Wouldn’t it make more sense to design a new, simple API and glue for doing secure DNS lookups just for certificate issuance? It could look more like dnscurve or even like HTTPS: have a new resource, say NSS, in parallel with NS. To securely traverse to a subdomain, you would query the parent for NSS and, if the record is present, you would learn an IP address and a public key hash or certificate hash that you can query via HTTPS to read the next domain. And this whole spec would say that normal HTTPS clients and OS resolvers SHOULD NOT use it. So if you mess it up, your site doesn’t go offline.
(HTTPS really needs a way to make a URL where the URL itself encodes the keying information.)
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bawolff
Even if you hate dnssec (and there are many legit criticisms to make) i think it does make sense for CA's to validate it if its there. Its low effort on the CA side, and there isn't really very much downside if its already active.
ysnp
DNSSEC is one of very few topics where voices I respect on security seem completely opposed (WebPKI depends on DNS vs. DNS security does not matter). Is there any literature that demonstrates deep understanding of both arguments? Why are they (DNSSEC + WebPKI) never considered complimentary?
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rmoriz
I enabled DNSSEC a couple of years ago on my self hosted powerdns setup. I sign the zone locally, than build docker containers via SSH on the target nodes.
I made a mistake once and signed with wrong keys which then broke DANE. It‘s good to validate your DNSSEC (and DANE, CAA etc.) setup through external monitoring.
1vuio0pswjnm7
Is there non-ICANN DNSSEC
Everyone knows "WebPKI", e.g., self-appointed "cert authorities", generally relies on DNS
With an added DNSSEC step, perhaps this is now limited to ICANN DNS only
Self-appointed "cert authorities" checking with self-appointed domainname "authority". A closed system
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tptacek
In case the post is fuzzy: what's changed is that as of March 2026, CAs are required to validate DNSSEC if it's enabled when doing DCV or CAA. Previously, it was technically the case that a CA could ignore DNSSEC if you had it set up on your domains, though LetsEncrypt has (as I understand it) been checking DNSSEC pretty much this whole time.
If you own and host your own domain, it's probably very easy to have your DNS provider enable DNSSEC for you, maybe just a button click. They'd sure like you to do that, because DNSSEC is itself quite complicated, and once you press that button it's much less likely that you're going to leave your provider. DNSSEC mistakes take your entire domain off the Internet, as if it had never existed.
There's a research project, started at KU Leuven, that attempts an unbiased "top N" list of most popular domains; it's called the Tranco List. For the last year or so, I've monitored the top 1000 domains on the Tranco list to see which have DNSSEC enabled. You can see that here:
First, DNSSEC penetration in the top 1000 is single digits % (dropping sharply, down to 2%, as you scope down to the top 100).
Second, in a year of monitoring and recording every change in DNSSEC state on every domain in this list, I've seen just three Tranco Top 1000 domains change their DNSSEC state, and one of those changes was Canva disabling DNSSEC. (I think, as of a few weeks ago, they've re-enabled it again). Think about that: 1000 very popular domains, and just 0.3% of them thought even a second about DNSSEC.
DNSSEC is moribund.
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baggy_trough
I'm too afraid to turn it on.
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indolering
It's great to see the free, cryptographically secure, and distributed keyval database that under-grids the entire internet being used to make it more secure. It's too bad lazy sys admins claim that it's not needed and spout a bunch of FUD [1] that is not true [2].
Wouldn’t it make more sense to design a new, simple API and glue for doing secure DNS lookups just for certificate issuance? It could look more like dnscurve or even like HTTPS: have a new resource, say NSS, in parallel with NS. To securely traverse to a subdomain, you would query the parent for NSS and, if the record is present, you would learn an IP address and a public key hash or certificate hash that you can query via HTTPS to read the next domain. And this whole spec would say that normal HTTPS clients and OS resolvers SHOULD NOT use it. So if you mess it up, your site doesn’t go offline.
(HTTPS really needs a way to make a URL where the URL itself encodes the keying information.)
Even if you hate dnssec (and there are many legit criticisms to make) i think it does make sense for CA's to validate it if its there. Its low effort on the CA side, and there isn't really very much downside if its already active.
DNSSEC is one of very few topics where voices I respect on security seem completely opposed (WebPKI depends on DNS vs. DNS security does not matter). Is there any literature that demonstrates deep understanding of both arguments? Why are they (DNSSEC + WebPKI) never considered complimentary?
I enabled DNSSEC a couple of years ago on my self hosted powerdns setup. I sign the zone locally, than build docker containers via SSH on the target nodes.
I made a mistake once and signed with wrong keys which then broke DANE. It‘s good to validate your DNSSEC (and DANE, CAA etc.) setup through external monitoring.
Is there non-ICANN DNSSEC
Everyone knows "WebPKI", e.g., self-appointed "cert authorities", generally relies on DNS
With an added DNSSEC step, perhaps this is now limited to ICANN DNS only
Self-appointed "cert authorities" checking with self-appointed domainname "authority". A closed system
In case the post is fuzzy: what's changed is that as of March 2026, CAs are required to validate DNSSEC if it's enabled when doing DCV or CAA. Previously, it was technically the case that a CA could ignore DNSSEC if you had it set up on your domains, though LetsEncrypt has (as I understand it) been checking DNSSEC pretty much this whole time.
If you own and host your own domain, it's probably very easy to have your DNS provider enable DNSSEC for you, maybe just a button click. They'd sure like you to do that, because DNSSEC is itself quite complicated, and once you press that button it's much less likely that you're going to leave your provider. DNSSEC mistakes take your entire domain off the Internet, as if it had never existed.
There's a research project, started at KU Leuven, that attempts an unbiased "top N" list of most popular domains; it's called the Tranco List. For the last year or so, I've monitored the top 1000 domains on the Tranco list to see which have DNSSEC enabled. You can see that here:
https://dnssecmenot.fly.dev/
There's 2 tl;dr's to this:
First, DNSSEC penetration in the top 1000 is single digits % (dropping sharply, down to 2%, as you scope down to the top 100).
Second, in a year of monitoring and recording every change in DNSSEC state on every domain in this list, I've seen just three Tranco Top 1000 domains change their DNSSEC state, and one of those changes was Canva disabling DNSSEC. (I think, as of a few weeks ago, they've re-enabled it again). Think about that: 1000 very popular domains, and just 0.3% of them thought even a second about DNSSEC.
DNSSEC is moribund.
I'm too afraid to turn it on.
It's great to see the free, cryptographically secure, and distributed keyval database that under-grids the entire internet being used to make it more secure. It's too bad lazy sys admins claim that it's not needed and spout a bunch of FUD [1] that is not true [2].
[1]: https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ [2]: https://easydns.com/blog/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/