


Intended Status: Informational                            O. Gudmundsson
Network Working Group                                OGUD Consulting LLC
Internet-Draft                                                  J. Ihren
Expires: August 21, 2008                                             AAB
                                                       February 18, 2008


                Names of States in the life of a DNSKEY
                  draft-gudmundsson-life-of-dnskey-00

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   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).













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Abstract

   This document recommends a specific terminology to use when
   expressing the state that a DNSKEY is in at particular time.  This
   does not affect how the protocol operates in any way.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  DNSKEY timeline  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Life stages of a DNSKEY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.1.  Generated  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.2.  Published  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       3.2.1.  Pre-Publication  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       3.2.2.  Out-Of-Band Publication  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.3.  Active . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.4.  Retired  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.5.  Removed  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       3.5.1.  Lame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       3.5.2.  Stale  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.6.  Revoked  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.  Security considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.  IANA considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   6.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     6.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     6.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 11






















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1.  Introduction

   When the editors of this document where comparing their DNSSEC key
   management projects they discovered that they where discussing
   roughly the same thing but using different terminology.

   This document presents a unified terminology to use when describing
   the current state of a DNSKEY.

   The DNSSEC standards documents ([1], [2] and [3]) do not address the
   required states for the key management of a DNSSEC key.  The DNSSEC
   Operational Practices [4] document does propose that keys be
   published before use but uses inconsistent or confusing terms.  This
   document assumes basic understanding of DNSSEC and key management.

   The terms proposed in this document attempt to avoid any confusion
   and make the states of keys to be as clear as possible.  The terms
   used in this document are intended as a operational supplement to the
   terms defined in Section 2 of [1].

   To large extent this discussion is motivated by Trust anchor keys but
   the same terminology can be used for zone signing keys.





























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2.  DNSKEY timeline

   The model in this document is that keys progress through a state
   machine along a one-way path, keys never move to an earlier states.



   GENERATED----------> PUBLISHED ---> ACTIVE ---> RETIRED --> REMOVED
    |                   ^       |        |            |         ^
    |                   |       |        |            v         |
    +--> Pre-PUBLISHED--+       +--------+---------> REVOKED ---+


   DNSKEY time line.

   There are few more states that are defined below but these apply only
   to the publisher of TA's and the consumer of TA's.  Two of these are
   sub-sets of the Published state, the other two are error states.

































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3.  Life stages of a DNSKEY

3.1.  Generated

   Once a key is generated it enters state Generated and stays there
   until the next state.  While in this state only the owner of the key
   is aware of its existence and can prepare for its future use.

3.2.  Published

   Once the key is added to the DNSKEY set of a zone the key is there
   for the world to see, or published.  The key needs to remain in this
   state for some time to propagate to all validators that have cached
   the prior version of the DNSKEY set.  In the case of KSK the key
   should remain in this state for a longer time as documented in DNSSEC
   Timers RFC [5].

3.2.1.  Pre-Publication

   In certain circumstances a zone owner may want to give out a new
   Trust Anchor before exposing the actual public key.  In this case the
   zone can publish a DS record of the key.  This allows others to
   configure the trust anchor but will not be able to use the key until
   the key is published in the DNSKEY RRset.

3.2.2.  Out-Of-Band Publication

   In certain circumstances a domain may want to give out a new Trust
   Anchor outside DNS to give others a long lead time to configure the
   new key as trust anchor.  The reason people may want to do this is to
   keep the size of the DNSKEY set smaller and only add new trust anchor
   just before the key goes into use.  One likely use for this is the
   DNS "." root key as it does not have a parent that can publish a DS
   record for it.  The publication mechanism does not matter it can be
   any one of web-site, advertisement in Financial Times and other
   international publication, e-mail to DNS related mailing lists, etc..

3.3.  Active

   The key is in ACTIVE state while it is actively signing data in the
   zone it resides in.  It is one of the the keys that are signing the
   zone or parts of the zone.

3.4.  Retired

   When the key is no longer used for signing the zone it enters state
   Retired.  In this state there may still be signatures by the key in
   cached data from the zone available at recursive servers, but the



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   authoritative servers for the zone do no longer carry any signatures
   generated by the key.

3.5.  Removed

   Once the key is removed from the DNSKEY RRset it enters the state
   Removed.  At this point all signatures by the key that may still be
   temporarily valid will fail to verify once the validator refreshes
   the DNSKEY RRset in its memory.

   Therefore "removal" of a key is typically not done until all the
   cached signatures have expired.  Entering this state too early may
   cause number of validators to end up with STALE Trust Anchors.

3.5.1.  Lame

   A Trust Anchor is Lame if the parent continues to publish DS pointing
   to the key after it has been removed from the DNSKEY RRset.  A Trust
   Anchor is arguably Lame if there are no signatures by a Retired KSK
   in the zone.

3.5.2.  Stale

   A Stale Trust Anchor is an old TA that remains in a validators list
   of active key(s) after the key has been removed from the zone's
   DNSKEY RRset.

3.6.  Revoked

   There are times when a zone wants to signal that a particular key
   should not be used at all.  The mechanism to do this is to set the
   REVOKE bit [5].  Any key in any of the while the key is the DNSSKEY
   set can be exited to Revoked state.  After some time in the Revoke
   state the key will be Removed.

















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4.  Security considerations

   TBD
















































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5.  IANA considerations

   This document does not have any IANA actions.
















































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6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

6.2.  Informative References

   [1]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose,
        "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements", RFC 4033,
        March 2005.

   [2]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose,
        "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions", RFC 4034,
        March 2005.

   [3]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose,
        "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security Extensions",
        RFC 4035, March 2005.

   [4]  Kolkman, O. and R. Gieben, "DNSSEC Operational Practices",
        RFC 4641, September 2006.

   [5]  StJohns, M., "Automated Updates of DNS Security (DNSSEC) Trust
        Anchors", RFC 5011, September 2007.




























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Authors' Addresses

   Olafur Gudmundsson
   OGUD Consulting LLC
   3821 Village Park Drive
   Chevy Chase, MD  20815
   USA

   Email: ogud@ogud.com


   Johan Ihren
   Automatica, AB
   Bellmansgatan 30
   Stockholm,   SE-118 47
   Sweden

   Email: johani@automatica.se

































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Full Copyright Statement

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