Skip to main content

On DNSSEC Negative Responses, Lies, and Zone Size Detection

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Passive and Active Measurement (PAM 2019)

Abstract

The Domain Name System (DNS) Security Extensions (DNSSEC) introduced additional DNS records (NSEC or NSEC3 records) into negative DNS responses, which records can prove there is no translation for a queried domain name. We introduce a novel technique to estimate the size of a DNS zone by analyzing the NSEC3 records returned by only a small number of DNS queries issued. We survey the prevalence of the deployment of different variants of DNSSEC negative responses across a large set of DNSSEC-signed zones in the wild, and identify over 50% as applicable to our measurement technique. Of the applicable zones, we show that 99% are composed of fewer than 40 names.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. BIND open source DNS server. https://www.isc.org/downloads/bind/

  2. Centralized Zone Data Service. https://czds.icann.org/

  3. Domains index. https://domains-index.com/

  4. The Internet Foundation in Sweden. https://www.iis.se/

  5. Public Interest Registry. https://pir.org/

  6. Verisign. https://www.verisign.com/

  7. Andrews, M.: RFC 2308: negative caching of DNS queries (DNS NCACHE), March 1998

    Google Scholar 

  8. Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., Rose, S.: RFC 4033: DNS security introduction and requirements, March 2005

    Google Scholar 

  9. Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., Rose, S.: RFC 4034: resource records for the DNS security extensions, March 2005

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bird, S., Loper, E., Klein, E.: Natural Language Processing with Python. O’Reilly Media Inc., Sebastopol (2009)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Deccio, C., Chen, C.C., Mohapatra, P., Sedayao, J., Kant, K.: Quality of name resolution in the domain name system. In: 2009 17th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, October 2009

    Google Scholar 

  12. DNSCurve: DNSCurve: Usable security for DNS. http://dnscurve.org/nsec3walker.html

  13. Elz, R., Bush, R.: RFC 2181: clarifications to the DNS specification, July 1997

    Google Scholar 

  14. Gardiner, C.: Stochastic Methods: A Handbook for the Natural and Social Sciences. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Goldberg, S., Naor, M., Papadopoulos, D., Reyzin, L., Vasant, S., Ziv, A.: NSEC5: provably preventing DNSSEC zone enumeration. In: NDSS 2015, February 2015

    Google Scholar 

  16. Grant, D.: Economical with the truth: making DNSSEC answers cheap. https://blog.cloudflare.com/black-lies/

  17. Josefsson, S.: RFC 4648: the base16, base32, and base64 data encodings, October 2006

    Google Scholar 

  18. Kaminsky, D.: Phreebird. https://dankaminsky.com/phreebird/

  19. Mockapetris, P.: RFC 1034: domain names - concepts and facilities, November 1987

    Google Scholar 

  20. Mockapetris, P.: RFC 1035: domain names - implementation and specification, November 1987

    Google Scholar 

  21. Osterweil, E., Ryan, M., Massey, D., Zhang, L.: Quantifying the operational status of the DNSSEC deployment. In: Proceedings of the 6th ACM/USENIX Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2008), October 2008

    Google Scholar 

  22. Ramasubramanian, V., Sirer, E.G.: Perils of transitive trust in the domain name system. In: IMC 2005 Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, October 2015

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sisson, G., Arends, R., Blacka, D.: RFC 5155: DNS security (DNSSEC) hashed authenticated denial of existence, March 2008

    Google Scholar 

  24. Wander, M., Schwittmann, L., Boelmann, C., Weis, T.: GPU-based NSEC3 hash breaking. In: 2014 IEEE 13th International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications. IEEE, August 2014

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Casey Deccio .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Demke, J., Deccio, C. (2019). On DNSSEC Negative Responses, Lies, and Zone Size Detection. In: Choffnes, D., Barcellos, M. (eds) Passive and Active Measurement. PAM 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11419. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15986-3_15

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15986-3_15

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15985-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15986-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics