The Area Identify System (DNS) is a basic protocol used on the Web to translate human-readable domains (e.g., www.instance.com) into numeric IP addresses (e.g., 192.0.2.1) in order that units and servers can discover and talk with one another. When a consumer enters a website title of their browser, the DNS resolver (e.g. Google Public DNS) locates the authoritative DNS nameservers for the requested title, and queries a number of of them to acquire the IP handle(es) to return to the browser.
When DNS was launched within the early Eighties as a trusted, content-neutral infrastructure, safety was not but a urgent concern, nonetheless, because the Web grew DNS grew to become susceptible to varied assaults. On this submit, we’ll take a look at DNS cache poisoning assaults and the way Google Public DNS addresses the dangers related to them.
DNS lookups in most functions are forwarded to a caching resolver (which might be native or an open resolver like. Google Public DNS). The trail from a consumer to the resolver is normally on an area community or could be protected utilizing encrypted transports like DoH, DoT. The resolver queries authoritative DNS servers to acquire solutions for consumer queries. This communication primarily happens over UDP, an insecure connectionless protocol, wherein messages could be simply spoofed together with the supply IP handle. The content material of DNS queries could also be sufficiently predictable that even an off-path attacker can, with sufficient effort, forge responses that look like from the queried authoritative server. This response will likely be cached if it matches the required fields and arrives earlier than the genuine response. This kind of assault is named a cache poisoning assault, which might trigger nice hurt as soon as profitable. In response to RFC 5452, the chance of success may be very excessive with out safety. Solid DNS responses can result in denial of service, or could even compromise utility safety. For a superb introduction to cache poisoning assaults, please see “An Illustrated Information to the Kaminsky DNS Vulnerability”.
Bettering DNS safety has been a objective of Google Public DNS since our launch in 2009. We take a multi-pronged strategy to guard customers towards DNS cache-poisoning assaults. There isn’t any silver bullet or countermeasure that solely solves the issue, however together they make profitable assaults considerably harder.
RFC 5452 And DNS Cookies
We now have carried out the fundamental countermeasures outlined in RFC 5452 particularly randomizing question supply ports and question IDs. However these measures alone usually are not ample (see web page 8 of our OARC 38 presentation).
We now have due to this fact additionally carried out assist for RFC 7873 (DNS Cookies) which might make spoofing impractical if it’s supported by the authoritative server. Measurements point out that the DNS Cookies don’t present ample protection, despite the fact that round 40% of nameservers by IP assist DNS Cookies, these account for lower than 10% of general question quantity. As well as, many non-compliant nameservers return incorrect or ambiguous responses for queries with DNS Cookies, which creates additional deployment obstacles. For now, we’ve enabled DNS Cookies by means of guide configuration, primarily for chosen TLD zones.
Case Randomization (0x20)
The question title case randomization mechanism, initially proposed in a March 2008 draft “Use of Bit 0x20 in DNS Labels to Enhance Transaction Id”, nonetheless, is extremely efficient, as a result of all however a small minority of nameservers are appropriate with question title case randomization. We now have been performing case randomization of question names since 2009 to a small set of chosen nameservers that deal with solely a minority of our question quantity.
In 2022 we began work on enabling case randomization by default, which when used, the question title within the query part is randomized and the DNS server’s response is predicted to match the case-randomized question title precisely within the request. For instance, if “ExaMplE.CoM” is the title despatched within the request, the title within the query part of the response should even be “ExaMplE.CoM” quite than, e.g., “instance.com.” Responses that fail to protect the case of the question title could also be dropped as potential cache poisoning assaults (and retried over TCP).
We’re joyful to announce that we’ve already enabled and deployed this characteristic globally by default. It covers over 90% of our UDP site visitors to nameservers, considerably decreasing the danger of cache poisoning assaults.
In the meantime, we keep an exception record and implement fallback mechanisms to forestall potential points with non-conformant nameservers. Nevertheless we strongly advocate that nameserver implementations protect the question case within the response.
DNS-over-TLS
Along with case randomization, we’ve deployed DNS-over-TLS to authoritative nameservers (ADoT), following procedures described in RFC 9539 (Unilateral Opportunistic Deployment of Encrypted Recursive-to-Authoritative DNS). Actual world measurements present that ADoT has a better success fee and comparable latency to UDP. And ADoT is in use for round 6% of egress site visitors. At the price of some CPU and reminiscence, we get each safety and privateness for nameserver queries with out DNS compliance points.
Abstract
Google Public DNS takes safety of our customers critically. By way of a number of countermeasures to cache poisoning assaults, we intention to offer a safer and dependable DNS decision service, enhancing the general Web expertise for customers worldwide. With the measures described above we’re in a position to present safety towards passive assaults for over 90% of authoritative queries.
To reinforce DNS safety, we advocate that DNS server operators assist a number of of the safety mechanisms described right here. We’re additionally working with the DNS group to enhance DNS safety. Please see our displays at DNS-OARC 38 and 40 for extra technical particulars.
