path: root/doc/rfc/rfc3761.txt

Network Working Group                                       P. Faltstrom
Request for Comments: 3761                           Cisco Systems, Inc.
Obsoletes: 2916                                              M. Mealling
Category: Standards Track                                       VeriSign
                                                              April 2004


            The E.164 to Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI)
     Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Application (ENUM)

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document discusses the use of the Domain Name System (DNS) for
   storage of E.164 numbers.  More specifically, how DNS can be used for
   identifying available services connected to one E.164 number.  It
   specifically obsoletes RFC 2916 to bring it in line with the Dynamic
   Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Application specification found in
   the document series specified in RFC 3401.  It is very important to
   note that it is impossible to read and understand this document
   without reading the documents discussed in RFC 3401.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
       1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
       1.2. Use for these mechanisms for private dialing plans. . . .  3
       1.3. Application of local policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  The ENUM Application Specifications .  . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       2.1. Application Unique String . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       2.2. First Well Known Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       2.3. Expected Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       2.4. Valid Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
            2.4.1. Flags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
            2.4.2. Services Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
       2.5. What constitutes an 'Enum Resolver'?. . . . . . . . . . .  8
   3.  Registration mechanism for Enumservices .  . . . . . . . . . .  8



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       3.1. Registration Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
            3.1.1. Functionality Requirement. . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
            3.1.2. Naming requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
            3.1.3. Security requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
            3.1.4. Publication Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       3.2. Registration procedure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
            3.2.1. IANA Registration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
            3.2.2. Registration Template. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   4.  Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
       4.1. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   5.  IANA Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   6.  Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       6.1. DNS Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       6.2. Caching Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
       6.3. Call Routing Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
       6.4. URI Resolution Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   7.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   8.  Changes since RFC 2916 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   9.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
       9.1. Normative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
       9.2. Informative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   10. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   11. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

1.  Introduction

   This document discusses the use of the Domain Name System (DNS) for
   storage of E.164 numbers.  More specifically, how DNS can be used for
   identifying available services connected to one E.164 number.  It
   specifically obsoletes RFC 2916 to bring it in line with the Dynamic
   Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Application specification found in
   the document series specified in RFC 3401 [6].  It is very important
   to note that it is impossible to read and understand this document
   without reading the documents discussed in RFC 3401 [6].

   Through transformation of International Public  Telecommunication
   Numbers in the international format [5], called within this document
   E.164 numbers, into DNS names and the use of existing DNS services
   like delegation through NS records and NAPTR records, one can look up
   what services are available for a specific E.164 in a decentralized
   way with distributed management of the different levels in the lookup
   process.

   The domain "e164.arpa" is being populated in order to provide the
   infrastructure in DNS for storage of E.164 numbers.  In order to
   facilitate distributed operations, this domain is divided into
   subdomains.  Holders of E.164 numbers which want to be listed in DNS
   should contact the appropriate zone administrator according to the



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   policy which is attached to the zone.  One should start looking for
   this information by examining the SOA resource record associated with
   the zone, just like in normal DNS operations.

   Of course, as with other domains, policies for such listings will be
   controlled on a subdomain basis and may differ in different parts of
   the world.

1.1.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [1].

   All other capitalized terms are taken from the vocabulary found in
   the DDDS algorithm specification found in RFC 3403 [2].

1.2.  Use for these mechanisms for private dialing plans

   This document describes the operation of these mechanisms in the
   context of numbers allocated according to the ITU-T recommendation
   E.164.  The same mechanisms might be used for private dialing plans.
   If these mechanisms are re-used, the suffix used for the private
   dialing plan MUST NOT be e164.arpa, to avoid conflict with this
   specification.  Parties to the private dialing plan will need to know
   the suffix used by their private dialing plan for correct operation
   of these mechanisms.  Further, the application unique string used
   SHOULD be the full number as specified, but without the leading '+',
   and such private use MUST NOT be called "ENUM".

1.3.  Application of local policy

   The Order field in the NAPTR record specifies in what order the DNS
   records are to be interpreted.  This is because DNS does not
   guarantee the order of records returned in the answer section of a
   DNS packet.  In most ENUM cases this isn't an issue because the
   typical regular expression will be '!^.*$!' since the first query
   often results in a terminal Rule.

