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IETF RFC 9103
Last modified on Tuesday, August 24th, 2021
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) W. Toorop
Request for Comments: 9103 NLnet Labs
Updates: 1995, 5936, 7766 S. Dickinson
Category: Standards Track Sinodun IT
ISSN: 2070-1721 S. Sahib
Brave Software
P. Aras
A. Mankin
Salesforce
August 2021
DNS Zone Transfer over TLS
 Abstract
DNS zone transfers are transmitted in cleartext, which gives
attackers the opportunity to collect the content of a zone by
eavesdropping on network connections. The DNS Transaction Signature
(TSIG) mechanism is specified to restrict direct zone transfer to
authorized clients only, but it does not add confidentiality. This
document specifies the use of TLS, rather than cleartext, to prevent
zone content collection via passive monitoring of zone transfers: XFR
over TLS (XoT). Additionally, this specification updates RFC 1995
and RFC 5936 with respect to efficient use of TCP connections and RFC
7766 with respect to the recommended number of connections between a
client and server for each transport.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 9103.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Terminology
3. Threat Model
4. Design Considerations for XoT
5. Connection and Data Flows in Existing XFR Mechanisms
5.1. AXFR Mechanism
5.2. IXFR Mechanism
5.3. Data Leakage of NOTIFY and SOA Message Exchanges
5.3.1. NOTIFY
5.3.2. SOA
6. Updates to Existing Specifications
6.1. Update to RFC 1995 for IXFR over TCP
6.2. Update to RFC 5936 for AXFR over TCP
6.3. Updates to RFCs 1995 and 5936 for XFR over TCP
6.3.1. Connection Reuse
6.3.2. AXFRs and IXFRs on the Same Connection
6.3.3. XFR Limits
6.3.4. The edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS(0) Option
6.3.5. Backwards Compatibility
6.4. Update to RFC 7766
7. XoT Specification
7.1. Connection Establishment
7.2. TLS Versions
7.3. Port Selection
7.4. High-Level XoT Descriptions
7.5. XoT Transfers
7.6. XoT Connections
7.7. XoT vs. ADoT
7.8. Response RCODES
7.9. AXoT Specifics
7.9.1. Padding AXoT Responses
7.10. IXoT Specifics
7.10.1. Condensation of Responses
7.10.2. Fallback to AXFR
7.10.3. Padding of IXoT Responses
7.11. Name Compression and Maximum Payload Sizes
8. Multi-primary Configurations
9. Authentication Mechanisms
9.1. TSIG
9.2. SIG(0)
9.3. TLS
9.3.1. Opportunistic TLS
9.3.2. Strict TLS
9.3.3. Mutual TLS
9.4. IP-Based ACL on the Primary
9.5. ZONEMD
10. XoT Authentication
11. Policies for Both AXoT and IXoT
12. Implementation Considerations
13. Operational Considerations
14. IANA Considerations
15. Security Considerations
16. References
16.1. Normative References
16.2. Informative References
Appendix A. XoT Server Connection Handling
A.1. Listening Only on a Specific IP Address for TLS
A.2. Client-Specific TLS Acceptance
A.3. SNI-Based TLS Acceptance
A.4. Transport-Specific Response Policies
A.4.1. SNI-Based Response Policies
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
DNS has a number of privacy vulnerabilities, as discussed in detail
in [RFC 9076]. Query privacy between stub resolvers and recursive
resolvers has received the most attention to date, with Standards
Track documents for both DNS over TLS (DoT) [RFC 7858] and DNS over
HTTPS (DoH) [RFC 8484] and a proposal for DNS over QUIC
[DPRIVE-DNSOQUIC]. There is ongoing work on DNS privacy requirements
for exchanges between recursive resolvers and authoritative servers
and some suggestions for how signaling of DoT support by
authoritative name servers might work. However, there is currently
no RFC that specifically defines recursive-to-authoritative DNS over
TLS (ADoT).
[RFC 9076] establishes that a stub resolver's DNS query transactions
are not public and that they need protection, but, on zone transfer
[RFC 1995] [RFC 5936], it says only:
| Privacy risks for the holder of a zone (the risk that someone gets
| the data) are discussed in [RFC 5155] and [RFC 5936].
In what way is exposing the full contents of a zone a privacy risk?
The contents of the zone could include information such as names of
persons used in names of hosts. Best practice is not to use personal
information for domain names, but many such domain names exist. The
contents of the zone could also include references to locations that
allow inference about location information of the individuals
associated with the zone's organization. It could also include
references to other organizations. Examples of this could be:
* Person-laptop.example.org
* MX-for-Location.example.org
* Service-tenant-from-another-org.example.org
Additionally, the full zone contents expose all the IP addresses of
endpoints held in the DNS records, which can make reconnaissance and
attack targeting easier, particularly for IPv6 addresses or private
networks. There may also be regulatory, policy, or other reasons why
the zone contents in full must be treated as private.
Neither of the RFCs mentioned in [RFC 9076] contemplate the risk that
someone gets the data through eavesdropping on network connections,
only via enumeration or unauthorized transfer, as described in the
following paragraphs.
Zone enumeration is trivially possible for DNSSEC zones that use
NSEC, i.e., queries for the authenticated denial-of-existence records
allow a client to walk through the entire zone contents. [RFC 5155]
specifies NSEC3, a mechanism to provide measures against zone
enumeration for DNSSEC-signed zones (a goal was to make it as hard to
enumerate a DNSSEC-signed zone as an unsigned zone). Whilst this is
widely used, it has been demonstrated that zone walking is possible
for precomputed NSEC3 using attacks, such as those described in
[NSEC3-attacks]. This prompted further work on an alternative
mechanism for DNSSEC-authenticated denial of existence (NSEC5
[NSEC5]); however, questions remain over the practicality of this
mechanism.
[RFC 5155] does not address data obtained outside zone enumeration
(nor does [NSEC5]). Preventing eavesdropping of zone transfers (as
described in this document) is orthogonal to preventing zone
enumeration, though they aim to protect the same information.
[RFC 5936] specifies using TSIG [RFC 8945] for authorization of the
clients of a zone transfer and for data integrity but does not
express any need for confidentiality, and TSIG does not offer
encryption.
Section 8 of the NIST document "Secure Domain Name System (DNS)
Deployment Guide" [NIST-GUIDE] discusses restricting access for zone
transfers using Access Control Lists (ACLs) and TSIG in more detail.
It also discusses the possibility that specific deployments might
choose to use a lower-level network layer to protect zone transfers,
e.g., IPsec.
It is noted that in all the common open-source implementations such
ACLs are applied on a per-query basis (at the time of writing).
Since requests typically occur on TCP connections, authoritative
servers must therefore accept any TCP connection and then handle the
authentication of each zone transfer (XFR) request individually.
