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draft-ietf-dprive-bcp-op-12.txt
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dprive S. Dickinson
Internet-Draft Sinodun IT
Intended status: Best Current Practice B. Overeinder
Expires: January 7, 2021 R. van Rijswijk-Deij
NLnet Labs
A. Mankin
Salesforce
July 6, 2020
Recommendations for DNS Privacy Service Operators
draft-ietf-dprive-bcp-op-12
Abstract
This document presents operational, policy, and security
considerations for DNS recursive resolver operators who choose to
offer DNS Privacy services. With these recommendations, the operator
can make deliberate decisions regarding which services to provide,
and how the decisions and alternatives impact the privacy of users.
This document also presents a non-normative framework to assist
writers of a Recursive operator Privacy statement (analogous to DNS
Security Extensions (DNSSEC) Policies and DNSSEC Practice Statements
described in RFC6841).
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 7, 2021.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
Dickinson, et al. Expires January 7, 2021 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft DNS Privacy Service Recommendations July 2020
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Privacy-related documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Recommendations for DNS privacy services . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1. On the wire between client and server . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.1.1. Transport recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.1.2. Authentication of DNS privacy services . . . . . . . 8
5.1.3. Protocol recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.1.4. DNSSEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1.5. Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1.6. Service options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1.7. Impact of Encryption on Monitoring by DNS Privacy
Service Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1.8. Limitations of fronting a DNS privacy service with a
pure TLS proxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.2. Data at rest on the server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2.1. Data handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2.2. Data minimization of network traffic . . . . . . . . 15
5.2.3. IP address pseudonymization and anonymization methods 16
5.2.4. Pseudonymization, anonymization, or discarding of
other correlation data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2.5. Cache snooping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3. Data sent onwards from the server . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3.1. Protocol recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3.2. Client query obfuscation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.3.3. Data sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6. Recursive operator Privacy Statement (RPS) . . . . . . . . . 19
6.1. Outline of an RPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.1.1. Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.1.2. Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.2. Enforcement/accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7. IANA considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
8. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
10. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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11. Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Appendix A. Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
A.1. Potential increases in DNS privacy . . . . . . . . . . . 33
A.2. Potential decreases in DNS privacy . . . . . . . . . . . 34
A.3. Related operational documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Appendix B. IP address techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
B.1. Categorization of techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
B.2. Specific techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
B.2.1. Google Analytics non-prefix filtering . . . . . . . . 37
B.2.2. dnswasher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
B.2.3. Prefix-preserving map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
B.2.4. Cryptographic Prefix-Preserving Pseudonymization . . 38
B.2.5. Top-hash Subtree-replicated Anonymization . . . . . . 38
B.2.6. ipcipher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
B.2.7. Bloom filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Appendix C. Current policy and privacy statements . . . . . . . 39
Appendix D. Example RPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
D.1. Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
D.2. Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
1. Introduction
The Domain Name System (DNS) is at the core of the Internet; almost
every activity on the Internet starts with a DNS query (and often
several). However the DNS was not originally designed with strong
security or privacy mechanisms. A number of developments have taken
place in recent years which aim to increase the privacy of the DNS
system and these are now seeing some deployment. This latest
evolution of the DNS presents new challenges to operators and this
document attempts to provide an overview of considerations for
privacy focused DNS services.
In recent years there has also been an increase in the availability
of "public resolvers" [RFC8499] which users may prefer to use instead
of the default network resolver either because they offer a specific
feature (e.g., good reachability or encrypted transport) or because
the network resolver lacks a specific feature (e.g., strong privacy
policy or unfiltered responses). These open resolvers have tended to
be at the forefront of adoption of privacy-related enhancements but
it is anticipated that operators of other resolver services will
follow.
Whilst protocols that encrypt DNS messages on the wire provide
protection against certain attacks, the resolver operator still has
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(in principle) full visibility of the query data and transport
identifiers for each user. Therefore, a trust relationship (whether
explicit or implicit) is assumed to exist between each user and the
operator of the resolver(s) used by that user. The ability of the
operator to provide a transparent, well documented, and secure
privacy service will likely serve as a major differentiating factor
for privacy conscious users if they make an active selection of which
resolver to use.