   But there are other cases (non-terminal Rules) where two different
   Rules both match the given Application Unique String.  As each Rule
   is evaluated within the algorithm, one may match a more significant
   piece of the AUS than the other.  For example, by using a non-
   terminal NAPTR a given set of numbers is sent to some private-
   dialing-plan-specific zone.  Within that zone there are two Rules
   that state that if a match is for the entire exchange and the service
   is SIP related then the first, SIP-specific rule is used.  But the
   other Rule matches a longer piece of the AUS, specifying that for



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   some other service (instant messaging) that the Rule denotes a
   departmental level service.  If the shorter matching Rule comes
   before the longer match, it can 'mask' the other rules.  Thus, the
   order in which each Rule is tested against the AUS is an important
   corner case that many DDDS applications take advantage of.

   In the case where the zone authority wishes to state that two Rules
   have the same effect or are identical in usage, then the Order for
   those records is set to the same value.  In that case, the Preference
   is used to specify a locally over-ridable suggestion by the zone
   authority that one Rule might simply be better than another for some
   reason.

   For ENUM this specifies where a client is allowed to apply local
   policy and where it is not.  The Order field in the NAPTR is a
   request from the holder of the E.164 number that the records be
   handled in a specific way.  The Preference field is merely a
   suggestion from that E.164 holder that one record might be better
   than another.  A client implementing ENUM MUST adhere to the Order
   field but can simply take the Preference value "on advisement" as
   part of a client context specific selection method.

2.  The ENUM Application Specifications

   This template defines the ENUM DDDS Application according to the
   rules and requirements found in [7].  The DDDS database used by this
   Application is found in [2] which is the document that defines the
   NAPTR DNS Resource Record type.

   ENUM is only applicable for E.164 numbers.  ENUM compliant
   applications MUST only query DNS for what it believes is an E.164
   number.  Since there are numerous dialing plans which can change over
   time, it is probably impossible for a client application to have
   perfect knowledge about every valid and dialable E.164 number.
   Therefore a client application, doing everything within its power,
   can end up with what it thinks is a syntactically correct E.164
   number which in reality is not actually valid or dialable.  This
   implies that applications MAY send DNS queries when, for example, a
   user mistypes a number in a user interface.  Because of this, there
   is the risk that collisions between E.164 numbers and non-E.164
   numbers can occur.  To mitigate this risk, the E2U portion of the
   service field MUST NOT be used for non-E.164 numbers.









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2.1.  Application Unique String

   The Application Unique String is a fully qualified E.164 number minus
   any non-digit characters except for the '+' character which appears
   at the beginning of the number.  The "+" is kept to provide a well
   understood anchor for the AUS in order to distinguish it from other
   telephone numbers that are not part of the E.164 namespace.

   For example, the E.164 number could start out as "+44-116-496-0348".
   To ensure that no syntactic sugar is allowed into the AUS, all non-
   digits except for "+" are removed, yielding "+441164960348".

2.2.  First Well Known Rule

   The First Well Known Rule for this Application is the identity rule.
   The output of this rule is the same as the input.  This is because
   the E.164 namespace and this Applications databases are organized in
   such a way that it is possible to go directly from the name to the
   smallest granularity of the namespace directly from the name itself.

   Take the previous example, the AUS is "+441164960348".  Applying the
   First Well Known Rule produces the exact same string,
   "+441164960348".

2.3.  Expected Output

   The output of the last DDDS loop is a Uniform Resource Identifier in
   its absolute form according to the 'absoluteURI' production in the
   Collected ABNF found in RFC2396 [4].

2.4.  Valid Databases

   At present only one DDDS Database is specified for this Application.
   "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Part Three: The DNS
   Database" (RFC 3403) [2] specifies a DDDS Database that uses the
   NAPTR DNS resource record to contain the rewrite rules.  The Keys for
   this database are encoded as domain-names.

