Copyright (C) 2000, 2001 Internet Software Consortium.

See COPYRIGHT in the source root or http://isc.org/copyright.html for terms.

DNSSEC Release Notes

This document summarizes the state of the DNSSEC implementation in

this release of BIND9.

Key Generation and Signing

The tools for generating DNSSEC keys and signatures are now in the

bin/dnssec directory. Documentation for these programs can be found

in doc/arm/Bv9ARM.4.html and the man pages.

The random data used in generating DNSSEC keys and signatures comes from

either /dev/random (if the OS supports it) or keyboard input. Alternatively,

a device or file containing entropy/random data can be specified.

Serving Secure Zones

When acting as an authoritative name server, BIND9 includes KEY, SIG

and NXT records in responses as specified in RFC2535.

Response generation for wildcard records in secure zones is not fully

supported. Responses indicating the nonexistence of a name include a

NXT record proving the nonexistence of the name itself, but do not

include any NXT records to prove the nonexistence of a matching

wildcard record. Positive responses resulting from wildcard expansion

do not include the NXT records to prove the nonexistence of a

non-wildcard match or a more specific wildcard match.

Secure Resolution

Basic support for validation of DNSSEC signatures in responses has

been implemented but should still be considered experimental.

When acting as a caching name server, BIND9 is capable of performing

basic DNSSEC validation of positive as well as nonexistence responses.

This functionality is enabled by including a "trusted-keys" clause

in the configuration file, containing the top-level zone key of the

the DNSSEC tree.

Validation of wildcard responses is not currently supported. In

particular, a "name does not exist" response will validate

successfully even if it does not contain the NXT records to prove the

nonexistence of a matching wildcard.

Proof of insecure status for insecure zones delegated from secure

zones works when the zones are completely insecure. Privately

secured zones delegated from secure zones will not work in all cases,

such as when the privately secured zone is served by the same server

as an ancestor (but not parent) zone.

Handling of the CD bit in queries is now fully implemented. Validation

is not attempted for recursive queries if CD is set.

Secure Dynamic Update

Dynamic update of secure zones has been implemented, but may not be

complete. Affected NXT and SIG records are updated by the server when

an update occurs. Advanced access control is possible using the

"update-policy" statement in the zone definition.

Performance of Cryptographic Operations

The cryptographic primitives used by the BIND 9 DNSSEC implementation

are based on the OpenSSL library. A version of that library is

integrated into the distribution, but for portability reasons this

version does not make use of any platform-specific assembly language

routines.

On many platforms, particularly i386 and SPARC, a significant

improvement in signing and verification speed can be achieved linking

BIND 9 with a separate OpenSSL library that uses hand-optimized

assembly language routines. To do this, you need to install OpenSSL

version 0.9.5a or newer separately from the BIND 9 tree prior to

building BIND 9, using the default openssl configuration settings

which will cause it to be built with assembly language routines. Then

specifying the "--with-openssl" option to the BIND 9 configure script

to make BIND 9 link against the system openssl library rather than its

own. For example, if openssl was installed under /usr/local, use

"configure --with-openssl=/usr/local".

$Id: dnssec,v 1.10 2001/01/09 21:50:26 bwelling Exp $