Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-dnsind-ncache
draft-ietf-dnsind-ncache
INTERNET-DRAFT Mark Andrews (CSIRO)
<draft-ietf-dnsind-ncache-09.txt> November 1997
Updates: 1034, 1035
Negative Caching of DNS Queries (DNS NCACHE)
Status of This Memo
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Abstract
[RFC1034] provided a description of how to cache negative
responses. It however had a fundamental flaw in that it did not
allow a name server to hand out those cached responses to other
resolvers, thereby greatly reducing the effect of the caching.
This document addresses issues raise in the light of experience
and replaces [RFC1034 Section 4.3.4].
Negative caching was an optional part of the DNS specification
and deals with the caching of the non-existence of an RRset
[RFC2181] or domain name.
Negative caching is useful as it reduces the response time for
negative answers. It also reduces the number of messages that
have to be sent between resolvers and name servers hence overall
network traffic. A large proportion of DNS traffic on the
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Internet could be eliminated if all resolvers implemented
negative caching. With this in mind negative caching should no
longer be seen as an optional part of a DNS resolver.
1 - Terminology
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 [RFC2119].
"Negative caching" - the storage of knowledge that something does not
exist. We can store the knowledge that a record has a particular value.
We can also do the reverse, that is, to store the knowledge that a
record does not exist. It is the storage of knowledge that something
does not exist, cannot or does not give an answer that we call negative
caching.
"QNAME" - the name in the query section of an answer, or where this
resolves to a CNAME, or CNAME chain, the data field of the last CNAME.
The last CNAME in this sense is that which contains a value which does
not resolve to another CNAME. Implementations should note that
including CNAME records in responses in order, so that the first has the
label from the query section, and then each in sequence has the label
from the data section of the previous (where more than one CNAME is
needed) allows the sequence to be processed in one pass, and
considerably eases the task of the receiver. Other relevant records
(such as SIG RRs) can be interspersed amongst the CNAMEs.
"NXDOMAIN" - an alternate expression for the "Name Error" RCODE as
described in [RFC1035 Section 4.1.1] and the two terms are used
interchangeably in this document.
"NODATA" - a pseudo RCODE which indicates that the name is valid, for
the given class, but are no records of the given type. A NODATA
response has to be inferred from the answer.
"FORWARDER" - a nameserver used to resolve queries instead of directly
using the authoritative nameserver chain. The forwarder typically
either has better access to the internet, or maintains a bigger cache
which may be shared amongst many resolvers. How a server is identified
as a FORWARDER, or knows it is a FORWARDER is outside the scope of this
document. However if you are being used as a forwarder the query will
have the recursion desired flag set.
An understanding of [RFC1034], [RFC1035] and [RFC2065] is expected when
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reading this document.
2 - Negative Responses
The most common negative responses indicate that a particular RRset does
not exist in the DNS. The first sections of this document deal with
this case. Other negative responses can indicate failures of a
nameserver, those are dealt with in section 7 (Other Negative
Responses).
A negative response is indicated by one of the following conditions:
2.1 - Name Error
Name errors (NXDOMAIN) are indicated by the presence of "Name Error" in
the RCODE field. In this case the domain referred to by the QNAME does
not exist. Note: the answer section may have SIG and CNAME RRs and
authority section may have SOA, NXT and SIG RRsets.
It is possible to distinguish between a referral and a NXDOMAIN response
by the presense of NXDOMAIN in the RCODE regardless of the presence of
NS or SOA records in the authority section.
NXDOMAIN responses can be categorised into four types by the contents of
the authority section. These are shown below along with a referral for
comparison. Fields not mentioned are not important in terms of the
examples.
NXDOMAIN RESPONSE: TYPE 1.
Header:
RDCODE=NXDOMAIN
Query:
AN.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
AN.EXAMPLE. CNAME TRIPPLE.XX.
Authority:
XX. SOA NS1.XX. HOSTMASTER.NS1.XX. ....
XX. NS NS1.XX.
XX. NS NS2.XX.
Additional:
NS1.XX. A 127.0.0.2
NS2.XX. A 127.0.0.3
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NXDOMAIN RESPONSE: TYPE 2.
