Use of HTTPS Resource Records
netmeister.org
netmeister.org
(I would use DoH on my devices, but I run a local resolver for filtering purposes. The local resolver then connects to a global NS via DoH, but my local devices use plain old DNS.)
For firefox, you can use a self-signed cert on your resolver (firefox did not work with ed25519, it did work with NIST P-256; I wanted a small key for lower overhead [having to use TLS + HTTP encapsulation for a resolver on localhost bothered me in irrational ways, and I was determined to minimize the overhead, even if the rational part of my brain said the overhead difference was too negligible to matter]). Add it with:
edit-> settings -> (search "cert" in 'find in settings') -> view certificates -> (server tab) -> add exception -> enter the url: https://localhost:4353/dns-query ensure "permanent" is checked
The file, "cert_override.txt" is created by firefox after adding the cert exception, which can be copied to other profiles for provisioning.
The gui DoH config will create the following in about:config which can be used for provisioning with user.js:
network.trr.uri https://localhost:4353/dns-query
network.trr.bootstrapAddress 127.0.0.1
network.trr.mode 3
trr true
(network.trr.custom_uri is not used for anything but display in the gui)
network.trr.custom_uri https://localhost:4353/dns-query
From query statistics, I see that around 15% of the queries are for HTTPS records, 30-35% for A and AAAA records, and the rest for RR types like NS, TXT, etc. Browsers make HTTPS requests in addition to the A/AAAA, so this makes sense.
In an ideal world, the ipv4/ipv6hints do the job if A and AAAA records, so a browser will only need to make an HTTPS request.
> The "ipv4hint" and "ipv6hint" keys convey IP addresses that clients MAY use to reach the service. If A and AAAA records for TargetName are locally available, the client SHOULD ignore these hints. Otherwise, clients SHOULD perform A and/or AAAA queries for TargetName per Section 3, and clients SHOULD use the IP address in those responses for future connections. Clients MAY opt to terminate any connections using the addresses in hints and instead switch to the addresses in response to the TargetName query. Failure to use A and/or AAAA response addresses could negatively impact load balancing or other geo-aware features and thereby degrade client performance.
That is: you’re allowed to use the ipv4hint on this connection, but you should still fetch A/AAAA and use that subsequently.
Whats the status on DNSSEC? Last I checked, it was a bit of a mess as far as protocols go.
IIRC, there have been recent years where the deployment count in .COM went down.
It's pretty much a dead letter.
You might have some valid criticism about the cryptography; I would not be able to judge that (except when you are basing it on wildly outdated information). I’m not an expert on the details; you could most assuredly argue circles around me when it comes to the cryptography, and possibly about the DNSSEC protocol details as well. But, from my perspective, your continuous claim that “nobody uses” DNSSEC is simply false. DNSSEC works, usage of DNSSEC is steadily increasing, and new protocols (like DANE) are starting to make use of DNSSEC for its features. Conversely, I only relatively rarely hear anything about MTA-STS.
(Repost of a two year old comment of mine: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27837530>, but the details given have not changed substantially.)
I'm not making the statistics up; you can just Google "DNSSEC deployment statistics" to see that I'm right about them, and I even provided a methodology in the comment you responded to for readers to verify for themselves.
Where DNSSEC signatures are climbing, it's largely because of registrars that automatically sign domains for customers. That's security theater. Moreover, it's capturing the least interesting cohort of new DNS zones: random things people register. I own a bunch of them, including "atmosflat.org" and "paulgra-ham.com" (don't ask me, I don't remember). If I had registered them at an autosigning DNSSEC registrar, they too would count in the "steadily increasing" count to which you refer.
(I'm focused on the stats argument here, because I feel like 'teddyh was trying to imply that I was making them up --- he only ever sees me relating them, to which I'd respond "that's because nobody else cares about DNSSEC". I have, an, uh, pretty expansive case to make against DNSSEC, but here I was just sort of relying on context 'teddyh and I share. Sorry about that!)
I've been managing domains with DNSSEC for several years and I've always had control of my keys.
Clarification of who controls what keys [1]:
The TLD zone's private keys are managed by the company operating
it. For a Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD), the government of
the country will be managing the key. For popular TLDs like .COM or
.NET, it will be the U.S. government through the operator Verisign.
For popular ccTLD .IO, it is the government of British Indian Ocean
Territory.
The private keys for an individual domain name are managed by the
domain owner either directly or via the DNS provider hosting their
domain name.
With DNSSEC, it is pretty clear who controls the private keys and
also keeps the risks involved distributed. Which means while China
holds private keys for .cn ccTLD, it can only sign domain names under
it.
