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    Insanely weird issue with DNS resolution to www.cdc.gov

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved DHCP and DNS
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    • johnpozJ
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @Gertjan
      last edited by

      @gertjan Not sure about all that.. I just looked and I am seeing warnings with www.irs.gov, but not with just irs.gov

      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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      • S
        stompro
        last edited by

        Hello, we just ran into this today.

        Unbound as a forwarder using OpenDNS (Cisco Umbrella DNS Essentials subscription).

        I don't see any red errors on the https://dnsviz.net/d/www.cdc.gov/dnssec/ site.

        Thanks for all the resources here for figuring out how to bypass the errors. The 'domain-insecure: "cdc.gov"' bypass seems to work for us also.

        I'll send a note to the CDC IT contact that popped up in this thread.

        Josh

        Hardware used: Alix 2D13 X 10, APU2D4 X 10, SG-2200 X 10, SG-2440 X 4

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        • johnpozJ
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stompro
          last edited by johnpoz

          @stompro said in Insanely weird issue with DNS resolution to www.cdc.gov:

          www.cdc.gov

          I still show that domain a mess from dnssec point of view..

          cdc.jpg

          Unbound as a forwarder using OpenDNS

          If your forwarding with unbound, you should not have dnssec checked. Where you forward to does dnssec or it doesn't.. That checkmark telling unbound to do dnssec isn't going to do anything other than problems...

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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          • S
            stompro @johnpoz
            last edited by

            I wasn't sure if warnings were a problem or not. Some of the other screenshots were filled with red errors... which is what I though the real problem was.

            @johnpoz said in Insanely weird issue with DNS resolution to www.cdc.gov:

            If your forwarding with unbound, you should not have dnssec checked. Where you forward to does dnssec or it doesn't.. That checkmark telling unbound to do dnssec isn't going to do anything other than problems...

            Thank you for saying this again so it would get through to me.

            So if the servers that I'm using to forward my request to do not support dnssec... then unbound doesn't do any extra checks on the returned information if dnssec is checked? There is no possible benefit there?

            And if the upstream dns server does do dnssec, then it has already performed the extra checks, so the unbound setting is redundant?

            Am I understanding that correctly?
            Josh

            Hardware used: Alix 2D13 X 10, APU2D4 X 10, SG-2200 X 10, SG-2440 X 4

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            • johnpozJ
              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stompro
              last edited by

              @stompro asking who your forwarding for dnssec info gets you nothing.. They could send you whatever they have cached, etc.

              For dnssec to be valid you need to directly talk to the authoritative name servers and validate the info, etc.

              Its just going to be extra queries and bandwidth for no actual real benefit.. And could cause problems..

              There is zero reason to have your dns software ask for dnssec info if its not actually resolving..

              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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              • S
                stompro @johnpoz
                last edited by

                @johnpoz said in Insanely weird issue with DNS resolution to www.cdc.gov:

                For dnssec to be valid you need to directly talk to the authoritative name servers and validate the info, etc.
                Its just going to be extra queries and bandwidth for no actual real benefit.. And could cause problems..
                There is zero reason to have your dns software ask for dnssec info if its not actually resolving..

                Thank you for the extra explanation. I'll fix all my installs to uncheck the "DNSSEC" unbound config option.

                Hardware used: Alix 2D13 X 10, APU2D4 X 10, SG-2200 X 10, SG-2440 X 4

                GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • GertjanG
                  Gertjan @stompro
                  last edited by

                  @stompro

                  Keep in mind that you are forwarding to ... a resolver.
                  That resolver probably does DNSSEC checks, and the cdc announced it supports DNSSEC.
                  If there was more then a warning, this an error, and the errors concerns a DNS record you were askinf for, protection kicks in : no answer or NXDOMAIN.
                  You think : my DNS is bad.
                  The reality is : the zone cdc is bad.
                  You have just one choice : use a resolver without DNSSEC. So now cdc records as any other DNS can be spoofed etc. I hope this "cdc" site isn't important for you.

                  can you imagine what happens when facebook start to implement DNSSEC, and they f*ck up on their side ?

                  No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                  Edit : and where are the logs ??

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                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @Gertjan
                    last edited by johnpoz

                    @gertjan said in Insanely weird issue with DNS resolution to www.cdc.gov:

                    Keep in mind that you are forwarding to ... a resolver.

                    Might not actually be true - could be another forwarder ;) But yeah at some point in the chain there has to be a resolver... So your point is valid.

                    You know for sure its not actually say 8.8.8.8 doing the actual resolving.. This is why for example when you setup 8.8.8.8 as your dns, and you do one of those dns leak tests, it shows other IPs as your dns that are not 8.8.8.8, same when you point to 1.1.1.1

                    I would be pretty sure in saying that the IP you point to when using any of these services, isn't actually doing the "resolving" itself. But just forwarding to some other box in their network. DNS wouldn't work at all if at some point a resolver doesn't get asked.

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                    • S
                      stompro @Gertjan
                      last edited by

                      @gertjan Thank you for the extra info.

                      I don't quite understand how the unbound DNSSEC option and the work around of setting 'server:domain-insecure: "cdc.gov"' relate to each other, if at all. But I haven't looked up the domain-insecure option yet to see what it actually does. You don't need to google it for me. :-)

                      I'll try and do more testing when I have a chance.

                      • Cisco Umbrella DNS Servers
                        • With DNSSEC Enabled - cdc.gov doesn't work for clients.
                        • With DNSSEC enabled in unbound and 'server:domain-insecure: "cdc.gov"' set, cdc.gov resolves fine for clients.

                      I can test with cloudflare and google dns, with dnssec on and off.

                      The pfsense dns lookup gui seems to always work... but I don't know if that is DNSSEC aware.

                      Maybe the end clients are doing some sort of dnssec validation... but I think @johnpoz explained that that isn't how it works. The resolvers do the validation.

                      I kind of hate not knowing why something isn't working... but who knows if this whole DNSSEC thing is really going to stick around,,, seems like a fad, like fidget spinners. :-)

                      Hardware used: Alix 2D13 X 10, APU2D4 X 10, SG-2200 X 10, SG-2440 X 4

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                      • johnpozJ
                        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stompro
                        last edited by

                        @stompro said in Insanely weird issue with DNS resolution to www.cdc.gov:

                        seems like a fad, like fidget spinners

                        Not sure if I would say that - but the overall adoption is disappointing to be sure..

                        Here is the thing that site is all kinds of messed up when it comes to dnssec... I don't have any problem resolving it, using dnssec - but with some of the errors I see, it could for sure be hit or miss.

                        If your forwarding, and also have dnssec enabled that can cause issues. So are you saying when you uncheck dnssec in unbound, and forward to cisco it fails? Is that something you have to enable do disable in your subscription.. Cisco Umbrella is a subscription service is in not?

                         $ dig @192.168.9.253 www.cdc.gov
                        
                        ; <<>> DiG 9.16.27 <<>> @192.168.9.253 www.cdc.gov
                        ; (1 server found)
                        ;; global options: +cmd
                        ;; Got answer:
                        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15485
                        ;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
                        
                        ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
                        ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
                        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
                        ;www.cdc.gov.                   IN      A
                        
                        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
                        www.cdc.gov.            3600    IN      CNAME   www.akam.cdc.gov.
                        www.akam.cdc.gov.       3600    IN      A       104.98.82.250
                        
                        ;; Query time: 185 msec
                        ;; SERVER: 192.168.9.253#53(192.168.9.253)
                        ;; WHEN: Fri Apr 22 09:45:15 Central Daylight Time 2022
                        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 79
                        

                        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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