It should also be noted that the choice of a user to configure a
single resolver (or a fixed set of resolvers) and an encrypted
transport to use in all network environments has both advantages and
disadvantages. For example, the user has a clear expectation of
which resolvers have visibility of their query data. However, this
resolver/transport selection may provide an added mechanism to track
them as they move across network environments. Commitments from
resolver operators to minimize such tracking as users move between
networks are also likely to play a role in user selection of
resolvers.
More recently the global legislative landscape with regard to
personal data collection, retention, and pseudonymization has seen
significant activity. Providing detailed practice advice about these
areas to the operator is out of scope, but Section 5.3.3 describes
some mitigations of data sharing risk.
This document has two main goals:
o To provide operational and policy guidance related to DNS over
encrypted transports and to outline recommendations for data
handling for operators of DNS privacy services.
o To introduce the Recursive operator Privacy Statement (RPS) and
present a framework to assist writers of an RPS. An RPS is a
document that an operator should publish which outlines their
operational practices and commitments with regard to privacy,
thereby providing a means for clients to evaluate both the
measurable and claimed privacy properties of a given DNS privacy
service. The framework identifies a set of elements and specifies
an outline order for them. This document does not, however,
define a particular privacy statement, nor does it seek to provide
legal advice as to the contents.
A desired operational impact is that all operators (both those
providing resolvers within networks and those operating large public
services) can demonstrate their commitment to user privacy thereby
driving all DNS resolution services to a more equitable footing.
Choices for users would (in this ideal world) be driven by other
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factors, e.g., differing security policies or minor difference in
operator policy, rather than gross disparities in privacy concerns.
Community insight [or judgment?] about operational practices can
change quickly, and experience shows that a Best Current Practice
(BCP) document about privacy and security is a point-in-time
statement. Readers are advised to seek out any updates that apply to
this document.
2. Scope
"DNS Privacy Considerations" [RFC7626] describes the general privacy
issues and threats associated with the use of the DNS by Internet
users and much of the threat analysis here is lifted from that
document and from [RFC6973]. However this document is limited in
scope to best practice considerations for the provision of DNS
privacy services by servers (recursive resolvers) to clients (stub
resolvers or forwarders). Choices that are made exclusively by the
end user, or those for operators of authoritative nameservers are out
of scope.
This document includes (but is not limited to) considerations in the
following areas:
1. Data "on the wire" between a client and a server.
2. Data "at rest" on a server (e.g., in logs).
3. Data "sent onwards" from the server (either on the wire or shared
with a third party).
Whilst the issues raised here are targeted at those operators who
choose to offer a DNS privacy service, considerations for areas 2 and
3 could equally apply to operators who only offer DNS over
unencrypted transports but who would otherwise like to align with
privacy best practice.
3. Privacy-related documents
There are various documents that describe protocol changes that have
the potential to either increase or decrease the privacy properties
of the DNS in various ways. Note this does not imply that some
documents are good or bad, better or worse, just that (for example)
some features may bring functional benefits at the price of a
reduction in privacy and conversely some features increase privacy
with an accompanying increase in complexity. A selection of the most
relevant documents are listed in Appendix A for reference.
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4. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
DNS terminology is as described in [RFC8499] with one modification:
we restate the clause in the original definition of Privacy-enabling
DNS server in [RFC8310] to include the requirement that a DNS over
(D)TLS server should also offer at least one of the credentials
described in Section 8 of [RFC8310] and implement the (D)TLS profile
described in Section 9 of [RFC8310].
Other Terms:
o RPS: Recursive operator Privacy Statement, see Section 6.
o DNS privacy service: The service that is offered via a privacy-
enabling DNS server and is documented either in an informal
statement of policy and practice with regard to users privacy or a
formal RPS.
5. Recommendations for DNS privacy services
In the following sections we first outline the threats relevant to
the specific topic and then discuss the potential actions that can be
taken to mitigate them.
We describe two classes of threats:
o Threats described in [RFC6973] 'Privacy Considerations for
Internet Protocols'
* Privacy terminology, threats to privacy, and mitigations as
described in Sections 3, 5, and 6 of [RFC6973].
o DNS Privacy Threats
* These are threats to the users and operators of DNS privacy
services that are not directly covered by [RFC6973]. These may
be more operational in nature such as certificate management or
service availability issues.
We describe three classes of actions that operators of DNS privacy
services can take:
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o Threat mitigation for well understood and documented privacy
threats to the users of the service and in some cases to the
operators of the service.
o Optimization of privacy services from an operational or management
perspective.
o Additional options that could further enhance the privacy and
usability of the service.