Header:
RDCODE=NXDOMAIN
Query:
AN.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
AN.EXAMPLE. CNAME TRIPPLE.XX.
Authority:
XX. SOA NS1.XX. HOSTMASTER.NS1.XX. ....
Additional:
<empty>
NXDOMAIN RESPONSE: TYPE 3.
Header:
RDCODE=NXDOMAIN
Query:
AN.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
AN.EXAMPLE. CNAME TRIPPLE.XX.
Authority:
<empty>
Additional:
<empty>
NXDOMAIN RESPONSE: TYPE 4
Header:
RDCODE=NXDOMAIN
Query:
AN.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
AN.EXAMPLE. CNAME TRIPPLE.XX.
Authority:
XX. NS NS1.XX.
XX. NS NS2.XX.
Additional:
NS1.XX. A 127.0.0.2
NS2.XX. A 127.0.0.3
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REFERRAL RESPONSE.
Header:
RDCODE=NOERROR
Query:
AN.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
AN.EXAMPLE. CNAME TRIPPLE.XX.
Authority:
XX. NS NS1.XX.
XX. NS NS2.XX.
Additional:
NS1.XX. A 127.0.0.2
NS2.XX. A 127.0.0.3
Note, in the four examples of NXDOMAIN responses, it is known that the
name "AN.EXAMPLE." exists, and has as its value a CNAME record. The
NXDOMAIN refers to "TRIPPLE.XX", which is then known not to exist. On
the other hand, in the referral example, it is shown that "AN.EXAMPLE"
exists, and has a CNAME RR as its value, but nothing is known one way or
the other about the existence of "TRIPPLE.XX", other than that "NS1.XX"
or "NS2.XX" can be consulted as the next step in obtaining information
about it.
Where no CNAME records appear, the NXDOMAIN response refers to the name
in the label of the RR in the question section.
2.1.1 Special Handling of Name Error
This section deals with errors encountered when implementing negative
caching of NXDOMAIN responses.
There are a large number of resolvers currently in existence that fail
to correctly detect and process all forms of NXDOMAIN response. Some
resolvers treat a TYPE 1 NXDOMAIN response as a referral. To alleviate
this problem it is recommended that servers that are authoritative for
the NXDOMAIN response only send TYPE 2 NXDOMAIN responses, that is the
authority section contains a SOA record and no NS records. If a non-
authoritative server sends a type 1 NXDOMAIN response to one of these
old resolvers, the result will be an unnecessary query to an
authoritative server. This is undesirable, but not fatal except when
the server is being used a FORWARDER. If however the resolver is using
the server as a FORWARDER to such a resolver it will be necessary to
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disable the sending of TYPE 1 NXDOMAIN response to it, use TYPE 2
NXDOMAIN instead.
Some resolvers incorrectly continue processing if the authoritative
answer flag is not set. This is a problem when your nameserver is
listed as a FORWARDER for such resolvers. If the nameserver is used as
a FORWARDER by such resolver, the authority flag will have to be forced
on for NXDOMAIN responses to these resolvers.
2.2 - No Data
NODATA is indicated by an answer with the RCODE set to NOERROR and no
relevant answers in the answer section. The authority section will
contain an SOA record, or there will be no NS records there.
NODATA responses have to be algorithmically determined from the
response's contents as there is no RCODE value to indicate NODATA. In
some cases to determine with certainty that NODATA is the correct
response it can be necessary to send another query.
The authority section may contain NXT and SIG RRsets in addition to NS
and SOA records. CNAME and SIG records may exist in the answer section.
It is possible to distinguish between a NODATA and a referral response
by the presence of a SOA record in the authority section or the absence
of NS records in the authority section.
NODATA responses can be categorised into three types by the contents of
the authority section. These are shows below along with a referral for
comparison. Fields not mentioned are not important in terms of the
examples.
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NODATA RESPONSE: TYPE 1.
Header:
RDCODE=NOERROR
Query:
ANOTHER.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
<empty>
Authority:
EXAMPLE. SOA NS1.XX. HOSTMASTER.NS1.XX. ....
EXAMPLE. NS NS1.XX.
EXAMPLE. NS NS2.XX.
Additional:
NS1.XX. A 127.0.0.2
NS2.XX. A 127.0.0.3
NO DATA RESPONSE: TYPE 2.
