alt Hacker NewsThis drills into the core problem: technologists like you look at DNSSEC and say "there is a problem, something must be done, this is something". But it's not enough to identify a problem and solution. The solution has to be worth the cost. Rollout can't be more costly than the original problem.
There's ample evidence that the cost/benefit math simply doesn't work out for DNSSEC.
You can design new DNSSECs with different cost profiles. I think a problem you'll run into is that the cost of the problem it solves is very low, so you won't have much headroom to maneuver in. But I'm not reflexively against ground-up retakes on DNSSEC.
Where you'll see viscerally negative takes from me is on attempts to take the current gravely flawed design --- offline signers+authenticated denial --- as a basis for those new solutions. The DNSSEC we're working with now has failed in the marketplace. In fact, it's failed more comprehensively than any IETF technology ever attempted: DNSSEC dates back into the early-mid 1990s. It's long past time to cut bait.
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> There's ample evidence that the cost/benefit math simply doesn't work out for DNSSEC.
Why? What is the real difference between DNSSEC and HTTPS?
I'd argue that the only difference is that browser vendors care about protecting against MITM on the client side. They're fine with MITM on the server side or with (potentially state-sponsored) BGP prefix hijacks. And I'm not fine with that personally.
> Where you'll see viscerally negative takes from me is on attempts to take the current gravely flawed design --- offline signers+authenticated denial --- as a basis for those new solutions.
Yes, I agree with that. In particular, NSEC3 was a huge mistake, along with the complexity it added.
I think that we should have stuck with NSEC for the cases where enumeration is OK or with a "black lies"-like approach and online signing. It's also ironic because now many companies proactively publish all their internal names in the CT logs, so attackers don't even need to interact with the target's DNS to find out all its internal names.
> In fact, it's failed more comprehensively than any IETF technology ever attempted: DNSSEC dates back into the early-mid 1990s. It's long past time to cut bait.
I would say that IPv6 failed even more. It's also unfair to say that DNSSEC dates back to the 90-s, the root zone was signed only in 2008.
The good news is that DNSSEC can be improved a lot by just deprecating bad practices. And this will improve DNS robustness in general, regardless of DNSSEC use.
> In fact, it's failed more comprehensively than any IETF technology ever attempted
Now here is where I disagree. Just off the top of my head, how about HIP, IP multicast and PEM?