Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-opsawg-mud-iot-dns-considerations
draft-ietf-opsawg-mud-iot-dns-considerations
OPSAWG Working Group M. Richardson
Internet-Draft Sandelman Software Works
Intended status: Best Current Practice W. Pan
Expires: 11 August 2024 Huawei Technologies
8 February 2024
Operational Considerations for use of DNS in IoT devices
draft-ietf-opsawg-mud-iot-dns-considerations-12
Abstract
This document details concerns about how Internet of Things devices
use IP addresses and DNS names. The issue becomes acute as network
operators begin deploying RFC8520 Manufacturer Usage Description
(MUD) definitions to control device access.
This document makes recommendations on when and how to use DNS names
in MUD files.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Status information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-opsawg-mud-iot-dns-
considerations/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the opsawg Working Group
mailing list (mailto:opsawg@ietf.org), which is archived at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/opsawg/. Subscribe at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/opsawg/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/mcr/iot-mud-dns-considerations.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 11 August 2024.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Strategies to map names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Failing strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1.1. Too slow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.2. Reveals patterns of usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.3. Mappings are often incomplete . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.4. Forward names can have wildcards . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. A successful strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. DNS and IP Anti-Patterns for IoT device Manufacturers . . . . 8
4.1. Use of IP address literals inprotocol . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2. Use of non-deterministic DNS names in-protocol . . . . . 10
4.3. Use of a too generic DNS name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. DNS privacy and outsourcing versus MUD controllers . . . . . 11
6. Recommendations to IoT device manufacturer on MUD and DNS
usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.1. Consistently use DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2. Use primary DNS names controlled by the manufacturer . . 12
6.3. Use Content-Distribution Network with stable names . . . 12
6.4. Do not use geofenced names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.5. Prefer DNS servers learnt from DHCP/Route
Advertisements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Appendix A. Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1. Introduction
[RFC8520] provides a standardized way to describe how a specific
purpose device makes use of Internet resources. Access Control Lists
(ACLs) can be defined in an RFC8520 Manufacturer Usage Description
(MUD) file that permit a device to access Internet resources by DNS
name or IP address.
Use of a DNS name rather than IP address in the ACL has many
advantages: not only does the layer of indirection permit the mapping
of name to IP address to be changed over time, it also generalizes
automatically to IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, as well as permitting a
variety of load balancing strategies, including multi-CDN deployments
wherein load balancing can account for geography and load.
At the MUD policy enforcement point -- the firewall -- there is a
problem. The firewall has access only to the layer-3 headers of the
packet. This includes the source and destination IP address, and if
not encrypted by IPsec, the destination UDP or TCP port number
present in the transport header. The DNS name is not present!
It has been suggested that one answer to this problem is to provide a
forced intermediate for the TLS connections. In theory, this could
be done for TLS 1.2 connections. The MUD policy enforcement point
could observe the Server Name Identifier (SNI) [RFC6066]. Some
Enterprises do this already. But, as this involves active
termination of the TCP connection (a forced circuit proxy) in order
to see enough of the traffic, it requires significant effort.
In TLS 1.3, with or without the use of ECH, middleboxes cannot rely
on SNI inspection because malware could lie about the SNI. In
addition, middleboxes do not have visibility into the server
certificate unless they are acting as TLS proxies.
So in order to implement these name based ACLs, there must be a
mapping between the names in the ACLs and layer-3 IP addresses. The
first section of this document details a few strategies that are
used.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
The second section of this document details how common manufacturer
anti-patterns get in the way of this mapping. The term "anti-
pattern" comes from agile software design literature, as per
[antipatterns].
The third section of this document details how current trends in DNS
resolution such as public DNS servers, DNS over TLS (DoT), DNS over
QUIC (DoQ), and DNS over HTTPS (DoH) cause problems for the
strategies employed.
The fourth section of this document makes a series of recommendations
("best current practices") for manufacturers on how to use DNS and IP
addresses with MUD supporting IoT devices.
The Privacy Considerations section concerns itself with issues that
DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS are frequently used to deal with.
How these concerns apply to IoT devices located within a residence or
enterprise is a key concern.
The Security Considerations section covers some of the negative
outcomes should MUD/firewall managers and IoT manufacturers choose
not to cooperate.
2. Terminology
Although this document is not an IETF Standards Track publication, it
adopts the conventions for normative language to provide clarity of
instructions to the implementer. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT",
"REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT",
"RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119]
[RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown
here.
