Naming Jennifer Rexford Advanced Computer Networks Tuesdays/Thursdays 1:30pm-2:50pm

Goals of Today’s Lecture Names in the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) –DNS server hierarchy –DNS queries and responses –DNS caching –Improving DNS reliability DNS security vulnerabilities –DNS cache poisoning and home-network attacks Use of DNS for (Web) server load balancing Beyond today’s naming and DNS

Names

Names in the Internet What gets named? –Hosts, especially servers –E.g., or ftp.cs.princeton.edu What format do names have? –Human-readable for ease of remembering –Decentralized, hierarchical allocation of names Why are names separate from addresses? –Names are easier (for humans) to remember –Allows IP addresses to change over time –Allows many-to-one and one-to-many mapping

Names in the Internet When are names translated to addresses? –Before IP-level communication begins –To learn the IP address of the remote end-point Who requests the translation? –The end-host initiating the communication Can addresses be translated back to names? –Yes, useful for access control, customization of content, interpreting measurement data, etc. –Though not always necessary or possible

Domain Name System (DNS) Proposed in 1983 by Paul Mockapetris

Key Concepts Underlying DNS Indirection –Use of names in place of addresses –Queries from local servers rather than end hosts Hierarchy –For scalability Many servers to handle the large load of queries –For decentralized control Of assigning unique names Of deploying and running DNS servers Caching –Of information from each level in the hierarchy –On behalf of variety of users at an organization

Variable-Depth Tree comeduorgac uk zw arpa unnamed root bar westeast foomy ac cam usr in- addr generic domainscountry domains my.east.bar.edu usr.cam.ac.uk /24

DNS Root Servers 13 root servers (see –Labeled A through M B USC-ISI Marina del Rey, CA L ICANN Los Angeles, CA E NASA Mt View, CA F Internet Software C. Palo Alto, CA (and 17 other locations) I Autonomica, Stockholm (plus 3 other locations) K RIPE London (also Amsterdam, Frankfurt) m WIDE Tokyo A Verisign, Dulles, VA C Cogent, Herndon, VA (also Los Angeles) D U Maryland College Park, MD G US DoD Vienna, VA H ARL Aberdeen, MD J Verisign (11 locations)

TLD and Authoritative DNS Servers Top-level domain (TLD) servers –Generic domains (e.g., com, org, edu) –Country domains (e.g., uk, fr, ca, jp) –Typically managed professionally Network Solutions maintains servers for “com” Educause maintains servers for “edu” Authoritative DNS servers –Provide public records for hosts at an organization –For organization’s servers (e.g., Web and mail) –Can be maintained locally or by a service provider

Local DNS Server and End-Host Resolver Local DNS server (“default name server”) –Usually near the end hosts who use it –Local hosts configured with local server (e.g., /etc/resolv.conf) or learn via DHCP End-host resolver –Triggered by application making system call –E.g., gethostbyname() or gethostbyaddr() –Sends query to the local DNS server

requesting host cis.poly.edu gaia.cs.umass.edu root DNS server local DNS server dns.poly.edu authoritative DNS server dns.cs.umass.edu 7 8 TLD DNS server Example Host at cis.poly.edu wants IP address for gaia.cs.umass.edu

Recursive vs. Iterative Queries Recursive query –Ask server to get answer for you –E.g., request 1 and response 8 Iterative query –Ask server who to ask next –E.g., all other request-response pairs requesting host cis.poly.edu root DNS server local DNS server dns.poly.edu authoritative DNS server dns.cs.umass.edu 7 8 TLD DNS server

DNS Caching Performing all these queries take time –All before the actual communication takes place –E.g., 1 sec latency before starting Web download Caching can substantially reduce overhead –The top-level servers very rarely change –Popular sites (e.g., visited often –Local DNS server often has the information cached How DNS caching works –DNS servers cache responses to queries –Responses include a “time to live” (TTL) field –Server deletes the cached entry after TTL expires

Negative Caching Remember things that don’t work –Misspellings like and –These can take a long time to fail the first time –Good to remember that they don’t work Benefits of negative caching –Reduce time to respond the next time –Avoid placing high load on other DNS servers

DNS Resource Records (RRs) Distributed database storing resource records RR format: (name, value, type, ttl) Type=A –name is hostname –value is IP address Type=NS –name is domain (e.g. foo.com) –value is hostname of authoritative name server for this domain Type=CNAME –name is alias name for some “canonical” (the real) name – is really east.backup2.ibm.com Type=MX –value is name of the mail server associated with name

Inserting Resource Records into DNS Example: just created startup “FooBar” Register foobar.com at Network Solutions –Provide registrar with names and addresses of your authoritative name server (primary and secondary) –Registrar inserts two RRs into the com TLD server: (foobar.com, dns1.foobar.com, NS) (dns1.foobar.com, , A) Put in authoritative server dns1.foobar.com –Type A record for –Type MX record for foobar.com

DNS Protocol DNS protocol : query and reply messages, both with same message format Message header Identification: 16 bit # for query, reply to query uses same # Flags: –Query or reply –Recursion desired –Recursion available –Reply is authoritative

