Finally,
   others have suggested DNS-over-TLS.  Recent work suggests DNS-over-
   TLS ([draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-privacy-sol]), and the Unbound DNS
   software [unbound] includes a DNS-over-TLS implementation.  However,
   neither defines methods to negotiate TLS use over an existing
   connection; unbound instead requires DNS-over-TLS to run on a
   different port.

   The mechanism described in this document enables DNS clients and
   servers to upgrade an existing DNS-over-TCP connection to a DNS-over-
   TLS connection.  It is analogous to STARTTLS [RFC2595] used in SMTP
   [RFC3207], IMAP [RFC3501] and POP [RFC1939].

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   This document defines only the protocol extensions necessary to
   support TLS negotiation.  It does not describe how DNS clients might
   validate server certificates or specify trusted certificate
   authorities.  Solutions for certificate authentication are outside
   the scope of this document.

1.1.  Reserved Words

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

2.  Protocol Changes

   Clients and servers indicate their support for, and desire to use,
   DNS-over-TLS by setting a bit in the Flags field of the EDNS0
   [RFC6891] OPT meta-RR.  The "TLS OK" (TO) bit is defined as the
   second bit of the third and fourth bytes of the "extended RCODE and
   flags" portion of the EDNS0 OPT meta-RR, immediately adjacent to the
   "DNSSEC OK" (DO) bit [RFC4033]:

                     +0 (MSB)                +1 (LSB)
              +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
           0: |   EXTENDED-RCODE      |       VERSION         |
              +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
           2: |DO|TO|                  Z                      |
              +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

2.1.  Use by DNS Clients

2.1.1.  Sending Queries

   DNS clients MAY set the TO bit in queries sent using UDP transport to
   signal their general ability to support DNS-over-TLS.  [For
   discussion: is this a bad idea because ignorant middleboxes might
   drop the TO=1 UDP queries?]

   DNS clients MAY set the TO bit in the initial query sent to a server
   using TCP transport to signal their desire that the TCP connection be
   upgraded to TLS.  DNS clients MUST NOT set the TO bit on subsequent
   queries when using TCP or TLS transport (to avoid ambiguity).

   Since the motivation for DNS-over-TLS is to preserve privacy, DNS
   clients SHOULD use a query that reveals no private information in the
   initial TO=1 query to a server.  To provide a standard "dummy" query,
   it is RECOMMENDED to send the initial query with RD=0,
   QNAME="STARTTLS", QCLASS=CH, and QTYPE=TXT ("STARTTLS/CH/TXT")

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   analogous to administrative queries already in widespread use
   [RFC4892].

   After sending the initial TO=1 query using TCP transport, DNS clients
   MUST wait for the initial response before sending any subsequent
   queries over the same TCP connection.

2.1.2.  Receiving Responses

   A DNS client that receives a response using UDP transport that has
   the TO bit set MUST handle that response as usual.  It MAY record the
   server's support for DNS-over-TLS and use that information as part of
   its server selection algorithm in the case where multiple servers are
   available to service a particular query.  [For discussion: UDP is
   subject to spoofing and a client which depends on TO=1 in a UDP
   response may be tricked into never upgrading to TLS.]

   A DNS client that receives a response to its initial query using TCP
   transport that has the TO bit set MUST immediately initiate a TLS
   handshake using the procedure described in [RFC5246].

   A DNS client that receives a response to its initial query using TCP
   transport that has the TO bit clear MUST not initiate a TLS handshake
   and SHOULD utilize the existing TCP connection for subsequent
   queries.  DNS clients SHOULD remember server IP addresses that don't
   support DNS-over-TLS (including TLS handshake failures) and SHOULD
   NOT request DNS-over-TLS from them for reasonable period.  (We
   suggest 1 hour, or when the client discovers a new resolver.)

2.2.  Use by DNS Servers

2.2.1.  Receiving Queries

   A DNS server receiving a query over UDP MUST ignore the TO bit.

   A DNS server receiving a query over an existing TLS connection MUST
   ignore the TO bit.

   A DNS server receiving an initial query over TCP that has the TO bit
   set MAY inform the client it is willing to establish a TLS session,
   as described in the next section.

   A DNS server receiving subsequent queries over TCP MUST ignore the TO
   bit.  (A client wishing to start TLS after the initial query MUST
   open a new TCP connection to do so.)