3. Strategies to map names
The most naive method is to try to map IP addresses to names using
the in-addr.arpa (IPv4), and ipv6.arpa (IPv6) mappings at the time
the packet is seen.
3.1. Failing strategy
Attempts to map IP address to names in real time fails for a number
of reasons:
1. it can not be done fast enough,
2. it reveals usage patterns of the devices,
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
3. the mapping are often incomplete,
4. Even if the mapping is present, due to virtual hosting, it may
not map back to the name used in the ACL.
This is not a successful strategy, its use is NOT RECOMMENDED for the
reasons explained below.
3.1.1. Too slow
Mapping of IP addresses to names requires a DNS lookup in the in-
addr.arpa or ip6.arpa space. For a cold DNS cache, this will
typically require 2 to 3 NS record lookups to locate the DNS server
that holds the information required. At 20 to 100 ms per round trip,
this easily adds up to significant time before the packet that caused
the lookup can be released.
While subsequent connections to the same site (and subsequent packets
in the same flow) will not be affected if the results are cached, the
effects will be felt. The ACL results can be cached for a period of
time given by the TTL of the DNS results, but the DNS lookup must be
repeated, e.g, in a few hours or days,when the cached IP address to
name binding expires.
3.1.2. Reveals patterns of usage
By doing the DNS lookups when the traffic occurs, then a passive
attacker can see when the device is active, and may be able to derive
usage patterns. They could determine when a home was occupied or
not. This does not require access to all on-path data, just to the
DNS requests to the bottom level of the DNS tree.
3.1.3. Mappings are often incomplete
A service provider that fails to include an A or AAAA record as part
of their forward name publication will find that the new server is
simply not used. The operational feedback for that mistake is
immediate. The same is not true for reverse names: they can often be
incomplete or incorrect for months or even years without visible
effect on operations.
Service providers often find it difficult to update reverse maps in a
timely fashion, assuming that they can do it at all. Many cloud
based solutions dynamically assign IP addresses to services, often as
the service grows and shrinks, reassigning those IP addresses to
other services quickly. The use of HTTP 1.1 Virtual Hosting may
allow addresses and entire front-end systems to be re-used
dynamically without even reassigning the IP addresses.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
In some cases there are multiple layers of CNAME between the original
name and the target service name. This is often due to a load
balancing layer in the DNS, followed by a load balancing layer at the
HTTP level.
The reverse name for the IP address of the load balancer usually does
not change. If hundreds of web services are funneled through the
load balancer, it would require hundreds of PTR records to be
deployed. This would easily exceed the UDP/DNS and EDNS0 limits, and
require all queries to use TCP, which would further slow down loading
of the records.
The enumeration of all services/sites that have been at that load
balancer might also constitute a security concern. To limit churn of
DNS PTR records, and reduce failures of the MUD ACLs, operators would
want to add all possible names for each reverse name, whether or not
the DNS load balancing in the forward DNS space lists that end-point
at that moment.
3.1.4. Forward names can have wildcards
In some large hosting providers content is hosted through a domain
name that is published as a DNS wildcard (and uses a wildcard
certificate). For instance, github.io, which is used for hosted
content, including the Editors' copy of internet drafts stored on
github, does not actually publish any names. Instead, a wildcard
exists to answer all potential names: requests are routed appropriate
once they are received.
This kind of system works well for self-managed hosted content.
However, while it is possible to insert up to a few dozen PTR
records, many thousand entries are not possible, nor is it possible
to deal with the unlimited (infinite) number of possibilities that a
wildcard supports.
It would be therefore impossible for the PTR reverse lookup to ever
work with these wildcard names.
3.2. A successful strategy
The simplest successful strategy for translating names for a MUD
controller to take is to do a DNS lookup on the name (a forward
lookup), and then use the resulting IP addresses to populate the
physical ACLs.
There are still a number of failures possible.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
The most important one is that the mapping of the names to IP
addresses may be non-deterministic. [RFC1794] describes the very
common mechanism that returns DNS A (or reasonably AAAA) records in a
permuted order. This is known as Round Robin DNS, and it has been
used for many decades. The device is intended to use the first IP
address that is returned, and each query returns addresses in a
different ordering, splitting the load among many servers.
This situation does not result in failures as long as all possible A/
AAAA records are returned. The MUD controller and the device get a
matching set, and the ACLs that are set up cover all possibilities.
