.de DNSSEC Outage: 2026-05-05

Date: May 5, 2026

Overview

This page gives some details on the .de (Germany) DNSSEC outage on May 5, 2026. This wasn't the first DNSSEC outage at DENIC. Amusingly, DENIC was hosting a party during the outage "with familiar faces, new connections and good conversations." I'm sure they had a rip-roaring good time. Also, their status page stated during the outage that "As a result, all DNSSEC-signed .de domains are currently affected in their reachability." However the truth was worse: all .de domains were impacted, regardless of whether they themselves use DNSSEC. A couple such examples are amazon.de and spiegel.de, neither of which use DNSSEC. So DENIC didn't understand the basics of the outage while it was happening. One might say it was a language issue but Germans are more proficient in English than DNS.

Timeline / DNSViz

Cloudflare 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 ebay.de. @1.1.1.1.

; <<>> dig 9.10.8-P1 <<>> +dnssec a ebay.de. @1.1.1.1.
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 13781
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 1232
; EDE: 22 (No Reachable Authority)
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ebay.de. IN A

;; Query time: 160 msec
;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)
;; WHEN: Tue May 05 19:40:00 UTC 2026
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 42

You have to disable DNSSEC to make DNS queries work:

$ dig +cd a ebay.de. @1.1.1.1.

; <<>> dig 9.10.8-P1 <<>> +cd a ebay.de. @1.1.1.1.
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 46785
;; flags: qr rd ra cd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ebay.de. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
ebay.de. 12 IN A 23.216.149.144
ebay.de. 12 IN A 23.216.149.153

;; Query time: 32 msec
;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)
;; WHEN: Tue May 05 19:40:00 UTC 2026
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 68

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: de.
[T] de. 3600 IN DNSKEY 256 3 8 ;{id = 32911 (zsk), size = 1024b}
de. 3600 IN DNSKEY 256 3 8 ;{id = 33834 (zsk), size = 1024b}
de. 3600 IN DNSKEY 257 3 8 ;{id = 26755 (ksk), size = 2048b}
[B] Error verifying denial of existence for ebay.de. DS: Bogus DNSSEC signature
;; No ds record for delegation
;; Domain: ebay.de.
;; No DNSKEY record found for ebay.de.
[U] ebay.de. 8 IN A 23.46.228.164
ebay.de. 8 IN A 23.46.228.168
;;[S] self sig OK; [B] bogus; [T] trusted; [U] unsigned

Logfile examples