Because both AXFR (authoritative transfer) and IXFR (incremental zone
transfer) are typically carried out over TCP from authoritative DNS
protocol implementations, encrypting zone transfers using TLS
[RFC 8499] -- based closely on DoT [RFC 7858] -- seems like a simple
step forward. This document specifies how to use TLS (1.3 or later)
as a transport to prevent zone collection from zone transfers.
This document also updates the previous specifications for zone
transfers to clarify and extend them, mainly with respect to TCP
usage:
* [RFC 1995] (IXFR) and [RFC 5936] (AXFR) are both updated to add
further specification on efficient use of TCP connections.
* Section 6.2.2 of [RFC 7766] ("DNS Transport over TCP -
Implementation Requirements") is updated with a new recommendation
about the number of connections between a client and server for
each transport.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC 2119] [RFC 8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
Privacy terminology is as described in Section 3 of [RFC 6973].
DNS terminology is as described in [RFC 8499]. Note that, as in
[RFC 8499], the terms 'primary' and 'secondary' are used for two
servers engaged in zone transfers.
DoT: DNS over TLS, as specified in [RFC 7858]
XFR over TCP: Used to mean both IXFR over TCP [RFC 1995] and AXFR
over TCP [RFC 5936]
XoT: XFR-over-TLS mechanisms, as specified in this document, which
apply to both AXFR over TLS and IXFR over TLS (XoT is
pronounced 'zot' since X here stands for 'zone transfer')
AXoT: AXFR over TLS
IXoT: IXFR over TLS
3. Threat Model
The threat model considered here is one where the current contents
and size of the zone are considered sensitive and should be protected
during transfer.
The threat model does not, however, consider the existence of a zone,
the act of zone transfer between two entities, nor the identities of
the name servers hosting a zone (including both those acting as
hidden primaries/secondaries or directly serving the zone) as
sensitive information. The proposed mechanism does not attempt to
obscure such information. The reasons for this include:
* much of this information can be obtained by various methods,
including active scanning of the DNS, and
* an attacker who can monitor network traffic can rather easily
infer relations between name servers simply from traffic patterns,
even when some or all of the traffic is encrypted (in terms of
current deployments).
The model does not consider attacks on the mechanisms that trigger a
zone transfer, e.g., NOTIFY messages.
It is noted that simply using XoT will indicate a desire by the zone
owner that the contents of the zone remain confidential and so could
be subject to blocking (e.g., via blocking of port 853) if an
attacker had such capabilities. However, this threat is likely true
of any such mechanism that attempts to encrypt data passed between
name servers, e.g., IPsec.
4. Design Considerations for XoT
The following principles were considered in the design for XoT:
Confidentiality: Clearly using an encrypted transport for zone
transfers will defeat zone content leakage that can occur via
passive surveillance.
Authentication: Use of single or mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication
(in combination with ACLs) can complement and potentially be an
alternative to TSIG.
Performance:
* Existing AXFR and IXFR mechanisms have the burden of backwards
compatibility with older implementations based on the original
specifications in [RFC 1034] and [RFC 1035]. For example, some
older AXFR servers don't support using a TCP connection for
multiple AXFR sessions or XFRs of different zones because they
have not been updated to follow the guidance in [RFC 5936]. Any
implementation of XoT would obviously be required to implement
optimized and interoperable transfers, as described in
[RFC 5936], e.g., transfer of multiple zones over one
connection.
* Current usage of TCP for IXFR is suboptimal in some cases,
i.e., connections are frequently closed after a single IXFR.
5. Connection and Data Flows in Existing XFR Mechanisms
The original specification for zone transfers in [RFC 1034] and
[RFC 1035] was based on a polling mechanism: a secondary performed a
periodic query for the SOA (start of zone authority) record (based on
the refresh timer) to determine if an AXFR was required.
[RFC 1995] and [RFC 1996] introduced the concepts of IXFR and NOTIFY,
respectively, to provide for prompt propagation of zone updates.
This has largely replaced AXFR where possible, particularly for
dynamically updated zones.
[RFC 5936] subsequently redefined the specification of AXFR to improve
performance and interoperability.
In this document, the term 'XFR mechanism' is used to describe the
entire set of message exchanges between a secondary and a primary
that concludes with a successful AXFR or IXFR request/response. This
set may or may not include:
* NOTIFY messages
* SOA queries
* Fallback from IXFR to AXFR
* Fallback from IXFR over UDP to IXFR over TCP
The term is used to encompass the range of permutations that are
possible and is useful to distinguish the 'XFR mechanism' from a
single XFR request/response exchange.
5.1. AXFR Mechanism
The figure below provides an outline of an AXFR mechanism including
NOTIFYs.
Secondary Primary
| NOTIFY |
| <-------------------------------- | UDP
| --------------------------------> |
| NOTIFY Response |
| |
| |
| SOA Request |
| --------------------------------> | UDP (or part of
| <-------------------------------- | a TCP session)
| SOA Response |
| |
| |
| |
| AXFR Request | ---
| --------------------------------> | |
| <-------------------------------- | |
| AXFR Response 1 | |
| (Zone data) | |
| | |
| <-------------------------------- | | TCP
| AXFR Response 2 | | Session
| (Zone data) | |
| | |
| <-------------------------------- | |
| AXFR Response 3 | |
| (Zone data) | ---
| |
Figure 1: AXFR Mechanism
1. An AXFR is often (but not always) preceded by a NOTIFY (over UDP)
from the primary to the secondary. A secondary may also initiate
an AXFR based on a refresh timer or scheduled/triggered zone
maintenance.
2. The secondary will normally (but not always) make an SOA query to
the primary to obtain the serial number of the zone held by the
primary.
3. If the primary serial is higher than the secondary's serial
(using Serial Number Arithmetic [RFC 1982]), the secondary makes
an AXFR request (over TCP) to the primary, after which the AXFR
data flows in one or more AXFR responses on the TCP connection.
[RFC 5936] defines this specific step as an 'AXFR session', i.e.,
as an AXFR query message and the sequence of AXFR response
messages returned for it.
[RFC 5936] re-specified AXFR, providing additional guidance beyond
that provided in [RFC 1034] and [RFC 1035] and importantly specified
that AXFR must use TCP as the transport protocol.
Additionally, Sections 4.1, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2 of [RFC 5936] provide
improved guidance for AXFR clients and servers with regard to reuse
of TCP connections for multiple AXFRs and AXFRs of different zones.
However, [RFC 5936] was constrained by having to be backwards
compatible with some very early basic implementations of AXFR. For
example, it outlines that the SOA query can also happen on this
connection. However, this can cause interoperability problems with
older implementations that support only the trivial case of one AXFR
per connection.
5.2. IXFR Mechanism
The figure below provides an outline of the IXFR mechanism including
NOTIFYs.