There are a number of circumstances in which the list is not
exhaustive. The simplest is when the round-robin does not return all
addresses. This is routinely done by geographical DNS load balancing
systems. It can also happen if there are more addresses than will
conveniently fit into a DNS reply. The reply will be marked as
truncated. (If DNSSEC resolution will be done, then the entire RR
must be retrieved over TCP (or using a larger EDNS(0) size) before
being validated)
However, in a geographical DNS load balancing system, different
answers are given based upon the locality of the system asking.
There may also be further layers of round-robin indirection.
Aside from the list of records being incomplete, the list may have
changed between the time that the MUD controller did the lookup and
the time that the IoT device did the lookup, and this change can
result in a failure for the ACL to match.
In order to compensate for this, the MUD controller SHOULD regularly
perform DNS lookups in order to never have stale data. These lookups
must be rate limited to avoid excessive load on the DNS servers, and
it may be necessary to avoid local recursive resolvers. The MUD
controller SHOULD incorporate its own recursive caching DNS server.
Properly designed recursive servers should cache data for at least
some number of minutes, up to some number of days, while the
underlying DNS data can change at a higher frequency, providing
different answers to different queries!
A MUD controller that is aware of which recursive DNS server the IoT
device will use can instead query that server on a periodic basis.
Doing so provides three advantages:
1. Any geographic load balancing will base the decision on the
geolocation of the recursive DNS server, and the recursive name
server will provide the same answer to the MUD controller as to
the IoT device.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
2. The resulting name to IP address mapping in the recursive name
server will be cached, and will remain the same for the entire
advertised Time-To-Live reported in the DNS query return. This
also allows the MUD controller to avoid doing unnecessary
queries.
3. if any addresses have been omitted in a round-robin DNS process,
the cache will have the same set of addresses that were returned.
The solution of using the same caching recursive resolver as the
target device is very simple when the MUD controller is located in a
residential CPE device. The device is usually also the policy
enforcement point for the ACLs, and a caching resolver is typically
located on the same device. In addition to convenience, there is a
shared fate advantage: as all three components are running on the
same device, if the device is rebooted, clearing the cache, then all
three components will get restarted when the device is restarted.
Where the solution is more complex is when the MUD controller is
located elsewhere in an Enterprise, or remotely in a cloud such as
when a Software Defined Network (SDN) is used to manage the ACLs.
The DNS servers for a particular device may not be known to the MUD
controller, nor the MUD controller be even permitted to make
recursive queries to that server if it is known. In this case,
additional installation specific mechanisms are probably needed to
get the right view of the DNS.
4. DNS and IP Anti-Patterns for IoT device Manufacturers
In many design fields, there are good patterns that should be
emulated, and often there are patterns that should not be emulated.
The latter are called anti-patterns, as per [antipatterns].
This section describes a number of things which IoT manufacturers
have been observed to do in the field, each of which presents
difficulties for MUD enforcement points.
4.1. Use of IP address literals inprotocol
A common pattern for a number of devices is to look for firmware
updates in a two-step process. An initial query is made (often over
HTTPS, sometimes with a POST, but the method is immaterial) to a
vendor system that knows whether an update is required.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
The current firmware model of the device is sometimes provided and
then the authoritative server provides a determination if a new
version is required and, if so, what version. In simpler cases, an
HTTPS endpoint is queried which provides the name and URL of the most
recent firmware.
The authoritative upgrade server then responds with a URL of a
firmware blob that the device should download and install. Best
practice is that firmware is either signed internally ([RFC9019]) so
that it can be verified, or a hash of the blob is provided.
An authoritative server might be tempted to provide an IP address
literal inside the protocol: there are two arguments (anti-patterns)
for doing this.
The first is that it eliminates problems with firmware updates that
might be caused by lack of DNS, or incompatibilities with DNS. For
instance a bug that causes interoperability issues with some
recursive servers would become unpatchable for devices that were
forced to use that recursive resolver type.
The second reason to avoid a IP address literal in the URL is when an
inhouse content-distribution system is involved that involves on-
demand instances being added (or removed) from a cloud computing
architecture.
But, there are more problems with use of IP address literals for the
location of the firmware.
The first is that the update service server must decide whether to
provide an IPv4 or an IPv6 literal. A DNS name can contain both
kinds of addresses, and can also contain many different IP addresses
of each kind.
