ICANN Delays KSK Rollover Because of Lazy ISPs, Technical Faults (bleepingcomputer.com) 42
ICANN had planned to change the master key used to sign secure Domain Name System records next week for the first time in history. But now an anonymous reader writes:Inattentive ISPs and technical faults have led the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to delay the KSK Rollover for next year. ICANN was supposed to remove the root encryption KSK key from core DNS servers on October 11 and allow a new one to take effect. The key is used for the DNSSEC protocol.
According to ICANN, between 6% to 8% of ISPs did not install the new KSK key to replace the one issued in 2010. The organization says that if it had gone forward with the original KSK Rollover plan, over 60 million Internet users would have been unable to make DNS requests. For the vast majority, ICANN blames lazy ISPs, which failed to update their existing keys. ICANN also believes that many ISPs may not be aware they had not installed the latest KSK. ICANN also distributed software to automatically pull down and install the new KSK. Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK, in some situations.
Because of this, ICANN announced this week it would delay the KSK Rollover final step — of removing and revoking the original KSK key -- to the first quarter of 2018. ICANN has not decided yet on a precise date.
According to ICANN, between 6% to 8% of ISPs did not install the new KSK key to replace the one issued in 2010. The organization says that if it had gone forward with the original KSK Rollover plan, over 60 million Internet users would have been unable to make DNS requests. For the vast majority, ICANN blames lazy ISPs, which failed to update their existing keys. ICANN also believes that many ISPs may not be aware they had not installed the latest KSK. ICANN also distributed software to automatically pull down and install the new KSK. Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK, in some situations.
Because of this, ICANN announced this week it would delay the KSK Rollover final step — of removing and revoking the original KSK key -- to the first quarter of 2018. ICANN has not decided yet on a precise date.
Re:KSK (Score:5, Informative)
Key Signing Key. DNSSEC is built on public key cryptography. You sign your zone with a Zone Signing Key ZSK, then sign the ZSK with your KSK, the public key part of which is available in your parent zone. The theory goes that you can roll over your ZSK frequently (and you should) without involving your parent zone.
Re: (Score:3)
As some of us can point out, updating root keys _cannot_ occur on a frequent basis. Lazy ISP's or not frequent mandated updates require customer collaboration. They also require the _designers_ of DNS capable applicances to be forward thinking enough to provide effective pathways for such updates.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I see your point. However, I was responding to this:
> The theory goes that you can roll over your ZSK frequently (and you should) without involving your parent zone.
The idea that the ZSK chain of authentication should be frequently rolled over is simply not going to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
The idea that the ZSK chain of authentication should be frequently rolled over is simply not going to happen.
I don't understand. It's the KSK that has a slow rollover which is what is being discussed in this article, and the ZSK with the faster rollover. I never said the KSK should never be changed, but at the same time, I didn't say it should be frequent.
Re: (Score:2)
My point was responding to your post.
> The theory goes that you can roll over your ZSK frequently
I'm afraid this is not going to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm afraid this is not going to happen.
That's why I said "in theory" :)
Reminds me of a joke I heard:
Q: What's the difference between theory and practice?
A: In theory they're the same, but in practice they're different.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not, since he's a big fan of C.W. McCall.
Distributed is Slow (Score:3)
If the Internet were centrally controlled by a dictatorship, then this democracy-preserving security feature would've been rolled out by now! That's why ICANN should relinquish control to China and Russia. /s
Re: (Score:1)
Uhm, no. ICANN't is still a California corporation, and various US judges have abused their power over US-based registries to seize domains owned by companies and persons otherwise well outside their jurisdiction. The US puts up a great show of "independence" but it simply isn't true.
If the USG had been truly forward-thinking, they'd've not stepped in but had let Jon Postel have his way. This is a battle the community already lost a long time ago, whatever spin you're trying to put on it.
Re: (Score:1)
better way (Score:2)
we roll over keys, certificates and passwords at work too, it's a chore every time. There must be a better way to do this, ideally there could be a grace period where old and new keys are in force and users get progressively worse nag messages about the impending demise of the old key/whatever.
