Growing support for open security standards in Switzerland

Open security standards are essential for a secure and resilient Internet in Switzerland and protect the privacy of Swiss Internet users. The adoption rate for Internet security standards like DNSSEC, DANE and DMARC in Switzerland is still low compared to the leading countries in Europe, but there is more and more support from the Internet industry, authorities and not for profit organizations in Switzerland.

Why are open security standards so important?

The implementation of open security standards that come out of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), reduce the attack surface of the domain/service owner. But even more important, a growing implementation rate reduces the attack surface of the internet as a whole and makes the life of cyber criminals and state actors more challenging. Open security standards provide different mechanisms to secure our communication on the internet, most important encryption and authentication. Encryption keeps our communication on the internet confidential and prevents third parties from reading our emails and tracking on which web sites users spend their time. Authentication allows us to identify and authenticate our communications partners, it makes sure that we are not on a fake website or send emails or our login credentials to a rogue email server. Continue reading “Growing support for open security standards in Switzerland”

100’000 .ch domain names are secured with DNSSEC!

Imagine you want to visit your online banking website «www.example-bank.ch». Now, instead of getting the correct IP address your computer gets manipulated information and connects you to a website that is owned by a criminal. You wouldn’t notice but disclose your online banking credentials to the attacker.

Luckily, DNSSEC is here to help. The extension of DNS protects you from being misled and helps you reach exactly the address you typed into your browser. A complex cryptographic process makes sure, that you’re always at the right place.

100’000 .ch domain names are signed with DNSSEC

In late December 2019 the .ch zone achieved a milestone with 100’000 DNSSEC secured domains. DNSSEC adds digital signatures to DNS answers and helps to mitigate attacks on DNS name resolution.

The percentage of .ch domain names that are signed is still below 5%, but is rising thanks to a few registrars like Infomaniak, OVH, Firestorm and netzone that sign domain names for their customers by default. The number of DNSSEC signed .ch domain names rose  54% from 1.1.2019 to 1.1.2020.

By January 1st 2020 the .ch zone contained 100’065 domain names that are secured with DNSSEC

Top .ch domain names are just average regarding domain name security

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DNSSEC Usage in Switzerland is on the rise after widespread attacks on the Domain Name System

Attacks on the DNS System

Cyber attacks on the DNS system are not new. Cache poisoning, Domain Hijacking and BGP injections of routes to public DNS resolvers happen regularly, but they usually don’t get much attention as they target the Internet’s core infrastructure and are not directly visible to end users in most cases. This time it was different. The recent widespread DNS hijacking attacks on several Mid East, North African and European and North American governments and infrastructure providers, published by Ciscos Talos showed that DNS attacks are a real threat to cyber security. Netnod, one of the affected infrastructure providers issued a statement, that called, amongst other domain security mechanisms, for the implementation of the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC).

The analysis of these attacks also convinced the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that there is an ongoing and significant risk to key parts of the System (DNS) infrastructure. ICANN issued a call for “Full DNSSEC Deployment to Protect the Internet” across all unsecured domain names.

The question is if  these attacks and the awareness that DNSSEC is an absolute essential base layer protection for domain names had some effects on the Implementation of DNSSEC Switzerland?

More DNSSEC signed domain names

As a ccTLD operator SWITCH publishes the number of DNSSEC signed .ch and .li domain names every month. While the number of signed domain names is still very low at around 3-4% we see a rise in the numbers of signed domain names for two years now.

DNSSEC signed .ch domain names 1.4.2019

Continue reading “DNSSEC Usage in Switzerland is on the rise after widespread attacks on the Domain Name System”

Taking Advantage of DNSSEC

According to measurements by APNIC’s Geoff Huston currently 16 percent of Swiss Internet users use a DNSSEC validating DNS resolver. If you want to benefit from the added security with DNSSEC in your network then I suggest you enable DNSSEC validation in your network as well. SurfNet published a deployment guide recently that takes BIND 9.x, Unbound and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 into account.

