.ke (Kenya) DNSSEC Outage: December 12, 2016

Updated: December 16, 2016

Overview

This page gives some details on the .ke TLD DNSSEC outage on December 16, 2016. It was not the first DNSSEC outage for Kenya.

Timeline / DNSViz

DNSSEC Debugger

Unlike DNSViz, Verisign's DNSSEC Debugger doesn't archive results, so here's a screenshot of my web browser's output from December 16, 2016:

ke (Kenya) DNSSEC outage, December 16, 2016

OpenDNS & Google Public DNS

OpenDNS does not support DNSSEC, instead supporting DNSCurve. Google Public DNS currently supports only DNSSEC, and thus, Google's users saw SERVFAIL for queries under .ke during this outage.

With OpenDNS, without DNSSEC, DNS works:

$ dig +dnssec google.co.ke. @resolver1.opendns.com.

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 <<>> +dnssec google.co.ke. @resolver1.opendns.com.
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 30035
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.co.ke. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.co.ke. 300 IN A 216.58.192.3

;; Query time: 8 msec
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)
;; WHEN: Fri Dec 16 03:41:49 2016
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 57

With Google Public DNS, because of DNSSEC, queries fail:

$ dig +dnssec google.co.ke. @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 <<>> +dnssec google.co.ke. @8.8.8.8
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 20032
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.co.ke. IN A

;; Query time: 9 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Fri Dec 16 03:41:49 2016
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 41

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