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draft-ietf-dnssd-prireq.xml
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<rfc category="info"
docName="draft-ietf-dnssd-prireq-05"
ipr="trust200902">
<front>
<title abbrev="DNS-SD Privacy Requirements">
DNS-SD Privacy and Security Requirements
</title>
<author fullname="Christian Huitema" initials="C." surname="Huitema">
<organization>Private Octopus Inc.</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street></street>
<city>Friday Harbor</city>
<code>98250</code>
<region>WA</region>
<country>U.S.A.</country>
</postal>
<email>[email protected]</email>
<uri>http://privateoctopus.com/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Daniel Kaiser" initials="D." surname="Kaiser">
<organization>University of Luxembourg</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>6, avenue de la Fonte</street>
<city>Esch-sur-Alzette</city>
<code>4364</code>
<region></region>
<country>Luxembourg</country>
</postal>
<email>[email protected]</email>
<uri>https://secan-lab.uni.lu/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<date year="2020" />
<abstract>
<t>
DNS-SD (DNS Service Discovery) normally discloses information about devices offering and
requesting services. This information includes host names, network parameters, and possibly
a further description of the corresponding service instance. Especially when mobile devices
engage in DNS Service Discovery at a public hotspot, serious privacy
problems arise. We analyze the requirements of a privacy-respecting discovery service.
</t>
</abstract>
</front>
<middle>
<section title="Introduction">
<t>
DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD) <xref target="RFC6763" /> over Multicast DNS
(mDNS) <xref target="RFC6762" /> enables zero-configuration
service discovery in local networks. It is very convenient for users, but it requires the
public exposure of the offering and requesting identities along with information about the
offered and requested services. Parts of the published information can seriously breach the
user's privacy. These privacy issues and potential solutions are
discussed in <xref target="KW14a" />, <xref target="KW14b" /> and <xref target="K17" />.
While the multicast nature of mDNS makes these risks obvious, most risks derive from the
observability of transactions.
These risks also need to be mitigated when using server-based variants of DNS-SD.
</t>
<t>
There are cases when nodes connected to a network want to provide
or consume services without exposing their identities to the other
parties connected to the same network. Consider, for example, a
traveler wanting to upload pictures from a phone to a laptop
when both are connected to the Wi-Fi network of an Internet cafe, or
two travelers who want to share files between their laptops
when waiting for their plane in an airport lounge.
</t>
<t>
We expect that these exchanges will start with a discovery procedure using DNS-SD over mDNS.
One of the devices will publish the availability of a service, such as a picture library
or a file store in our examples. The user of the other device will
discover this service, and then connect to it.
</t>
<t>
When analyzing these scenarios in <xref target="scenarios"/>, we find that
the DNS-SD messages leak identifying information such as the service instance name,
the host name, or service properties. We use the following definitions:
<list style="hanging">
<t hangText="Identity">
In this document, the term "identity" refers to the identity of the entity (legal person)
operating a device.
</t>
<t hangText="Disclosing an Identity">
In this document "disclosing an identity" means showing the identity of operating entities
to devices external to the discovery process; e.g., devices on the same network link that are listening to the
network traffic but are not actually involved in the discovery process.
This document focuses on identity disclosure by data conveyed via messages on the service discovery protocol layer.
Still, identity leaks on deeper layers, e.g., the IP layer, are mentioned.
</t>
<t hangText="Disclosing Information">
In this document "disclosing information" is also focused
on disclosure of data conveyed via messages on the service discovery protocol layer,
such as generic non-identity but still potentially sensitive data.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Threat Model" anchor="threatmodel">
<t>
This document considers the following attacker types sorted by increasing power.
All these attackers can either be passive (they
just listen to network traffic they have access to) or active
(they additionally can craft and send malicious packets).
</t>
<t>
<list style="hanging">
<t hangText="external">
An external attacker is not on the same network link as victim devices engaging in service discovery;
thus, the external attacker is in a different multicast domain.
</t>
<t hangText="on-link">
An on-link attacker is on the same network link as victim devices engaging in service discovery;
thus, the on-link attacker is in the same multicast domain.
This attacker can also mount all attacks an external attacker can mount.