   The output of the First Well Known Rule for the ENUM Application is
   the E.164 number minus all non-digit characters except for the +.  In
   order to convert this to a unique key in this Database the string is
   converted into a domain-name according to this algorithm:

   1. Remove all characters with the exception of the digits.  For
      example, the First Well Known Rule produced the Key
      "+442079460148".  This step would simply remove the leading "+",
      producing "442079460148".




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   2. Put dots (".") between each digit.  Example:
      4.4.2.0.7.9.4.6.0.1.4.8

   3. Reverse the order of the digits.  Example:
      8.4.1.0.6.4.9.7.0.2.4.4

   4. Append the string ".e164.arpa" to the end.  Example:
      8.4.1.0.6.4.9.7.0.2.4.4.e164.arpa

   This domain-name is used to request NAPTR records which may contain
   the end result or, if the flags field is blank, produces new keys in
   the form of domain-names from the DNS.

   Some nameserver implementations attempt to be intelligent about items
   that are inserted into the additional information section of a given
   DNS response.  For example, BIND will attempt to determine if it is
   authoritative for a domain whenever it encodes one into a packet.  If
   it is, then it will insert any A records it finds for that domain
   into the additional information section of the answer until the
   packet reaches the maximum length allowed.  It is therefore
   potentially useful for a client to check for this additional
   information.  It is also easy to contemplate an ENUM enhanced
   nameserver that understand the actual contents of the NAPTR records
   it is serving and inserts more appropriate information into the
   additional information section of the response.  Thus, DNS servers
   MAY interpret Flag values and use that information to include
   appropriate resource records in the Additional Information portion of
   the DNS packet.  Clients are encouraged to check for additional
   information but are not required to do so.  See the Additional
   Information Processing section of RFC 3403 [2], Section 4.2 for more
   information on NAPTR records and the Additional Information section
   of a DNS response packet.

   The character set used to encode the substitution expression is UTF-
   8.  The allowed input characters are all those characters that are
   allowed anywhere in an E.164 number.  The characters allowed to be in
   a Key are those that are currently defined for DNS domain-names.

2.4.1.  Flags

   This Database contains a field that contains flags that signal when
   the DDDS algorithm has finished.  At this time only one flag, "U", is
   defined.  This means that this Rule is the last one and that the
   output of the Rule is a URI [4].  See RFC 3404 [3].

   If a client encounters a record with an unknown flag, it MUST ignore
   it and move to the next Rule.  This test takes precedence over any
   ordering since flags can control the interpretation placed on fields.



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   A novel flag might change the interpretation of the regexp and/or
   replacement fields such that it is impossible to determine if a
   record matched a given target.

   If this flag is not present then this rule is non-terminal.  If a
   Rule is non-terminal then clients MUST use the Key produced by this
   Rewrite Rule as the new Key in the DDDS loop (i.e., causing the
   client to query for new NAPTR records at the domain-name that is the
   result of this Rule).

2.4.2.  Services Parameters

   Service Parameters for this Application take the following form and
   are found in the Service field of the NAPTR record.

               service-field = "E2U" 1*(servicespec)
               servicespec   = "+" enumservice
               enumservice   = type 0*(subtypespec)
               subtypespec   = ":" subtype
               type          = 1*32(ALPHA / DIGIT)
               subtype       = 1*32(ALPHA / DIGIT)

   In other words, a non-optional "E2U" (used to denote ENUM only
   Rewrite Rules in order to mitigate record collisions) followed by 1
   or more or more Enumservices which indicate what class of
   functionality a given end point offers.  Each Enumservice is
   indicated by an initial '+' character.

2.4.2.1.  ENUM Services

   Enumservice specifications contain the functional specification
   (i.e., what it can be used for), the valid protocols, and the URI
   schemes that may be returned.  Note that there is no implicit mapping
   between the textual string "type" or "subtype" in the grammar for the
   Enumservice and URI schemes or protocols.  The mapping, if any, must
   be made explicit in the specification for the Enumservice itself.  A
   registration of a specific Type also has to specify the Subtypes
   allowed.

   The only exception to the registration rule is for Types and Subtypes
   used for experimental purposes, and those are to start with the facet
   "X-".  These elements are unregistered, experimental, and should be
   used only with the active agreement of the parties exchanging them.

