[Cryptography] DNSSEC = completely unnecessary?

Viktor Dukhovni cryptography at dukhovni.org
Mon Nov 4 15:55:59 EST 2013


On Sun, Nov 03, 2013 at 11:33:37PM -0500, Greg wrote:

> In all my readings on it I kept walking away thinking that I
> understood its purpose, but I'd then come back at myself with the
> same question: what does it give us over HTTPS?

Nothing: provided:

- You're trying to secure HTTP over TLS.
- You assume the destination website has a certificate from a trusted public CA.
- You assume that the HTTPS client does not trust any rogue CAs.
- You assume that the CA issued the certificate based on criteria stronger
  than verifying that the requestor seems to control the DNS for the domain.
- You assume that CA certificates assert a stronger claim than domain
  ownership, i.e. some sort of brand validation, as in EV certificates.
- You're only trying to secure the small minority of HTTP sites with EV
  certificates for brand-name domains.
- If your protocol is not HTTP, there is no DNS-based indirection from
  client destination to server domain as with MX or SRV records.
- ...

When one defines all problems to be nails, the solution will always
be a hammer, and people making axes will appear to be wasting their
time.

> What say you list? To me, the DNSSEC thing seems like it might
> be mostly a waste of a bunch of people's time.

Perhaps the bunch of people "wasting" time on DNSSEC are interested
in a broader class of problems.

-- 
	Viktor.


More information about the cryptography mailing list