This is the fourth in a multi-part series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).

One of the "key" questions cryptographers have been asking for the past decade or more is what to do about the potential future development of a large-scale quantum computer.

If theory holds, a quantum computer could break established public-key algorithms including RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), building on Peter Shor's groundbreaking result from 1994.

This prospect has motivated research into new so-called "post-quantum" algorithms that are less vulnerable to quantum computing advances. These algorithms, once standardized, may well be added into the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) thus also adding another dimension to a cryptographer's perspective on the DNS.

(Caveat: Once again, the concepts I'm discussing in this post are topics we're studying in our long-term research program as we evaluate potential future applications of technology. They do not necessarily represent Verisign's plans or position on possible new products or services.)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started a Post-Quantum Cryptography project in 2016 to "specify one or more additional unclassified, publicly disclosed digital signature, public-key encryption, and key-establishment algorithms that are capable of protecting sensitive government information well into the foreseeable future, including after the advent of quantum computers."

Security protocols that NIST is targeting for these algorithms, according to its 2019 status report (Section 2.2.1), include: "Transport Layer Security (TLS), Secure Shell (SSH), Internet Key Exchange (IKE), Internet Protocol Security (IPsec), and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)."

The project is now in its third round, with seven finalists, including three digital signature algorithms, and eight alternates.

NIST's project timeline anticipates that the draft standards for the new post-quantum algorithms will be available between 2022 and 2024.

It will likely take several additional years for standards bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task (IETF) to incorporate the new algorithms into security protocols. Broad deployments of the upgraded protocols will likely take several years more.

Post-quantum algorithms can therefore be considered a long-term issue, not a near-term one. However, as with other long-term research, it's appropriate to draw attention to factors that need to be taken into account well ahead of time.

The three candidate digital signature algorithms in NIST's third round have one common characteristic: all of them have a key size or signature size (or both) that is much larger than for current algorithms.

Key and signature sizes are important operational considerations for DNSSEC because most of the DNS traffic exchanged with authoritative data servers is sent and received via the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which has a limited response size.

Response size concerns were evident during the expansion of the root zone signing key (ZSK) from 1024-bit to 2048-bit RSA in 2016, and in the rollover of the root key signing key (KSK) in 2018. In the latter case, although the signature and key sizes didn't change, total response size was still an issue because responses during the rollover sometimes carried as many as four keys rather than the usual two.

Thanks to careful design and implementation, response sizes during these transitions generally stayed within typical UDP limits. Equally important, response sizes also appeared to have stayed within the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) of most networks involved, thereby also avoiding the risk of packet fragmentation. (You can check how well your network handles various DNSSEC response sizes with this tool developed by Verisign Labs.)

The larger sizes associated with certain post-quantum algorithms do not appear to be a significant issue either for TLS, according to one benchmarking study, or for public-key infrastructures, according to another report. However, a recently published study of post-quantum algorithms and DNSSEC observes that "DNSSEC is particularly challenging to transition" to the new algorithms.

Verisign Labs offers the following observations about DNSSEC-related queries that may help researchers to model DNSSEC impact:

A typical resolver that implements both DNSSEC validation and qname minimization will send a combination of queries to Verisign's root and top-level domain (TLD) servers.

Because the resolver is a validating resolver, these queries will all have the "DNSSEC OK" bit set, indicating that the resolver wants the DNSSEC signatures on the records.

The content of typical responses by Verisign's root and TLD servers to these queries are given in Table 1 below. (In the table, . are the final two labels of a domain name of interest, including the TLD and the second-level domain (SLD); record types involved include A, Name Server (NS), and DNSKEY.)

For an A or NS query, the typical response, when the domain of interest exists, includes a referral to another name server. If the domain supports DNSSEC, the response also includes a set of Delegation Signer (DS) records providing the hashes of each of the referred zone's KSKs the next link in the DNSSEC trust chain. When the domain of interest doesn't exist, the response includes one or more Next Secure (NSEC) or Next Secure 3 (NSEC3) records.

Researchers can estimate the effect of post-quantum algorithms on response size by replacing the sizes of the various RSA keys and signatures with those for their post-quantum counterparts. As discussed above, it is important to keep in mind that the number of keys returned may be larger during key rollovers.

Most of the queries from qname-minimizing, validating resolvers to the root and TLD name servers will be for A or NS records (the choice depends on the implementation of qname minimization, and has recently trended toward A). The signature size for a post-quantum algorithm, which affects all DNSSEC-related responses, will therefore generally have a much larger impact on average response size than will the key size, which affects only the DNSKEY responses.

Post-quantum algorithms are among the newest developments in cryptography. They add another dimension to a cryptographer's perspective on the DNS because of the possibility that these algorithms, or other variants, may be added to DNSSEC in the long term.

In my next post, I'll make the case for why the oldest post-quantum algorithm, hash-based signatures, could be a particularly good match for DNSSEC. I'll also share the results of some research at Verisign Labs into how the large signature sizes of hash-based signatures could potentially be overcome.

Read the previous posts in this six-part blog series:

Read more:
Securing the DNS in a Post-Quantum World: New DNSSEC Algorithms on the Horizon - CircleID