nohats.ca DNSSEC Outage: 2020-01-04

Date: January 4, 2020

Overview

This page gives some details on the nohats.ca DNSSEC outage on January 4, 2020.

DNSViz / Timeline

DNSViz historical archives have been down for about a year at the time of this writing. DNSSEC makes its users completely give up.

Here's a screenshot of DNSViz output during the nohats.ca DNSSEC outage:

January 4, 2020 nohats.ca DNSSEC outage at DNSViz

This data was also saved by archive.is.

DNSSEC Debugger

Unlike DNSViz, Verisign's DNSSEC Debugger doesn't archive results, so here's a screenshot of my web browser's output from January 4, 2020:

January 4, 2020 nohats.ca DNSSEC outage

Zonemaster

Please note: Zonemaster requires javascript to display text.

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.

With DNSSEC, DNS queries fail:

$ dig +dnssec a nohats.ca. @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 <<>> +dnssec a nohats.ca. @8.8.8.8
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 36473
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

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

;; Query time: 311 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Sat Jan 4 10:07:55 2020
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 38

You have to disable DNSSEC to make DNS queries work:

$ dig +cd a nohats.ca. @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P2 &;t;<>> +cd a nohats.ca. @8.8.8.8
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 56292
;; flags: qr rd ra cd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;nohats.ca. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
nohats.ca. 21599 IN A 193.110.157.102

;; Query time: 85 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Sat Jan 4 10:07:55 2020
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 43

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):

[T] nohats.ca. 86400 IN DS 1321 8 2 b7890a1e7b4ce1d671795d5fd46a71f229c58025587bec4eeb70ccda9233011c
;; Domain: nohats.ca.
;; Signature ok but no chain to a trusted key or ds record
[S] nohats.ca. 3600 IN DNSKEY 256 3 8 ;{id = 56754 (zsk), size = 2048b}
nohats.ca. 3600 IN DNSKEY 257 3 8 ;{id = 35434 (ksk), size = 2048b}
[S] nohats.ca. 86400 IN A 193.110.157.102
;;[S] self sig OK; [B] bogus; [T] trusted

dns.google.com

dns.google.com is related to but separate from Google Public DNS. During this DNSSEC outage, dns.google.com showed the following for nohats.ca:

January 4, 2020 dns.google.com output for nohats.ca

Logfile examples