Internet DRAFT - draft-rescorla-doh-cdisco

draft-rescorla-doh-cdisco







Network Working Group                                        E. Rescorla
Internet-Draft                                                   Mozilla
Intended status: Informational                              J. Livingood
Expires: 27 December 2020                                        Comcast
                                                            25 June 2020


                 CNAME Discovery of Local DoH Resolvers
                      draft-rescorla-doh-cdisco-00

Abstract

   This note describes a simple mechanism for determining whether an
   Internet Service Provider (ISP) network is operating a DNS over HTTPS
   [RFC8484] server on it for users connected to that network.

Discussion Venues

   This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

   Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
   https://github.com/ekr/draft-rescorla-doh-cdisco
   (https://github.com/ekr/draft-rescorla-doh-cdisco).

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
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 27 December 2020.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.






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   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 Simplified BSD License text
   as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  DoH Resolver Discovery  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Why DNS?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Why a CNAME?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   Some applications perform their own name resolution rather than using
   the system resolver, typically using an encrypted protocol such as
   DoH [RFC8484].  These applications have the choice of using either
   the same recursive resolver configured into the system or of using a
   resolver chosen out of a preconfigured list of trusted resolvers in
   an application, such as in [DOHTRR].

   If all of the trusted resolvers are publicly available, then there
   are a number of mechanisms for choosing between them, for instance
   randomly or based on performance.
   [I-D.arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-selection] describes a number of
   potential mechanisms.  However, if the list of trusted resolvers
   includes Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the client is on a
   network associated with such a provider, then it may be desirable to
   preferentially select the resolver associated with that provider.
   This provides the benefits both of using a DNS resolver with a known
   policy and using a resolver that has high quality local information
   about the local network topology.

   This document describes a mechanism to address this situation.  This
   mechanism is being tested in the Firefox browser with Comcast's
   resolvers.



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2.  Conventions and Definitions

   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.  DoH Resolver Discovery

   The basic mechanism described in this document is straightforward and
   has been chosen for ease of implementation rather than architectural
   correctness.

                                   +--------------+
   Provision CNAME                 |              |
   doh.test -> resolver.example -> | ISP Resolver |
                                   |              |
                                   +--------------+
                                       ^      |
                                       |      |
                             doh.test? |      | resolver.example
                                       |      |
                                       |      v
                                   +--------------+
                                   |              |
                                   |    Client    |
                                   |              |
                                   +--------------+

   A network provider can publish the fact that it has an associated DoH
   resolver on its network by configuring its own resolvers to serve a
   CNAME record at a well known domain name which cannot be otherwise
   registered.  The current test deployment uses "doh.test" (see
   [RFC2606] for the definition of .test).  This CNAME points to the
   domain name of the associated DoH resolver ("resolver.example" in the
   diagram above).

   [[OPEN ISSUE: doh.test is probably the wrong domain.  We may pick
   something else later.]]

   A client which wishes to test for the presence of a DoH resolver on
   the network takes the following steps:

   1.  Do any testing for whether DoH should be disabled, such as
       looking for canary domains [I-D.grover-add-policy-detection] or
       checking for local enterprise configuration.




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   2.  Do a CNAME query for "doh.test" using either the system resolver
       or by talking directly to the recursive resolver IP address
       configured into the system.

   3.  If the query succeeds, then look up the CNAME record value in the
       list of preconfigured resolvers.  If an exact match is found,
       then use the resolver address for the matching preconfigured
       resolver.  Otherwise fall back to the ordinary DoH resolver
       selection logic.

   4.  If the query fails, then no associated resolver is present; fall
       back to the ordinary DoH resolver selection logic.

   As noted above, this mechanism was designed for ease of
   implementation.

   Comcast's resolvers and authoritative servers have been configured
   with some additional records to support the Firefox applications and
   potential future applications.  The DNS behavior is as follows, where
   example.com is the domain used for naming provider services:

   1.  doh.test IN CNAME doh-discovery.example.com

   2.  doh-discovery.example.com must have at least one A and/or AAAA RR
       (address does not matter - can be 127.0.0.1)

   3.  doh-discovery.example.com IN URI https://doh.example.com/dns-
       query (the ISP DoH URI - not currently used by Firefox as the URI
       is preconfigured in the application)

   The next few sections describe the reasoning for some of the design
   choices.

   Considering that many applications do not act as a DNS client and
   instead use platform functions such as getaddrinfo, the domain of the
   associated resolver SHOULD also have an A record, so the call to
   getaddrinfo does not fail.

3.1.  Why DNS?

   There have been a number of discussions of using non-DNS mechanisms
   resolver information, for instance as in Section 4 of
   [I-D.pauly-add-resolver-discovery].  While arguably more
   architecturally correct in terms of layering, they have a number of
   deployment drawbacks:






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   *  They require the client to have much tighter integration with the
      operating system in order to query the data.  By contrast, with
      this mechanism, the client need only be able to do name resolution
      via the system resolver, which it generally already is able to do
      via standard APIs.

