FreeBSD 7.1 and BIND exploit

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:52:15 -0500
> From: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl_lists at tx.rr.com>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
> 
> --On Tuesday, July 22, 2008 10:27:42 -0700 Doug Barton <dougb at FreeBSD.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> > Matthew Seaman wrote:
> >
> >> Are there any plans to enable DNSSEC capability in the resolver built
> >> into FreeBSD?
> >
> > The server is already capable of it. I'm seriously considering enabling the
> > define to make the CLI tools (dig/host/nslookup) capable as well (there is
> > already an OPTION for this in ports).
> >
> > The problem is that _using_ DNSSEC requires configuration changes in
> > named.conf, and more importantly, configuration of "trust anchors" (even for
> > the command line stuff) since the root is not signed. It's not hard to do
> > that with the DLV system that ISC has in place, and I would be willing to
> > create a conf file that shows how to do that for users to include if they
> > choose to. I am not comfortable enabling it by default (not yet anyway), it's
> > too big of a POLA issue.
> >
> 
> I just played around with it recently.  It's not that easy to understand 
> initially *and* the trust anchors thing is a royal PITA.

No one is likely to argue with that statement!

> Once you implement DNSSEC you *must* generate keys every 30 days.  So,
> I think, if you're going to enable it by default, there needs to be a
> script in periodic that will do all the magic to change keys every 30
> days.  Maybe put vars in /etc/rc.conf to override the default key
> lengths and other portions of the commands that could change per
> installation.

No, you don't HAVE to generate keys every 30 days, but you should if you
want real security. Still, for a while, until the infrastructure is
complete enough to make DNSSEC really of value to the end user, just
getting signed domains with keys published in an easily accessed place
is at least getting things started and getting the infrastructure
moving.

Rolling keys is a rather tricky operation where mistakes, once DNSSEC
makes it to the end user, would be disastrous, so it would require a
couple of scripts, one to set a new key and another to remove the old
one. You need both key present for a period of time.

> If I were to implement it, I'd write a shell script to turn the keys
> over and cron it because doing it manually every 30 days ain't gonna
> happen.  Too many ways to forget to do it.  (I did the same for the
> root servers so that named.ca gets updated automagically every month.)

And that is FAR less important than the signatures. (named.ca could be
updated once a year and be just fine.)

> But until root is signed, it's not worth it for those of us who don't
> have dedicated staff doing dns only.

Work continues on getting the root signed, but it .com and .net that
present the really big problems. The root delay is mostly political, not
technical. .com and .net are both.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
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