Header:
RDCODE=NOERROR
Query:
ANOTHER.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
<empty>
Authority:
EXAMPLE. SOA NS1.XX. HOSTMASTER.NS1.XX. ....
Additional:
<empty>
NO DATA RESPONSE: TYPE 3.
Header:
RDCODE=NOERROR
Query:
ANOTHER.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
<empty>
Authority:
<empty>
Additional:
<empty>
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REFERRAL RESPONSE.
Header:
RDCODE=NOERROR
Query:
ANOTHER.EXAMPLE. A
Answer:
<empty>
Authority:
EXAMPLE. NS NS1.XX.
EXAMPLE. NS NS2.XX.
Additional:
NS1.XX. A 127.0.0.2
NS2.XX. A 127.0.0.3
These examples, unlike the NXDOMAIN examples above, have no CNAME
records, however they could, in just the same way that the NXDOMAIN
examples did, in which case it would be the value of the last CNAME (the
QNAME) for which NODATA would be concluded.
2.2.1 - Special Handling of No Data
There are a large number of resolvers currently in existence that fail
to correctly detect and process all forms of NODATA response. Some
resolvers treat a TYPE 1 NODATA response as a referral. To alleviate
this problem it is recommended that servers that are authoritative for
the NODATA response only send TYPE 2 NODATA responses, that is the
authority section contains a SOA record and no NS records. Sending a
TYPE 1 NODATA response from a non-authoritative server to one of these
resolvers will only result in an unnecessary query. If a server is
listed as a FORWARDER for another resolver it may also be necessary to
disable the sending of TYPE 1 NODATA response for non-authoritative
NODATA responses.
Some name servers fail to set the RCODE to NXDOMAIN in the presence of
CNAMEs in the answer section. If a definitive NXDOMAIN / NODATA answer
is required in this case the resolver must query again using the QNAME
as the query label.
3 - Negative Answers from Authoritative Servers
Name servers authoritative for a zone MUST include the SOA record of the
zone in the authority section of the response when reporting an NXDOMAIN
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or indicating that no data of the requested type exists. This is
required so that the response may be cached. The TTL of this record is
set from the minimum of the MINIMUM field of the SOA record and the TTL
of the SOA itself, and indicates how long a resolver may cache the
negative answer. The TTL SIG record associated with the SOA record
should also be trimmed in line with the SOA's TTL.
If the containing zone is signed [RFC2065] the SOA and appropriate NXT
and SIG records MUST be added.
4 - SOA Minimum Field
The SOA minimum field has been overloaded in the past to have three
different meanings, the minimum TTL value of all RRs in a zone, the
default TTL of RRs which did not contain a TTL value and the TTL of
negative responses.
Despite being the original defined meaning, the first of these, the
minimum TTL value of all RRs in a zone, has never in practice been used
and is hereby deprecated.
The second, the default TTL of RRs which contain no explicit TTL in the
master zone file, is relevant only at the primary server. After a zone
transfer all RRs have explicit TTLs and it is impossible to determine
whether the TTL for a record was explicitly set or derived from the
default after a zone transfer. Where a server does not require RRs to
include the TTL value explicitly, it should provide a mechanism, not
being the value of the MINIMUM field of the SOA record, from which the
missing TTL values are obtained. How this is done is implementation
dependent.
The Master File format [RFC 1035 Section 5] is extended to include the
following directive:
$TTL <TTL> [comment]
All resource records appearing after the directive, and which do not
explicitly include a TTL value, have their TTL set to the TTL given in
the $TTL directive. SIG records without a explicit TTL get their TTL
from the "original TTL" of the SIG record [RFC 2065 Section 4.5].
The remaining of the current meanings, of being the TTL to be used for
negative responses, is the new defined meaning of the SOA minimum field.
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5 - Caching Negative Answers
Like normal answers negative answers have a time to live (TTL). As
there is no record in the answer section to which this TTL can be
applied, the TTL must be carried by another method. This is done by
including the SOA record from the zone in the authority section of the
reply. When the authoritative server creates this record its TTL is
taken from the minimum of the SOA.MINIMUM field and SOA's TTL. This TTL
decrements in a similar manner to a normal cached answer and upon
reaching zero (0) indicates the cached negative answer MUST NOT be used
again.