Secondary Primary
| NOTIFY |
| <-------------------------------- | UDP
| --------------------------------> |
| NOTIFY Response |
| |
| |
| SOA Request |
| --------------------------------> | UDP or TCP
| <-------------------------------- |
| SOA Response |
| |
| |
| |
| IXFR Request |
| --------------------------------> | UDP or TCP
| <-------------------------------- |
| IXFR Response |
| (Zone data) |
| |
| | ---
| IXFR Request | |
| --------------------------------> | | Retry over
| <-------------------------------- | | TCP if
| IXFR Response | | required
| (Zone data) | ---
Figure 2: IXFR Mechanism
1. An IXFR is normally (but not always) preceded by a NOTIFY (over
UDP) from the primary to the secondary. A secondary may also
initiate an IXFR based on a refresh timer or scheduled/triggered
zone maintenance.
2. The secondary will normally (but not always) make an SOA query to
the primary to obtain the serial number of the zone held by the
primary.
3. If the primary serial is higher than the secondary's serial
(using Serial Number Arithmetic [RFC 1982]), the secondary makes
an IXFR request to the primary, after which the primary sends an
IXFR response.
[RFC 1995] specifies that IXFR may use UDP if the entire IXFR response
can be contained in a single DNS packet, otherwise, TCP is used. In
fact, it says:
| Thus, a client should first make an IXFR query using UDP.
So there may be a fourth step above where the client falls back to
IXFR over TCP. There may also be an additional step where the
secondary must fall back to AXFR because, e.g., the primary does not
support IXFR.
However, it is noted that most of the widely used open-source
implementations of authoritative name servers (including both [BIND]
and [NSD]) do IXFR using TCP by default in their latest releases.
For BIND, TCP connections are sometimes used for SOA queries, but, in
general, they are not used persistently and are closed after an IXFR
is completed.
5.3. Data Leakage of NOTIFY and SOA Message Exchanges
This section presents a rationale for considering the encryption of
the other messages in the XFR mechanism.
Since the SOA of the published zone can be trivially discovered by
simply querying the publicly available authoritative servers, leakage
of this resource record (RR) via such a direct query is not discussed
in the following sections.
5.3.1. NOTIFY
Unencrypted NOTIFY messages identify configured secondaries on the
primary.
[RFC 1996] also states:
| If ANCOUNT>0, then the answer section represents an unsecure hint
| at the new RRset for this <QNAME,QCLASS,QTYPE>.
But since the only query type (QTYPE) for NOTIFY defined at the time
of this writing is SOA, this does not pose a potential leak.
5.3.2. SOA
For hidden XFR servers (either primaries or secondaries), an SOA
response directly from that server only additionally leaks the degree
of SOA serial number lag of any downstream secondary of that server.
6. Updates to Existing Specifications
For convenience, the term 'XFR over TCP' is used in this document to
mean both IXFR over TCP and AXFR over TCP; therefore, statements that
use that term update both [RFC 1995] and [RFC 5936] and implicitly also
apply to XoT. Differences in behavior specific to XoT are discussed
in Section 7.
Both [RFC 1995] and [RFC 5936] were published sometime before TCP
became a widely supported transport for DNS. [RFC 1995], in fact,
says nothing with respect to optimizing IXFRs over TCP or reusing
already open TCP connections to perform IXFRs or other queries.
Therefore, there arguably is an implicit assumption that a TCP
connection is used for one and only one IXFR request. Indeed, many
major open-source implementations take this approach (at the time of
this writing). And whilst [RFC 5936] gives guidance on connection
reuse for AXFR, it predates more recent specifications describing
persistent TCP connections (e.g., [RFC 7766], [RFC 7828]), and AXFR
implementations again often make less-than-optimal use of open
connections.
Given this, new implementations of XoT will clearly benefit from
specific guidance on TCP/TLS connection usage for XFR, because this
will:
* result in more consistent XoT implementations with better
interoperability and
* remove any need for XoT implementations to support legacy behavior
for XoT connections that XFR-over-TCP implementations have
historically often supported.
Therefore, this document updates both the previous specifications for
XFR over TCP ([RFC 1995] and [RFC 5936]) to clarify that:
* Implementations MUST use [RFC 7766] ("DNS Transport over TCP -
Implementation Requirements") to optimize the use of TCP
connections.
* Whilst [RFC 7766] states that "DNS clients SHOULD pipeline their
queries" on TCP connections, it did not distinguish between XFRs
and other queries for this behavior. It is now recognized that
XFRs are not as latency sensitive as other queries and can be
significantly more complex for clients to handle, both because of
the large amount of state that must be kept and because there may
be multiple messages in the responses. For these reasons, it is
clarified here that a valid reason for not pipelining queries is
when they are all XFR queries, i.e., clients sending multiple XFRs
MAY choose not to pipeline those queries. Clients that do not
pipeline XFR queries therefore have no additional requirements to
handle out-of-order or intermingled responses (as described
later), since they will never receive them.
* Implementations SHOULD use the edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS(0) option
[RFC 7828] to manage persistent connections. This is more flexible
than the alternative of simply using fixed timeouts.
The following sections include detailed clarifications on the updates
to XFR behavior implied in [RFC 7766] and how the use of [RFC 7828]
applies specifically to XFR exchanges. They also discuss how IXFR
and AXFR can reuse the same TCP connection.
For completeness, the recent specification of extended DNS error
(EDE) codes [RFC 8914] is also mentioned here. For zone transfers,
when returning REFUSED to a zone transfer request from an
'unauthorized' client (e.g., where the client is not listed in an ACL
for zone transfers or does not sign the request with a valid TSIG
key), the extended DNS error code 18 - Prohibited can also be sent.
6.1. Update to RFC 1995 for IXFR over TCP
For clarity, an IXFR-over-TCP server compliant with this
specification MUST be able to handle multiple concurrent IXoT
requests on a single TCP connection (for the same and different
zones) and SHOULD send the responses as soon as they are available,
which might be out of order compared to the requests.
6.2. Update to RFC 5936 for AXFR over TCP
For clarity, an AXFR-over-TCP server compliant with this
specification MUST be able to handle multiple concurrent AXoT
sessions on a single TCP connection (for the same and different
zones). The response streams for concurrent AXFRs MAY be
intermingled, and AXFR-over-TCP clients compliant with this
specification, which pipeline AXFR requests, MUST be able to handle
this.
6.3. Updates to RFCs 1995 and 5936 for XFR over TCP
6.3.1. Connection Reuse
As specified, XFR-over-TCP clients SHOULD reuse any existing open TCP
connection when starting any new XFR request to the same primary, and
for issuing SOA queries, instead of opening a new connection. The
number of TCP connections between a secondary and primary SHOULD be
minimized (also see Section 6.4).
Valid reasons for not reusing existing connections might include:
* As already noted in [RFC 7766], separate connections for different
zones might be preferred for operational reasons. In this case,
the number of concurrent connections for zone transfers SHOULD be
limited to the total number of zones transferred between the
client and server.
* A configured limit for the number of outstanding queries or XFR
requests allowed on a single TCP connection has been reached.
* The message ID pool has already been exhausted on an open
connection.
* A large number of timeouts or slow responses have occurred on an
open connection.