If the protocol doesn't support messaging then maybe it should degrade, start off with a 1ms delay and then ramp up exponentially as the deadline nears
Re:better way (Score:4, Interesting)
Doing that is easy. Both keys need to sign records for a while.
A new KSK is published and as such signed in the zone along with the previous KSK.
This new KSK can automatically accepted as valid by resolvers and when, days later, the old KSK is removed, only the new KSK signature remains (or more accurately: is remade, as it covers all DNSKEY records)
DNSSEC is not that complicated (if you ignore the convoluted NSEC3 chains)
Re: (Score:1)
Well, there's RFC5011, which updates the KSKs automatically *as long as the server sees the new key for a month*. But:
1. some resolvers don't implement it for whatever reasons, but those hardcode the KSK so if you updated them recently, you got the new KSK;
2. one widely-used resolver had a bug and did not trust the new KSK, and this one would actually need a manual override (or purge and reinstall) to unbreak, even after being updated (due to stale data that overrides the built-in KSKs). But this is going
Is anybody surprised of this? (Score:3)
For as long as I remember, most companies only care about security a bit after some critical issue happen. Then they act as it was their chief concern.
This is why we have responsible disclosure (Score:2, Interesting)
This is why we have responsible disclosure in security.
In the old days, many companies had major issues with publishing security fixes quickly until they were forced to because they didn't want to spend the time and resources to fix the issue.
As a result, security researchers started releasing details of the vulnerabilities after warning the company and giving them some time to fix the problem. This forced the companies to change their behaviour.
The end result is that it is now completely socially unaccepta
Re: (Score:2)
You shouldn't be maintaining a DNS server if you don't know what a KSK is.
If you're not maintaining a DNS server, you don't need to know what a KSK is.
So? (Score:5, Informative)
Possible outcomes of moving forward:
1. 60m people call their lazy ISPs and the ISPs get their shit in gear / sued for causing an outage due to negligence.
2. 60m people stop relying on shitty ISP's DNS servers.
Accepting tyranny of minority is not the right way to handle internet infrastructure.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, it seems like the obvious solution is to just do it. 60 million people without DNS is hardly a big deal compared to 5 billion facing potentially compromised DNS.
Just do it, and watch how quickly the ISPs sort it out when their phone lines are hammered because people's internet connections are "down". Lessons will be learned, and those ISPs will be on it next time around.
I can't think of any worse a solution than simply delaying in the hope that those ISPs will get their arses into gear next time aro
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I can't think of any worse a solution than simply delaying in the hope that those ISPs will get their arses into gear next time around, let's face it, they wont, we'll still be waiting on them in a year's time.
I can think of something worse: Technical workarounds. Stay tuned for DNSSEC-NAT
Way to bury the lede! (Score:5, Informative)
The key capture here comes down to this pair of sentences (especially the second one):
ICANN also distributed software to automatically pull down and install the new KSK. Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK, in some situations.
Instead of "lazy ISPs", as the headline misleadingly states, it sure appears to me that the party actually responsible for the failure of the KSK update rollout is ICANN itself.
Or is there some aspect of, "Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK," that I'm misapprehending ... ?
(Added emphasis mine, of course.)
Re: (Score:2)
It explains why they're delaying the rollover instead of doing it regardless of impact to the "lazy ISP's".
The headline does say "Lazy ISPs, Technical Faults"
(Added emphasis mine, of course)
Re: (Score:2)
"Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK,"
I used to work DNS at my ISP, several years ago. Back then, I did the first setup of the DNS resolvers using DNSSEC, testing with both bind and unbound. Neither of those, back then anyway, would automatically handle KSK change, the key resided in a plain file in the server configuration. I sure hope the people that took up DNS there after I left upgraded the server software used, and are keeping an eye on the subject.
I know where to get DNS resolving in case the ISPs servers cause problems... other customer
Map? (Score:2)
I've love to see a 'heat map' of the world with the location (to the nearest country would do) for these lazy ISPs and issues. I'll bet it'll either look exactly as you'd expect, or the exact opposite of what you'd expect ;-)