A negative answer that resulted from a name error (NXDOMAIN) should be
cached such that it can be retrieved and returned in response to another
query for the same <QNAME, QCLASS> that resulted in the cached negative
response.
A negative answer that resulted from a no data error (NODATA) should be
cached such that it can be retrieved and returned in response to another
query for the same <QNAME, QTYPE, QCLASS> that resulted in the cached
negative response.
The NXT record, if it exists in the authority section of a negative
answer received, MUST be stored such that it can be be located and
returned with SOA record in the authority section, as should any SIG
records in the authority section. For NXDOMAIN answers there is no
"necessary" obvious relationship between the NXT records and the QNAME.
The NXT record MUST have the same owner name as the query name for
NODATA responses.
Negative responses without SOA records SHOULD NOT be cached as there is
no way to prevent the negative responses looping forever between a pair
of servers even with a short TTL.
As with caching positive responses it is sensible for a resolver to
limit for how long it will cache a negative response as the protocol
supports caching for up to 68 years. Such a limit should not be greater
than that applied to positive answers and preferably be tunable. Values
of one to three hours have been found to work well and would make
sensible a default. Values exceeding one day have been found to be
problematic.
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6 - Negative answers from the cache
When a server, in answering a query, encounters a cached negative
response it MUST add the cached SOA record to the authority section of
the response with the TTL decremented by the amount of time it was
stored in the cache. This allows the NXDOMAIN / NODATA response to time
out correctly.
If a NXT record was cached along with SOA record it MUST be added to the
authority section. If a SIG record was cached along with a NXT record
it SHOULD be added to the authority section.
As with all answers coming from the cache, negative answers SHOULD have
an implicit referral built into the answer. This enables the resolver
to locate an authoritative source. An implicit referral is
characterised by NS records in the authority section referring the
resolver towards a authoritative source. NXDOMAIN types 1 and 4
responses contain implicit referrals as does NODATA type 1 response.
7 - Other Negative Responses
Caching of other negative responses is not covered by any existing RFC.
There is no way to indicate a desired TTL in these responses. Care
needs to be taken to ensure that there are not forwarding loops.
7.1 Server Failure (OPTIONAL)
Server failures fall into two major classes. The first is where a
server can determine that it has been misconfigured for a zone. This
may be where it has been listed as a server, but not configured to be a
server for the zone, or where it has been configured to be a server for
the zone, but cannot obtain the zone data for some reason. This can
occur either because the zone file does not exist or contains errors, or
because another server from which the zone should have been available
either did not respond or was unable or unwilling to supply the zone.
The second class is where the server needs to obtain an answer from
elsewhere, but is unable to do so, due to network failures, other
servers that don't reply, or return server failure errors, or similar.
In either case a resolver MAY cache a server failure response. If it
does so it MUST NOT cache it for longer than five (5) minutes, and it
MUST be cached against the specific query tuple <query name, type,
class, server IP address>.
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7.2 Dead / Unreachable Server (OPTIONAL)
Dead / Unreachable servers are servers that fail to respond in any way
to a query or where the transport layer has provided an indication that
the server does not exist or is unreachable. A server may be deemed to
be dead or unreachable if it has not responded to an outstanding query
within 120 seconds.
Examples of transport layer indications are:
ICMP error messages indicating host, net or port unreachable.
TCP resets
IP stack error messages providing similar indications to those above.
A server MAY cache a dead server indication. If it does so it MUST NOT
be deemed dead for longer than five (5) minutes. The indication MUST be
stored against query tuple <query name, type, class, server IP address>
unless there was a transport layer indication that the server does not
exist, in which case it applies to all queries to that specific IP
address.
8 - Changes from RFC 1034
Negative caching in resolvers is no-longer optional, if a resolver
caches anything it must also cache negative answers.
Non-authoritative negative answers MAY be cached.
The SOA record from the authority section MUST be cached. Name error
indications must be cached against the tuple <query name, QCLASS>. No
data indications must be cached against <query name, QTYPE, QCLASS>
tuple.
A cached SOA record must be added to the response. This was explicitly
not allowed because previously the distinction between a normal cached
SOA record, and the SOA cached as a result of a negative response was
not made, and simply extracting a normal cached SOA and adding that to a
cached negative response causes problems.