Reliability DNS servers are replicated –Name service available if at least one replica is up –Queries can be load balanced between replicas UDP used for queries –Need reliability: must implement this on top of UDP Try alternate servers on timeout –Exponential backoff when retrying same server Same identifier for all queries –Don’t care which server responds

Reliability: IP Anycast Multiple replicas with same IP address –Replicas located at multiple geographic locations –Routing system directs query to “closest” replica Used especially for the root DNS servers –Can add more servers and locations without adding new IP addresses for the root servers /24 Root server

Bogus Queries at Root Server (Wessels03 Paper) Many kinds of bogus queries –Undefined DNS query types –Name-to-address queries on IP addresses –Unknown TLD (e.g., “.elvis”) or ill-formed address (e.g., “ in-addr.arpa”) –Queries on private IP addresses (e.g., ) –Repeated queries (e.g., retransmissions due to packet filters dropping the DNS responses) Less than 2% of queries were legitimate!

DNS Security

DNS Cache Poisoning Suppose an attacker owns sub.example.com –And wants to control wikipedia.org’s domain Receives a legitimate request for the address records of sub.example.com –“sub.example.com IN A” Redirects to target domain & assigns address –“example.com IN NS ns.wikipedia.org” –“ns.wikipedia.org IN A w.x.y.z” (a glue record) Vulnerable server caches additional A record –Now attacker, who controls w.x.y.z can resolve queries for the entire wikipedia.org domain

DNS Cache Poisoning (Continued) DNS forgery is another approach –Beating the real answer to a recursive DNS query DNS server tries to resolve –Attacker sends a forged response –Challenging: needs to match 16-bit ID and port # Overcoming the challenges –Some servers increment the id and use fixed port –Some servers accept queries from anyone So attacker can send *queries* to the server for to trigger the server to make more queries of its own

Preventing DNS Cache Poisoning Making DNS servers less trusting –Ignore records not directly relevant to the query Making it harder to guess query id –Using cryptographically secure random numbers –(Some early servers use bad random number generators) Disallowing DNS queries from outsider –Filtering DNS queries based on source IP address Ensuring the authenticity of the data –DNSSEC using digital certificates (not widely deployed) Ensuring the right transport or application connection to avoid talking to wrong endpoint –Using HTTPs or SSH with digital certificates

Recent DNS Attack Poisoning authoritative records –For the entire domain (e.g., bankofsteve.com) –Rather than an individual address Even against well-protected servers –E.g., those that randomize the query id –By sending many, many requests to the server Need to make sure query results aren’t cached –Send many queries for random domain names –E.g., www bankofsteve.com –Attack can be successful within (say) 10 seconds The patch: randomize source port number, too

DNS Attacks on Edge Networks Many end hosts check local “hosts” file first –… before sending queries to local DNS server Malware can add entries to this file –… to direct certain domains to different addresses Many home networks have a local DNS server –… running on a local network router Attacker can compromise the router –… and reconfigure the next DNS server –… or completely overwrite the firmware

DNS-Based Load Balancing

Directing Web Clients to Replicas: Different Names Simple approach: different names –www1.cnn.com, www2.cnn.com, www3.cnn.com –But, this requires users to select specific replicas www1 www2 Web server

Directing Web Clients to Replicas: Different Addresses More elegant approach: different IP addresses –Single name (e.g., multiple addresses –E.g., , , , … Authoritative DNS server returns many addresses –And the local DNS server selects one address –Authoritative server may vary the order of addresses Web server

Directing Web Clients to Replicas: Finer Control Web sites need greater flexibility –For load balancing over the Web server replicas –Directing Web clients to the closest server –Directing clients to customized version of content Different DNS responses to different queries! Web server

Challenges of Fine-Grain Control Frequent modification to DNS records –To exercise fine-grain control –To remove IP addresses for failed replicas Inferring the Web client location –Based on the IP address of local DNS server –And mapping to topological or geographic location Caching of query results at the local DNS server –Sending the same cached result to many users Even setting small TTL is not fully effective –Many Web browsers cache the resolved address –And smaller TTLs add latency and DNS server load Load balancing at machine level, not Web object

Beyond Today’s Naming and DNS

Problems with DNS and Naming/Addressing Many levels of look-up is slow –Sometimes > 1 sec when all queries miss in cache Cache expiry is clumsy –Low TTL leads to poor scaling and higher delays –High TTL leads to slow failover and poor control Operates at the level of host names/addresses –Yet many apps (like CDNs) care about objects Increasingly an address is not a host anyway –Multiple servers (anycast), front-end for a load balancer, NAT box, …

Questions Is hierarchical allocation necessary? –E.g., to ensure uniqueness? Is hierarchical lookup necessary? –E.g., for scalability? Are mnemonic names necessary? –E.g., for human readability? Should the name correspond to a host? –E.g., rather than to an object? Should the lookup map to a machine address? –E.g., rather than to a direction to follow?