   The registration mechanism is specified in Section 3.






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2.5.  What constitutes an 'Enum Resolver'?

   There has been some confusion over what exactly an ENUM Resolver
   returns and what relation that has to the 'Note 1' section in RFC
   3402.  On first reading it seems as though it might be possible for
   an ENUM Resolver to return two Rules.

   The ENUM algorithm always returns a single rule.  Specific
   applications may have application-specific knowledge or facilities
   that allow them to present multiple results or speed selection, but
   these should never change the operation of the algorithm.

3.  Registration mechanism for Enumservices

   As specified in the ABNF found in Section 2.4.2, an 'enumservice' is
   made up of 'types' and 'subtypes'.  For any given 'type', the
   allowable 'subtypes' must be specified in the registration.  There is
   currently no concept of a registered 'subtype' outside the scope of a
   given 'type'.  Thus the registration process uses the 'type' as its
   main key within the IANA Registry.  While the combination of each
   type and all of its subtypes constitutes the allowed values for the
   'enumservice' field, it is not sufficient to simply document those
   values.  A complete registration will also include the allowed URI
   schemes, a functional specification, security considerations,
   intended usage, and any other information needed to allow for
   interoperability within ENUM.  In order to be a registered ENUM
   Service, the entire specification, including the template, requires
   approval by the IESG and publication of the Enumservice registration
   specification as an RFC.

3.1.  Registration Requirements

   Service registration proposals are all expected to conform to various
   requirements laid out in the following sections.

3.1.1.  Functionality Requirement

   A registered Enumservice must be able to function as a selection
   mechanism when choosing one NAPTR resource record from another.  That
   means that the registration MUST specify what is expected when using
   that very NAPTR record, and the URI which is the outcome of the use
   of it.

   Specifically, a registered Enumservice MUST specify the URI scheme(s)
   that may be used for the Enumservice, and, when needed, other
   information which will have to be transferred into the URI resolution
   process itself (LDAP Distinguished Names, transferring of the AUS
   into the resulting URI, etc).



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3.1.2.  Naming requirement

   An Enumservice MUST be unique in order to be useful as a selection
   criteria.  Since an Enumservice is made up of a type and a type-
   dependent subtype, it is sufficient to require that the 'type' itself
   be unique.  The 'type' MUST be unique, conform to the ABNF specified
   in Section 2.4.2, and MUST NOT start with the facet "X-" which is
   reserved for experimental, private use.

   The subtype, being dependent on the type, MUST be unique within a
   given 'type'.  It must conform to the ABNF specified in Section
   2.4.2, and MUST NOT start with the facet "X-" which is reserved for
   experimental, private use.  The subtype for one type MAY be the same
   as a subtype for a different registered type but it is not sufficient
   to simply reference another type's subtype.  The function of each
   subtype must be specified in the context of the type being
   registered.

3.1.3.  Security requirement

   An analysis of security issues is required for all registered
   Enumservices.  (This is in accordance with the basic requirements for
   all IETF protocols.)

   All descriptions of security issues must be as accurate as possible
   regardless of registration tree.  In particular, a statement that
   there are "no security issues associated with this Enumservice" must
   not be confused with "the security issues associated with this
   Enumservice have not been assessed".

   There is no requirement that an Enumservice must be secure or
   completely free from risks.  Nevertheless, all known security risks
   must be identified in the registration of an Enumservice.

   The security considerations section of all registrations is subject
   to continuing evaluation and modification.

   Some of the issues that should be looked at in a security analysis of
   an Enumservice are:

   1. Complex Enumservices may include provisions for directives that
      institute actions on a user's resources.  In many cases provision
      can be made to specify arbitrary actions in an unrestricted
      fashion which may then have devastating results.  Especially if
      there is a risk for a new ENUM lookup, and because of that an
      infinite loop in the overall resolution process of the E.164.





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   2. Complex Enumservices may include provisions for directives that
      institute actions which, while not directly harmful, may result in
      disclosure of information that either facilitates a subsequent
      attack or else violates the users privacy in some way.