I never claimed you did. But they are, from my perspective, misleading.
> registrars that automatically sign domains for customers
Like I wrote the very last time I posted my comment two years ago:
Registrars can’t “auto-sign” domains. Only DNS server operators can do that, if they have the cooperation of the registrar. And the DNS server operators is the only workable definition of “owners of the zones”, so they do own their keys. It can’t work any other way.
In fact, the new CDS and CDNSKEY DNS records allow it to work the other way around; DNS server operators can auto-sign domains, and the registrars need not be involved at all.
Yup.
> You might have some valid criticism about the cryptography; I would not be able to judge that (except when you are basing it on wildly outdated information).
Yes—context matters. Unless someone knows the details of how DNSSEC works, they wouldn't necessarily recognize how disingenuous chronic DNSSEC detractors often are.
In addition to DANE, I'd also add SSHFP [1], another protocol enabled by DNSSEC that addresses SSH's default trust on first use (TOFU) issue in a pretty straightforward way.
Anyone new just has to read "For DNSSEC And Why DANE Is Needed" [2], where the author debunks the talking points that DNSSEC detractors often use. There's often a hint of truth to these talking points but the reality is more nuanced than they would lead you to believe.
[1]: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/techblog/2019/05/06/sshfp-and...
[2]: https://blog.technitium.com/2023/05/for-dnssec-and-why-dane-...
I don't like trust-on-first-use either. Fortunately, it's easy to solve: just use an SSH CA, which is what most shops with significant numbers of servers do (because it's drastically easier to administer than individual keys).
I've never seen this "technitium" blog before. It's very long. If you want to see me pick it apart, submit it tomorrow and see if you can get it on the front page. Very few people are reading this thread, so I'm definitely not going to close-read it just for this.
Sure, you could use SSH certificates, but that does mean deploying user certificates to your users and server certificates to your servers, etc. And for some use cases, this would be the right thing to do.
Yes, a 10,000 person enterprise with dozens of servers should use SSH certificates. On the other hand, using SSHFP is also a viable solution, depending on the use case. In general, it's less work than creating a SSH CA, signing keys, distributing certificates, etc, especially when SSH certificates would be overkill.
On the other hand, with SSHFP, you run ssh-keygen -r examplehost.example.org and add the records to the server's DNS configuration.
On the client side, a user adds VerifyHostKeyDNS yes to their OpenSSH configuration and they're done.
> Why would you give the United States Government a say in whether you trust your own server? It's your own server!
SSHFP records are just the fingerprint of the server's public keys—no 3rd party has a say in the ssh-keygen command generating the records. I just made some SSHFP records—no government involved:
SSHFP <KEY-ALGO> <HASH-TYPE> <FINGERPRINT>
localhost IN SSHFP 1 1 78aefcdf726dfd71160c8dd9e31b385174da4189
localhost IN SSHFP 1 2 830313e0f1c70de6db7431f22f488e715f5882b7ad82a11bcb0b784fba618cfc
localhost IN SSHFP 3 1 8140d1ed33ee45e0d078e1c0ef61df03332eac5c
localhost IN SSHFP 3 2 748fdd9a6795626ec4c201cc41fb62c7407227db3e810e1a26d2e0b8cb82e896
localhost IN SSHFP 4 1 c75294aa5909c2dbfcd5606005bc4f2d1ec37ff6
localhost IN SSHFP 4 2 795480afe1777c3438f40bc269c25667cf366ef24c14f264456ff10844b818fb
KEY-ALGO Algorithm
0 reserved
1 RSA
2 DSA
3 ECDSA
4 ED25519
5 unassigned
6 ED448
HASH-TYPE Algorithm
0 reserved
1 SHA1
2 SHA256
How easy it is to set up depends on where you host and bought your domain. In my experience, I needed to copy-paste two keys and it Just Worked.
It's barely used in .COM though, so companies like Amazon took ages to implement even basic support for it, and their buggy services took down various websites.
To top it all off, mistakes by badly managed TLDs caused downtimes for various TLDs over time, of "someone told the root servers to redirect .NZ to localhost for a week" severity. If whoever is managing your TLD cannot be trusted to maintain a TLD, don't enable DNSSEC.
The protocol is Very 90s ("computers aren't fast enough to validate RSA signatures so let's centralise it"), but modern clients take all of the 90s bullcrap out of the picture. DNSSEC is in dire need of a v2 that fixes this, but I've never had much trouble with it in practice, other than when websites misconfigure their DNSSEC config.
One major problem with DNSSEC is that it is relatively easy to misconfigure it, especially in more complicated scenarios, and a misconfiguration can take you down for a long time.
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/7482