This document does not specify policy - only best practice, however
for DNS Privacy services to be considered compliant with these best
practice guidelines they SHOULD implement (where appropriate) all:
o Threat mitigations to be minimally compliant.
o Optimizations to be moderately compliant.
o Additional options to be maximally compliant.
The rest of this document does not use normative language but instead
refers only to the three differing classes of action which correspond
to the three named levels of compliance stated above. However,
compliance (to the indicated level) remains a normative requirement.
5.1. On the wire between client and server
In this section we consider both data on the wire and the service
provided to the client.
5.1.1. Transport recommendations
[RFC6973] Threats:
o Surveillance:
* Passive surveillance of traffic on the wire
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Active injection of spurious data or traffic.
Mitigations:
A DNS privacy service can mitigate these threats by providing service
over one or more of the following transports
o DNS over TLS (DoT) [RFC7858] and [RFC8310].
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o DNS over HTTPS (DoH) [RFC8484].
It is noted that a DNS privacy service can also be provided over DNS-
over-DTLS [RFC8094], however this is an Experimental specification
and there are no known implementations at the time of writing.
It is also noted that DNS privacy service might be provided over
IPSec, DNSCrypt, or VPNs. However, there are no specific RFCs that
cover the use of these transports for DNS and any discussion of best
practice for providing such a service is out of scope for this
document.
Whilst encryption of DNS traffic can protect against active injection
this does not diminish the need for DNSSEC, see Section 5.1.4.
5.1.2. Authentication of DNS privacy services
[RFC6973] Threats:
o Surveillance:
* Active attacks on client resolver configuration
Mitigations:
DNS privacy services should ensure clients can authenticate the
server. Note that this, in effect, commits the DNS privacy service
to a public identity users will trust.
When using DoT, clients that select a 'Strict Privacy' usage profile
[RFC8310] (to mitigate the threat of active attack on the client)
require the ability to authenticate the DNS server. To enable this,
DNS privacy services that offer DNS-over-TLS need to provide
credentials that will be accepted by the client's trust model, in the
form of either X.509 certificates [RFC5280] or Subject Public Key
Info (SPKI) pin sets [RFC8310].
When offering DoH [RFC8484], HTTPS requires authentication of the
server as part of the protocol.
Server operators should also follow the best practices with regard to
certificate revocation as described in [RFC7525].
5.1.2.1. Certificate management
Anecdotal evidence to date highlights the management of certificates
as one of the more challenging aspects for operators of traditional
DNS resolvers that choose to additionally provide a DNS privacy
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service as management of such credentials is new to those DNS
operators.
It is noted that SPKI pin set management is described in [RFC7858]
but that key pinning mechanisms in general have fallen out of favor
operationally for various reasons such as the logistical overhead of
rolling keys.
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Invalid certificates, resulting in an unavailable service which
might force a user to fallback to cleartext.
o Mis-identification of a server by a client e.g., typos in DoH URL
templates [RFC8484] or authentication domain names [RFC8310] which
accidentally direct clients to attacker controlled servers.
Mitigations:
It is recommended that operators:
o Follow the guidance in Section 6.5 of [RFC7525] with regards to
certificate revocation.
o Automate the generation, publication, and renewal of certificates.
For example, ACME [RFC8555] provides a mechanism to actively
manage certificates through automation and has been implemented by
a number of certificate authorities.
o Monitor certificates to prevent accidental expiration of
certificates.
o Choose a short, memorable authentication domain name for the
service.
5.1.3. Protocol recommendations
5.1.3.1. DoT
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Known attacks on TLS such as those described in [RFC7457].
o Traffic analysis, for example: [Pitfalls-of-DNS-Encryption].
o Potential for client tracking via transport identifiers.
o Blocking of well known ports (e.g., 853 for DoT).
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Mitigations:
In the case of DoT, TLS profiles from Section 9 of [RFC8310] and the
Countermeasures to DNS Traffic Analysis from section 11.1 of
[RFC8310] provide strong mitigations. This includes but is not
limited to:
o Adhering to [RFC7525].
o Implementing only (D)TLS 1.2 or later as specified in [RFC8310].
o Implementing EDNS(0) Padding [RFC7830] using the guidelines in
[RFC8467] or a successor specification.
o Servers should not degrade in any way the query service level
provided to clients that do not use any form of session resumption
mechanism, such as TLS session resumption [RFC5077] with TLS 1.2,
section 2.2 of [RFC8446], or Domain Name System (DNS) Cookies
[RFC7873].
o A DoT privacy service on both port 853 and 443. If the operator
deploys DoH on the same IP address this requires the use of the
'dot' ALPN value [dot-ALPN].
