Registrars have the opportunity to fundamentally change the landscape of the Internet's security infrastructure by working to close the DNSSEC functionality gap. Virtually everything every Internet user does on the Internet depends on the DNS. DNSSEC is not just about protecting the DNS, it is about building a secure infrastructure foundation upon which new and innovative services and applications can be built to benefit us all. Registrars are the linchpins to advancing the deployment of DNSSEC. more
July 15, 2010 (yesterday) marked the end of the beginning for DNSSEC, as the DNS root was cryptographically signed. For nearly two decades, security researchers, academics and Internet leaders have worked to develop and deploy Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). DNSSEC was developed to improve the overall security of the DNS, a need which was dramatized by the discovery of the Kaminsky bug a few years ago. more
Today the e-mail faerie brought news of the release of BIND9 9.10.0 which can be downloaded from here. BIND9 is the most popular name server on the Internet and has been ever since taking that title away from BIND8 which had a few years earlier taken it from BIND4. I used to work on BIND, and I founded ISC, the home of BIND, and even though I left ISC in July 2013 to launch a commercial security startup company, I remain a fan of both ISC and BIND. more
The DNS is normally a relatively open protocol that smears its data (which is your data and mine too!) far and wide. Little wonder that the DNS is used in many ways, not just as a mundane name resolution protocol, but as a data channel for surveillance and as a common means of implementing various forms of content access control. But all this is poised to change. more
It's no secret that Comcast has been leading the charge of DNSSEC deployment among ISPs. For the past couple years, Comcast has been testing and pushing for the widespread adoption of DNSSEC. In the spirit of increasing adoption, I thought I would interview the DNS gurus at Comcast to see what they've learned and what advice they would give other ISPs considering DNSSEC deployment. more
The ways in which the Internet is embedded in our daily lives are too varied and numerous to catalogue. The Internet delivers information, access to goods, services, education, banking, social interaction and, increasingly, work space. The global pandemic has only heightened our dependence on the online world, which is why efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a trusted and secure environment are more important than ever. more
While conventional cyber attacks are evolving at breakneck speed, the world is witnessing the rise of a new generation of political, ideological, religious, terror and destruction motivated "Poli-Cyber™" threats. These are attacks perpetrated or inspired by extremists' groups such as ISIS/Daesh, rogue states, national intelligence services and their proxies. They are breaching organizations and governments daily, and no one is immune. more
All effective spam filters use DNS blacklists or blocklists, known as DNSBLs. They provide an efficient way to publish sets of IP addresses from which the publisher recommends that mail systems not accept mail. A well run DNSBL can be very effective; the Spamhaus lists typically catch upwards of 80% of incoming spam with a very low error rate. DNSBLs take advantage of the existing DNS infrastructure to do fast, efficient lookups. A DNS lookup typically goes through three computers... more
OARC held a 2-day meeting in February, with presentations on various DNS topics. Here are some observations I picked up from the presentations in that meeting... In a world where every DNS name is DNSSEC-signed, and every DNS client validates all received DNS responses, we wouldn't necessarily have the problem of DNS spoofing. Even if we concede that universal use of DNSSEC is a long time off ... more
When we look at the intersection of cryptocurrency and domain data, we see something insidious: The prevalence of crypto-related threats. And it's not just cryptojacking. It's not even the use of cryptocurrency which has made ransomware attacks easier for threat actors to commit and all the more widespread. As with nearly every trend, there is always someone looking to capitalize on it and use it for their own, personal gain. Ever since cryptocurrency became the pandemic hobby of choice, threat actors have begun to target crypto novices for their schemes. more
Keynote speaker, and noted security industry commentator, Bruce Schneier (Co3 Systems ) set the tone for the two days with a discussion on how humans name things and the shortcomings of computers in doing the same. Names require context, he observed, and "computers are really bad at this" because "everything defaults to global." Referring to the potential that new gTLDs could conflict with internal names in installed systems, he commented, "It would be great if we could go back 20 years and say 'Don't do that'," but concluded that policymakers have to work with DNS the way it is today. more
Tonight begins the third annual SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) in Herndon, Virginia, where technical and operations staff from service providers around the world with gather to share information and learn about the latest trends in IP communications services - and specifically those based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Produced by the nonprofit SIP Forum, SIPNOC is an educational event sharing best practices, deployment information and technology updates. Attendees range from many traditional telecom carriers to newer VoIP-focused service providers and application developers. more
As regular readers know, ICANN holds lengthy, in-depth discussions devoted to DNSSEC at each of its three annual meetings. The half-day session held at ICANN 43 in Costa Rica last month was particularly interesting. What became clear is that the industry is quickly moving into the end-user adoption phase of global DNSSEC deployment. more
In Tony Li's article on path MTU discovery we see this text: "The next attempt to solve the MTU problem has been Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery (PLPMTUD). Rather than depending on ICMP messaging, in this approach, the transport layer depends on packet loss to determine that the packet was too big for the network. Heuristics are used to differentiate between MTU problems and congestion. Obviously, this technique is only practical for protocols where the source can determine that there has been packet loss. Unidirectional, unacknowledged transfers, typically using UDP, would not be able to use this mechanism. To date, PLPMTUD hasn't demonstrated a significant improvement in the situation." Tony's article is (as usual) quite readable and useful, but my specific concern here is DNS... more
It is not often I go out to my driveway to pick up the Washington Post -- yes, I still enjoy reading a real physical paper, perhaps a sign of age -- and the headline is NOT about how the (insert DC sports team here) lost last night but is instead is about an IT technology. That technology is the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a major Internet protocol that has been around for more than a quarter century, before the Internet was commercialized and before most people even knew what the Internet was. more
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