Subject: [DNSOP] Semantics of draft-brotman-rdbd

From: Matthew Pounsett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 10:19:11 +0100

I think the weak semantic definition of this record makes it either not
useful, or actively dangerous, depending on how the consumer of a record
chooses to interpret it.

As I mentioned at the mic in dnsop, it looks to me like the core motivation
of all of the described use cases are actually based around sending signals
to anti-abuse researchers.  If that is the case, then I think that should
be clear.  If those other use cases have other potential motivations for
deploying the record, then those should be more clearly articulated.

With the weak semantics I have concerns about how absent or unidirectional
mappings might be interpreted by researchers.  Where ignorance of the
existence of the record might injure the operations of a domain, or where
an attacker might gain advantage by associating themselves with a visually
similar domain with which they are not actually associated.

I think this needs to be thought about in a lot more detail, and at least
have the risks fleshed out in the draft.  Depending on the outcome of those
discussions I may prefer to see stronger semantics before supporting the
draft, or to see it abandoned entirely.

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From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 02:31:29 -0700

Hi Matt!

(Replying on dnsop but noting that dbound was the suggested venue)

On Mar 29, 2019, at 10:19, Matthew Pounsett <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I think the weak semantic definition of this record makes it either not useful, or actively dangerous, depending on how the consumer of a record chooses to interpret it.

I think it would be helpful to describe the risks that you see in more
detail, e.g. being clear about the intent from the publishing and
consuming side and how it could be subverted. I'm not sure I see a
problem. I'm not saying there isn't one.

More generally the authors don't actually need adoption or even
tolerance by this group to get an RRType code point assignment. I
don't think you are suggesting a veto, but I always find it helpful to
be clear that documentation in the RFC series for new RRTypes is a
welcome courtesy and not a requirement :-)

Joe

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From: Matthew Pounsett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 10:55:49 +0100

> (Replying on dnsop but noting that dbound was the suggested venue)

My bad.  Obviously I missed that request. I'll move there.