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2.2.2.  Sending Responses

   A DNS server sending a response over UDP SHOULD set the TO bit to
   indicate its general support for DNS-over-TLS, as long as it is
   willing and able to support a TLS connection with the particular
   client.

   A DNS server receiving an initial query over TCP that has the TO bit
   set MAY set the TO bit in its response.  The server MUST then proceed
   with the TLS handshake protocol.

   A DNS server receiving a "dummy" STARTTLS/CH/TXT query over TCP MUST
   respond with RCODE=0 and a TXT RR in the Answer section.  Contents of
   the TXT RR are strictly informative (for humans) and MUST NOT be
   interpreted by the client software.  Recommended TXT RDATA values are
   "STARTTLS" or "NO_TLS".

2.3.  Established Sessions

   After TLS negotiation completes, the connection will be encrypted and
   is now protected from eavesdropping and normal DNS queries SHOULD
   take place.

   Both clients and servers SHOULD follow existing DNS-over-TCP timeout
   rules, which are often implementation- and situation-dependent.  In
   the absence of any other advice, the RECOMMENDED timeout values are
   30 seconds for recursive name servers, 60 seconds for clients of
   recursive name servers, 10 seconds for authoritative name servers,
   and 20 seconds for clients of authoritative name servers.  Current
   work in this area may assist DNS-over-TLS clients and servers select
   useful timeout values [draft-wouters-edns-tcp-keepalive] [tdns].

   As with current DNS-over-TCP, DNS servers MAY close the connection at
   any time (e.g., due to resource constraints).  As with current DNS-
   over-TCP, clients MUST handle abrupt closes and be prepared to
   reestablish connections and/or retry queries.  DNS servers SHOULD use
   the TLS close-notify request to shift TCP TIME-WAIT state to the
   clients.

   DNS servers SHOULD enable fast TLS session resumption [RFC5077] to
   avoid keeping per-client session state.

2.4.  Middleboxes

   Middleboxes [RFC3234] may be present in some networks that interfere
   with normal DNS resolution and create problems for DNS-over-TLS.  A
   DNS client attempting DNS-over-TLS with a middlebox could have one of
   the following outcomes (as discussed in prior RFCs [RFC3207]):

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   1.  The DNS client sends a TO=1 query and receives a TO=0 response.
       In this case there is no upgrade to TLS and DNS resolution occurs
       normally, without encryption.

   2.  The DNS client sends a TO=1 query and receives a TO=1 response,
       but the TLS handshake fails because the server's certificate
       cannot be authenticated.  In this case the client SHOULD close
       the established connection and fall back to unencrypted DNS for a
       reasonable period (as discussed in Section 2.1.2).

   3.  The DNS client sends a TO=1 query and receives a TO=1 response,
       but the middlebox does not understand the TLS negotiation.
       Middleboxes SHOULD clear TO in replies if they are not prepared
       to pass through TLS negotiation.  Clients SHOULD retry DNS
       without TO set if negotiation fails, and then retry with TLS
       after a reasonable period (see Section 2.1.2).

   4.  The DNS client sends a TO=1 query but receives no response at
       all.  The middlebox might be silently dropping the query, despite
       [RFC6891] stating that the "Z" Flags are to be ignored by
       receivers.  The client SHOULD fall back to normal (unencrypted)
       DNS for a reasonable period (as discussed in Section 2.1.2).

   In general, clients that attempt TLS and fail can either fall back on
   unencrypted DNS, or wait and retry later, depending on their privacy
   requirements.  [For discussion: should IETF recommend defaulting to
   postpone and retry instead of non-private operation?  This is a
   policy decision.]

3.  Performance Considerations

   DNS-over-TLS incurs additional latency at session startup.  It also
   requires additional state (memory) increased processing (CPU).

   1.  Latency: Compared to UDP, DNS-over-TCP requires an additional
       round-trip-time (RTT) of latency to establish the connection.
       The TLS handshake adds another two RTTs of latency.  Using a
       single connection for multiple requests amortizes the connection
       setup costs.  Moreover, TLS connection resumption can further
       reduce the setup delay.

   2.  State: The use of connection-oriented TCP requires keeping
       additional state in both kernels and applications.  TLS has
       marginal increases in state over TCP alone.  The state
       requirements are of particular concerns on servers with many
       clients.  Smaller timeout values will reduce the number of
       concurrent connections, and servers can preemptively close

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       connections when resources limits are exceeded.

   3.  Processing: Use of TLS encryption algorithms necessarily results
       in increased CPU usage.  Servers can choose to refuse new DNS-
       over-TCP clients if processing limits are exceeded.

