bind9/doc/draft/draft-ietf-dnsext-obsolete-iquery-02.txt

DNSEXT Working Group                                     David C Lawrence
INTERNET-DRAFT                                                    Nominum
<draft-ietf-dnsext-obsolete-iquery-02.txt>                  December 2001
Updates: RFC 1035


                          Obsoleting IQUERY

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
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   Comments should be sent to the authors or the DNSEXT WG mailing list
   namedroppers@ops.ietf.org.

   This draft expires on 14 June 2002.

   Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001).  All rights reserved.

Abstract

   Based on a lack of working implementations of the IQUERY method
   of performing inverse DNS lookups, and because an alternative
   mechanism for doing inverse queries of address records has been
   successfully used operationally for well over a decade, this
   draft proposes that the IQUERY operation be entirely obsoleted.



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1 - Introduction

   As specified in RFC 1035 (section 6.4), the IQUERY operation for
   DNS queries is used to look up the name(s) which are associated
   with the given value.  The value being sought is provided in the
   query's answer section and the response fills in the question
   section with one or more 3-tuples of type, name and class.

   As noted in [RFC1035], section 6.4.3, inverse query processing can
   put quite an onerous burden on a server.  A server would need to
   perform either an exhaustive search of its database or maintain a
   separate database that is keyed by the values of the primary
   database.  Both of these approaches could strain system resource
   use, particularly for servers that are authoritative for millions
   of names.

   Response packet from these megaservers could be exceptionally
   large, and easily run into megabyte sizes.  For example, using
   IQUERY to find every domain that is delegated to one of the
   nameservers of a large ISP could return tens of thousands of
   3-tuples in the question section.  This could easily be used to
   launch denial of service attacks.

   Operators of servers that do support IQUERY in some form (such as
   very old BIND 4 servers) generally opt to disable it.  This is
   largely due to bugs in insufficiently-exercised code, or concerns
   about exposure of large blocks of names in their zones by probes
   such as inverse MX queries.

   IQUERY is also somewhat inherently crippled by being unable to tell
   a requestor where it needs to go to get the information that was
   requested.  The answer is very specific to the single server that
   was queried.  This is sometimes a handy diagnostic tool, but
   apparently not enough so that server operators like to enable it,
   or request implementation where it's lacking.

   No known clients use IQUERY to provide any meaningful service.  The
   only common reverse mapping support on the Internet, mapping
   address records to names, is provided through the use of PTR
   records in the in-addr.arpa tree and has served the community well
   for many years.

   Based on all of these factors, this draft proposes that the IQUERY
   operation for DNS servers be officially obsoleted.

1.1 - Requirements

   The key words "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119.


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1.2 - Updated documents and sections

   In RFC 1035, sections 4.1.1 is updated in part and section 6.4 is
   entirely superseded.

2 - New text for RFC 1035.

   Section 4.1.1 has the following text to describe opcode 1:

               "1               an inverse query (IQUERY)"

   It is now considered to read as follows:

               "1               an inverse query (IQUERY) (obsolete)"

   Section 6.4, including all subsections, of RFC 1035 should be
   considered obsolete and not to be implemented.  The section
   effectively now reads as follows:

   "Inverse queries using the IQUERY opcode were originally described
   as the ability to look up the names that are associated with a
   particular RR.  Their implementation was optional and never
   achieved widespread use.  Therefore IQUERY is now obsolete, and
   name servers SHOULD return a "Not Implemented" error when an IQUERY
   request is received."

4 - Security Considerations:

   Since this document obsoletes an operation that was once available,
   it is conceivable that someone was using it as the basis of a
   security policy.  However, since the most logical course for such a
   policy to take in the face of a lack of positive response from a
   server is to deny authentication/authorization, it is highly
   unlikely that removing support for IQUERY will open any new
   security holes.

   Note that if IQUERY is not obsoleted, securing the responses with
   DNSSEC is extremely difficult without out-on-the-fly digital signing.

5 - IANA Considerations:

   The IQUERY opcode of 1 should be permanently retired, not to be
   assigned to any future opcode.

6 - Acknowledgments:

   Olafur Gudmundsson was the instigator for this action.
   Matt Crawford contributed some improved wording.




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References:

[RFC1035]  P. Mockapetris, ``Domain Names - Implementation and
           Specification'', STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.

7 - Author's Address

      David Lawrence
      Nominum, Inc.
      950 Charter St
      Redwood City CA 94063
      USA

      Phone: +1.650.779.6042
      EMail: tale@nominum.com

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