temple.edu DNSSEC Outage:
2018-05-28 to 2018-05-29

Updated: May 29, 2018

Overview

This page gives some details on the temple.edu (Temple University) DNSSEC outage from May 28 to May 29, 2018. Temple has around 40,000 students.

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 May 28, 2018.

May 28, 2018 temple.edu DNSSEC outage

Google Public DNS: with and without DNSSEC

DNSSEC can be disabled in queries via the CD (checking disabled) bit. Let's compare DNS queries with and without DNSSEC. With DNSSEC, DNS queries result in SERVFAIL:

$ dig +dnssec a temple.edu. @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 <<>> +dnssec a temple.edu. @8.8.8.8
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 25818
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;temple.edu. IN A

;; Query time: 146 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Mon May 28 20:57:37 2018
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 39

You have to disable DNSSEC to make DNS queries work:

$ dig +cd a temple.edu. @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 <<>> +cd a temple.edu. @8.8.8.8
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65033
;; flags: qr rd ra cd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;temple.edu. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
temple.edu. 21599 IN A 155.247.166.60

;; Query time: 77 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Mon May 28 20:57:37 2018
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 44

drill trace

Since DNSSEC contains so much garbage, I put the complete drill trace into its own file with the relevant portion below (emphasis added):

;; Domain: temple.edu.
[B] temple.edu. 3600 IN DNSKEY 256 3 7 ;{id = 58568 (zsk), size = 1024b}
temple.edu. 3600 IN DNSKEY 257 3 7 ;{id = 12526 (ksk), size = 2048b}
[B] temple.edu. 86400 IN A 155.247.166.60
;; Error: No keys with the keytag and algorithm from the RRSIG found
;;[S] self sig OK; [B] bogus; [T] trusted

Logfile examples