The $TTL TTL directive was added to the master file format.
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9 History of Negative Caching
The following is a potted history of negative caching in the DNS and
forms no part of the technical specification of negative caching.
It is interesting to note that the same concepts were re-invented in
both the CHIVES and BIND servers.
The history of the early CHIVES work (Section 9.1) was supplied by Rob
Austein <sra@epilogue.com> and is reproduced here in the form in which
he supplied it [MPA].
Sometime around the spring of 1985, I mentioned to Paul Mockapetris that
our experience with his JEEVES DNS resolver had pointed out the need for
some kind of negative caching scheme. Paul suggested that we simply
cache authoritative errors, using the SOA MINIMUM value for the zone
that would have contained the target RRs. I'm pretty sure that this
conversation took place before RFC-973 was written, but it was never
clear to me whether this idea was something that Paul came up with on
the spot in response to my question or something he'd already been
planning to put into the document that became RFC-973. In any case,
neither of us was entirely sure that the SOA MINIMUM value was really
the right metric to use, but it was available and was under the control
of the administrator of the target zone, both of which seemed to us at
the time to be important feature.
Late in 1987, I released the initial beta-test version of CHIVES, the
DNS resolver I'd written to replace Paul's JEEVES resolver. CHIVES
included a search path mechanism that was used pretty heavily at several
sites (including my own), so CHIVES also included a negative caching
mechanism based on SOA MINIMUM values. The basic strategy was to cache
authoritative error codes keyed by the exact query parameters (QNAME,
QCLASS, and QTYPE), with a cache TTL equal to the SOA MINIMUM value.
CHIVES did not attempt to track down SOA RRs if they weren't supplied in
the authoritative response, so it never managed to completely eliminate
the gratuitous DNS error message traffic, but it did help considerably.
Keep in mind that this was happening at about the same time as the
near-collapse of the ARPANET due to congestion caused by exponential
growth and the the "old" (pre-VJ) TCP retransmission algorithm, so
negative caching resulted in drasticly better DNS response time for our
users, mailer daemons, etcetera.
As far as I know, CHIVES was the first resolver to implement negative
caching. CHIVES was developed during the twilight years of TOPS-20, so
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it never ran on very many machines, but the few machines that it did run
on were the ones that were too critical to shut down quickly no matter
how much it cost to keep them running. So what few users we did have
tended to drive CHIVES pretty hard. Several interesting bits of DNS
technology resulted from that, but the one that's relevant here is the
MAXTTL configuration parameter.
Experience with JEEVES had already shown that RRs often showed up with
ridiculously long TTLs (99999999 was particularly popular for many
years, due to bugs in the code and documentation of several early
versions of BIND), and that robust software that blindly believed such
TTLs could create so many strange failures that it was often necessary
to reboot the resolver frequently just to clear this garbage out of the
cache. So CHIVES had a configuration parameter "MAXTTL", which
specified the maximum "reasonable" TTL in a received RR. RRs with TTLs
greater than MAXTTL would either have their TTLs reduced to MAXTTL or
would be discarded entirely, depending on the setting of another
configuration parameter.
When we started getting field experience with CHIVES's negative caching
code, it became clear that the SOA MINIMUM value was often large enough
to cause the same kinds of problems for negative caching as the huge
TTLs in RRs had for normal caching (again, this was in part due to a bug
in several early versions of BIND, where a secondary server would
authoritatively deny all knowledge of its zones if it couldn't contact
the primaries on reboot). So we started running the negative cache TTLs
through the MAXTTL check too, and continued to experiment.
The configuration that seemed to work best on WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
(last of the major Internet TOPS-20 machines to be shut down, thus the
last major user of CHIVES, thus the place where we had the longest
experimental baseline) was to set MAXTTL to about three days. Most of
the traffic initiated by SIMTEL20 in its last years was mail-related,
and the mail queue timeout was set to one week, so this gave a "stuck"
message several tries at complete DNS resolution, without bogging down
the system with a lot of useless queries. Since (for reasons that now
escape me) we only had the single MAXTTL parameter rather than separate
ones for positive and negative caching, it's not clear how much effect
this setting of MAXTTL had on the negative caching code.