   3. An Enumservice might be targeted for applications that require
      some sort of security assurance but do not provide the necessary
      security mechanisms themselves.  For example, an Enumservice could
      be defined for storage of confidential security services
      information such as alarm systems or message service passcodes,
      which in turn require an external confidentiality service.

3.1.4.  Publication Requirements

   Proposals for Enumservices registrations MUST be published as one of
   the following documents; RFC on the Standards Track, Experimental
   RFC, or as a BCP.

   IANA will retain copies of all Enumservice registration proposals and
   "publish" them as part of the Enumservice Registration tree itself.

3.2.  Registration procedure

3.2.1.  IANA Registration

   Provided that the Enumservice has obtained the necessary approval,
   and the RFC is published, IANA will register the Enumservice and make
   the Enumservice registration available to the community in addition
   to the RFC publication itself.

3.2.1.1.  Location of Enumservice Registrations

   Enumservice registrations will be published in the IANA repository
   and made available via anonymous FTP at the following URI:
   "ftp://ftp.iana.org/assignments/enum-services/".

3.2.1.2.  Change Control

   Change control of Enumservices stay with the IETF via the RFC
   publication process.  Especially, Enumservice registrations may not
   be deleted; Enumservices which are no longer believed appropriate for
   use can be declared OBSOLETE by publication of a new RFC and a change
   to their "intended use" field; such Enumservice will be clearly
   marked in the lists published by IANA.







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3.2.2.  Registration Template

   Enumservice Type:

   Enumservice Subtype(s):

   URI Scheme(s):

   Functional Specification:

   Security considerations:

   Intended usage: (One of COMMON, LIMITED USE or OBSOLETE)

   Author:

   Any other information that the author deems interesting:

   Note: In the case where a particular field has no value, that field
   is left completely blank, especially in the case where a given type
   has no subtypes.

4.  Examples

   The examples below use theoretical services that contain Enumservices
   which might not make sense, but that are still used for educational
   purposes.  For example, the protocol used is in some cases exactly
   the same string as the URI scheme.  That was the specification in RFC
   2916, but this 'default' specification of an Enumservice is no longer
   allowed.  All Enumservices need to be registered explicitly by the
   procedure specified in section Section 3.

4.1.  Example

   $ORIGIN 3.8.0.0.6.9.2.3.6.1.4.4.e164.arpa.
      NAPTR 10 100 "u" "E2U+sip" "!^.*$!sip:info@example.com!" .
      NAPTR 10 101 "u" "E2U+h323" "!^.*$!h323:info@example.com!" .
      NAPTR 10 102 "u" "E2U+msg" "!^.*$!mailto:info@example.com!" .

   This describes that the domain 3.8.0.0.6.9.2.3.6.1.4.4.e164.arpa. is
   preferably contacted by SIP, secondly via H.323 for voice, and
   thirdly by SMTP for messaging.  Note that the tokens "sip", "h323",
   and "msg" are Types registered with IANA, and they have no implicit
   connection with the protocols or URI schemes with the same names.







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   In all cases, the next step in the resolution process is to use the
   resolution mechanism for each of the protocols, (specified by the URI
   schemes sip, h323 and mailto) to know what node to contact for each.

5.  IANA Considerations

   RFC 2916 (which this document replaces) requested IANA to delegate
   the E164.ARPA domain following instructions to be provided by the
   IAB.  The domain was delegated according to those instructions.
   Names within this zone are to be delegated to parties according to
   the ITU-T Recommendation E.164.  The names allocated should be
   hierarchic in accordance with ITU-T Recommendation E.164, and the
   codes should be assigned in accordance with that Recommendation.

   IAB is to coordinate with ITU-T TSB if the technical contact for the
   domain e164.arpa is to change, as ITU-T TSB has an operational
   working relationship with this technical contact which needs to be
   reestablished.

   Delegations in the zone e164.arpa (not delegations in delegated
   domains of e164.arpa) should be done after Expert Review, and the
   IESG will appoint a designated expert.

   IANA has created a registry for Enumservices as specified in Section
   3.  Whenever a new Enumservice is registered by the RFC process in
   the IETF, IANA is at the time of publication of the RFC to register
   the Enumservice and add a pointer to the RFC itself.

