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rfc:rfc4074

Network Working Group Y. Morishita Request for Comments: 4074 JPRS Category: Informational T. Jinmei

                                                               Toshiba
                                                              May 2005
     Common Misbehavior Against DNS Queries for IPv6 Addresses

Status of This Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
 not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
 memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).

Abstract

 There is some known misbehavior of DNS authoritative servers when
 they are queried for AAAA resource records.  Such behavior can block
 IPv4 communication that should actually be available, cause a
 significant delay in name resolution, or even make a denial of
 service attack.  This memo describes details of known cases and
 discusses their effects.

1. Introduction

 Many existing DNS clients (resolvers) that support IPv6 first search
 for AAAA Resource Records (RRs) of a target host name, and then for A
 RRs of the same name.  This fallback mechanism is based on the DNS
 specifications, which if not obeyed by authoritative servers, can
 produce unpleasant results.  In some cases, for example, a web
 browser fails to connect to a web server it could otherwise reach.
 In the following sections, this memo describes some typical cases of
 such misbehavior and its (bad) effects.
 Note that the misbehavior is not specific to AAAA RRs.  In fact, all
 known examples also apply to the cases of queries for MX, NS, and SOA
 RRs.  The authors believe this can be generalized for all types of
 queries other than those for A RRs.  In this memo, however, we
 concentrate on the case for AAAA queries, since the problem is
 particularly severe for resolvers that support IPv6, which thus
 affects many end users.  Resolvers at end users normally send A
 and/or AAAA queries only, so the problem for the other cases is
 relatively minor.

Morishita & Jinmei Informational [Page 1] RFC 4074 Common Misbehavior Against DNS Queries May 2005

2. Network Model

 In this memo, we assume a typical network model of name resolution
 environment using DNS.  It consists of three components: stub
 resolvers, caching servers, and authoritative servers.  A stub
 resolver issues a recursive query to a caching server, which then
 handles the entire name resolution procedure recursively.  The
 caching server caches the result of the query and sends the result to
 the stub resolver.  The authoritative servers respond to queries for
 names for which they have the authority, normally in a non-recursive
 manner.

3. Expected Behavior

 Suppose that an authoritative server has an A RR but has no AAAA RR
 for a host name.  Then, the server should return a response to a
 query for an AAAA RR of the name with the response code (RCODE) being
 0 (indicating no error) and with an empty answer section (see
 Sections 4.3.2 and 6.2.4 of [1]).  Such a response indicates that
 there is at least one RR of a different type than AAAA for the
 queried name, and the stub resolver can then look for A RRs.
 This way, the caching server can cache the fact that the queried name
 has no AAAA RR (but may have other types of RRs), and thus improve
 the response time to further queries for an AAAA RR of the name.

4. Problematic Behaviors

 There are some known cases at authoritative servers that do not
 conform to the expected behavior.  This section describes those
 problematic cases.

4.1. Ignore Queries for AAAA

 Some authoritative servers seem to ignore queries for an AAAA RR,
 causing a delay at the stub resolver to fall back to a query for an A
 RR.  This behavior may cause a fatal timeout at the resolver or at
 the application that calls the resolver.  Even if the resolver
 eventually falls back, the result can be an unacceptable delay for
 the application user, especially with interactive applications like
 web browsing.

4.2. Return "Name Error"

 This type of server returns a response with RCODE 3 ("Name Error") to
 a query for an AAAA RR, indicating that it does not have any RRs of
 any type for the queried name.

Morishita & Jinmei Informational [Page 2] RFC 4074 Common Misbehavior Against DNS Queries May 2005

 With this response, the stub resolver may immediately give up and
 never fall back.  Even if the resolver retries with a query for an A
 RR, the negative response for the name has been cached in the caching
 server, and the caching server will simply return the negative
 response.  As a result, the stub resolver considers this to be a
 fatal error in name resolution.
 Several examples of this behavior are known to the authors.  As of
 this writing, all have been fixed.

4.3. Return Other Erroneous Codes

 Other authoritative servers return a response with erroneous response
 codes other than RCODE 3 ("Name Error").  One such RCODE is 4 ("Not
 Implemented"), indicating that the servers do not support the
 requested type of query.
 These cases are less harmful than the previous one; if the stub
 resolver falls back to querying for an A RR, the caching server will
 process the query correctly and return an appropriate response.
 However, these can still cause a serious effect.  There was an
 authoritative server implementation that returned RCODE 2 ("Server
 failure") to queries for AAAA RRs.  One widely deployed mail server
 implementation with a certain type of resolver library interpreted
 this result as an indication of retry and did not fall back to
 queries for A RRs, causing message delivery failure.
 If the caching server receives a response with these response codes,
 it does not cache the fact that the queried name has no AAAA RR,
 resulting in redundant queries for AAAA RRs in the future.  The
 behavior will waste network bandwidth and increase the load of the
 authoritative server.
 Using RCODE 1 ("Format error") would cause a similar effect, though
 the authors have not seen such implementations yet.

