How is DNSSEC

[Ben Laurie]

bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 08:52:07AM +1000, James A. Donald wrote:
>> From time to time I hear that DNSSEC is working fine, and on examining 
>> the matter I find it is "working fine" except that ....
>>
>> Seems to me that if DNSSEC is actually working fine, I should be able to 
>> provide an authoritative public key for any domain name I control, and 
>> should be able to obtain such keys for other domain names, and use such 
>> keys for any purpose, not just those purposes envisaged in the DNSSEC 
>> specification.  Can I?  It is not apparent to me that I can.
> 
> 
> 	actually, the DNSSEC specification -used- to support 
> 	keys for "any purpose", and in theory you could use
> 	DNSSEC keys in that manner.  However a bit of careful
> 	thought suggests that there is potential  disconnect btwn
> 	the zone owner/admin who creates/distributes the keys as 
> 	a token of the integrity and authenticity of the data in
> 	the DNS, and the owner/admin of the node to which the DNS
> 	data points.

So far, so good. This disconnect doesn't seem to have done the CA 
industry any harm, though.

>       Remember that while you may control your forward
> 	name (and not many people actually run their own DNS servers)
> 	it is less likely that you run your address maps - and for
> 	the paranoid, you would want to ensure the forward and 
> 	reverse zones are signed and at the intersection, there is
> 	a common data element which you can use.

Non sequiteur, plus I can't see why paranoia would prompt me to want to 
do this? What does it prove?

Also, PTR records are only supposed to point to "primary domain names". 
Since it is common for hosts to have many names resolving to the same IP 
address, by definition most of these will not correspond to the reverse 
lookup.

> 	To do what you want, want, you might consider using the
> 	CERT-rr, using the DNS to distribute host-specific keys/certs.
> 	And to ensure that the data in the DNS was not tampered with,
> 	using DNSSEC signed zones with CERT-rr's would not be a bad
> 	thing.   In fact, thats what we are testing .

Who is "we" and what exactly are you testing?

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
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"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
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