The second problem is that it forces the MUD file definition to
contain the exact same IP address literals. It must also contain an
ACL for each address literal. DNS provides a useful indirection
method that naturally aggregates the addresses.
A third problem involves the use of HTTPS. IP address literals do
not provide enough context for TLS ServerNameIndicator to be useful
[RFC6066]. This limits the firmware repository to be a single tenant
on that IP address, and for IPv4 (at least), this is no longer a
sustainable use of IP addresses.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
Finally, it is common in some content-distribution networks (CDN) to
use multiple layers of DNS CNAMEs in order to isolate the content-
owner's naming system from changes in how the distribution network is
organized.
A non-deterministic name or address that is returned within the
update protocol, the MUD controller is unable to know what the name
is. It is therefore unable to make sure that the communication to
retrieve the new firmware is permitted by the MUD enforcement point.
4.2. Use of non-deterministic DNS names in-protocol
A second pattern is for a control protocol to connect to a known HTTP
endpoint. This is easily described in MUD. Within that control
protocol references are made to additional content at other URLs.
The values of those URLs do not fit any easily described pattern and
may point at arbitrary names.
Those names are often within some third-party Content-Distribution-
Network (CDN) system, or may be arbitrary names in a cloud-provider
storage system (i.e., [AmazonS3], or [Akamai]). Some of the name
components may be specified by the provider.
Such names may be unpredictably chosen by the content provider, and
not the content owner, and so impossible to insert into a MUD file.
Even if the content provider chosen names are deterministic they may
change at a rate much faster than MUD files can be updated.
This in particular may apply to the location where firmware updates
may be retrieved.
A solution is to use a deterministic DNS name, within the control of
the firmware vendor. This may be a problem if the content
distribution network needs to reorganize which IP address is
responsible for which content, or if there is a desire to provide
content in geographically relevant ways.
The firmware vendor is therefore likely to be asked to point a CNAME
to the CDN network, to a name that might look like "g7.a.example",
with the expectation that the CDN vendors DNS will do all the
appropriate work to geolocate the transfer. This can be fine for a
MUD file, as the MUD controller, if located in the same geography as
the IoT device, can follow the CNAME, and can collect the set of
resulting IP addresses, along with the TTL for each. The MUD
controller can then take charge of refreshing that mapping at
intervals driven by the TTL.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
In some cases, a complete set of geographically distributed servers
is known ahead of time, and the firmware vendor can list all those
addresses DNS for the the name that it lists in the MUD file. As
long as the active set of addresses used by the CDN is a strict
subset of that list, then the geolocated name can be used for the
firmware download itself. This use of two addresses is ripe for
confusion, however.
4.3. Use of a too generic DNS name
Some CDNs make all customer content available at a single URL (such
as s3.amazonaws.com). This seems to be ideal from a MUD point of
view: a completely predictable URL.
The problem is that a compromised device could then connect to the
contents of any bucket, potentially attacking the data from other
customers.
Exactly what the risk is depends upon what the other customers are
doing: it could be limited to simply causing a distributed denial-of-
service attack resulting in high costs to those customers, or such an
attack could potentially include writing content.
Amazon has recognized the problems associated with this practice, and
aims to change it to a virtual hosting model, as per
[awss3virtualhosting].
The MUD ACLs provide only for permitting end points (hostnames and
ports), but do not filter URLs (nor could filtering be enforced
within HTTPS).
5. DNS privacy and outsourcing versus MUD controllers
[RFC7858] and [RFC8094] provide for DNS over TLS (DoT) and DNS over
HTTPS (DoH). [I-D.ietf-dnsop-rfc8499bis] details the terms. But,
even with traditional DNS over Port-53 (Do53), it is possible to
outsource DNS queries to other public services, such as those
operated by Google, CloudFlare, Verisign, etc.
For some users and classes of device, revealing the DNS queries to
those outside entities may constitute a privacy concern. For other
users the use of an insecure local resolver may constitute a privacy
concern.
As described above in Section 3 the MUD controller needs to have
access to the same resolver(s) as the IoT device.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
6. Recommendations to IoT device manufacturer on MUD and DNS usage
Inclusion of a MUD file with IoT devices is operationally quite
simple. It requires only a few small changes to the DHCP client code
to express the MUD URL. It can even be done without code changes via
the use of a QR code affixed to the packaging (see [RFC9238])
The difficult part is determining what to put into the MUD file
itself. There are currently tools that help with the definition and
analysis of MUD files, see [mudmaker]. The remaining difficulty is
now the actual list of expected connections to put in the MUD file.
An IoT manufacturer must now spend some time reviewing the network
communications by their device.
This document discusses a number of challenges that occur relating to
how DNS requests are made and resolved, and the goal of this section
is to make recommendations on how to modify IoT systems to work well
with MUD.
6.1. Consistently use DNS
For the reasons explained in Section 4.1, the most important
recommendation is to avoid using IP address literals in any protocol.
Names should always be used.
6.2. Use primary DNS names controlled by the manufacturer
The second recommendation is to allocate and use names within zones
controlled by the manufacturer. These names can be populated with an
alias (see [I-D.ietf-dnsop-rfc8499bis] section 2) that points to the
production system. Ideally, a different name is used for each
logical function, allowing for different rules in the MUD file to be
enabled and disabled.
While it used to be costly to have a large number of aliases in a web
server certificate, this is no longer the case. Wildcard
certificates are also commonly available which allow for an infinite
number of possible names.
6.3. Use Content-Distribution Network with stable names
When aliases point to a Content-Distribution Network (CDN), prefer
stable names that point to appropriately load balanced targets. CDNs
that employ very low time-to-live (TTL) values for DNS make it harder
for the MUD controller to get the same answer as the IoT Device. A
CDN that always returns the same set of A and AAAA records, but
permutes them to provide the best one first provides a more reliable
answer.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
6.4. Do not use geofenced names
Due to the problems with different answers from different DNS
servers, described above, a strong recommendation is to avoid using
geofenced names.
6.5. Prefer DNS servers learnt from DHCP/Route Advertisements
IoT Devices SHOULD prefer doing DNS with the DHCP provided DNS
servers.
The ADD WG has written [I-D.ietf-add-dnr] and [I-D.ietf-add-ddr] to
provide information to end devices on how to find locally provisioned
secure/private DNS servers.
Use of public resolvers instead of the provided DNS resolver, whether
Do53, DoQ, DoT or DoH is discouraged. Should the network provide
such a resolver for use, then there is no reason not to use it, as
the network operator has clearly thought about this.
Some manufacturers would like to have a fallback to using a public
resolver to mitigate against local misconfiguration. There are a
number of reasons to avoid this, or at least do this very carefully.
It is recommended that use of non-local resolvers is only done when
the locally provided resolvers provide no answers to any queries at
all, and do so repeatedly. The use of the operator provided
resolvers SHOULD be retried on a periodic basis, and once they
answer, there SHOULD be no further attempts to contact public
resolvers.
Finally, the list of public resolvers that might be contacted MUST be
listed in the MUD file as destinations that are to be permitted!
This should include the port numbers (i.e., 53, 853 for DoT, 443 for
DoH) that will be used as well.
7. Privacy Considerations
The use of non-local DNS servers exposes the list of names resolved
to a third party, including passive eavesdroppers.
The use of DoT and DoH eliminates the threat from passive
eavesdropping, but still exposes the list to the operator of the DoT
or DoH server. There are additional methods to help preserve
privacy, such as described by [RFC9230].
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
The use of unencrypted (Do53) requests to a local DNS server exposes
the list to any internal passive eavesdroppers, and for some
situations that may be significant, particularly if unencrypted Wi-Fi
is used. Use of Encrypted DNS connection to a local DNS recursive
resolver is the preferred choice.
IoT devices that reach out to the manufacturer at regular intervals
to check for firmware updates are informing passive eavesdroppers of
the existence of a specific manufacturer's device being present at
the origin location.
Identifying the IoT device type empowers the attacker to launch
targeted attacks to the IoT device (e.g., Attacker can take advantage
of any known vulnerability on the device).
While possession of a Large (Kitchen) Appliance at a residence may be
uninteresting to most, possession of intimate personal devices (e.g.,
"sex toys") may be a cause for embarrassment.
IoT device manufacturers are encouraged to find ways to anonymize
their update queries. For instance, contracting out the update
notification service to a third party that deals with a large variety
of devices would provide a level of defense against passive
eavesdropping. Other update mechanisms should be investigated,
including use of DNSSEC signed TXT records with current version
information. This would permit DoT or DoH to convey the update
notification in a private fashion. This is particularly powerful if
a local recursive DoT server is used, which then communicates using
DoT over the Internet.
