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Re: [DNSOP] Practical issues deploying DNSSEC into the home.

2013-09-11 10:44:54
OK lets consider the trust requirements here.

1. We only need to know the current time to an accuracy of 1 hour.

2. The current time is a matter of convention rather than a natural
property. It is therefore impossible to determine the time without
reference to at least one trusted party.

2a) A trusted party that asserts that the current time is set to a date in
the future can perform a denial of service attack on a relying party but
one that is easily detected.

2b) It is a simple matter for the trusted party to provide a signed
assertion that the current time is after the Date-Time X. The hard part is
ensuring that the relying party can access an up to date version of the
current time assertion.

2c) DNSSEC already provides an abundance of such assertions. If the
signatures on the .com zone are claiming a date in the future then the
whole viability of DNSSEC collapses.

3) A relying party thus requires a demonstration that is secure against a
replay attack from one or more trusted parties to be assured that the time
assertion presented is current but this need not necessarily be the same as
the source of the signed time assertion itself.

4) In the case of DNSSEC the window of vulnerability is actually fairly
small since rewinding the time to a date in the past only helps an attacker
if they had compromised the system on that date.


The real design decision is who you decide you are going to rely on for
(3). TLS is proof against replay attack due to the exchange of nonces.
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