HN Gopher Feed (2017-09-27) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Ed25519 for DNSSEC
24 points by fanf2
https://ed25519.nl/___________________________________________________________________
tptacek - 49 minutes ago
This sounds interesting but really isn't.Think about it for a
second and you'll realize that specifying a modern signature scheme
for DNSSEC is trivial. The best modern signature schemes are
designed to be easy to adopt!The problem is that none of the
installed DNSSEC base groks ed25519. It took years to get P-curve
DNSSEC --- which virtually nobody uses --- to the point where its
mere presence didn't break resolvers. It would probably take
something on the order of 10 years of concerted effort to get 95%+
of active resolvers to grok ed25519, and during that time everyone
who wanted secure signatures would need to sign both with RSA and
with ed25519, and for 10 years after that we'd be dealing with
people keeping insecure RSA signatures around out of compat
concerns, and then comes the Usenix papers about downgrade attacks,
and at night the ice weasels come, just like anyone who's dealt
seriously with TLS will tell you.What's especially irritating about
this situation is that we know the signature scheme used in
"mainstream" DNSSEC is inferior to modern curve signatures, and we
know virtually none of the DNSSEC software being deployed can grok
modern curve signatures, and we know this is an upgrade that needs
to happen lest we get a whole crapload of new 1990s crypto deployed
across the Internet, and still DNSSEC advocates are pushing for
more deployment of this stuff.Nobody uses DNSSEC right now. If the
root private keys were dumped to Pastebin right now, to a pretty
good first approximation not one commercial operator on the
Internet would need to send out a breach warning to customers. We
should all be taking a breath and reconsidering the protocol and
its implementation details.This, of course, isn't all that's wrong
with DNSSEC. Google [against dnssec].
tatersolid - 37 minutes ago
Not that I disagree with anything you?ve written, but you?ve
fallen into the ?X sucks but I offer no alternative? trap.What is
your suggestion instead of DNSsec? DNScurve? No DNS security at
all and rely on TLS and certificates? Other?
xenophonf - 30 minutes ago
His suggestion is precisely that---do nothing. From
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8897347:There is a real
alternative solution, and it has the virtue of being
exceptionally simple: do nothing. The DNS doesn't need to be
secured, just like raw IP isn't, nor every individual BGP4
update.
colmmacc - 36 minutes ago
Those are like hipster reasons to not like DNSSEC! DNSSEC is just
dumb and doesn't work. [ User ] <-----> [ Resolver ] <-----> [
Auth DNS ] ^ ^ Most attacks
work here DNSSEC protects here