Re: [dane] I-D Action: draft-ietf-dane-smime-03.txt

In message <20140206044440.GI21114@mx1.yitter.info>, Andrew Sullivan writes:
> On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 04:31:38AM +0000, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
> > I must plead ignorance of the obstacle, what do you have in mind?
> 
> I am repeatedly informed by my man pages, RFC 3493, and every web
> browser implementer I've ever spoken to that getting the TTL on an RR
> coming to you from the system resolver is hard.  I'd be more delighted
> than I can express to be misinformed, so if you know otherwise please
> say so.

And I say BS.  If you are using a layer above the resolver
(gethostbyname, getaddrinfo) yes it may be hard but for TLSA *there
is no layer above the resolver*.

libresolv/libbind have provided access to the TTL since the 1980's.

Even Microsoft Windows programmers don't have a excuse as DnsQuery
returns the ttl in its results.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682016(v=vs.85).aspx

> There is a new API (more a meta-api) that Paul Hoffman worked on
> (http://www.vpnc.org/getdns-api/) that I think we should all embrace
> partly for the above reason, but we're not even at 0-day with that yet
> AFAICT.  
> 
> > If learning DNS TTLs along with the RRset data is problematic,
> > application caches should have reasonably short maximum lifetimes.
> 
> I recognise the basic impulse in what you're saying, but it gives me
> pause.  Timing attacks involving DNS and the browser "pinning" policy
> have always struck me as plausible (and ISTR a demonstration, but I'm
> darned if I can come up with it now).  But using this sort of trick
> for actual certificate stuff appears to make the target of any
> pinning-timing attack more valuable.  Is that a problem?  (That's not
> a rhetorical question.  I'm an idiot.)
> 
> [I get your other argument about lifetimes.  Not trying to ignore,
> just accepting.]
> 
> A
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs@anvilwalrusden.com
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Mark Andrews, ISC
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