6.  Security Considerations

6.1.  DNS Security

   As ENUM uses DNS, which in its current form is an insecure protocol,
   there is no mechanism for ensuring that the data one gets back is
   authentic.  As ENUM is deployed on the global Internet, it is
   expected to be a popular target for various kind of attacks, and
   attacking the underlying DNS infrastructure is one way of attacking
   the ENUM service itself.

   There are multiple types of attacks that can happen against DNS that
   ENUM implementations should be aware of.  The following threats are
   taken from Threat Analysis Of The Domain Name System [10]:

   Packet Interception
      Some of the simplest threats against DNS are various forms of
      packet interception: monkey-in-the-middle attacks, eavesdropping
      on requests combined with spoofed responses that beat the real
      response back to the resolver, and so forth.  In any of these



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      scenarios, the attacker can simply tell either party (usually the
      resolver) whatever it wants that party to believe.  While packet
      interception attacks are far from unique to DNS, DNS's usual
      behavior of sending an entire query or response in a single
      unsigned, unencrypted UDP packet makes these attacks particularly
      easy for any bad guy with the ability to intercept packets on a
      shared or transit network.

   ID Guessing and Query Prediction
      Since the ID field in the DNS header is only a 16-bit field and
      the server UDP port associated with DNS is a well-known value,
      there are only 2**32 possible combinations of ID and client UDP
      port for a given client and server.  Thus it is possible for a
      reasonable brute force attack to allow an attacker to masquerade
      as a trusted server.  In most respects, this attack is similar to
      a packet interception attack except that it does not require the
      attacker to be on a transit or shared network.

   Name-based Attacks
      Name-based attacks use the actual DNS caching behavior as a tool
      to insert bad data into a victim's cache, thus potentially
      subverting subsequent decisions based on DNS names.  Most examples
      occur with CNAME, NS and DNAME Resource Records as they redirect a
      victim's query to another location.  The common thread in all of
      these attacks is that response messages allow the attacker to
      introduce arbitrary DNS names of the attacker's choosing and
      provide further information that the attacker claims is associated
      with those names; unless the victim has better knowledge of the
      data associated with those names, the victim is going to have a
      hard time defending against this class of attacks.

   Betrayal By A Trusted Server
      Another variation on the packet interception attack is the trusted
      server that turns out not to be so trustworthy, whether by
      accident or by intent.  Many client machines are only configured
      with stub resolvers, and use trusted servers to perform all of
      their DNS queries on their behalf.  In many cases the trusted
      server is furnished by the user's ISP and advertised to the client
      via DHCP or PPP options.  Besides accidental betrayal of this
      trust relationship (via server bugs, successful server break-ins,
      etc), the server itself may be configured to give back answers
      that are not what the user would expect (whether in an honest
      attempt to help the user or to further some other goal such as
      furthering a business partnership between the ISP and some third
      party).






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   Denial of Service
      As with any network service (or, indeed, almost any service of any
      kind in any domain of discourse), DNS is vulnerable to denial of
      service attacks.  DNS servers are also at risk of being used as
      denial of service amplifiers, since DNS response packets tend to
      be significantly longer than DNS query packets.

   Authenticated Denial of Domain Names
      The existence of RR types whose absence causes an action other
      than immediate failure (such as missing MX and SRV RRs, which fail
      over to A RRs) constitutes a real threat.  In the specific case of
      ENUM, even the immediate failure of a missing RR can be considered
      a problem as a method for changing call routing policy.

   Because of these threats, a deployed ENUM service SHOULD include
   mechanisms which ameliorate these threats.  Most of these threats can
   be solved by verifying the authenticity of the data via mechanisms
   such as DNSSEC [8] once it is deployed.  Others, such and Denial Of
   Service attacks, cannot be solved by data authentication.  It is
   important to remember that these threats include not only the NAPTR
   lookups themselves, but also the various records needed for the
   services to be useful (for example NS, MX, SRV and A records).

   Even if DNSSEC is deployed, a service that uses ENUM for address
   translation should not blindly trust that the peer is the intended
   party as all kind of attacks against DNS can not be protected against
   with DNSSEC.  A service should always authenticate the peers as part
   of the setup process for the service itself and never blindly trust
   any kind of addressing mechanism.