* An edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS(0) option with a timeout of 0 has been
received from the server, and the client is in the process of
closing the connection (see Section 6.3.4).
If no TCP connections are currently open, XFR clients MAY send SOA
queries over UDP or a new TCP connection.
6.3.2. AXFRs and IXFRs on the Same Connection
Neither [RFC 1995] nor [RFC 5936] explicitly discuss the use of a
single TCP connection for both IXFR and AXFR requests. [RFC 5936]
does make the general statement:
| Non-AXFR session traffic can also use an open connection.
In this document, the above is clarified to indicate that
implementations capable of both AXFR and IXFR and compliant with this
specification SHOULD:
* use the same TCP connection for both AXFR and IXFR requests to the
same primary,
* pipeline such requests (if they pipeline XFR requests in general)
and MAY intermingle them, and
* send the response(s) for each request as soon as they are
available, i.e., responses MAY be sent intermingled.
For some current implementations, adding all the above functionality
would introduce significant code complexity. In such a case, there
will need to be an assessment of the trade-off between that and the
performance benefits of the above for XFR.
6.3.3. XFR Limits
The server MAY limit the number of concurrent IXFRs, AXFRs, or total
XFR transfers in progress (or from a given secondary) to protect
server resources. Servers SHOULD return SERVFAIL if this limit is
hit, since it is a transient error and a retry at a later time might
succeed (there is no previous specification for this behavior).
6.3.4. The edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS(0) Option
XFR clients that send the edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS(0) option on every
XFR request provide the server with maximum opportunity to update the
edns-tcp-keepalive timeout. The XFR server may use the frequency of
recent XFRs to calculate an average update rate as input to the
decision of what edns-tcp-keepalive timeout to use. If the server
does not support edns-tcp-keepalive, the client MAY keep the
connection open for a few seconds ([RFC 7766] recommends that servers
use timeouts of at least a few seconds).
Whilst the specification for EDNS(0) [RFC 6891] does not specifically
mention AXFRs, it does say:
| If an OPT record is present in a received request, compliant
| responders MUST include an OPT record in their respective
| responses.
In this document, the above is clarified to indicate that if an OPT
record is present in a received AXFR request, compliant responders
MUST include an OPT record in each of the subsequent AXFR responses.
Note that this requirement, combined with the use of edns-tcp-
keepalive, enables AXFR servers to signal the desire to close a
connection (when existing transactions have competed) due to low
resources by sending an edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS(0) option with a
timeout of 0 on any AXFR response. This does not signal that the
AXFR is aborted, just that the server wishes to close the connection
as soon as possible.
6.3.5. Backwards Compatibility
Certain legacy behaviors were noted in [RFC 5936], with provisions
that implementations may want to offer options to fallback to legacy
behavior when interoperating with servers known to not support
[RFC 5936]. For purposes of interoperability, IXFR and AXFR
implementations may want to continue offering such configuration
options, as well as supporting some behaviors that were
underspecified prior to this work (e.g., performing IXFR and AXFRs on
separate connections). However, XoT connections should have no need
to do so.
6.4. Update to RFC 7766
[RFC 7766] made general implementation recommendations with regard to
TCP/TLS connection handling:
| To mitigate the risk of unintentional server overload, DNS clients
| MUST take care to minimize the number of concurrent TCP
| connections made to any individual server. It is RECOMMENDED that
| for any given client/server interaction there SHOULD be no more
| than one connection for regular queries, one for zone transfers,
| and one for each protocol that is being used on top of TCP (for
| example, if the resolver was using TLS). However, it is noted
| that certain primary/ secondary configurations with many busy
| zones might need to use more than one TCP connection for zone
| transfers for operational reasons (for example, to support
| concurrent transfers of multiple zones).
Whilst this recommends a particular behavior for the clients using
TCP, it does not relax the requirement for servers to handle 'mixed'
traffic (regular queries and zone transfers) on any open TCP/TLS
connection. It also overlooks the potential that other transports
might want to take the same approach with regard to using separate
connections for different purposes.
This specification updates the above general guidance in [RFC 7766] to
provide the same separation of connection purpose (regular queries
and zone transfers) for all transports being used on top of TCP.
Therefore, it is RECOMMENDED that for each protocol used on top of
TCP in any given client/server interaction there SHOULD be no more
than one connection for regular queries and one for zone transfers.
As an illustration, it could be imagined that in the future such an
interaction could hypothetically include one or all of the following:
* one TCP connection for regular queries
* one TCP connection for zone transfers
* one TLS connection for regular queries
* one TLS connection for zone transfers
* one DoH connection for regular queries
* one DoH connection for zone transfers
Section 6.3.1 provides specific details of the reasons why more than
one connection for a given transport might be required for zone
transfers from a particular client.
7. XoT Specification
7.1. Connection Establishment
During connection establishment, the Application-Layer Protocol
Negotiation (ALPN) token "dot" [DoT-ALPN] MUST be selected in the TLS
handshake.
7.2. TLS Versions
All implementations of this specification MUST use only TLS 1.3
[RFC 8446] or later.
7.3. Port Selection
The connection for XoT SHOULD be established using port 853, as
specified in [RFC 7858], unless there is mutual agreement between the
primary and secondary to use a port other than port 853 for XoT.
There MAY be agreement to use different ports for AXoT and IXoT or
for different zones.
7.4. High-Level XoT Descriptions
It is useful to note that in XoT it is the secondary that initiates
the TLS connection to the primary for an XFR request so that, in
terms of connectivity, the secondary is the TLS client and the
primary is the TLS server.
The figure below provides an outline of the AXoT mechanism including
NOTIFYs.
Secondary Primary
| NOTIFY |
| <-------------------------------- | UDP
| --------------------------------> |
| NOTIFY Response |
| |
| |
| SOA Request |
| --------------------------------> | UDP (or part of
| <-------------------------------- | a TCP/TLS session)
| SOA Response |
| |
| |
| |
| AXFR Request | ---
| --------------------------------> | |
| <-------------------------------- | |
| AXFR Response 1 | |
| (Zone data) | |
| | |
| <-------------------------------- | | TLS
| AXFR Response 2 | | Session
| (Zone data) | |
| | |
| <-------------------------------- | |
| AXFR Response 3 | |
| (Zone data) | ---
| |
Figure 3: AXoT Mechanism
The figure below provides an outline of the IXoT mechanism including
NOTIFYs.
Secondary Primary
| NOTIFY |
| <-------------------------------- | UDP
| --------------------------------> |
| NOTIFY Response |
| |
| |
| SOA Request |
| --------------------------------> | UDP (or part of
| <-------------------------------- | a TCP/TLS session)
| SOA Response |
| |
| |
| |
| IXFR Request | ---
| --------------------------------> | |
| <-------------------------------- | |
| IXFR Response | |
| (Zone data) | |
| | | TLS
| | | session
| IXFR Request | |
| --------------------------------> | |
| <-------------------------------- | |
| IXFR Response | |
| (Zone data) | ---
Figure 4: IXoT Mechanism
7.5. XoT Transfers
For a zone transfer between two endpoints to be considered protected
with XoT, all XFR requests and responses for that zone MUST be sent
over TLS connections, where at a minimum:
* The client MUST authenticate the server by use of an
authentication domain name using a Strict Privacy profile, as
described in [RFC 8310].