</t>
<t hangText="MITM">
A Man in the Middle (MITM) attacker either controls (parts of) a network link
or can trick two parties to send traffic via the attacker;
thus, the MITM attacker has access to unicast traffic between devices engaging in service discovery.
This attacker can also mount all attacks an on-link attacker can mount.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Threat Analysis" anchor="threatanalysis">
<t>
In this section we analyse how the attackers described in the previous section
might threaten the privacy of entities operating devices engaging in service discovery.
We focus on attacks leveraging data transmitted in service discovery protocol messages.
</t>
<section title="Service Discovery Scenarios" anchor="scenarios">
<t>In this section, we review common service discovery scenarios
and discuss privacy threats and their privacy requirements.
In all three of these common scenarios the attacker is of the type passive on-link.</t>
<section title="Private Client and Public Server" anchor="privclipubserv" >
<t>
Perhaps the simplest private discovery scenario involves a single client connecting
to a public server through a public network. A common example would be
a traveler using a publicly available printer in a business center,
in an hotel, or at an airport.
</t>
<t>
<figure>
<artwork>
( Taking notes:
( David is printing
( a document
~~~~~~~~~~~
o
___ o ___
/ \ _|___|_
| | client server |* *|
\_/ __ \_/
| / / Discovery +----------+ |
/|\ /_/ <-----------> | +----+ | /|\
/ | \__/ +--| |--+ / | \
/ | |____/ / | \
/ | / | \
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
David adversary
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
<t>
In that scenario, the server is public and wants to be discovered, but
the client is private. The adversary will be listening to the network
traffic, trying to identify the visitors' devices and their activity.
Identifying devices leads to identifying people, either for surveillance of
these individuals in the physical world or as a preliminary step for a targeted
cyber attack.
</t>
<t>
The requirement in that scenario is that the discovery activity
should not disclose the identity of the client.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Private Client and Private Server" anchor="privcliprivserv" >
<t>
The second private discovery scenario involves a private client connecting
to a private server. A common example would be two people engaging
in a collaborative application in a public place, such as an airport's lounge.
</t>
<t>
<figure>
<artwork>
( Taking notes:
( David is meeting
( with Stuart
~~~~~~~~~~~
o
___ ___ o ___
/ \ / \ _|___|_
| | server client | | |* *|
\_/ __ __ \_/ \_/
| / / Discovery \ \ | |
/|\ /_/ <-----------> \_\ /|\ /|\
/ | \__/ \__/ | \ / | \
/ | | \ / | \
/ | | \ / | \
/ \ / \ / \
/ \ / \ / \
/ \ / \ / \
/ \ / \ / \
/ \ / \ / \
David Stuart Adversary
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
<t>
In that scenario, the collaborative application on one of the devices will
act as a server, and the application on the other device will act as a client.
The server wants to be discovered by the client, but has no desire to
be discovered by anyone else. The adversary will be listening to
network traffic, attempting to discover the identity of devices as in
the first scenario, and also attempting to discover the patterns of traffic,
as these patterns reveal the business and social interactions between
the owners of the devices.
</t>
<t>
The requirement in that scenario is that the discovery activity
should not disclose the identity of either the client or the server,
nor reveal the business and social interactions between the owners of
the devices.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Wearable Client and Server" anchor="wearcliserv" >
<t>
The third private discovery scenario involves wearable devices.
A typical example would be the watch on someone's wrist connecting
to the phone in their pocket.
</t>
<t>
<figure>
<artwork>
( Taking notes:
( David is here. His watch is
( talking to his phone
~~~~~~~~~~~
o
___ o ___
/ \ _|___|_
| | client |* *|
\_/ \_/
| _/ |
/|\ // /|\
/ | \__/ ^ / | \
/ |__ | Discovery / | \
/ |\ \ v / | \
/ \\_\ / \
/ \ server / \
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
David Adversary
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
<t>
This third scenario is in many ways similar to the second scenario. It involves
two devices, one acting as server and the other acting as client, and it
leads to the same requirement of the discovery traffic not disclosing the
identity of either the client or the server. The main difference is that
the devices are managed by a single owner, which can lead to different
methods for establishing secure relations between the devices. There is
also an added emphasis on hiding the type of devices that the person
wears.