4.4. Return a Broken Response

 Another type of authoritative servers returns broken responses to
 AAAA queries.  Returning a response whose RR type is AAAA with the
 length of the RDATA being 4 bytes is a known behavior of this
 category.  The 4-byte data looks like the IPv4 address of the queried
 host name.

Morishita & Jinmei Informational [Page 3] RFC 4074 Common Misbehavior Against DNS Queries May 2005

 That is, the RR in the answer section would be described as follows:
   www.bad.example. 600 IN AAAA 192.0.2.1
 which is, of course, bogus (or at least meaningless).
 A widely deployed caching server implementation transparently returns
 the broken response (and caches it) to the stub resolver.  Another
 known server implementation parses the response by itself, and sends
 a separate response with RCODE 2 ("Server failure").
 In either case, the broken response does not affect queries for an A
 RR of the same name.  If the stub resolver falls back to A queries,
 it will get an appropriate response.
 The latter case, however, causes the same bad effect as that
 described in the previous section: redundant queries for AAAA RRs.

4.5. Make Lame Delegation

 Some authoritative servers respond to AAAA queries in a way that
 causes lame delegation.  In this case, the parent zone specifies that
 the authoritative server should have the authority of a zone, but the
 server should not return an authoritative response for AAAA queries
 within the zone (i.e., the AA bit in the response is not set).  On
 the other hand, the authoritative server returns an authoritative
 response for A queries.
 When a caching server asks the server for AAAA RRs in the zone, it
 recognizes the delegation is lame, and returns a response with RCODE
 2 ("Server failure") to the stub resolver.
 Furthermore, some caching servers record the authoritative server as
 lame for the zone and will not use it for a certain period of time.
 With this type of caching server, even if the stub resolver falls
 back to querying for an A RR, the caching server will simply return a
 response with RCODE 2, since all the servers are known to be "lame."
 There is also an implementation that relaxes the behavior a little
 bit.  It tries to avoid using the lame server, but continues to try
 it as a last resort.  With this type of caching server, the stub
 resolver will get a correct response if it falls back after Server
 failure.  However, this still causes redundant AAAA queries, as
 explained in the previous sections.

Morishita & Jinmei Informational [Page 4] RFC 4074 Common Misbehavior Against DNS Queries May 2005

5. Security Considerations

 The CERT/CC pointed out that the response with RCODE 3 ("Name
 Error"), described in Section 4.2, can be used for a denial of
 service attack [2].  The same argument applies to the case of "lame
 delegation", described in Section 4.5, with a certain type of caching
 server.

6. Acknowledgements

 Erik Nordmark encouraged the authors to publish this document as an
 RFC.  Akira Kato and Paul Vixie reviewed a preliminary version of
 this document.  Pekka Savola carefully reviewed a previous version
 and provided detailed comments.  Bill Fenner, Scott Hollenbeck,
 Thomas Narten, and Alex Zinin reviewed and helped improve the
 document at the last stage for publication.

7. Informative References

 [1]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities", STD
      13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
 [2]  The CERT Coordination Center, "Incorrect NXDOMAIN responses from
      AAAA queries could cause denial-of-service conditions",
      March 2003, <http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/714121>.

Authors' Addresses

 MORISHITA Orange Yasuhiro
 Research and Development Department, Japan Registry Services Co.,Ltd.
 Chiyoda First Bldg. East 13F, 3-8-1 Nishi-Kanda
 Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo  101-0065
 Japan
 EMail: yasuhiro@jprs.co.jp
 JINMEI Tatuya
 Corporate Research & Development Center, Toshiba Corporation
 1 Komukai Toshiba-cho, Saiwai-ku
 Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa  212-8582
 Japan
 EMail: jinmei@isl.rdc.toshiba.co.jp

Morishita & Jinmei Informational [Page 5] RFC 4074 Common Misbehavior Against DNS Queries May 2005

Full Copyright Statement

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
 This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
 contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
 retain all their rights.
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Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
 Internet Society.

Morishita & Jinmei Informational [Page 6]

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