   A full performance evaluation is outside the scope of this
   specification.  A more detailed analysis of the performance
   implications of DNS-over-TLS (and DNS-over-TCP) is discussed in a
   technical report [tdns].

4.  IANA Considerations

   This document defines a new bit ("TO") in the Flags field of the
   EDNS0 OPT meta-RR.  At the time of approval of this draft in the
   standards track, as per the IANA Considerations of RFC 6891, IANA is
   requested to reserve the second leftmost bit of the flags as the TO
   bit, immediately adjacent to the DNSSEC DO bit, as shown in
   Section 2.

5.  Security Considerations

   The goal of this proposal is to address the security risks that arise
   because DNS queries may be eavesdropped upon, as described above.
   There are a number of residual risks that may impact this goal.

   1.  There are known attacks on TLS, such as person-in-the-middle and
       protocol downgrade.  These are general attacks on TLS and not
       specific to DNS-over-TLS; we refer to the TLS RFCs for discussion
       of these security issues.

   2.  Any protocol interactions prior to the TLS handshake are
       performed in the clear and can be modified by a man-in-the-middle
       attacker.  For this reason, clients MAY discard cached
       information about server capabilities advertised prior to the
       start of the TLS handshake.

   3.  As with other uses of STARTTLS-upgrade to TLS, the mechanism
       specified here is susceptible to downgrade attacks, where a
       person-in-the-middle prevents a successful TLS upgrade.  Keeping
       track of servers known to support TLS (i.e., "pinning") enables
       clients to detect downgrade attacks.  For servers with no
       connection history, clients may choose to refuse non-TLS DNS, or
       they may continue without TLS, depending on their privacy
       requirements.

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   4.  This document does not propose new ideas for certificate
       authentication for TLS in the context of DNS.  Several external
       methods are possible, although each has weaknesses.  The current
       Certificate Authority infrastructure [RFC5280] is used by HTTP/
       TLS [RFC2818].  With many trusted CAs, this approach has
       recognized weaknesses [CA_Compromise].  Some work is underway to
       partially address these concerns (for example, with certificate
       pinning [certificate_pinning], but more work is needed.  DANE
       [RFC6698] provides mechanisms to root certificate trust with
       DNSSEC.  That use here must be carefully evaluated to address
       potential issues in trust recursion.  For stub-to-recursive
       resolver use, certificate authentication is sometimes either easy
       or nearly impossible.  If the recursive resolver is manually
       configured, its certificate can be authenticated when it is
       configured.  If the recursive resolver is automatically
       configured (such as with DHCP [RFC2131]), it could use DHCP
       authentication mechanisms [RFC3118]).

   Ongoing discussion of opportunistic TLS (connections without CA
   validation, [draft-hoffman-uta-opportunistic-tls]) may be relevant to
   DNS-over-TLS.

6.  Acknowledgements

   We would like to thank Stephane Bortzmeyer, Brian Haberman, Paul
   Hoffman, Kim-Minh Kaplan, Bill Manning, George Michaelson, Eric
   Osterweil and Glen Wiley for reviewing this Internet-draft.

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [RFC1034]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
              STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.

   [RFC1035]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
              specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC5077]  Salowey, J., Zhou, H., Eronen, P., and H. Tschofenig,
              "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Session Resumption without
              Server-Side State", RFC 5077, January 2008.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security

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              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.

   [RFC6891]  Damas, J., Graff, M., and P. Vixie, "Extension Mechanisms
              for DNS (EDNS(0))", STD 75, RFC 6891, April 2013.

7.2.  Informative References

   [CA_Compromise]
              Infosec Island Admin, "CA Compromise", January 2012, <http
              ://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/
              19782-Web-Authentication-A-Broken-Trust-with-No-Easy-
              Fix.html>.

   [RFC1939]  Myers, J. and M. Rose, "Post Office Protocol - Version 3",
              STD 53, RFC 1939, May 1996.

   [RFC2131]  Droms, R., "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol",
              RFC 2131, March 1997.

   [RFC2595]  Newman, C., "Using TLS with IMAP, POP3 and ACAP",
              RFC 2595, June 1999.

   [RFC2818]  Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000.

   [RFC3118]  Droms, R. and W. Arbaugh, "Authentication for DHCP
              Messages", RFC 3118, June 2001.

