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Feds Tighten DNS Security On .Gov
alphadogg writes "When you file your taxes online, you want to be sure that the Web site you visit — www.irs.gov — is operated by the Internal Revenue Service and not a scam artist. By the end of next year, you can be confident that every U.S. government Web page is being served up by the appropriate agency. That's because the feds have launched the largest-ever rollout of a new authentication mechanism for the Internet's DNS. All federal agencies are deploying DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) on the .gov top-level domain, and some expect that once that rollout is complete, banks and other businesses might be encouraged to follow suit for their sites. DNSSEC prevents hackers from hijacking Web traffic and redirecting it to bogus sites. The Internet standard prevents spoofing attacks by allowing Web sites to verify their domain names and corresponding IP addresses using digital signatures and public-key encryption."
If my memory is correct, DNSSEC is one of the prerequisites for making opportunistic encryption easier to deploy widely. I hope this catches on and becomes more widespread.
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I've been told that DNSSEC is basically just a proof of concept when it's done on a single TLD, not providing much real security. If I understood it right, the main attack DNSSEC is intended to prevent is a man-in-the-middle returning a fake response to your computer's (or your ISP's computer's) DNS query, a fake that it accepts in place of the real response.
If so, then when your ISP queries one of the thirteen root servers for the .gov authority, the attacker could still return a fake response and set himself up as the DNS authority for .gov, at least as far as your ISP knew.
Anyone know how plausible that attack remains? Knowledgeable responses welcome :)
Of course, part of getting DNSSEC set up for the whole internet is seeing how well it plays out in real-world testing, and .gov is the logical place to start. I assume once any kinks are discovered from this rollout, we'll be one step closer to enabling it on the root servers, which will allow any TLD to achieve a real security gain.
My understanding is that unless DNSSEC is implemented in the last mile resolvers (e.g. my ISP), it doesn't buy a whole lot, especially when it comes to preventing cache poisoning attacks. Moreover, according to RFC4035, delegation records and glue records aren't subject to public key verification (i.e. not signed), so DNSSEC could still be vulnerable. Until DNSSEC is pushed out to the end user to the point that are browsers are performing signature verification, I don't think it's going to buy us the security we're looking for. Even then, with PKI being notoriously difficult to implement, I'm sure it will be botched and somebody will find ways to poison public key registries with fake public keys, etc.