</t>
<t>
In addition to tracking the identity of the owner of the devices, the adversary
is interested in the characteristics of the devices, such as type, brand, and model.
Identifying the type of device can lead to further attacks, from theft to
device-specific hacking. The combination of devices worn by the same person
will also provide a "fingerprint" of the person, risking identification.
</t>
<t>
This scenario also represents the general case of bringing private IoT devices into public places.
A wearable IoT device might act as a DNS-SD/mDNS client which allows attackers to infer information about devices' owners.
While the attacker might be a person as in the example figure,
this could also be abused for large scale data collection installing stationary
IoT-device-tracking servers in frequented public places.
</t>
<t>
The issues described in <xref target="privclipubserv" /> such as identifying
people or using the information for targeted attacks apply here too.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="DNS-SD Privacy Considerations" anchor="analysis">
<t>
While the discovery process illustrated in the scenarios in <xref target="scenarios"/> most likely
would be based on <xref target="RFC6762" /> as a means for making service information available,
this document considers all kinds of means for making DNS-SD resource records available.
These means comprise but are not limited to mDNS <xref target="RFC6762" />,
DNS servers (<xref target="RFC1033"/> <xref target="RFC1034"/>, <xref target="RFC1035"/>),
using SRP <xref target="I-D.ietf-dnssd-srp"/>, and multi-link <xref target="RFC7558"/> networks.
</t>
<t>The discovery scenarios in <xref target="scenarios"/> illustrate three
separate abstract privacy requirements that vary based on the use case. These are not limited to mDNS.
<list style="numbers">
<t>Client identity privacy: Client identities are not leaked during service discovery
or use.</t>
<t>Multi-entity, mutual client and server identity privacy: Neither client nor server identities are
leaked during service discovery or use.</t>
<t>Single-entity, mutual client and server identity privacy: Identities of clients and servers
owned and managed by the same legal person are not leaked during service discovery or use.</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
In this section, we describe aspects of DNS-SD that make these requirements
difficult to achieve in practice.
While it is intended to be thorough, it is not possible to be exhaustive.
</t>
<t>
Client identity privacy, if not addressed properly, can be thwarted by a passive attacker (see <xref target="threatmodel"/>).
The type of passive attacker necessary depends on the means of making service information available.
Information conveyed via multicast messages can be obtained by an on-link attacker. Unicast messages are
easy to access if the transmission is not encrypted, but could still be accessed by an attacker with
access to network routers or bridges. Using multi-link service discovery solutions <xref target="RFC7558"/>,
external attackers have to be taken into consideration as well, e.g., when relaying multicast messages to other links.
</t>
<t>
Server identity privacy can be thwarted by a passive attacker in the same way as client identity privacy.
Additionally, active attackers querying for information have to be taken into consideration as well.
This is mainly relevant for unicast-based discovery, where listening to discovery traffic requires a
MITM attacker; however, an external active attacker might be able to learn the server identity by just querying for
service information, e.g. via DNS.
</t>
<section title="Information made available via DNS-SD Resource Records" anchor="RRs">
<t>
DNS-Based Service Discovery (DNS-SD) is defined in <xref target="RFC6763" />.
It allows nodes to publish the availability of an instance of a service by
inserting specific records in the DNS (<xref target="RFC1033"/>,
<xref target="RFC1034"/>, <xref target="RFC1035"/>) or by publishing
these records locally using
multicast DNS (mDNS) <xref target="RFC6762"/>.
Available services are described using three types of records:
</t>
<t>
<list style="hanging">
<t hangText="PTR Record:">Associates a service type in the domain with
an "instance" name of this service type.
</t>
<t hangText="SRV Record:">Provides the node name, port number, priority and
weight associated with the service instance, in conformance with <xref target="RFC2782" />.
</t>
<t hangText="TXT Record:">Provides a set of attribute-value pairs describing
specific properties of the service instance.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Privacy Implication of Publishing Service Instance Names" anchor="instanceLeak" >
<t>
In the first phase of discovery, clients obtain all PTR records associated with a service type
in a given naming domain. Each PTR record contains a Service Instance Name defined in Section
4 of <xref target="RFC6763" />:
</t>
<t>
<figure>
<artwork>
Service Instance Name = <Instance> . <Service> . <Domain>
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
<t>
The <Instance> portion of the Service Instance Name is meant to convey
enough information for users of discovery clients to easily select the desired service instance.
