Re: RFC 2119 section 6

[Kevin Darcy <[e-mail]>]

Andreas Borchert wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 12:20:06AM -0700, Robert Elz wrote:
> >     Date:        Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:13:07 -0700
> >     From:        "D. J. Bernstein" <[e-mail]>
> >     Message-ID:  <[e-mail]>
> >
> >   | I have thousands of sites whose adminitsrators don't want to be forced
> >   | to upgrade their working DNS software.
> >
> > This is a nonsense argument - before anyone would possibly be required
> > to upgrade their working software because of changes to AXFR that put
> > something different in the auth/additional sections than what is in
> > the answer section, all those administrators are going to have upgraded
> > their software for other reasons anyway (and not necessarily all for the
> > same one).
>
> This argument is not nonsense for administrators using djbdns and
> other software packages from the same author. Dan designes his software
> packages to be minimal, fast, and secure which allows him to keep them
> stable for a long time.

What's "minimal" about looking for zone data in sections where it doesn't
belong? Section-agnosticism is not necessary for minimalism, security or
performance, it's just a "feature" Dan made up to justify a fairly mundane
design decision he made in his AXFR client which in hindsight probably should
have been done a different way.


- Kevin

P.S. ($500 to the first person who proves that the following compromises
security or substantially impacts performance. As is usual with such
guarantees, my judgment is final as to whether a security-compromise or
substantial-performance-impact in fact exists.)

*** axfr-get.c.old      Sun Jan 21 21:51:44 2001
--- axfr-get.c  Wed Jul 11 21:03:38 2001
***************
*** 352,357 ****
--- 352,358 ----

      pos = x_copy(packet.s,packet.len,0,out,12);
      uint16_unpack_big(out + 4,&numqueries);
+     uint16_unpack_big(out + 6,&numanswers);

      while (numqueries) {
        --numqueries;
***************
*** 358,366 ****
        pos = x_skipname(packet.s,packet.len,pos);
        pos += 4;
      }
!     while (pos < packet.len) {
        pos = doit(packet.s,packet.len,pos);
!       if (!pos) die_parse();
      }
    }

--- 359,368 ----
        pos = x_skipname(packet.s,packet.len,pos);
        pos += 4;
      }
!     while (numanswers) {
!       --numanswers;
        pos = doit(packet.s,packet.len,pos);
!       if (!pos || (pos > packet.len)) die_parse();
      }
    }







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