2 DNS Extensions O. Kolkman
3 Internet-Draft RIPE NCC
4 Expires: June 17, 2004 J. Schlyter
11 DNSKEY RR Secure Entry Point Flag
12 draft-ietf-dnsext-keyrr-key-signing-flag-12
16 This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
17 all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
19 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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23 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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25 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
26 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
28 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://
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31 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
32 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
34 This Internet-Draft will expire on June 17, 2004.
38 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
42 With the Delegation Signer (DS) resource record the concept of a
43 public key acting as a secure entry point has been introduced. During
44 exchanges of public keys with the parent there is a need to
45 differentiate secure entry point keys from other public keys in the
46 DNSKEY resource record (RR) set. A flag bit in the DNSKEY RR is
47 defined to indicate that DNSKEY is to be used as a secure entry
48 point. The flag bit is intended to assist in operational procedures
49 to correctly generate DS resource records, or to indicate what
50 DNSKEYs are intended for static configuration. The flag bit is not to
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56 Internet-Draft DNSKEY RR Secure Entry Point Flag December 2003
59 be used in the DNS verification protocol. This document updates RFC
64 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
65 2. The Secure Entry Point (SEP) Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
66 3. DNSSEC Protocol Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
67 4. Operational Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
68 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
69 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
70 7. Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
71 8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
72 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
73 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
74 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
75 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . 9
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112 Internet-Draft DNSKEY RR Secure Entry Point Flag December 2003
117 "All keys are equal but some keys are more equal than others" [6]
119 With the definition of the Delegation Signer Resource Record (DS RR)
120 [5] it has become important to differentiate between the keys in the
121 DNSKEY RR set that are (to be) pointed to by parental DS RRs and the
122 other keys in the DNSKEY RR set. We refer to these public keys as
123 Secure Entry Point (SEP) keys. A SEP key either used to generate a
124 DS RR or is distributed to resolvers that use the key as the root of
125 a trusted subtree[3].
127 In early deployment tests, the use of two (kinds of) key pairs for
128 each zone has been prevalent. For one kind of key pair the private
129 key is used to sign just the zone's DNSKEY resource record (RR) set.
130 Its public key is intended to be referenced by a DS RR at the parent
131 or configured statically in a resolver. The private key of the other
132 kind of key pair is used to sign the rest of the zone's data sets.
133 The former key pair is called a key-signing key (KSK) and the latter
134 is called a zone-signing key (ZSK). In practice there have been
135 usually one of each kind of key pair, but there will be multiples of
138 It should be noted that division of keys pairs into KSK's and ZSK's
139 is not mandatory in any definition of DNSSEC, not even with the
140 introduction of the DS RR. But, in testing, this distinction has
141 been helpful when designing key roll over (key super-cession)
142 schemes. Given that the distinction has proven helpful, the labels
143 KSK and ZSK have begun to stick.
145 There is a need to differentiate the public keys for the key pairs
146 that are used for key signing from keys that are not used key signing
147 (KSKs vs ZSKs). This need is driven by knowing which DNSKEYs are to
148 be sent for generating DS RRs, which DNSKEYs are to be distributed to
149 resolvers, and which keys are fed to the signer application at the
152 In other words, the SEP bit provides an in-band method to communicate
153 a DNSKEY RR's intended use to third parties. As an example we present
154 3 use cases in which the bit is useful:
156 The parent is a registry, the parent and the child use secured DNS
157 queries and responses, with a preexisting trust-relation, or plain
158 DNS over a secured channel to exchange the child's DNSKEY RR
159 sets. Since a DNSKEY RR set will contain a complete DNSKEY RRset
160 the SEP bit can be used to isolate the DNSKEYs for which a DS RR
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171 An administrator has configured a DNSKEY as root for a trusted
172 subtree into security aware resolver. Using a special purpose tool
173 that queries for the KEY RRs from that domain's apex, the
174 administrator will be able to notice the roll over of the trusted
175 anchor by a change of the subset of KEY RRs with the DS flag set.
177 A signer might use the SEP bit on the public key to determine
178 which private key to use to exclusively sign the DNSKEY RRset and
179 which private key to use to sign the other RRsets in the zone.
181 As demonstrated in the above examples it is important to be able to
182 differentiate the SEP keys from the other keys in a DNSKEY RR set in
183 the flow between signer and (parental) key-collector and in the flow
184 between the signer and the resolver configuration. The SEP flag is to
185 be of no interest to the flow between the verifier and the
186 authoritative data store.
188 The reason for the term "SEP" is a result of the observation that the
189 distinction between KSK and ZSK key pairs is made by the signer, a
190 key pair could be used as both a KSK and a ZSK at the same time. To
191 be clear, the term SEP was coined to lessen the confusion caused by
192 the overlap. ( Once this label was applied, it had the side effect of
193 removing the temptation to have both a KSK flag bit and a ZSK flag
196 The key words "MAY","MAY NOT", "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
197 "RECOMMENDED", "SHOULD", and "SHOULD NOT" in this document are to be
198 interpreted as described in RFC2119 [1].