Nodes that use DNS-SD over mDNS <xref target="RFC6762" /> in a mobile environment will rely on the specificity
of the instance name to identify the desired service instance.
In our example of users wanting to upload pictures to a laptop in an Internet Cafe, the list of
available service instances may look like:
</t>
<t>
<figure>
<artwork>
Alice's Images . _imageStore._tcp . local
Alice's Mobile Phone . _presence._tcp . local
Alice's Notebook . _presence._tcp . local
Bob's Notebook . _presence._tcp . local
Carol's Notebook . _presence._tcp . local
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
<t>
Alice will see the list on her phone and understand intuitively that she should
pick the first item. The discovery will "just work". (Note that our examples of
service names conform to the specification in section 4.1 of <xref target="RFC6763" />,
but may require some character escaping when entered in conventional DNS software.)
</t>
<t>
However, DNS-SD/mDNS will reveal to anybody that Alice is currently visiting the Internet Cafe.
It further discloses the fact that she uses two devices, shares an image store,
and uses a chat application supporting the
_presence protocol on both of her devices. She might currently chat with Bob or Carol,
as they are also using a _presence supporting chat application.
This information is not just available to devices actively browsing for and offering
services, but to anybody passively listening to the network traffic, i.e. a passive on-link attacker.
</t>
<t>
There is, of course, also no authentication requirement to claim a
particular instance name, so an active attacker can provide resources
that claim to be Alice's but are not.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Privacy Implication of Publishing Node Names">
<t>
The SRV records contain the DNS name of the node publishing the
service. Typical implementations construct this DNS name by
concatenating the "host name" of the node with the name of the
local domain. The privacy implications of this
practice are reviewed in <xref target="RFC8117" />.
Depending on naming practices, the host name is either a strong
identifier of the device, or at a minimum a partial identifier.
It enables tracking of both the device, and, by extension, the device's owner.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Privacy Implication of Publishing Service Attributes">
<t>
The TXT record's attribute-value pairs contain information on the characteristics of
the corresponding service instance.
This in turn reveals information
about the devices that publish services. The amount of information
varies widely with the particular service and its implementation:
</t>
<t>
<list style="symbols">
<t>
Some attributes, such as the paper size available in a printer, are the
same on many devices, and thus only provide limited information
to a tracker.
</t>
<t>
Attributes that have freeform values, such as the name of a directory,
may reveal much more information.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Combinations of individual attributes have more information power than specific attributes,
and can potentially be used for "fingerprinting" a specific device.
</t>
<t>
Information contained in TXT records not only breaches privacy by making devices
trackable, but might directly contain private information about the user.
For instance the _presence service reveals the "chat status" to everyone in the same network.
Users might not be aware of that.
</t>
<t>
Further, TXT records often contain version information about services, allowing potential attackers
to identify devices running exploit-prone versions of a certain service.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Device Fingerprinting" anchor="serverFingerprint">
<t>
The combination of information published in DNS-SD has the potential to
provide a "fingerprint" of a specific device. Such information includes:
</t>
<t>
<list style="symbols">
<t>
List of services published by the device, which can be retrieved because the
SRV records will point to the same host name.
</t>
<t>
Specific attributes describing these services.
</t>
<t>
Port numbers used by the services.
</t>
<t>
Priority and weight attributes in the SRV records.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
This combination of services and attributes will often be sufficient to identify
the version of the software running on a device. If a device publishes
many services with rich sets of attributes, the combination may be
sufficient to identify the specific device and track its owner.
</t>
<t>
An argument is sometimes made that devices providing services can be identified
by observing the local traffic, and that trying to hide the presence of the service
is futile. However, there are good
reasons for the discovery service layer to avoid unnecessary exposure:
<list style="numbers">
<t>
Providing privacy at the discovery layer is of the essence for enabling automatically configured privacy-preserving
network applications. Application layer protocols are not forced to leverage the offered privacy,
but if device tracking is not prevented at the deeper layers, including the service discovery layer,
obfuscating a certain service's protocol at the application layer is futile.
