DNS hardening, was Re: Dan Kaminsky

Wed Aug 5 21:58:55 UTC 2009

On Wed, 5 Aug 2009 15:07:30 -0400 (EDT)
"John R. Levine" <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:

> >> 5 is 'edns ping', but it was effectively blocked because people
> >> thought DNSSEC would be easier to do, or demanded that EDNS PING
> >> (http://edns-ping.org) would offer everything that DNSSEC offered.
> >
> > 	I'm surprised you failed to mention
> > http://dnscurve.org/crypto.html, which is always brought up, but
> > never seems to solve the problems mentioned.
> 
> dnscurve looks like a swell idea, but I wouldn't put it in the
> category of a hack as straightforward as the ones I listed.  Also, at
> this point there appears to be neither code nor an implementable spec
> available since Dan is still fiddling with it.
> 
As I understand it, dnscurve protects transmissions, not objects.
That's not the way DNS operates today, what with N levels of cache.  It
may or may not be better, but it's a much bigger delta to today's
systems and practices than DNSSEC is.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb