init commit

1 files changed, 79 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/content/posts/2015-08-16-mystery-ds-record.md b/content/posts/2015-08-16-mystery-ds-record.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9757503
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/posts/2015-08-16-mystery-ds-record.md
@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
+$title "The mystery DS record"
+$tags DNS DNSSEC
+
+So after transferring my domain from transip.eu to namecheap.com for WHOIS
+privacy I realised that suddenly the Google public DNS servers were no longer
+able to resolve my domain. Very quickly, I realised that quite a few things
+seemed to rely on the Google public DNS services (and DNSSEC supporting
+resolvers). Fun ensued.
+
+$pre
+
+DNSSEC is a fancy extension to DNS which allows resolvers to cryptographically
+confirm, through the use of some public keys and signatures, that the records
+they are looking up are in fact the records they want and not the result of
+some MITM attack. This is explained well in multiple places, so I won't explain
+it here.
+
+I transferred my domain from transip.eu who provide DNSSEC (no way to publish
+DS records, everything is maintained in the background), but don't provide
+WHOIS privacy, to namecheap.com who do provide WHOIS privacy but don't provide
+DNSSEC. The DS record that transip.eu published to gtld-servers for their
+DNSSEC was left published after I transferred which initially, for someone who
+didn't know anything about DNSSEC, caused many confusing side effects.
+
+DS records have to be published in the parent zone, this means that it has to
+be done through your registrar. (Unless you have a lot of money and time and
+feel like bribing Verisign. If someone knows how to do this without bribery,
+tell me!). Upon contacting namecheap about the issue, the person I was talking
+to seemed confused about the issue. They seemed to think I was having issues
+with A and AAAA records and DNS propagation. They tried to inform me that I
+just had to wait. Of course, all the waiting in the world wouldn't get the DS
+records to disappear so after explaining the situation a bit better (I still
+didn't quite know much about it myself) I got them to contact their "upstream
+DNS provider."
+
+Finally, a weekend later, the DS record was gone and Google's DNS servers were
+serving my records again. Additionally, I switched over to using my own BIND
+name server so I could have full control over my DNS. This proved to be quite
+fun to set up. The second server is hosted by a good friend of mine and the
+third one by a friend of that friend. So far, other than me accidentally
+forgetting to enable named.service and rebooting my server to find that DNS
+wasn't working very well, I've had no problems.
+So after transferring my domain from transip.eu to namecheap.com for WHOIS
+privacy I realised that suddenly the Google public DNS servers were no longer
+able to resolve my domain. Very quickly, I realised that quite a few things
+seemed to rely on the Google public DNS services (and DNSSEC supporting
+resolvers). Fun ensued.
+
+DNSSEC is a fancy extension to DNS which allows resolvers to cryptographically
+confirm, through the use of some public keys and signatures, that the records
+they are looking up are in fact the records they want and not the result of
+some MITM attack. This is explained well in multiple places, so I won't explain
+it here.
+
+I transferred my domain from transip.eu who provide DNSSEC (no way to publish
+DS records, everything is maintained in the background), but don't provide
+WHOIS privacy, to namecheap.com who do provide WHOIS privacy but don't provide
+DNSSEC. The DS record that transip.eu published to gtld-servers for their
+DNSSEC was left published after I transferred which initially, for someone who
+didn't know anything about DNSSEC, caused many confusing side effects.
+
+DS records have to be published in the parent zone, this means that it has to
+be done through your registrar. (Unless you have a lot of money and time and
+feel like bribing Verisign. If someone knows how to do this without bribery,
+tell me!). Upon contacting namecheap about the issue, the person I was talking
+to seemed confused about the issue. They seemed to think I was having issues
+with A and AAAA records and DNS propagation. They tried to inform me that I
+just had to wait. Of course, all the waiting in the world wouldn't get the DS
+records to disappear so after explaining the situation a bit better (I still
+didn't quite know much about it myself) I got them to contact their "upstream
+DNS provider."
+
+Finally, a weekend later, the DS record was gone and Google's DNS servers were
+serving my records again. Additionally, I switched over to using my own BIND
+name server so I could have full control over my DNS. This proved to be quite
+fun to set up. The second server is hosted by a good friend of mine and the
+third one by a friend of that friend. So far, other than me accidentally
+forgetting to enable named.service and rebooting my server to find that DNS
+wasn't working very well, I've had no problems.