Subject: Secure DNS actually is not so secure.

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 00:41:53 +0900

Dear all;

I think all the secure DNS documents should make it explicite
that secure DNS actually is not so secure.

That is, if a zone shared by a client and a server (e.g.
the root zone) is compromized, secure DNS is also compromized.

You might think that CAs are much more secure than ISPs.
But it is not.

Thus, it is equally likely that some ISP between a server
and a client is compromized ant some CA between a server
and a client is compromized.

It should be noted that, if secure DNS is relied upon for
monetary transactions that its certificate has
authority to perform $1,000 transaction without consulting
someone managing upper limit of credential of the certificate,
the attacker can use the certificate 1,000 times a second from
1,000 different locations for 1,000 seconds to 1,000,000 or
1,000,000,000, which means there is $1,000,000,000,000 of
economical benefit/damage, which is large enough to seduce
employees of the largest CAs or, worse, terrorists.

That is, it is mandately that certificates need confirmation
everytime it is used, which negete the merit of public keys
over shared keys.

So, why do we bother to have secure DNS?

						Masataka Ohta

						Masataka Ohta 

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From: Greg Hudson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 12:50:53 -0400

> that secure DNS actually is not so secure.
[...]
> So, why do we bother to have secure DNS?

What's the point of bringing this up ten years into the process, just
before a last call?  It's not like we haven't known about this aspect of
the security model all along.  djb levelled the criticism years ago
(http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/forgery.html) and suggested "nyms", which punt
to the security of the channel through which you get the domain name;
that hasn't caught on either.

> and a client is compromized.

DNS-spoofing does not require a compromised ISP.