   [RFC3207]  Hoffman, P., "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over
              Transport Layer Security", RFC 3207, February 2002.

   [RFC3234]  Carpenter, B. and S. Brim, "Middleboxes: Taxonomy and
              Issues", RFC 3234, February 2002.

   [RFC3501]  Crispin, M., "INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION
              4rev1", RFC 3501, March 2003.

   [RFC4033]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
              RFC 4033, March 2005.

   [RFC4892]  Woolf, S. and D. Conrad, "Requirements for a Mechanism
              Identifying a Name Server Instance", RFC 4892, June 2007.

   [RFC5280]  Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
              Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
              Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
              (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008.

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   [RFC6698]  Hoffman, P. and J. Schlyter, "The DNS-Based Authentication
              of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS)
              Protocol: TLSA", RFC 6698, August 2012.

   [certificate_pinning]
              OWASP, "Certificate and Public Key Pinning", <https://
              www.owasp.org/index.php/
              Certificate_and_Public_Key_Pinning>.

   [draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy]
              Bortzmeyer, S., "DNS Privacy issues",
              draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy-01 (work in progress),
              November 2013, <http://tools.ietf.org/html/
              draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-dns-privacy-01>.

   [draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-privacy-sol]
              Bortzmeyer, S., "Solutions to DNS privacy issues",
              draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-privacy-sol-00 (work in progress),
              December 2013, <http://tools.ietf.org/html/
              draft-bortzmeyer-dnsop-privacy-sol-00>.

   [draft-dempsky-dnscurve]
              Dempsky, M., "DNSCurve", draft-dempsky-dnscurve-01 (work
              in progress), August 2010,
              <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dempsky-dnscurve-01>.

   [draft-hoffman-uta-opportunistic-tls]
              Hoffman, P., "Opportunistic Encryption Using TLS",
              draft-hoffman-uta-opportunistic-tls-00 (work in progress),
              February 2014, <http://tools.ietf.org/html/
              draft-hoffman-uta-opportunistic-tls-00>.

   [draft-osterweil-dane-ipsec]
              Osterweil, E., Wiley, G., Mitchell, D., and A. Newton,
              "Opportunistic Encryption with DANE Semantics and IPsec:
              IPSECA", draft-osterweil-dane-ipsec-00 (work in progress),
              February 2014,
              <http://tools.ietf.org/html/
              draft-osterweil-dane-ipsec-00>.

   [draft-wijngaards-confidentialdns]
              Wijngaards, W., "Confidential DNS",
              draft-wijngaards-dnsop-confidentialdns-00 (work in
              progress), November 2013, <http://tools.ietf.org/html/
              draft-wijngaards-dnsop-confidentialdns-00>.

   [draft-wouters-edns-tcp-keepalive]
              Wouters, P. and J. Abley, "The edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS0

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              Option", draft-wouters-edns-tcp-keepalive-00 (work in
              progress), October 2013, <http://tools.ietf.org/html/
              draft-wouters-edns-tcp-keepalive-00>.

   [tdns]     Zhu, L., Hu, Z., Heidemann, J., Wessels, D., Mankin, A.,
              and N. Somaiya, "T-DNS: Connection-Oriented DNS to Improve
              Privacy and Security", Technical report ISI-TR-688,
              Feburary 2014, <Technical report, ISI-TR-688,
              ftp://ftp.isi.edu/isi-pubs/tr-688.pdf>.

   [unbound]  NLnet Labs, Verisign labs, "Unbound", December 2013,
              <http://unbound.net/>.

Authors' Addresses

   Zi Hu
   USC/Information Sciences Institute
   4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1133
   Marina del Rey, CA  90292
   USA

   Phone: +1 213 587-1057
   Email: zihu@usc.edu

   Liang Zhu
   USC/Information Sciences Institute
   4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1133
   Marina del Rey, CA  90292
   USA

   Phone: +1 310 448-8323
   Email: liangzhu@usc.edu

   John Heidemann
   USC/Information Sciences Institute
   4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001
   Marina del Rey, CA  90292
   USA

   Phone: +1 310 822-1511
   Email: johnh@isi.edu

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   Allison Mankin
   Verisign Labs
   12061 Bluemont Way
   Reston, VA  20190

   Phone: +1 703 948-3200
   Email: amankin@verisign.com

   Duane Wessels
   Verisign Labs
   12061 Bluemont Way
   Reston, VA  20190

   Phone: +1 703 948-3200
   Email: dwessels@verisign.com

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