5 Years After Major DNS Flaw Found, Few US Companies Have Deployed Long-term Fix 313
alphadogg writes "Five years after the disclosure of a serious vulnerability in the Domain Name System dubbed the Kaminsky bug, only a handful of U.S. ISPs, financial institutions or e-commerce companies have deployed DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) to alleviate this threat. In 2008, security researcher Dan Kaminsky described a major DNS flaw that made it possible for hackers to launch cache poisoning attacks, where traffic is redirected from a legitimate website to a fake one without the website operator or end user knowing. While DNS software patches are available to help plug the Kaminsky hole, experts agree that the best long-term fix is DNSSEC, which uses digital signatures and public-key encryption to allow websites to verify their domain names and corresponding IP addresses and prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. Despite the promise of DNSSEC, the number of U.S. corporations that have deployed this added layer of security to their DNS server is minuscule."
I deployed it at our ISP recursive servers (Score:5, Interesting)
It broke access to several DNSSEC enabled websites that were misconfigured. After a few months of support problems where we suggested the websites fix their issues and they ignored it, it was requested by management that we turn it off.
It's a very bad design as it stands now. It's unable to return any error but NX Domain for DNSSEC errors for reasons of backword compatibility, which is stupid since you need a DNSSEC enabled resolver to make the request.
It also has an incredibly steep learning curve that even experienced public key administrators face problems with.