[IPsec] Benjamin Kaduk's Yes on draft-ietf-ipsecme-split-dns-14: (with COMMENT)

[Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]>]

Benjamin Kaduk has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-ipsecme-split-dns-14: Yes

When responding, please keep the subject line intact and reply to all
email addresses included in the To and CC lines. (Feel free to cut this
introductory paragraph, however.)


Please refer to https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/discuss-criteria.html
for more information about IESG DISCUSS and COMMENT positions.


The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ipsecme-split-dns/



----------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENT:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I am balloting YES because I think this mechanism has significant value, but I do also
have some substantial comments that will likely result in changes to the draft.
(I also have a number of nit-level comments.)

Section 1

nit: the Abstract and Introduction are supposed to stand on their own, so
starting off with "Split DNS is a common configuration" before defining it
makes the reader work a bit harder than perhaps they need to.

Section 2

                                                       When Split DNS
   has been negotiated, the existing DNS server configuration attributes
   will be interpreted as internal DNS servers that can resolve
   hostnames within the internal domains.

nit: maybe add a word or two to emphasize that the existing attributes are
also IKEv2 Configuration Payload Attributes?

Section 2.1

                         If an INTERNAL_DNS_DOMAIN attribute is included
   in the CFG_REQUEST, the initiator MUST also include one or more
   INTERNAL_IP4_DNS and INTERNAL_IP6_DNS attributes in the CFG_REQUEST.

nit: I think I could parse this as saying that I need one or more IP4 and also
one or more IP6 attributes (i.e., precluding v4- or v6-only
configurations), which I assume is not the intent.  Maybe "or" or "and/or"
would be better than "and"?

   To indicate support for DNSSEC, an initiator includes one or more
   INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA attributes as defined in Section 3 as part of the
   CFG_REQUEST payload. [...]

nit: There are perhaps philosophical arguments to have about whether this
indicates support for DNSSEC as a whole, or just for receiving trust
anchors for DNSSEC from the responder [for the split-DNS domain(s)].

Section 2.2

   supported by the server, unless the initiator has been configured
   with local polict to define a set of Split DNS domains to use by
   default.

typo: "policy"

We have to use DNS presentation format for the DS records and not wire
format?

Section 2.4

Please consider using IPv6 examples, per
https://www.iab.org/2016/11/07/iab-statement-on-ipv6/ .

Section 3.1

   o  Domain Name (0 or more octets) - A Fully Qualified Domain Name
      used for Split DNS rules, such as "example.com", in DNS
      presentation format and optionally using IDNA [RFC5890] for
      Internationalized Domain Names.  Implementors need to be careful
      that this value is not null-terminated.

W.r.t. IDNA, is this an A-label or a U-label?
W.r.t NUL-termination, do they need to not send the zero byte or not expect
to receive one?

Section 3.2

                                                    Any
   INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA attribute that is not immediately preceded by an
   INTERNAL_DNS_DOMAIN or another INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA attribute applying
   to the same domain name MUST be ignored and treated as a protocol
   error.

Isn't "ignored" incompatible with "treated as a protocol error"?

Section 4

   If a client is configured by local policy to only accept a limited
   number of INTERNAL_DNS_DOMAIN values, the client MUST ignore any
   other INTERNAL_DNS_DOMAIN values.

Is this a limited *number* or a limited *set*?  (If the former, exposition
about which ones are the "other" ones is probably in order.)

   private remote network using the IPsec connection.  If all traffic is
   routed over the IPsec connection, the existing global
   INTERNAL_IP4_DNS and INTERNAL_IP6_DNS can be used without creating
   specific DNS exemptions.

DNS or DNSSEC exemptions (i.e., both)?

Section 5

   DNS records can be used to publish specific records containing trust
   anchors for applications.  The most common record type is the TLSA
   record specified in [RFC6698].  This DNS record type publishes which
   CA certificate or EE certificate to expect for a certain host name.
   These records are protected by DNSSEC and thus can be trusted by the
   application.  [...]

I'm probably thinking too much about "trust" as a concept (due to the RATS
BoF), but especially given that this goes on to say that this is a local
policy decision, I'd suggest replacing "can be trusted" with something like
"has a trust path in" or "are trustable by".  Merely being in DNS with
valid DNSSEC signatures does not make the client trust it; that's still a
local policy decision.

                 It allows the remote IKE/IPsec server to modify DNS
   answers including its DNSSEC cryptographic signatures by overriding
   existing DNS information with trust anchor conveyed via IKE and
   (temporarilly) installed on the IKE client. [...]

nits: "including DNSSEC cryptographic signatures" (no "its"); "trust
anchor(s)"

   IKE clients willing to accept INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA attributes MUST use
   a whitelist of one or more domains that can be updated out of band.
   IKE clients with an empty whitelist MUST NOT use any
   INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA attributes received over IKE.  Such clients MAY
   interpret receiving an INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA attribute for a non-
   whitelisted domain as an indication that their local configuration
   may need to be updated out of band.
[...]
   IKE clients MAY interpret an INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA for domain that was
   not preconfigured as an indication that it needs to update its IKE
   configuration (out of band).  The client MUST NOT use such a
   INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA to reconfigure its local DNS settings.

These two paragraphs seem essentially redundant (the first seems better to
me).

   IKE clients MUST ignore any received INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA requests for
   a FDQN for which it did not receive and accept an INTERNAL_DNS_DOMAIN
   Configuration Payload.

nit: are these really "requests"?

Section 6

It's probably appropriate to reiterate here that "As discussed in Section
5, the INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA mechanism allows the credential used to
authenticate an IKEv2 association to be leveraged into authenticating
credentials for TLS and other connections.  This reflects something of a
privilege escalation, and initiators should ensure that they have
sufficient trust in the communications peer to responsibly use (or not use)
that elevated privilege."

   If the initiator is using DNSSEC validation for a domain in its
   public DNS view, and it requests and receives an INTERNAL_DNS_DOMAIN
   attribute without an INTERNAL_DNSSEC_TA, it will need to reconfigure
   its DNS resolver to allow for an insecure delegation.  It SHOULD NOT
   accept insecure delegations for domains that are DNSSEC signed in the
   public DNS view, for which it has not explicitely requested such
   deletation by specifying the domain specifically using a
   INTERNAL_DNS_DOMAIN(domain) request.

It seems like heeding this SHOULD NOT would potentially require the
initiator to make extra DNS requests from the external view that it would
not otherwise need to make.  I agree that this is the behavior we want to
encourage with respect to not downgrading away from DNSSEC, but it's less
clear to me that we want to encourage the initiator to go out of its way to
check, as opposed to just using information it may happen to have already.