</t>
<t>
Further, in the case of mDNS based discovery, even if the application layer does not protect privacy,
typically services are provided via unicast which requires a MITM attacker,
while identifying services based on multicast discovery messages just requires an on-link attacker.
</t>
</list>
The same argument can be extended to say that the pattern of services
offered by a device allows for fingerprinting the device. This may or may not
be true, since we can expect that services will be designed or updated to
avoid leaking fingerprints. In any case, the design of the discovery
service should avoid making a bad situation worse, and should as much as
possible avoid providing new fingerprinting information.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Privacy Implication of Discovering Services" anchor="clientPrivacy" >
<t>
The consumers of services engage in discovery, and in doing so
reveal some information such as the list of services they
are interested in and the domains in which they are looking for the
services. When the clients select specific instances of services,
they reveal their preference for these instances. This can be benign if
the service type is very common, but it could be more problematic
for sensitive services, such as some private messaging services.
</t>
<t>
One way to protect clients would be to somehow encrypt the requested service types.
Of course, just as we noted in <xref target="serverFingerprint"/>, traffic
analysis can often reveal the service.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Security Considerations">
<t>For each of the operations described above, we must also consider security
threats we are concerned about.</t>
<section title="Authenticity, Integrity & Freshness">
<t>Can devices (both servers and clients) trust the information they receive?
Has it been modified in flight by an adversary?
Can devices trust the source of the information?
Is the source of information fresh, i.e., not replayed?
Freshness may or may not be required depending on whether the
discovery process is meant to be online. In some cases, publishing
discovery information to a shared directory or registry,
rather than to each online recipient through a broadcast channel,
may suffice.</t>
</section>
<section title="Confidentiality">
<t>Confidentiality is about restricting information access to only
authorized individuals. Ideally this should only be the appropriate
trusted parties, though it can be challenging to define who are "the
appropriate trusted parties." In some use cases, this may mean that only
mutually authenticated and trusting clients and servers can read messages sent for one another.
The process of service discovery in particular is often used to discover
new entities that the device did not previously know about.
It may be tricky to work out how a device can have an established trust
relationship with a new entity it has never previously communicated with.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Resistance to Dictionary Attacks">
<t>It can be tempting to use (publicly computable) hash functions to obscure sensitive identifiers.
This transforms a sensitive unique identifier such as an email address
into a "scrambled" but still unique identifier. Unfortunately simple solutions
may be vulnerable to offline dictionary attacks.</t>
</section>
<section title="Resistance to Denial-of-Service Attacks">
<t>In any protocol where the receiver of messages has to perform cryptographic
operations on those messages, there is a risk of a brute-force flooding
attack causing the receiver to expend excessive amounts of CPU time
and, where appliciable, battery power just processing and discarding those messages.</t>
<t>
Also, amplification attacks have to be taken into consideration.
Messages with larger payloads should only be sent as an answer to
a query sent by a verified client.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Resistance to Sender Impersonation">
<t>Sender impersonation is an attack wherein messages such as service offers are forged
by entities who do not possess the corresponding secret key material. These attacks
may be used to learn the identity of a communicating party, actively or passively.</t>
</section>
<section title="Sender Deniability">
<t>Deniability of sender activity, e.g., of broadcasting a discovery request, may be
desirable or necessary in some use cases. This property ensures that eavesdroppers
cannot prove senders issued a specific message destined for one or more peers. </t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Operational Considerations">
<section title="Power Management">
<t>Many modern devices, especially battery-powered devices,
use power management techniques to conserve energy.
One such technique is for a device to transfer information about itself
to a proxy, which will act on behalf of the device for some functions,
while the device itself goes to sleep to reduce power consumption.
When the proxy determines that some action is required which only
the device itself can perform, the proxy may have some way to wake the
device, as described for example in <xref target="SLEEP-PROXY" />.</t>
<t>In many cases, the device may not trust the network proxy
sufficiently to share all its confidential key material with the proxy.
This poses challenges for combining private discovery
that relies on per-query cryptographic operations,
with energy-saving techniques that rely on having (somewhat untrusted)
network proxies answer queries on behalf of sleeping devices.</t>
</section>
<section title="Protocol Efficiency">
<t>Creating a discovery protocol that has the desired security
properties may result in a design that is not efficient.