   Finally, as an ENUM service will be implementing some type of
   security mechanism, software which implements ENUM MUST be prepared
   to receive DNSSEC and other standardized DNS security responses,
   including large responses, EDNS0 signaling, unknown RRs, etc.

6.2.  Caching Security

   The caching in DNS can make the propagation time for a change take
   the same amount of time as the time to live for the NAPTR records in
   the zone that is changed.  The use of this in an environment where
   IP-addresses are for hire (for example, when using DHCP [9]) must
   therefore be done very carefully.

6.3.  Call Routing Security

   There are a number of countries (and other numbering environments) in
   which there are multiple providers of call routing and number/name-
   translation services.  In these areas, any system that permits users,



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   or putative agents for users, to change routing or supplier
   information may provide incentives for changes that are actually
   unauthorized (and, in some cases, for denial of legitimate change
   requests).  Such environments should be designed with adequate
   mechanisms for identification and authentication of those requesting
   changes and for authorization of those changes.

6.4.  URI Resolution Security

   A large amount of Security Issues have to do with the resolution
   process itself, and use of the URIs produced by the DDDS mechanism.
   Those have to be specified in the registration of the Enumservice
   used, as specified in Section 3.1.3.

7.  Acknowledgements

   Support and ideas leading to RFC 2916 have come from people at
   Ericsson, Bjorn Larsson and the group which implemented this scheme
   in their lab to see that it worked.  Input has also arrived from
   ITU-T SG2, Working Party 1/2 (Numbering, Routing, Global Mobility and
   Enumservice Definition), the ENUM working group in the IETF, John
   Klensin and Leif Sunnegardh.

   This update of RFC 2916 is created with specific input from: Randy
   Bush, David Conrad, Richard Hill, Jon Peterson, Jim Reid, Joakim
   Stralmark, Robert Walter and James Yu.

8.  Changes since RFC 2916

   Part from clarifications in the text in this document, the major
   changes are two:

   The document uses an explicit DDDS algorithm, and not only NAPTR
   resource records in an "ad-hoc" mode.  In reality this doesn't imply
   any changes in deployed base of applications, as the algorithm used
   for ENUM resolution is exactly the same.

   The format of the service field has changed.  The old format was of
   the form "example+E2U", while the new format is "E2U+example".
   Reason for this change have to with the added subtypes in the
   enumservice, the ability to support more than one enumservice per
   NAPTR RR, and a general agreement in the IETF that the main selector
   between different NAPTR with the same owner (E2U in this case) should
   be first.







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9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [1]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
        Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [2]  Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Part
        Three: The Domain Name System (DNS) Database", RFC 3403, October
        2002.

   [3]  Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Part
        Four: The Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Resolution
        Application", RFC 3404, October 2002.

   [4]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource
        Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998.

   [5]  ITU-T, "The International Public Telecommunication Number Plan",
        Recommendation E.164, May 1997.

   [6]  Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Part
        One: The Comprehensive DDDS", RFC 3401, October 2002.

   [7]  Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Part
        Two: The Algorithm", RFC 3402, October 2002.

9.2.  Informative References

   [8]  Eastlake, D., "Domain Name System Security Extensions", RFC
        2535, March 1999.

   [9]  Droms, R., "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol", RFC 2131,
        March 1997.

   [10] Atkins, D. and R. Austein, "Threat Analysis Of The Domain Name
        System", Work in Progress, April 2004.














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10.  Authors' Addresses

   Patrik Faltstrom
   Cisco Systems Inc
   Ledasa
   273 71 Lovestad
   Sweden

   EMail: paf@cisco.com
   URI:   http://www.cisco.com


   Michael Mealling
   VeriSign
   21345 Ridgetop Circle
   Sterling, VA  20166
   US

   Email: michael@verisignlabs.com
   URI:   http://www.verisignlabs.com































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11.  Full Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  This document is subject
   to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
   except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.

   This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
   OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
   ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
   INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
   INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
   WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

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   The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
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   this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
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   Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
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   The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
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Acknowledgement

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.









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