200 2. The Secure Entry Point (SEP) Flag
203 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3
204 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
205 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
206 | flags |S| protocol | algorithm |
209 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
213 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
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227 This document assigns the 15'th bit in the flags field as the secure
228 entry point (SEP) bit. If the the bit is set to 1 the key is
229 intended to be used as secure entry point key. One SHOULD NOT assign
230 special meaning to the key if the bit is set to 0. Operators can
231 recognize the secure entry point key by the even or odd-ness of the
232 decimal representation of the flag field.
234 3. DNSSEC Protocol Changes
236 The bit MUST NOT be used during the resolving and verification
237 process. The SEP flag is only used to provide a hint about the
238 different administrative properties of the key and therefore the use
239 of the SEP flag does not change the DNS resolution protocol or the
242 4. Operational Guidelines
244 The SEP bit is set by the key-pair-generator and MAY be used by the
245 zone signer to decide whether the public part of the key pair is to
246 be prepared for input to a DS RR generation function. The SEP bit is
247 recommended to be set (to 1) whenever the public key of the key pair
248 will be distributed to the parent zone to build the authentication
249 chain or if the public key is to be distributed for static
250 configuration in verifiers.
252 When a key pair is created, the operator needs to indicate whether
253 the SEP bit is to be set in the DNSKEY RR. As the SEP bit is within
254 the data that is used to compute the 'key tag field' in the SIG RR,
255 changing the SEP bit will change the identity of the key within DNS.
256 In other words, once a key is used to generate signatures, the
257 setting of the SEP bit is to remain constant. If not, a verifier will
258 not be able to find the relevant KEY RR.
260 When signing a zone, it is intended that the key(s) with the SEP bit
261 set (if such keys exist) are used to sign the KEY RR set of the zone.
262 The same key can be used to sign the rest of the zone data too. It
263 is conceivable that not all keys with a SEP bit set will sign the
264 DNSKEY RR set, such keys might be pending retirement or not yet in
267 When verifying a RR set, the SEP bit is not intended to play a role.
268 How the key is used by the verifier is not intended to be a
269 consideration at key creation time.
271 Although the SEP flag provides a hint on which public key is to be
272 used as trusted root, administrators can choose to ignore the fact
273 that a DNSKEY has its SEP bit set or not when configuring a trusted
274 root for their resolvers.
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280 Internet-Draft DNSKEY RR Secure Entry Point Flag December 2003
283 Using the SEP flag a key roll over can be automated. The parent can
284 use an existing trust relation to verify DNSKEY RR sets in which a
285 new DNSKEY RR with the SEP flag appears.
287 5. Security Considerations
289 As stated in Section 3 the flag is not to be used in the resolution
290 protocol or to determine the security status of a key. The flag is to
291 be used for administrative purposes only.
293 No trust in a key should be inferred from this flag - trust MUST be
294 inferred from an existing chain of trust or an out-of-band exchange.
296 Since this flag might be used for automating public key exchanges, we
297 think the following consideration is in place.
299 Automated mechanisms for roll over of the DS RR might be vulnerable
300 to a class of replay attacks. This might happen after a public key
301 exchange where a DNSKEY RR set, containing two DNSKEY RRs with the
302 SEP flag set, is sent to the parent. The parent verifies the DNSKEY
303 RR set with the existing trust relation and creates the new DS RR
304 from the DNSKEY RR that the current DS RR is not pointing to. This
305 key exchange might be replayed. Parents are encouraged to implement a
306 replay defense. A simple defense can be based on a registry of keys
307 that have been used to generate DS RRs during the most recent roll
308 over. These same considerations apply to entities that configure keys
311 6. IANA Considerations
313 The flag bits in the DNSKEY RR are assigned by IETF consensus and
314 registered in the DNSKEY Flags registry (created by [4]). This
315 document assigns the 15th bit in the DNSKEY RR as the Secure Entry
318 7. Internationalization Considerations
320 Although SEP is a popular acronym in many different languages, there
321 are no internationalization considerations.
325 The ideas documented in this document are inspired by communications
326 we had with numerous people and ideas published by other folk. Among
327 others Mark Andrews, Rob Austein, Miek Gieben, Olafur Gudmundsson,
328 Daniel Karrenberg, Dan Massey, Scott Rose, Marcos Sanz and Sam Weiler
329 have contributed ideas and provided feedback.
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339 This document saw the light during a workshop on DNSSEC operations
340 hosted by USC/ISI in August 2002.
344 [1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
345 Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
347 [2] Eastlake, D., "Domain Name System Security Extensions", RFC
350 [3] Lewis, E., "DNS Security Extension Clarification on Zone
351 Status", RFC 3090, March 2001.
353 [4] Weiler, S., "Legacy Resolver Compatibility for Delegation
354 Signer", draft-ietf-dnsext-dnssec-2535typecode-change-05 (work
355 in progress), October 2003.
357 Informative References
359 [5] Gudmundsson, O., "Delegation Signer Resource Record",
360 draft-ietf-dnsext-delegation-signer-15 (work in progress), June
363 [6] Orwell, G. and R. Steadman (illustrator), "Animal Farm; a Fairy
364 Story", ISBN 0151002177 (50th anniversary edition), April 1996.
375 Phone: +31 20 535 4444
377 URI: http://www.ripe.net/
385 EMail: jakob@schlyter.se
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397 3635 Concorde Parkway Suite 200
401 Phone: +1 703 227 9854
402 EMail: edlewis@arin.net
403 URI: http://www.arin.net/
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