The more complex case of section Section 4.1 postulates that the
version number needs to be provided to an intelligent agent that can
decide the correct route to do upgrades. [RFC9019] provides a wide
variety of ways to accomplish the same thing without having to
divulge the current version number.
The use of a publicly specified firmware update protocol would also
enhance privacy of IoT devices. In such a system, the IoT device
would never contact the manufacturer for version information or for
firmware itself. Instead, details of how to query and where to get
the firmware would be provided as a MUD extension, and an Enterprise-
wide mechanism would retrieve firmware, and then distribute it
internally. Aside from the bandwidth savings of downloading the
firmware only once, this also makes the number of devices active
confidential, and provides some evidence about which devices have
been upgraded and which ones might still be vulnerable. (The
unpatched devices might be lurking, powered off, lost in a closet)
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
8. Security Considerations
This document deals with conflicting Security requirements:
1. devices which an operator wants to manage using [RFC8520]
2. requirements for the devices to get access to network resources
that may be critical to their continued safe operation.
This document takes the view that the two requirements do not need to
be in conflict, but resolving the conflict requires careful planning
on how the DNS can be safely and effectively used by MUD controllers
and IoT devices.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-dnsop-rfc8499bis]
Hoffman, P. E. and K. Fujiwara, "DNS Terminology", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-dnsop-rfc8499bis-10,
25 September 2023, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-ietf-dnsop-rfc8499bis-10>.
[RFC1794] Brisco, T., "DNS Support for Load Balancing", RFC 1794,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1794, April 1995,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1794>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC7858] Hu, Z., Zhu, L., Heidemann, J., Mankin, A., Wessels, D.,
and P. Hoffman, "Specification for DNS over Transport
Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 7858, DOI 10.17487/RFC7858, May
2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7858>.
[RFC8094] Reddy, T., Wing, D., and P. Patil, "DNS over Datagram
Transport Layer Security (DTLS)", RFC 8094,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8094, February 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8094>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
[RFC8520] Lear, E., Droms, R., and D. Romascanu, "Manufacturer Usage
Description Specification", RFC 8520,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8520, March 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8520>.
[RFC9019] Moran, B., Tschofenig, H., Brown, D., and M. Meriac, "A
Firmware Update Architecture for Internet of Things",
RFC 9019, DOI 10.17487/RFC9019, April 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9019>.
9.2. Informative References
[Akamai] "Akamai", 2019,
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies>.
[AmazonS3] "Amazon S3", 2019,
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_S3>.
[antipatterns]
"AntiPattern", 12 July 2021,
<https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/antipattern>.
[awss3virtualhosting]
"Down to the Wire: AWS Delays 'Path-Style' S3 Deprecation
at Last Minute", 12 July 2021,
<https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/cloud/aws-s3-path-
deprecation>.
[I-D.ietf-add-ddr]
Pauly, T., Kinnear, E., Wood, C. A., McManus, P., and T.
Jensen, "Discovery of Designated Resolvers", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-add-ddr-10, 5 August
2022, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-
add-ddr-10>.
[I-D.ietf-add-dnr]
Boucadair, M., Reddy.K, T., Wing, D., Cook, N., and T.
Jensen, "DHCP and Router Advertisement Options for the
Discovery of Network-designated Resolvers (DNR)", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-add-dnr-16, 27 April
2023, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-
add-dnr-16>.
[mudmaker] "Mud Maker", 2019, <https://mudmaker.org>.
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft mud-iot-dns February 2024
[RFC6066] Eastlake 3rd, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6066, January 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6066>.
[RFC9230] Kinnear, E., McManus, P., Pauly, T., Verma, T., and C.A.
Wood, "Oblivious DNS over HTTPS", RFC 9230,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9230, June 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9230>.
[RFC9238] Richardson, M., Latour, J., and H. Habibi Gharakheili,
"Loading Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) URLs from QR
Codes", RFC 9238, DOI 10.17487/RFC9238, May 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9238>.
Appendix A. Appendices
Contributors
Tirumaleswar Reddy
Nokia
Authors' Addresses
Michael Richardson
Sandelman Software Works
Email: mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca
Wei Pan
Huawei Technologies
Email: william.panwei@huawei.com
Richardson & Pan Expires 11 August 2024 [Page 17]
