On Apr 2, 2014, at 11:19 AM, 🔒 Roy Arends <r...@dnss.ec> wrote:
> 
> Just a thought that occured to me. Crypto-maffia folk are looking for a 
> minimum (i.e. at least so many bits otherwise its insecure). DNS-maffia folk 
> are looking for a maximum (i.e. at most soo many bits otherwise 
> fragmentation/fallback to tcp). It seems that the cryptomaffia’s minimum 
> might actually be larger than the DNS-maffia’s maximum.

The problem from the dns-op maximalist viewpoint is there is basically two 
magic numbers: 512B and ~1400B.  As someone who's measured this, the 512B is 
not a problem, but the 1400B "here be fragments" is.  Yet at the same time, the 
current 1024B ZSK/2048B KSK configuration on TLDs does blow through it: I 
reported in the previous thread how org's DNSKEY record already blew past that 
limit.


And even in that case, resolvers can handle "fragments don't work", albeit with 
a latency penalty.  So its not a "DNSSEC fails" point but simply "performance 
degraded".


So the real question is "do the common answers fragment", the ones with short 
TTLs that are accessed a lot, have a fragment problem.  With 2048b keys, they 
don't: the one that gets you is NSEC3, and that only blows up in your face on 
4096b keys.  (But boy does it, those 3 RRSIGs get big when you're using 4096b 
keys).


And please don't discount the psychology of the issue.  If DNSSEC wants to be 
taken seriously, it needs to show it.  Using short keys for root and the major 
TLDs, under the assumptions that it can't be cracked quickly (IMO, we have to 
assume 1024b can be.) and that old keys don't matter [1], is something that 
really does draw criticism.



[1] IMO they do until validators record and use a 'root key ratchet': never 
accept a key who's expiration is older than the inception date of the RRSIG on 
the youngest root ZSK seen, or have some other defense to roll-back-the-clock 
attacks.

--
Nicholas Weaver                  it is a tale, told by an idiot,
nwea...@icsi.berkeley.edu                full of sound and fury,
510-666-2903                                 .signifying nothing
PGP: http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/data/nweaver_pub.asc

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