DNS privacy will receive a large focus in the latter half of the IETF 102 week with attention in the DPRIVE, DNSSD, and OPSEC working groups. In an interesting bit of scheduling (which is always challenging), most of the DNS sessions are Wednesday through Friday. As part of our Rough Guide to IETF 102, here’s a quick view on what’s happening in the world of DNS.
Given that IETF 102 is in Montreal, Canada, all times below are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), which is UTC-4.
IETF 102 Hackathon
The “DNS team” has become a regular feature of the IETF Hackathons and the Montreal meeting is no different. The IETF 102 Hackathon wiki outlines the work that will start tomorrow (scroll down to see it). Major security/privacy projects include:
- Implementing a part of draft-bortzmeyer-dprive-resolver-to-auth
- Setting up and measuring leakage avoidance using root loopback at privacy server
- Oblivious DNS
- Proof of concept of the Multi-Provider DNSSEC draft.
Anyone is welcome to join the DNS team for part or all of that event.
DNS Operations (DNSOP)
The DNS sessions at IETF 102 start on Wednesday morning from 9:30am – 12noon with the DNS Operations (DNSOP) Working Group. Paul Wouters and Ondrej Sury will be speaking about “Algorithm Implementation Requirements and Usage Guidance for DNSSEC“, where they will be offering updated guidance around what cryptographic algorithms should be used for different aspects of DNSSEC. Shumon Huque will be bringing the latest updates to draft-huque-dnsop-multi-provider-dnssec, exploring how to deploy DNSSEC in environments where multiple DNS providers are in use. Paul Wouters will also bring a new draft, draft-pwouters-powerbind, which introduces a new flag for DNSSEC keys that can address a potential attack. Given the critical role DNS plays, the DNSOP agenda has many other drafts up for discussion and action. The DNSOP working group also has a second meeting block on Thursday from 18:10-19:10.
DNS PRIVate Exchange (DPRIVE)
The DPRIVE working group meets Wednesday afternoon from 13:30-15:00 EDT. As shown on the agenda, there will be three major blocks of discussion. After some initial discussion of current work on existing DNS privacy policies, there will be a larger discussion about some new work called “Oblivious DNS” that aims to make DNS privacy protection even stronger. This work originated in a paper at Princeton University – https://odns.cs.princeton.edu/ – and now is captured in draft-annee-dprive-oblivious-dns. It should be quite an interesting discussion!
The third major area will continue discussion about how to add privacy to the communication between a DNS recursive resolver and the authoritative DNS server for a given domain. This is work outside the current DPRIVE Working Group charter and so the group will be discussing whether to ask to expand their mandate to cover this new work.
Extensions for Scalable DNS Service Discovery (DNSSD)
Privacy will also get attention at the DNSSD Working Group on Thursday morning from 9:30-12:00 EDT. DNSSD focuses on how to make device discovery easier across multiple networks. For instance, helping you find available printers on not just your own network, but also on other networks to which your network is connected. However in doing so the current mechanisms expose a great deal of information. The agenda allocates 65 minutes to Christian Huitema to guide a discussion around the way forward. Drafts under discussion include:
- draft-ietf-dnssd-privacy (Privacy Extensions)
- draft-huitema-dnssd-prireq (Privacy and Security Requirements)
- draft-huitema-dnssd-privacyscaling (Privacy Scaling Tradeoffs)
- draft-ietf-dnssd-pairing (Short Authentication Strings)
- draft-ietf-dnssd-pairing-info (Pairing Design Issues)
There are other drafts under discussion at DNSSD, but these are the ones probably most of interest to readers of this article.
DNS Resolver Identification and Use (DRIU)
IETF 102 will feature a number of Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions, and one in particular relates to DNS security. The quick description is:
The IETF has added additional methods for DNS stub resolvers to get to recursive resolvers (notably DNS-over-TLS, RFC 7858), and is about to add another (DNS-over-HTTPS, from the DOH Working Group). As these have been developed, questions have been raised about how to identify these resolvers from protocols such as DHCP and DHCPv6, what the security properties these transports have in various configurations (such as between strict security and opportunistic security), and what it means for a user who has multiple resolvers configured when the elements of the configured set have different transports and security properties.
The DRIU session will be on Thursday from 15:50-17:50, right before the second DNSOP session (although in a different room).
Operational Security Capabilities for IP Network Infrastructure
In the very last slot on Friday afternoon from 11:50-13:20, the OPSEC working group will feature Benno Overeinder speaking about “Recommendations for DNS Privacy Service Operators“. This document outlines things DNS operators should thing about when considering offering “DNS privacy” services. It builds on the work coming out of the DPRIVE working group and the experience gained from the IETF Hackathon and the real-world deployment of these new protocols.
DNSSEC Coordination informal breakfast meeting
As a final note, on Friday morning before the sessions start we are planning an informal gathering of people involved with DNSSEC. We’ve done this at many of the IETF meetings over the past few years and it’s been a good way to connect and talk about various projects. True to the “informal” nature, we’re not sure of the location and time yet (and we are not sure if it will involve food or just be a meeting). If you would like to join us, please drop me an email or join the dnssec-coord mailing list.
Other Working Groups
DANE and DNSSEC will also appear in the TLS Working Group’s Monday meeting. The draft-ietf-tls-dnssec-chain-extension will be presented as a potential way to make DANE work faster by allowing both DANE and DNSSEC records to be transmitted in a single exchange, thus reducing the time involved with DANE transactions. Given the key role DNS plays in the Internet in general, you can also expect DNS to appear in other groups throughout the week.
P.S. For more information about DNSSEC and DANE and how you can get them deployed for your networks and domains, please see our Deploy360 site:
- http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/dnssec/
- http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/resources/dane/
Relevant Working Groups at IETF 102:
DNSOP (DNS Operations) WG
Wednesday, 18 July 2018, 9:30-12:00 EDT, Laurier
Thursday, 19 July 2018, 18:10-19:10 EDT, Place du Canada
Agenda: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/102/agenda/dnsop/
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dnsop/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/dnsop/about/
DPRIVE (DNS PRIVate Exchange) WG
Wednesday, 18 July 2018, 13:30-15:00 EDT, Place du Canada
Agenda: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/102/agenda/dprive/
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dprive/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/dprive/about/
DNSSD (Extensions for Scalable DNS Service Discovery) WG
Thursday, 19 July 2018, 9:30-12:00 EDT, Duluth
Agenda: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/102/agenda/dnssd/
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dnssd/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/dnssd/about/
DRIU (DNS Resolver Identification and Use) BOF
Thursday, 19 July 2018, 15:50-17:50 EDT, Viger
Agenda: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/102/materials/agenda-102-driu
OPSEC (Operational Security Capabilities for IP Network Infrastructure) WG
Friday, 20 July 2018, 11:50-13:20 EDT, Viger
Agenda: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/102/agenda/opsec/
Documents: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/opsec/
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/opsec/about/
Follow Us
It will be a busy week in Montreal, and whether you plan to be there or join remotely, there’s much to monitor. Read the full series of Rough Guide to IETF 102 posts, and follow us on the Internet Society blog, Twitter, or Facebook using #IETF102 to keep up with the latest news.