* The server MUST validate the client is authorized to request or
proxy a zone transfer by using one or both of the following
methods:
- mutual TLS (mTLS)
- an IP-based ACL (which can be either per message or per
connection) combined with a valid TSIG/SIG(0) signature on the
XFR request
If only one method is selected, then mTLS is preferred because it
provides strong cryptographic protection at both endpoints.
Authentication mechanisms are discussed in full in Section 9, and the
rationale for the above requirement is discussed in Section 10.
Transfer group policies are discussed in Section 11.
7.6. XoT Connections
The details in Section 6 about, e.g., persistent connections and XFR
message handling, are fully applicable to XoT connections as well.
However, any behavior specified here takes precedence for XoT.
If no TLS connections are currently open, XoT clients MAY send SOA
queries over UDP, TCP, or TLS.
7.7. XoT vs. ADoT
As noted earlier, there is currently no specification for encryption
of connections from recursive resolvers to authoritative servers.
Some authoritative servers are experimenting with ADoT, and
opportunistic encryption has also been raised as a possibility;
therefore, it is highly likely that use of encryption by
authoritative servers will evolve in the coming years.
This raises questions in the short term with regard to TLS connection
and message handling for authoritative servers. In particular, there
is likely to be a class of authoritative servers that wish to use XoT
in the near future with a small number of configured secondaries but
that do not wish to support DoT for regular queries from recursives
in that same time frame. These servers have to potentially cope with
probing and direct queries from recursives and from test servers and
also potential attacks that might wish to make use of TLS to overload
the server.
[RFC 5936] clearly states that non-AXFR session traffic can use an
open connection; however, this requirement needs to be reevaluated
when considering the application of the same model to XoT. Proposing
that a server should also start responding to all queries received
over TLS just because it has enabled XoT would be equivalent to
defining a form of authoritative DoT. This specification does not
propose that, but it also does not prohibit servers from answering
queries unrelated to XFR exchanges over TLS. Rather, this
specification simply outlines in later sections:
* the utilization of EDE codes by XoT servers in response to queries
on TLS connections that they are not willing to answer (see
Section 7.8)
* the operational and policy options that an operator of a XoT
server has with regard to managing TLS connections and messages
(see Appendix A)
7.8. Response RCODES
XoT clients and servers MUST implement EDE codes. If a XoT server
receives non-XoT traffic it is not willing to answer on a TLS
connection, it SHOULD respond with REFUSED and the extended DNS error
code 21 - Not Supported [RFC 8914]. XoT clients should not send any
further queries of this type to the server for a reasonable period of
time (for example, one hour), i.e., long enough that the server
configuration or policy might be updated.
Historically, servers have used the REFUSED RCODE for many
situations; therefore, clients often had no detailed information on
which to base an error or fallback path when queries were refused.
As a result, the client behavior could vary significantly. XoT
servers that refuse queries must cater to the fact that client
behavior might vary from continually retrying queries regardless of
receiving REFUSED to every query or, at the other extreme, clients
may decide to stop using the server over any transport. This might
be because those clients are either non-XoT clients or do not
implement EDE codes.
7.9. AXoT Specifics
7.9.1. Padding AXoT Responses
The goal of padding AXoT responses is two fold:
* to obfuscate the actual size of the transferred zone to minimize
information leakage about the entire contents of the zone
* to obfuscate the incremental changes to the zone between SOA
updates to minimize information leakage about zone update activity
and growth
Note that the reuse of XoT connections for transfers of multiple
different zones slightly complicates any attempt to analyze the
traffic size and timing to extract information. Also, effective
padding may require the state to be kept because zones may grow and/
or shrink over time.
It is noted here that, depending on the padding policies eventually
developed for XoT, the requirement to obfuscate the total zone size
might require a server to create 'empty' AXoT responses, that is,
AXoT responses that contain no RRs apart from an OPT RR containing
the EDNS(0) option for padding. For example, without this
capability, the maximum size that a tiny zone could be padded to
would theoretically be limited if there had to be a minimum of 1 RR
per packet.
However, as with existing AXFR, the last AXoT response message sent
MUST contain the same SOA that was in the first message of the AXoT
response series in order to signal the conclusion of the zone
transfer.
[RFC 5936] says:
| Each AXFR response message SHOULD contain a sufficient number of
| RRs to reasonably amortize the per-message overhead, up to the
| largest number that will fit within a DNS message (taking the
| required content of the other sections into account, as described
| below).
'Empty' AXoT responses generated in order to meet a padding
requirement will be exceptions to the above statement. For
flexibility, for future proofing, and in order to guarantee support
for future padding policies, it is stated here that secondary
implementations MUST be resilient to receiving padded AXoT responses,
including 'empty' AXoT responses that contain only an OPT RR
containing the EDNS(0) option for padding.
Recommendations of specific policies for padding AXoT responses are
out of scope for this specification. Detailed considerations of such
policies and the trade-offs involved are expected to be the subject
of future work.
7.10. IXoT Specifics
7.10.1. Condensation of Responses
[RFC 1995] says that condensation of responses is optional and MAY be
done. Whilst it does add complexity to generating responses, it can
significantly reduce the size of responses. However, any such
reduction might be offset by increased message size due to padding.
This specification does not update the optionality of condensation
for XoT responses.
7.10.2. Fallback to AXFR
Fallback to AXFR can happen, for example, if the server is not able
to provide an IXFR for the requested SOA. Implementations differ in
how long they store zone deltas and how many may be stored at any one
time.
Just as with IXFR over TCP, after a failed IXFR, an IXoT client
SHOULD request the AXFR on the already open XoT connection.
7.10.3. Padding of IXoT Responses
The goal of padding IXoT responses is to obfuscate the incremental
changes to the zone between SOA updates to minimize information
leakage about zone update activity and growth. Both the size and
timing of the IXoT responses could reveal information.
IXFR responses can vary greatly in size from the order of 100 bytes
for one or two record updates to tens of thousands of bytes for
large, dynamic DNSSEC-signed zones. The frequency of IXFR responses
can also depend greatly on if and how the zone is DNSSEC signed.
In order to guarantee support for future padding policies, it is
stated here that secondary implementations MUST be resilient to
receiving padded IXoT responses.
Recommendation of specific policies for padding IXoT responses are
out of scope for this specification. Detailed considerations of such
padding policies, the use of traffic obfuscation techniques (such as
generating fake XFR traffic), and the trade-offs involved are
expected to be the subject of future work.
