Lawrence MacIntyre wrote:
Hi:

I have a name server running named on a closed network. The root servers name my node and another node (running DNS on a sidewinder firewall) as authoritative for our domain as well as several subdomains. Two of the subdomains have their own servers, and we configured our (allegedly authoritative) servers as slaves to the subdomain servers. This worked well for several years. Now, these subdomains have decided (for "security" reasons) that they are going to disallow zone transfers to us. So we set our servers to forward requests to the subdomain nameservers. The sidewinder does this, but our server doesn't. It simply reports that it has no information about any node in the subdomain. Remote users report that when they use dig +trace @ourserver node.in.subdomain, they see referrals to the Internet root servers. Our hints file has the correct root servers, and we don't even have a file listing the Internet root servers. I cannot verify their claims, as it doesn't do that when queried from our site, and I have no access to an account on any remote site.

What does named do when it is listed as authoritative for a domain by the root servers, but is configured to forward requests for addresses in that domain? Does anyone know how the remote users could see referrals to the Internet root servers even though we have the correct root servers set in our nameserver?
I started a long tirade about clueless admins who take the mantra "zone transfers are insecure" way too far, but I think the more terse and level-headed response is a) BIND will never recurse a non-recursive query, and non-recursive queries is what it gets when arbitrary resolvers query yours as a result of following the resolution of the query down the delegation chain (e.g. what one sees in dig +trace) b) if you want to recurse a query that wasn't recursive to begin with, I think this falls under the generic heading of "proxying DNS". BIND doesn't support that, but I'm presuming that's what the Sidewinder is doing, c) in architectural terms, you simply *cannot* be "authoritative" for a zone if you don't replicate the full contents of the zone, either in-protocol (AXFR/IXFR) or via some "out-of-band" mechanism (e.g. rsync), d) are these subdomains being hosted on BIND or something that supports TSIG? Perhaps offering to TSIG-authenticate your zone transfers might satisfy their security requirements...

- Kevin

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