CHIVES also included a second, somewhat controversial mechanism which
took the place of negative caching in some cases. The CHIVES resolver
daemon could be configured to load DNS master files, giving it the
ability to act as what today would be called a "stealth secondary".
That is, when configured in this way, the resolver had direct access to
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authoritative information for heavily-used zones. The search path
mechanisms in CHIVES reflected this: there were actually two separate
search paths, one of which only searched local authoritative zone data,
and one which could generate normal iterative queries. This cut down on
the need for negative caching in cases where usage was predictably heavy
(e.g., the resolver on XX.LCS.MIT.EDU always loaded the zone files for
both LCS.MIT.EDU and AI.MIT.EDU and put both of these suffixes into the
"local" search path, since between them the hosts in these two zones
accounted for the bulk of the DNS traffic). Not all sites running
CHIVES chose to use this feature; C.CS.CMU.EDU, for example, chose to
use the "remote" search path for everything because there were too many
different sub-zones at CMU for zone shadowing to be practical for them,
so they relied pretty heavily on negative caching even for local
traffic.
Overall, I still think the basic design we used for negative caching was
pretty reasonable: the zone administrator specified how long to cache
negative answers, and the resolver configuration chose the actual cache
time from the range between zero and the period specified by the zone
administrator. There are a lot of details I'd do differently now (like
using a new SOA field instead of overloading the MINIMUM field), but
after more than a decade, I'd be more worried if we couldn't think of at
least a few improvements.
9.2 BIND
While not the first attempt to get negative caching into BIND, in July
1993, BIND 4.9.2 ALPHA, Anant Kumar of ISI supplied code that
implemented, validation and negative caching (NCACHE). This code had a
10 minute TTL for negative caching and only cached the indication that
there was a negative response, NXDOMAIN or NOERROR_NODATA. This is the
origin of the NODATA pseudo response code mentioned above.
Mark Andrews of CSIRO added code (RETURNSOA) that stored the SOA record
such that it could be retrieved by a similar query. UUnet complained
that they were getting old answers after loading a new zone, and the
option was turned off, BIND 4.9.3-alpha5, April 1994. In reality this
indicated that the named needed to purge the space the zone would
occupy. Functionality to do this was added in BIND 4.9.3 BETA11 patch2,
December 1994.
RETURNSOA was re-enabled by default, BIND 4.9.5-T1A, August 1996.
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10 Example
The following example is based on a signed zone that is empty apart from
the nameservers. We will query for WWW.XX.EXAMPLE showing initial
response and again 10 minutes later.
Note 1: during the intervening 10 minutes the NS records for XX.EXAMPLE
have expired.
Note 2: the TTL of the SIG records are not explicitly set in the zone
file and are hence the TTL of the RRset they are the signature for.
Zone File:
$TTL 86400
$ORIGIN XX.EXAMPLE.
@ IN SOA NS1.XX.EXAMPLE. HOSTMATER.XX.EXAMPLE. (
1997102000 ; serial
1800 ; refresh (30 mins)
900 ; retry (15 mins)
604800 ; expire (7 days)
1200 ) ; minimum (20 mins)
IN SIG SOA ...
1200 IN NXT NS1.XX.EXAMPLE. A NXT SIG SOA NS KEY
IN SIG NXT ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
300 IN NS NS1.XX.EXAMPLE.
300 IN NS NS2.XX.EXAMPLE.
IN SIG NS ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
IN KEY 0x4100 1 1 ...
IN SIG KEY ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
IN SIG KEY ... EXAMPLE. ...
NS1 IN A 10.0.0.1
IN SIG A ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
1200 IN NXT NS2.XX.EXAMPLE. A NXT SIG
IN SIG NXT ...
NS2 IN A 10.0.0.2
IN SIG A ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
1200 IN NXT XX.EXAMPLE. A NXT SIG
IN SIG NXT ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
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Initial Response:
Header:
RDCODE=NXDOMAIN, AA=1, QR=1, TC=0
Query:
WWW.XX.EXAMPLE. IN A
Answer:
<empty>
Authority:
XX.EXAMPLE. 1200 IN SOA NS1.XX.EXAMPLE. ...