7.11. Name Compression and Maximum Payload Sizes
It is noted here that name compression [RFC 1035] can be used in XFR
responses to reduce the size of the payload; however, the maximum
value of the offset that can be used in the name compression pointer
structure is 16384. For some DNS implementations, this limits the
size of an individual XFR response used in practice to something
around the order of 16 KB. In principle, larger payload sizes can be
supported for some responses with more sophisticated approaches
(e.g., by precalculating the maximum offset required).
Implementations may wish to offer options to disable name compression
for XoT responses to enable larger payloads. This might be
particularly helpful when padding is used, since minimizing the
payload size is not necessarily a useful optimization in this case
and disabling name compression will reduce the resources required to
construct the payload.
8. Multi-primary Configurations
This model can provide flexibility and redundancy, particularly for
IXFR. A secondary will receive one or more NOTIFY messages and can
send an SOA to all of the configured primaries. It can then choose
to send an XFR request to the primary with the highest SOA (or based
on other criteria, e.g., RTT).
When using persistent connections, the secondary may have a XoT
connection already open to one or more primaries. Should a secondary
preferentially request an XFR from a primary to which it already has
an open XoT connection or the one with the highest SOA (assuming it
doesn't have a connection open to it already)?
Two extremes can be envisaged here. The first one can be considered
a 'preferred primary connection' model. In this case, the secondary
continues to use one persistent connection to a single primary until
it has reason not to. Reasons not to might include the primary
repeatedly closing the connection, long query/response RTTs on
transfers, or the SOA of the primary being an unacceptable lag behind
the SOA of an alternative primary.
The other extreme can be considered a 'parallel primary connection'
model. Here, a secondary could keep multiple persistent connections
open to all available primaries and only request XFRs from the
primary with the highest serial number. Since normally the number of
secondaries and primaries in direct contact in a transfer group is
reasonably low, this might be feasible if latency is the most
significant concern.
Recommendation of a particular scheme is out of scope of this
document, but implementations are encouraged to provide configuration
options that allow operators to make choices about this behavior.
9. Authentication Mechanisms
To provide context to the requirements in Section 7.5, this section
provides a brief summary of some of the existing authentication and
validation mechanisms (both transport independent and TLS specific)
that are available when performing zone transfers. Section 10 then
discusses in more detail specifically how a combination of TLS
authentication, TSIG, and IP-based ACLs interact for XoT.
In this document, the mechanisms are classified based on the
following properties:
Data Origin Authentication (DO):
Authentication 1) of the fact that the DNS message originated from
the party with whom credentials were shared and 2) of the data
integrity of the message contents (the originating party may or
may not be the party operating the far end of a TCP/TLS connection
in a 'proxy' scenario).
Channel Confidentiality (CC):
Confidentiality of the communication channel between the client
and server (i.e., the two endpoints of a TCP/TLS connection) from
passive surveillance.
Channel Authentication (CA):
Authentication of the identity of the party to whom a TCP/TLS
connection is made (this might not be a direct connection between
the primary and secondary in a proxy scenario).
9.1. TSIG
TSIG [RFC 8945] provides a mechanism for two or more parties to use
shared secret keys that can then be used to create a message digest
to protect individual DNS messages. This allows each party to
authenticate that a request or response (and the data in it) came
from the other party, even if it was transmitted over an unsecured
channel or via a proxy.
Properties: Data origin authentication.
9.2. SIG(0)
SIG(0) [RFC 2931] similarly provides a mechanism to digitally sign a
DNS message but uses public key authentication, where the public keys
are stored in DNS as KEY RRs and a private key is stored at the
signer.
Properties: Data origin authentication.
9.3. TLS
9.3.1. Opportunistic TLS
Opportunistic TLS for DoT is defined in [RFC 8310] and can provide a
defense against passive surveillance, providing on-the-wire
confidentiality. Essentially:
* if clients know authentication information for a server, they
SHOULD try to authenticate the server,
* if this fails or clients do not know the information, they MAY
fallback to using TLS without authentication, or
* clients MAY fallback to using cleartext if TLS is not available.
As such, it does not offer a defense against active attacks (e.g., an
on-path active attacker on the connection from client to server) and
is not considered as useful for XoT.
Properties: None guaranteed.
9.3.2. Strict TLS
Strict TLS for DoT [RFC 8310] requires that a client is configured
with an authentication domain name (and/or Subject Public Key Info
(SPKI) pin set) that MUST be used to authenticate the TLS handshake
with the server. If authentication of the server fails, the client
will not proceed with the connection. This provides a defense for
the client against active surveillance, providing client-to-server
authentication and end-to-end channel confidentiality.
Properties: Channel confidentiality and channel authentication (of
the server).
9.3.3. Mutual TLS
This is an extension to Strict TLS [RFC 8310] that requires that a
client is configured with an authentication domain name (and/or SPKI
pin set) and a client certificate. The client offers the certificate
for authentication by the server, and the client can authenticate the
server the same way as in Strict TLS. This provides a defense for
both parties against active surveillance, providing bidirectional
authentication and end-to-end channel confidentiality.
Properties: Channel confidentiality and mutual channel
authentication.
9.4. IP-Based ACL on the Primary
Most DNS server implementations offer an option to configure an IP-
based ACL, which is often used in combination with TSIG-based ACLs to
restrict access to zone transfers on primary servers on a per-query
basis.
This is also possible with XoT, but it must be noted that, as with
TCP, the implementation of such an ACL cannot be enforced on the
primary until an XFR request is received on an established
connection.
As discussed in Appendix A, an IP-based per-connection ACL could also
be implemented where only TLS connections from recognized secondaries
are accepted.
Properties: Channel authentication of the client.
9.5. ZONEMD
For completeness, ZONEMD [RFC 8976] ("Message Digest for DNS Zones")
is described here. The ZONEMD message digest is a mechanism that can
be used to verify the content of a standalone zone. It is designed
to be independent of the transmission channel or mechanism, allowing
a general consumer of a zone to do origin authentication of the
entire zone contents. Note that the current version of [RFC 8976]
states:
| As specified herein, ZONEMD is impractical for large, dynamic
| zones due to the time and resources required for digest
| calculation. However, the ZONEMD record is extensible so that new
| digest schemes may be added in the future to support large,
| dynamic zones.
It is complementary but orthogonal to the above mechanisms and can be
used in conjunction with XoT but is not considered further here.
10. XoT Authentication
It is noted that zone transfer scenarios can vary from a simple
single primary/secondary relationship where both servers are under
the control of a single operator to a complex hierarchical structure
that includes proxies and multiple operators. Each deployment
scenario will require specific analysis to determine which
combination of authentication methods are best suited to the
deployment model in question.
The XoT authentication requirement specified in Section 7.5 addresses
the issue of ensuring that the transfers are encrypted between the
two endpoints directly involved in the current transfers. The
following table summarizes the properties of a selection of the
mechanisms discussed in Section 9. The two-letter abbreviations for
the properties are used below: (S) indicates the secondary and (P)
indicates the primary.