Optimizations:
o Concurrent processing of pipelined queries, returning responses as
soon as available, potentially out of order as specified in
[RFC7766]. This is often called 'OOOR' - out-of-order responses
(providing processing performance similar to HTTP multiplexing).
o Management of TLS connections to optimize performance for clients
using [RFC7766] and EDNS(0) Keepalive [RFC7828]
Additional Options:
Management of TLS connections to optimize performance for clients
using DNS Stateful Operations [RFC8490].
5.1.3.2. DoH
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Known attacks on TLS such as those described in [RFC7457].
o Traffic analysis, for example: [DNS-Privacy-not-so-private].
o Potential for client tracking via transport identifiers.
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Mitigations:
o Clients must be able to forgo the use of HTTP Cookies [RFC6265]
and still use the service.
o Use of HTTP/2 padding and/or EDNS(0) padding as described in
Section 9 of [RFC8484]
o Clients should not be required to include any headers beyond the
absolute minimum to obtain service from a DoH server. (See
Section 6.1 of [I-D.ietf-httpbis-bcp56bis].)
5.1.4. DNSSEC
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Users may be directed to bogus IP addresses which, depending on
the application, protocol and authentication method, might lead
users to reveal personal information to attackers. One example is
a website that doesn't use TLS or its TLS authentication can
somehow be subverted.
Mitigations:
o All DNS privacy services must offer a DNS privacy service that
performs Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)
validation. In addition they must be able to provide the DNSSEC
RRs to the client so that it can perform its own validation.
The addition of encryption to DNS does not remove the need for DNSSEC
[RFC4033] - they are independent and fully compatible protocols, each
solving different problems. The use of one does not diminish the
need nor the usefulness of the other.
While the use of an authenticated and encrypted transport protects
origin authentication and data integrity between a client and a DNS
privacy service it provides no proof (for a non-validating client)
that the data provided by the DNS privacy service was actually DNSSEC
authenticated. As with cleartext DNS the user is still solely
trusting the AD bit (if present) set by the resolver.
It should also be noted that the use of an encrypted transport for
DNS actually solves many of the practical issues encountered by DNS
validating clients e.g. interference by middleboxes with cleartext
DNS payloads is completely avoided. In this sense a validating
client that uses a DNS privacy service which supports DNSSEC has a
far simpler task in terms of DNSSEC Roadblock avoidance [RFC8027].
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5.1.5. Availability
DNS Privacy Threats:
o A failed DNS privacy service could force the user to switch
providers, fallback to cleartext or accept no DNS service for the
outage.
Mitigations:
A DNS privacy service should strive to engineer encrypted services to
the same availability level as any unencrypted services they provide.
Particular care should to be taken to protect DNS privacy services
against denial-of-service attacks, as experience has shown that
unavailability of DNS resolving because of attacks is a significant
motivation for users to switch services. See, for example
Section IV-C of [Passive-Observations-of-a-Large-DNS].
Techniques such as those described in Section 10 of [RFC7766] can be
of use to operators to defend against such attacks.
5.1.6. Service options
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Unfairly disadvantaging users of the privacy service with respect
to the services available. This could force the user to switch
providers, fallback to cleartext or accept no DNS service for the
outage.
Mitigations:
A DNS privacy service should deliver the same level of service as
offered on un-encrypted channels in terms of options such as
filtering (or lack thereof), DNSSEC validation, etc.
5.1.7. Impact of Encryption on Monitoring by DNS Privacy Service
Operators
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Increased use of encryption can impact DNS privacy service
operator ability to monitor traffic and therefore manage their DNS
servers [RFC8404].
Many monitoring solutions for DNS traffic rely on the plain text
nature of this traffic and work by intercepting traffic on the wire,
either using a separate view on the connection between clients and
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the resolver, or as a separate process on the resolver system that
inspects network traffic. Such solutions will no longer function
when traffic between clients and resolvers is encrypted. Many DNS
privacy service operators still have need to inspect DNS traffic,
e.g., to monitor for network security threats. Operators may
therefore need to invest in alternative means of monitoring that
relies on either the resolver software directly, or exporting DNS
traffic from the resolver using e.g., [dnstap].