To perform the necessary operations the protocol may
need to send and receive a large number of network packets,
or require an inordinate amount of multicast transmissions.
This may consume an unreasonable amount of network capacity,
particularly problematic when it is a shared wireless spectrum.
Further, it may cause an unnecessary level of power consumption
which is particularly problematic on battery devices,
and may result in the discovery process being slow.</t>
<t>It is a difficult challenge to design a discovery protocol that has the
property of obscuring the details of what it is doing from unauthorized
observers, while also managing to perform efficiently.</t>
</section>
<section title="Secure Initialization and Trust Models">
<t>One of the challenges implicit in the preceding discussions is
that whenever we discuss "trusted entities" versus "untrusted entities",
there needs to be some way that trust is initially established,
to convert an "untrusted entity" into a "trusted entity".</t>
<t>The purpose of this document is not to define the specific way in
which trust can be established. Protocol designers may rely on a
number of existing technologies, including PKI, Trust On First Use (TOFU),
or using a short passphrase or PIN with
cryptographic algorithms such as
<xref target="RFC5054">Secure Remote Password (SRP)</xref>
or a Password Authenticated Key Exchange like
<xref target="RFC8236">J-PAKE</xref>
using a
<xref target="RFC8235">Schnorr Non-interactive Zero-Knowledge Proof</xref>.
</t>
<t>Protocol designers should consider a specific usability pitfall when
trust is established immediately prior to performing discovery. Users
will have a tendency to "click OK" in order to achieve their task. This
implicit vulnerability is avoided if the trust establishment requires
more significant participation of the user, such as entering a password or PIN.
</t>
</section>
<section title="External Dependencies">
<t>Trust establishment may depend on external parties.
Optionally, this might involve synchronous communication.
Systems which have such a dependency may be attacked by interfering with communication
to external dependencies. Where possible, such dependencies should be minimized.
Local trust models are best for secure initialization in the presence of active attackers.</t>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Requirements for a DNS-SD Privacy Extension">
<t>
Given the considerations discussed in the previous sections, we
state requirements for privacy preserving DNS-SD in the following subsections.
</t>
<t>
Defining a solution according to these requirements is intended to lead to a solution that
does not transmit privacy-violating DNS-SD messages and further does not open pathways to new attacks against the
operation of DNS-SD.
</t>
<t>
However, while this document gives advice on which
privacy protecting mechanisms should be used on deeper-layer network
protocols and on how to actually connect to services in a
privacy-preserving way, stating corresponding requirements is out of the scope of this document.
To mitigate attacks against privacy on lower layers,
both servers and clients must use privacy options available at lower layers,
and for example avoid publishing static IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, or static IEEE 802 MAC addresses.
For services advertised on a single network link, link local IP addresses should be used; see
<xref target="RFC3927" /> and <xref target="RFC4291" /> for IPv4 and IPv6, respectively.
Static servers advertising services globally via DNS can hide their IP addresses from
unauthorized clients using the split mode topology shown in <xref target="I-D.ietf-tls-esni"/>.
Hiding static MAC addresses can be achieved via MAC address randomization (see <xref target="RFC7844" />).
</t>
<section title="Private Client Requirements">
<t>
For all three scenarios described in <xref target="scenarios" />, client privacy
requires DNS-SD messages to:
<list style="numbers">
<t>
Avoid disclosure of the client's identity, either directly or via inference,
to nodes other than select servers.
</t>
<t>
Avoid exposure of linkable identifiers that allow tracing client devices.
</t>
<t>
Avoid disclosure of the client's interest in specific service instances or service types to
nodes other than select servers.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
When listing and resolving services via current DNS-SD deployments, clients typically disclose their interest in
specific services types and specific instances of these types, respectively.
</t>
<t>
In addition to the exposure and disclosure risks noted above, protocols and implementations will have
to consider fingerprinting attacks (see <xref target="serverFingerprint"/>) that could retrieve similar information.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Private Server Requirements">
<t>
Servers like the "printer" discussed in scenario 1 are public, but the servers
discussed in scenarios 2 and 3 are by essence private.