+================+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+
| Method | DO(S) | CC(S) | CA(S) | DO(P) | CC(P) | CA(P) |
+================+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+
| Strict TLS | | Y | Y | | Y | |
+----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| Mutual TLS | | Y | Y | | Y | Y |
+----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| ACL on primary | | | | | | Y |
+----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| TSIG | Y | | | Y | | |
+----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
Table 1: Properties of Authentication Methods for XoT
Based on this analysis, it can be seen that:
* Using just mutual TLS can be considered a standalone solution
since both endpoints are cryptographically authenticated.
* Using secondary-side Strict TLS with a primary-side IP-based ACL
and TSIG/SIG(0) combination provides sufficient protection to be
acceptable.
Using just an IP-based ACL could be susceptible to attacks that can
spoof TCP IP addresses; using TSIG/SIG(0) alone could be susceptible
to attacks that were able to capture such messages should they be
accidentally sent in cleartext by any server with the key.
11. Policies for Both AXoT and IXoT
Whilst the protection of the zone contents in a transfer between two
endpoints can be provided by the XoT protocol, the protection of all
the transfers of a given zone requires operational administration and
policy management.
The entire group of servers involved in XFR for a particular set of
zones (all the primaries and all the secondaries) is called the
'transfer group'.
In order to assure the confidentiality of the zone information, the
entire transfer group MUST have a consistent policy of using XoT. If
any do not, this is a weak link for attackers to exploit. For
clarification, this means that within any transfer group both AXFRs
and IXFRs for a zone MUST all use XoT.
An individual zone transfer is not considered protected by XoT unless
both the client and server are configured to use only XoT, and the
overall zone transfer is not considered protected until all members
of the transfer group are configured to use only XoT with all other
transfers servers (see Section 12).
A XoT policy MUST specify if:
* mutual TLS is used and/or
* an IP-based ACL and TSIG/SIG(0) combination is used.
Since this may require configuration of a number of servers who may
be under the control of different operators, the desired consistency
could be hard to enforce and audit in practice.
Certain aspects of the policies can be relatively easy to test
independently, e.g., by requesting zone transfers without TSIG, from
unauthorized IP addresses or over cleartext DNS. Other aspects, such
as if a secondary will accept data without a TSIG digest or if
secondaries are using Strict as opposed to Opportunistic TLS, are
more challenging.
The mechanics of coordinating or enforcing such policies are out of
the scope of this document but may be the subject of future
operational guidance.
12. Implementation Considerations
Server implementations may want to also offer options that allow ACLs
on a zone to specify that a specific client can use either XoT or
TCP. This would allow for flexibility while clients are migrating to
XoT.
Client implementations may similarly want to offer options to cater
to the multi-primary case where the primaries are migrating to XoT.
13. Operational Considerations
If the options described in Section 12 are available, such
configuration options MUST only be used in a 'migration mode' and
therefore should be used with great care.
It is noted that use of a TLS proxy in front of the primary server is
a simple deployment solution that can enable server-side XoT.
14. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
15. Security Considerations
This document specifies a security measure against a DNS risk: the
risk that an attacker collects entire DNS zones through eavesdropping
on cleartext DNS zone transfers.
This does not mitigate:
* the risk that some level of zone activity might be inferred by
observing zone transfer sizes and timing on encrypted connections
(even with padding applied), in combination with obtaining SOA
records by directly querying authoritative servers,
* the risk that hidden primaries might be inferred or identified via
observation of encrypted connections, or
* the risk of zone contents being obtained via zone enumeration
techniques.
Security concerns of DoT are outlined in [RFC 7858] and [RFC 8310].
16. References
16.1. Normative References
[DoT-ALPN] IANA, "TLS Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN)
Protocol IDs", <https://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-
extensiontype-values/>.
[RFC 1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
STD 13, RFC 1034, DOI 10.17487/RFC 1034, November 1987,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 1034>.
[RFC 1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC 1035,
November 1987, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 1035>.
[RFC 1995] Ohta, M., "Incremental Zone Transfer in DNS", RFC 1995,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 1995, August 1996,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 1995>.
[RFC 1996] Vixie, P., "A Mechanism for Prompt Notification of Zone
Changes (DNS NOTIFY)", RFC 1996, DOI 10.17487/RFC 1996,
August 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 1996>.
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2119>.
[RFC 2931] Eastlake 3rd, D., "DNS Request and Transaction Signatures
( SIG(0)s )", RFC 2931, DOI 10.17487/RFC 2931, September
2000, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2931>.
[RFC 5936] Lewis, E. and A. Hoenes, Ed., "DNS Zone Transfer Protocol
(AXFR)", RFC 5936, DOI 10.17487/RFC 5936, June 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5936>.
[RFC 6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6973, July 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6973>.
[RFC 7766] Dickinson, J., Dickinson, S., Bellis, R., Mankin, A., and
D. Wessels, "DNS Transport over TCP - Implementation
Requirements", RFC 7766, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7766, March 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7766>.
[RFC 7828] Wouters, P., Abley, J., Dickinson, S., and R. Bellis, "The
edns-tcp-keepalive EDNS0 Option", RFC 7828,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 7828, April 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7828>.
[RFC 7858] Hu, Z., Zhu, L., Heidemann, J., Mankin, A., Wessels, D.,
and P. Hoffman, "Specification for DNS over Transport
Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 7858, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7858, May
2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7858>.
[RFC 8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8174>.
[RFC 8310] Dickinson, S., Gillmor, D., and T. Reddy, "Usage Profiles
for DNS over TLS and DNS over DTLS", RFC 8310,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8310, March 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8310>.
[RFC 8446] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8446>.
[RFC 8499] Hoffman, P., Sullivan, A., and K. Fujiwara, "DNS
Terminology", BCP 219, RFC 8499, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8499,
January 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8499>.
[RFC 8914] Kumari, W., Hunt, E., Arends, R., Hardaker, W., and D.
Lawrence, "Extended DNS Errors", RFC 8914,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8914, October 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8914>.
[RFC 8945] Dupont, F., Morris, S., Vixie, P., Eastlake 3rd, D.,
Gudmundsson, O., and B. Wellington, "Secret Key
Transaction Authentication for DNS (TSIG)", STD 93,
RFC 8945, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8945, November 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8945>.
16.2. Informative References
[BIND] ISC, "BIND 9.16.16", <https://www.isc.org/bind/>.
[DPRIVE-DNSOQUIC]
Huitema, C., Dickinson, S., and A. Mankin, "Specification
of DNS over Dedicated QUIC Connections", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-dprive-dnsoquic-03, 12 July
2021, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-
dprive-dnsoquic-03>.
[NIST-GUIDE]
Chandramouli, R. and S. Rose, "Secure Domain Name System
(DNS) Deployment Guide", September 2013,
<https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/
NIST.SP.800-81-2.pdf>.
[NSD] NLnet Labs, "NSD 4.3.6",
<https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/nsd/about/>.
