Re: Summary of the LLMNR Last Call

Bernard Aboba <aboba@internaut.com> writes:

>> We agree that home burglary is a serious problem.  This is why we
>> recommend that everyone hire an armed guard for their house.  If your
>> house is monitored by armed guards, burglary is very unlikely.  Given
>> that there is an effective security mechanism available, there's really
>> no need to consider simple deterrants that won't provide true security.

> Not sure what this has to do with a link-scope resolution protocol
> supporting name partitioning and DNSSEC.  LLMNR provides a simple
> deterrant in the case where security is available -- restricting the
> names for which queries are sent.  This is *exactly* the same mechanism
> used by mDNS.

It was a possibly too sarcastic way of pointing out that I don't think
DNSSEC is an answer to this concern.

The difference between LLMNR and mDNS is one that I think is important.
This is a place where a SHOULD is the least that needs to be said, and a
MAY is simply not strong enough, not only for security reasons, but partly
for that.  If you said MAY *if* DNSSEC or TSIG is used, SHOULD otherwise,
I would be somewhat less concerned, but still dubious.

> The NetBIOS and DNS names spaces have coexisted for more than two
> decades without requiring exact matches, because they do not overlap.

If LLMNR required that the namespaces not overlap, I believe that would
address many (although not all) of the concerns that were raised here.

> Similarly, "exact matches" can be ensured via security schemes such as
> DNSSEC while permitting overlapping name spaces.

Is .com signed yet?

> *Both* the mDNS and LLMNR specifications agree on this point. The only
> difference is that mDNS uses ".local" for partioning, while it is
> suggested (but not required) that LLMNR implementations use single-label
> names.

That's a very important difference to me.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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