Optimization:
When implementing alternative means for traffic monitoring, operators
of a DNS privacy service should consider using privacy conscious
means to do so (see section Section 5.2 for more details on data
handling and also the discussion on the use of Bloom Filters in
Appendix B.
5.1.8. Limitations of fronting a DNS privacy service with a pure TLS
proxy
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Limited ability to manage or monitor incoming connections using
DNS specific techniques.
o Misconfiguration (e.g., of the target server address in the proxy
configuration) could lead to data leakage if the proxy to target
server path is not encrypted.
Optimization:
Some operators may choose to implement DoT using a TLS proxy (e.g.
[nginx], [haproxy], or [stunnel]) in front of a DNS nameserver
because of proven robustness and capacity when handling large numbers
of client connections, load balancing capabilities and good tooling.
Currently, however, because such proxies typically have no specific
handling of DNS as a protocol over TLS or DTLS using them can
restrict traffic management at the proxy layer and at the DNS server.
For example, all traffic received by a nameserver behind such a proxy
will appear to originate from the proxy and DNS techniques such as
ACLs, RRL, or DNS64 will be hard or impossible to implement in the
nameserver.
Operators may choose to use a DNS aware proxy such as [dnsdist] which
offers custom options (similar to that proposed in
[I-D.bellis-dnsop-xpf]) to add source information to packets to
address this shortcoming. It should be noted that such options
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potentially significantly increase the leaked information in the
event of a misconfiguration.
5.2. Data at rest on the server
5.2.1. Data handling
[RFC6973] Threats:
o Surveillance.
o Stored data compromise.
o Correlation.
o Identification.
o Secondary use.
o Disclosure.
Other Threats
o Contravention of legal requirements not to process user data.
Mitigations:
The following are recommendations relating to common activities for
DNS service operators and in all cases data retention should be
minimized or completely avoided if possible for DNS privacy services.
If data is retained it should be encrypted and either aggregated,
pseudonymized, or anonymized whenever possible. In general the
principle of data minimization described in [RFC6973] should be
applied.
o Transient data (e.g., that is used for real time monitoring and
threat analysis which might be held only in memory) should be
retained for the shortest possible period deemed operationally
feasible.
o The retention period of DNS traffic logs should be only those
required to sustain operation of the service and, to the extent
that such exists, meet regulatory requirements.
o DNS privacy services should not track users except for the
particular purpose of detecting and remedying technically
malicious (e.g., DoS) or anomalous use of the service.
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o Data access should be minimized to only those personnel who
require access to perform operational duties. It should also be
limited to anonymized or pseudonymized data where operationally
feasible, with access to full logs (if any are held) only
permitted when necessary.
Optimizations:
o Consider use of full disk encryption for logs and data capture
storage.
5.2.2. Data minimization of network traffic
Data minimization refers to collecting, using, disclosing, and
storing the minimal data necessary to perform a task, and this can be
achieved by removing or obfuscating privacy-sensitive information in
network traffic logs. This is typically personal data, or data that
can be used to link a record to an individual, but may also include
revealing other confidential information, for example on the
structure of an internal corporate network.
The problem of effectively ensuring that DNS traffic logs contain no
or minimal privacy-sensitive information is not one that currently
has a generally agreed solution or any standards to inform this
discussion. This section presents an overview of current techniques
to simply provide reference on the current status of this work.
Research into data minimization techniques (and particularly IP
address pseudonymization/anonymization) was sparked in the late
1990s/early 2000s, partly driven by the desire to share significant
corpuses of traffic captures for research purposes. Several
techniques reflecting different requirements in this area and
different performance/resource tradeoffs emerged over the course of
the decade. Developments over the last decade have been both a
blessing and a curse; the large increase in size between an IPv4 and
an IPv6 address, for example, renders some techniques impractical,
but also makes available a much larger amount of input entropy, the
better to resist brute force re-identification attacks that have
grown in practicality over the period.
Techniques employed may be broadly categorized as either
anonymization or pseudonymization. The following discussion uses the
definitions from [RFC6973] Section 3, with additional observations
from [van-Dijkhuizen-et-al.]
o Anonymization. To enable anonymity of an individual, there must
exist a set of individuals that appear to have the same
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attribute(s) as the individual. To the attacker or the observer,
these individuals must appear indistinguishable from each other.
o Pseudonymization. The true identity is deterministically replaced
with an alternate identity (a pseudonym). When the
pseudonymization schema is known, the process can be reversed, so
the original identity becomes known again.
