.ss TLD DNSSEC Outage: 2019-10-01 to 2019-10-05

Date: October 5, 2019

Overview

This page gives some details on the .ss (South Sudan) TLD DNSSEC outage from October 1 to October 5, 2019.

Timeline / DNSViz

(At the time of this writing, DNSViz historical archives have been down for months. DNSSEC makes its users think downtime doesn't matter.)

Since DNSViz no longer saves DNSSEC outage info, there is an archive at archive.is.

DNSSEC Debugger

Here's a screenshot of my web browser's output from October 1, 2019:

October 1, 2019 .ss (South Sudan) TLD DNSSEC outage

There is a copy of DNSSEC Debugger output saved by archive.is.

Google 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.

$ dig +dnssec ns ss. @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 <<>> +dnssec ns ss. @8.8.8.8
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 1922
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ss. IN NS

;; Query time: 510 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Tue Oct 1 20:24:55 2019
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 31

You have to disable DNSSEC to make DNS queries work:

$ dig +cd ns ss. @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 <<>> +cd ns ss. @8.8.8.8
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35022
;; flags: qr rd ra cd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ss. IN NS

;; ANSWER SECTION:
ss. 21599 IN NS ssnic.anycastdns.cz.
ss. 21599 IN NS root.ssnic.gov.ss.
ss. 21599 IN NS b.ns.tznic.or.tz.

;; Query time: 339 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Tue Oct 1 20:24:55 2019
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 112

Zonemaster

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: ss.
[B] ss. 3600 IN DNSKEY 256 3 8 ;{id = 13561 (zsk), size = 2048b}
ss. 3600 IN DNSKEY 257 3 8 ;{id = 43817 (ksk), size = 2048b}
ss. 3600 IN DNSKEY 256 3 8 ;{id = 27705 (zsk), size = 2048b}
[B] Error verifying denial of existence for ss. type A: No keys with the keytag and algorithm from the RRSIG found
;;[S] self sig OK; [B] bogus; [T] trusted

Logfile examples

These Unbound log entries come from different Unbound instances, each on different servers in different geographical regions.