Server privacy requires DNS-SD messages to:
</t>
<t>
<list style="numbers">
<t>
Avoid disclosure of the server's identity, either directly or via inference,
to nodes other than authorized clients.
In particular, Servers must avoid publishing static identifiers such as host names or service names.
When those fields are required by the protocol, servers should publish randomized
values. (See <xref target="RFC8117" /> for a discussion of host names.)
</t>
<t>
Avoid exposure of linkable identifiers that allow tracing servers.
</t>
<t>
Avoid disclosure to unauthorized clients of service instance names or service types
of offered services.
</t>
<t>
Avoid disclosure to
unauthorized clients of information about the services they offer.
</t>
<t>
Avoid disclosure of static IPv4 or IPv6 addresses.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
When offering services via current DNS-SD deployments, servers typically disclose their hostnames (SRV, A/AAAA), instance names of
offered services (PRT, SRV), and information about services (TXT).
Heeding these requirements protects a server's privacy on the DNS-SD level.
</t>
<t>
The current DNS-SD user interfaces present the list of discovered service names to the users,
and let them pick a service from the list. Using random identifiers for service names renders
that UI flow unusable. Privacy-respecting discovery protocols will have to solve this issue,
for example by presenting authenticated or decrypted service names instead of the
randomized values.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Security and Operation">
<t>
In order to be secure and feasible, a DNS-SD privacy extension needs to consider
security and operational requirements including:
<list style="numbers">
<t>
Avoiding significant CPU overhead on nodes or significantly higher network load.
Such overhead or load would make nodes vulnerable to denial of service
attacks. Further, it would increase power consumption which is damaging for IoT devices.
</t>
<t>
Avoiding designs in which a small message can trigger a large
amount of traffic towards an unverified address, as this could be exploited in amplification attacks.
</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="IANA Considerations" anchor="iana">
<t>
This draft does not require any IANA action.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Acknowledgments">
<t>This draft incorporates many contributions from Stuart Cheshire and Chris Wood. Thanks to
Florian Adamsky for extensive review and suggestions on the organization of the threat
model. Thanks to Barry Leiba for an extensive review. Thanks to Roman Danyliw, Ben Kaduk,
Adam Roach and Alissa Cooper for their comments during IESG review.
</t>
</section>
</middle>
<back>
<references title="Normative References">
&rfc6762;
&rfc6763;
</references>
<references title="Informative References">
&rfc1033;
&rfc1034;
&rfc1035;
&rfc2782;
&rfc3927;
&rfc4291;
&rfc5054;
&rfc7558;
&rfc7844;
&rfc8117;
&rfc8235;
&rfc8236;
&I-D.ietf-dnssd-srp;
&I-D.ietf-tls-esni;
<reference anchor="KW14a" target="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=7011331">
<front>
<title>Adding Privacy to Multicast DNS Service Discovery</title>
<author initials="D." surname="Kaiser" fullname="Daniel Kaiser">
<organization/>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Waldvogel" fullname="Marcel Waldvogel">
<organization/>
</author>
<date year="2014"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="DOI" value="10.1109/TrustCom.2014.107"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="KW14b" target="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=7056899">
<front>
<title>Efficient Privacy Preserving Multicast DNS Service Discovery</title>
<author initials="D." surname="Kaiser" fullname="Daniel Kaiser">
<organization/>
</author>
<author initials="M." surname="Waldvogel" fullname="Marcel Waldvogel">
<organization/>
</author>
<date year="2014"/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="DOI" value="10.1109/HPCC.2014.141"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="K17" target="http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-0-422757">
<front>
<title>Efficient Privacy-Preserving Configurationless Service Discovery Supporting Multi-Link Networks</title>
<author initials="D." surname="Kaiser" fullname="Daniel Kaiser">
<organization/>
</author>
<date year="2017"/>
</front>
</reference>
<reference anchor="SLEEP-PROXY" target="http://stuartcheshire.org/SleepProxy/index.html">
<front>
<title>Understanding Sleep Proxy Service</title>
<author initials="S." surname="Cheshire" fullname="Stuart Cheshire">
<organization/>
</author>
<date year="2009"/>
</front>