[NSEC3-attacks]
Goldberg, S., Naor, N., Papadopoulos, D., Reyzin, L.,
Vasant, S., and A. Ziv, "Stretching NSEC3 to the Limit:
Efficient Zone Enumeration Attacks on NSEC3 Variants",
February 2015,
<https://www.cs.bu.edu/~goldbe/papers/nsec3attacks.pdf>.
[NSEC5] Vcelak, J., Goldberg, S., Papadopoulos, D., Huque, S., and
D. Lawrence, "NSEC5, DNSSEC Authenticated Denial of
Existence", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
vcelak-nsec5-08, 29 December 2018,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-vcelak-
nsec5-08>.
[RFC 1982] Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Serial Number Arithmetic", RFC 1982,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 1982, August 1996,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 1982>.
[RFC 5155] Laurie, B., Sisson, G., Arends, R., and D. Blacka, "DNS
Security (DNSSEC) Hashed Authenticated Denial of
Existence", RFC 5155, DOI 10.17487/RFC 5155, March 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5155>.
[RFC 6891] Damas, J., Graff, M., and P. Vixie, "Extension Mechanisms
for DNS (EDNS(0))", STD 75, RFC 6891,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6891, April 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6891>.
[RFC 8484] Hoffman, P. and P. McManus, "DNS Queries over HTTPS
(DoH)", RFC 8484, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8484, October 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8484>.
[RFC 8976] Wessels, D., Barber, P., Weinberg, M., Kumari, W., and W.
Hardaker, "Message Digest for DNS Zones", RFC 8976,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8976, February 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8976>.
[RFC 9076] Wicinski, T., Ed., "DNS Privacy Considerations", RFC 9076,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 9076, July 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 9076>.
[TLS-ESNI] Rescorla, E., Oku, K., Sullivan, N., and C. A. Wood, "TLS
Encrypted Client Hello", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-tls-esni-13, 12 August 2021,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tls-
esni-13>.
Appendix A. XoT Server Connection Handling
This appendix provides a non-normative outline of the pros and cons
of XoT server connection-handling options.
For completeness, it is noted that an earlier draft version of this
document suggested using a XoT-specific ALPN to negotiate TLS
connections that supported only a limited set of queries (SOA, XFRs);
however, this did not gain support. Reasons given included
additional code complexity and the fact that XoT and ADoT are both
DNS wire format and so should share the "dot" ALPN.
A.1. Listening Only on a Specific IP Address for TLS
Obviously, a name server that hosts a zone and services queries for
the zone on an IP address published in an NS record may wish to use a
separate IP address for XoT to listen for TLS, only publishing that
address to its secondaries.
Pros: Probing of the public IP address will show no support for TLS.
ACLs will prevent zone transfer on all transports on a per-query
basis.
Cons: Attackers passively observing traffic will still be able to
observe TLS connections to the separate address.
A.2. Client-Specific TLS Acceptance
Primaries that include IP-based ACLs and/or mutual TLS in their
authentication models have the option of only accepting TLS
connections from authorized clients. This could be implemented
either using a proxy or directly in the DNS implementation.
Pros: Connection management happens at setup time. The maximum
number of TLS connections a server will have to support can be
easily assessed. Once the connection is accepted, the server
might well be willing to answer any query on that connection since
it is coming from a configured secondary, and a specific response
policy on the connection may not be needed (see below).
Cons: Currently, none of the major open-source implementations of a
DNS authoritative server support such an option.
A.3. SNI-Based TLS Acceptance
Primaries could also choose to only accept TLS connections based on a
Server Name Indication (SNI) that was published only to their
secondaries.
Pros: Reduces the number of accepted connections.
Cons: As above. Also, this is not a recommended use of SNI. For
SNIs sent in the clear, this would still allow attackers passively
observing traffic to potentially abuse this mechanism. The use of
Encrypted Client Hello [TLS-ESNI] may be of use here.
A.4. Transport-Specific Response Policies
Some primaries might rely on TSIG/SIG(0) combined with per-query, IP-
based ACLs to authenticate secondaries. In this case, the primary
must accept all incoming TLS/TCP connections and then apply a
transport-specific response policy on a per-query basis.
As an aside, whilst [RFC 7766] makes a general purpose distinction in
the advice to clients about their usage of connections (between
regular queries and zone transfers), this is not strict, and nothing
in the DNS protocol prevents using the same connection for both types
of traffic. Hence, a server cannot know the intention of any client
that connects to it; it can only inspect the messages it receives on
such a connection and make per-query decisions about whether or not
to answer those queries.
Example policies a XoT server might implement are:
strict: REFUSE all queries on TLS connections, except SOA and
authorized XFR requests
moderate: REFUSE all queries on TLS connections until one is
received that is signed by a recognized TSIG/SIG(0) key,
then answer all queries on the connection after that
complex: apply a heuristic to determine which queries on a TLS
connections to REFUSE
relaxed: answer all non-XoT queries on all TLS connections with
the same policy applied to TCP queries
Pros: Allows for flexible behavior by the server that could be
changed over time.
Cons: The server must handle the burden of accepting all TLS
connections just to perform XFRs with a small number of
secondaries. Client behavior to a REFUSED response is not clearly
defined (see Section 7.8). Currently, none of the major open-
source implementations of a DNS authoritative server offer an
option for different response policies in different transports
(but such functionality could potentially be implemented using a
proxy).
A.4.1. SNI-Based Response Policies
In a similar fashion, XoT servers might use the presence of an SNI in
the Client Hello to determine which response policy to initially
apply to the TLS connections.
Pros: This has the potential to allow a clean distinction between a
XoT service and any future DoT-based service for answering
recursive queries.
Cons: As above.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Tony Finch, Benno Overeinder, Shumon Huque, Tim
Wicinski, and many other members of DPRIVE for review and
discussions.
The authors particularly thank Peter van Dijk, Ondrej Sury, Brian
Dickson, and several other open-source DNS implementers for valuable
discussion and clarification on the issue associated with pipelining
XFR queries and handling out-of-order/intermingled responses.
Contributors
Significant contributions to the document were made by:
Han Zhang
Salesforce
San Francisco, CA
United States of America
Email: hzhang@salesforce.com
Authors' Addresses
Willem Toorop
NLnet Labs
Science Park 400
1098 XH Amsterdam
Netherlands
Email: willem@nlnetlabs.nl
Sara Dickinson
Sinodun IT
Magdalen Centre
Oxford Science Park
Oxford
OX4 4GA
United Kingdom
Email: sara@sinodun.com
Shivan Sahib
Brave Software
Vancouver BC
Canada
Email: shivankaulsahib@gmail.com
Pallavi Aras
Salesforce
Herndon, VA
United States of America
Email: paras@salesforce.com
Allison Mankin
Salesforce
Herndon, VA
United States of America
Email: allison.mankin@gmail.com
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 74106 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Tuesday, August 24th, 2021
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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