XX.EXAMPLE. 1200 IN SIG SOA ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
NS2.XX.EXAMPLE. 1200 IN NXT XX.EXAMPLE. NXT A NXT SIG
NS2.XX.EXAMPLE. 1200 IN SIG NXT ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN NS NS1.XX.EXAMPLE.
XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN NS NS2.XX.EXAMPLE.
XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN SIG NS ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
Additional
XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN KEY 0x4100 1 1 ...
XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN SIG KEY ... EXAMPLE. ...
NS1.XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN A 10.0.0.1
NS1.XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN SIG A ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
NS2.XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN A 10.0.0.2
NS3.XX.EXAMPLE. 86400 IN SIG A ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
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After 10 Minutes:
Header:
RDCODE=NXDOMAIN, AA=0, QR=1, TC=0
Query:
WWW.XX.EXAMPLE. IN A
Answer:
<empty>
Authority:
XX.EXAMPLE. 600 IN SOA NS1.XX.EXAMPLE. ...
XX.EXAMPLE. 600 IN SIG SOA ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
NS2.XX.EXAMPLE. 600 IN NXT XX.EXAMPLE. NXT A NXT SIG
NS2.XX.EXAMPLE. 600 IN SIG NXT ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
EXAMPLE. 65799 IN NS NS1.YY.EXAMPLE.
EXAMPLE. 65799 IN NS NS2.YY.EXAMPLE.
EXAMPLE. 65799 IN SIG NS ... XX.EXAMPLE. ...
Additional
XX.EXAMPLE. 65800 IN KEY 0x4100 1 1 ...
XX.EXAMPLE. 65800 IN SIG KEY ... EXAMPLE. ...
NS1.YY.EXAMPLE. 65799 IN A 10.100.0.1
NS1.YY.EXAMPLE. 65799 IN SIG A ... EXAMPLE. ...
NS2.YY.EXAMPLE. 65799 IN A 10.100.0.2
NS3.YY.EXAMPLE. 65799 IN SIG A ... EXAMPLE. ...
EXAMPLE. 65799 IN KEY 0x4100 1 1 ...
EXAMPLE. 65799 IN SIG KEY ... . ...
11 Security Considerations
It is believed that this document does not introduce any significant
additional security threats other that those that already exist when
using data from the DNS.
With negative caching it might be possible to propagate a denial of
service attack by spreading a NXDOMAIN message with a very high TTL.
Without negative caching that would be much harder. A similar effect
could be achieved previously by spreading a bad A record, so that the
server could not be reached - which is almost the same. It has the same
effect as far as what the end user is able to do, but with a different
psychological effect. With the bad A, I feel "damn the network is
broken again" and try again tomorrow. With the "NXDOMAIN" I feel "Oh,
they've turned off the server and it doesn't exist any more" and
probably never bother trying this server again.
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For such an attack to be successful, the NXDOMAIN indiction injected
into a parent server (or a busy caching resolver). One way this might
be done by the use of a CNAME which results in the parent server
querying an attackers server. Resolvers that wish to prevent such
attacks can query again the final QNAME ignoring any NS data in the
query responses it has received for this query.
Implementing TTL sanity checking will reduce the effectiveness of such
an attack, because a successful attack would require re-injection of the
bogus data at more frequent intervals.
DNS Security [RFC2065] provides a mechanism to verify whether a negative
response is valid or not, through the use of NXT and SIG records. This
document supports the use of that mechanism by promoting the
transmission of the relevant security records even in a non security
aware server.
I would like to thank Rob Austein for his history of the CHIVES
nameserver. The DNSIND working group, in particular Robert Elz for his
valuable technical and editorial contributions to this document.
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.
[RCF2065]
Eastlake, D. 3rd. and Kaufman, C,. "Domain Name System Security
Extensions," RFC 2065, January 1997
[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels," BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997
[RFC2181]
Elz, R., and Bush, R., "Clarifications to the DNS
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Specification," RFC 2181, July 1997.
Author's Address
Mark Andrews
CSIRO - Mathematical and Information Sciences
Locked Bag 17
North Ryde NSW 2113
AUSTRALIA
+61 2 9325 3148
<Mark.Andrews@cmis.csiro.au>
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