Hi Shane,

On Jul 29, 2017, at 09:05, Shane Kerr <sh...@time-travellers.org> wrote:

> I guess that I understand your concern, but we don't have any way to 
> authenticate servers in DNS today and we already send error messages back. 
> 
> I'm happy with error codes that are informational, but don't change client 
> behavior. Yes, I realize that users may be tricked, but that's also the case 
> today, right? 

In the case of validation failures, today a DNS client (of whatever kind) can 
receive a SERVFAIL of unknown authenticity from a resolver and has to do more 
work to figure out what that means. It can't just assume that there has been a 
validation failure upstream. Ultimately it can re-fetch records with CD=1 and 
do its own validation if it needs to understand the reason for the failure in 
detail.

The motivation for extended RCODEs is to be able to provide more fine-grained 
indiciations to a client than are currently provided. In the case of a 
conventional SERVFAIL response, for example, the client might also receive some 
information that further indicates that the reason for the SERVFAIL was an 
upstream validation failure.

It feels like there is more potential in this second case for a client to 
believe what it was told and avoid further checking (this is an example of your 
"change client behaviour"). Without an authenticated response, should we not be 
concerned about the threat that a bogus response from a third party system 
might mask an otherwise legitimate and positive response? If client behaviour 
is not supposed to change when you return an extended RCODE, why bother 
returning one?

I'm not saying this particular threat is credible or high-probability 
necessarily, but it seems sensible to think about this with a little more 
energy than "it's no worse than what we have today". Maybe the answer is to say 
"don't use this mechanism to indicate validation failures". Maybe there's a 
different approach that could accommodate signed extended responses, and 
writing that up from scratch is more sensible than adapting what's currently on 
the table. I'm not presupposing the answer, just thinking aloud.

I don't have a strong opinion about it, but it does seem reasonable to consider 
these kinds of things before assuming that any particular draft fits the 
requirements and should be adopted.

Nothing against Warren's fine draftsmanship, of course!


Joe
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