In practice there is a fine line between the two; for example, how to
categorize a deterministic algorithm for data minimization of IP
addresses that produces a group of pseudonyms for a single given
address.
5.2.3. IP address pseudonymization and anonymization methods
A major privacy risk in DNS is connecting DNS queries to an
individual and the major vector for this in DNS traffic is the client
IP address.
There is active discussion in the space of effective pseudonymization
of IP addresses in DNS traffic logs, however there seems to be no
single solution that is widely recognized as suitable for all or most
use cases. There are also as yet no standards for this that are
unencumbered by patents.
Appendix B provides a more detailed survey of various techniques
employed or under development in 2019.
5.2.4. Pseudonymization, anonymization, or discarding of other
correlation data
DNS Privacy Threats:
o Fingerprinting of the client OS via various means including: IP
TTL/Hoplimit, TCP parameters (e.g., window size, ECN support,
SACK), OS specific DNS query patterns (e.g., for network
connectivity, captive portal detection, or OS specific updates).
o Fingerprinting of the client application or TLS library by, e.g.,
HTTP headers (e.g., User-Agent, Accept, Accept-Encoding), TLS
version/Cipher suite combinations, or other connection parameters.
o Correlation of queries on multiple TCP sessions originating from
the same IP address.
o Correlating of queries on multiple TLS sessions originating from
the same client, including via session resumption mechanisms.
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o Resolvers _might_ receive client identifiers, e.g., MAC addresses
in EDNS(0) options - some Customer-premises equipment (CPE)
devices are known to add them [MAC-address-EDNS].
Mitigations:
o Data minimization or discarding of such correlation data.
5.2.5. Cache snooping
[RFC6973] Threats:
o Surveillance:
* Profiling of client queries by malicious third parties.
Mitigations:
o See [ISC-Knowledge-database-on-cache-snooping] for an example
discussion on defending against cache snooping.
5.3. Data sent onwards from the server
In this section we consider both data sent on the wire in upstream
queries and data shared with third parties.
5.3.1. Protocol recommendations
[RFC6973] Threats:
o Surveillance:
* Transmission of identifying data upstream.
Mitigations:
As specified in [RFC8310] for DoT but applicable to any DNS Privacy
services the server should:
o Implement QNAME minimization [RFC7816].
o Honor a SOURCE PREFIX-LENGTH set to 0 in a query containing the
EDNS(0) Client Subnet (ECS) option ([RFC7871] Section 7.1.2).
Optimizations:
o As per Section 2 of [RFC7871] the server should either:
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* not use the ECS option in upstream queries at all, or
* offer alternative services, one that sends ECS and one that
does not.
If operators do offer a service that sends the ECS options upstream
they should use the shortest prefix that is operationally feasible
and ideally use a policy of allowlisting upstream servers to send ECS
to in order to reduce data leakage. Operators should make clear in
any policy statement what prefix length they actually send and the
specific policy used.
Allowlisting has the benefit that not only does the operator know
which upstream servers can use ECS but also allows the operator to
decide which upstream servers apply privacy policies that the
operator is happy with. However some operators consider allowlisting
to incur significant operational overhead compared to dynamic
detection of ECS support on authoritative servers.
Additional options:
o Aggressive Use of DNSSEC-Validated Cache [RFC8198] and [RFC8020]
(NXDOMAIN: There Really Is Nothing Underneath) to reduce the
number of queries to authoritative servers to increase privacy.
o Run a copy of the root zone on loopback [RFC7706] to avoid making
queries to the root servers that might leak information.
5.3.2. Client query obfuscation
Additional options:
Since queries from recursive resolvers to authoritative servers are
performed using cleartext (at the time of writing), resolver services
need to consider the extent to which they may be directly leaking
information about their client community via these upstream queries
and what they can do to mitigate this further. Note, that even when
all the relevant techniques described above are employed there may
still be attacks possible, e.g. [Pitfalls-of-DNS-Encryption]. For
example, a resolver with a very small community of users risks
exposing data in this way and ought to obfuscate this traffic by
mixing it with 'generated' traffic to make client characterization
harder. The resolver could also employ aggressive pre-fetch
techniques as a further measure to counter traffic analysis.