   *  They require new types of configuration which ISPs may not already
      be set up to do.  By contrast, configuring DNS records is
      generally well understood.

   *  They rely on intermediate devices (e.g., NATs) being aware of the
      configuration information and passing it onto clients.  These
      devices already do this with DNS information.

   For these reasons, DNS seems to be the easiest solution to deploy
   quickly.

3.2.  Why a CNAME?

   Most other proposed designs (e.g., [I-D.pp-add-resinfo] and
   [I-D.pp-add-stub-upgrade], and [I-D.pauly-add-resolver-discovery])
   use new RRtypes.  While this may be the right answer eventually, it
   is less convenient for immediate deployment, for several reasons:

   1.  It is somewhat more difficult (though not impossible) to look up
       new RRTypes on the client and provision them on the ISP resolver.

   2.  Some consumer-grade middleboxes (e.g., WiFI routers) may block
       unknown RRTypes.  The data here is quite old and limited, but
       still not particularly promising.

   The choice to use a CNAME does have one major drawback: it does not
   let us provide the URL template but only the name of the resolver.
   This is not a problem for our system in practice because Firefox will
   only connect to resolvers on a preconfigured list and thus will use
   the CNAME as a lookup key for that list.  The Mozilla team is working
   to measure the rate of new RRType interference and may revise this
   approach depending on the results of that.

   [[OPEN ISSUE: We are working to measure the rate of new RRType
   interference and may revise this approach depending on the results of
   that.]]









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4.  Security Considerations

   Because the initial request for discovery is done over insecure DNS
   (Do53), a local attacker or malicious local resolver can substitute
   their own response.  However, because this mechanism only selects
   from a list of preconfigured trusted resolvers, an attacker can only
   redirect you to a different resolver out of that list, which by
   definition is also trusted.  Note: the URI field potentially has
   different security properties depending on how it is used.  As noted
   above; Firefox does not use it.

   If the server which is redirected to is not publicly available, this
   mechanism can be used as a DoS attack.  Application clients should
   test the selected server before committing to it and otherwise fall
   back to their ordinary DoH selection logic.

   Any local discovery mechanism has potential privacy impacts: suppose
   that a user uses their mobile device on ISP A, which redirects it to
   their own resolver, and ISP B which does not.  In that case, the
   user's DNS queries will be spread over both ISP A's resolver and one
   of the public trusted resolvers, which could have an impact on the
   user's privacy.  This has to be balanced against the improvement
   obtained by using a local resolver and the level of metadata leakage
   that currently occurs to the ISP, but can be mitigated through
   trusted recursive resolver policies.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.grover-add-policy-detection]
              Grover, A. and P. Saint-Andre, "DNS Resolver-Based Policy
              Detection Domain", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-grover-add-policy-detection-00, 8 July 2019,
              <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-grover-add-
              policy-detection-00.txt>.

   [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>.






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   [RFC2606]  Eastlake 3rd, D. and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
              Names", BCP 32, RFC 2606, DOI 10.17487/RFC2606, June 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2606>.

   [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>.

   [RFC8484]  Hoffman, P. and P. McManus, "DNS Queries over HTTPS
              (DoH)", RFC 8484, DOI 10.17487/RFC8484, October 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8484>.

6.2.  Informative References

   [DOHTRR]   Mozilla, ., "Trusted Recursive Resolver", n.d.,
              <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver>.

   [I-D.arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-selection]
              Arkko, J., Thomson, M., and T. Hardie, "Selecting
              Resolvers from a Set of Distributed DNS Resolvers", Work
              in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-arkko-abcd-distributed-
              resolver-selection-01, 9 March 2020, <http://www.ietf.org/
              internet-drafts/draft-arkko-abcd-distributed-resolver-
              selection-01.txt>.

   [I-D.pauly-add-resolver-discovery]
              Pauly, T., Kinnear, E., Wood, C., McManus, P., and T.
              Jensen, "Adaptive DNS Resolver Discovery", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-pauly-add-resolver-
              discovery-00, 20 May 2020, <http://www.ietf.org/internet-
              drafts/draft-pauly-add-resolver-discovery-00.txt>.

   [I-D.pp-add-resinfo]
              Sood, P. and P. Hoffman, "DNS Resolver Information Self-
              publication", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-pp-
              add-resinfo-01, 14 May 2020, <http://www.ietf.org/
              internet-drafts/draft-pp-add-resinfo-01.txt>.

   [I-D.pp-add-stub-upgrade]
              Sood, P. and P. Hoffman, "Upgrading Communication from
              Stub Resolvers to DoT or DoH", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-pp-add-stub-upgrade-01, 14 May 2020,
              <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-pp-add-stub-
              upgrade-01.txt>.







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Acknowledgments

   TODO acknowledge.

Authors' Addresses

   Eric Rescorla
   Mozilla

   Email: ekr@rtfm.com


   Jason Livingood
   Comcast

   Email: jason_livingood@comcast.com



































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