Enabling DNSSEC validation on your DNS resolvers is one simple step and it protects you from DNS Cache Poisoning. However, if it were only for this, then the DNSSEC protocol complexity would come at a high cost for only providing this one benefit. In fact, DNSSEC is much more than only a protection from Cache Poisoning. It’s a new PKI in DNS and if you have signed your zone and are already validating then you can take advantage of that PKI. Some use cases are described below but there are many more ideas which are currently discussed.
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Verbindungsprobleme bei der DNS Namensauflösung erkennen

Die ursprüngliche Spezifikation von DNS-Nachrichten (RFC 1035), welche über UDP gesendet werden, ist auf 512 Bytes begrenzt. Bereits Ende der Neunzigerjahre wurde mit dem “Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)” (RFC 2671) eine Erweiterung für das DNS-Protokoll festgelegt, welche es u.a. dem Client erlaubt eine grössere Buffergrösse bekannt zu geben.

Die meisten DNS Resolver-Implementierungen kündigen eine Buffergrösse von 4096 Bytes an. Das heisst aber auch, dass bei einer maximalen Paketgrösse (Maximum Transmission Unit, MTU) von 1500 Bytes eine Fragmentierung der Datenpakete stattfindet. Die Vergangenheit hat gezeigt, dass viele Netzwerk- und Sicherheitsprodukte diese Protokolländerung noch nicht mitgekriegt haben und auf eine kleinere Paketgrösse bestehen. Für DNSSEC ist die EDNS0-Erweiterung eine Voraussetzung, da durch die Signierung der Daten die Paketgrösse ansteigt.

Die Unterstützung einer grossen Buffergrösse von Ihrem DNS-Resolver zur Aussenwelt ist aber auch relevant, wenn Sie keine DNSSEC-Validierung auf dem DNS-Resolver aktiviert haben. Aktuelle DNS-Resolver kennzeichnen die Unterstützung von DNSSEC (durch das DO-bit, Bezeichnung “DNSSEC OK”-bit, RFC 3225) und erhalten deshalb in der Antwort die DNSSEC-Signaturen, auch wenn der DNS-Resolver die Validierung nicht aktiviert hat.
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DDoS-Angriffe durch Reflektierende DNS-Amplifikation vermeiden

Das DNS (Domain Name System) Protokoll ist momentan das häufigst missbrauchte Protokoll für Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Angriffe. Wurden früher vor allem öffentlich erreichbare DNS-Resolver (Open Resolver) als Amplifikator verwendet, werden heute zunehmend autoritative DNS-Server benutzt.

Was sind reflektierende DNS-Amplifikation-DDoS-Angriffe?
Bei reflektierenden DNS-Amplifikation-DDoS-Angriffen versenden infizierte Clients (meistens aus einem Botnet) tausende von DNS-Anfragen an autoritative DNS-Server, welche als Amplifikator missbraucht werden. Die DNS-Anfragen werden mit der IP-Adresse des Opfers gefälscht. Die autoritativen DNS-Server beantworten die DNS-Anfragen, wobei die Antwort ein Mehrfaches der Anfragegrösse sein kann. Für DNSSEC-signierte Zonen kann schnell ein Amplifikationsfaktor von über 40 entstehen.

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DNSSEC – Einführung zu DNS Security Extensions

Das Domain Name System (DNS) ist ein wichtiger Bestandteil des Internets. Aus Endbenutzersicht erscheint das Internet oft zusammengebrochen, wenn die Namensauflösung nicht funktioniert. In den letzten Jahren wurden Schwachstellen im Protokoll aufgedeckt, welche es erlauben, DNS-Antworten für einen DNS-Resolver zu manipulieren. Um die Vertrauenswürdigkeit der Daten sicherzustellen, wurde die Erweiterung DNSSEC entwickelt.

Was ist DNSSEC?

DNSSEC ist eine Erweiterung des Domain Namen Systems (DNS), die dazu dient, die Echtheit (Authentizität) und die Vollständigkeit (Integrität) der Daten von DNS-Antworten sicherzustellen.

Continue reading “DNSSEC – Einführung zu DNS Security Extensions”