Calculating DS record from DNSKEY with Python 3

While working on DNSSEC for PCextreme’s Aurora DNS I had to convert a DNSKEY to a DS-record which could be set in the parent zone for proper delegation.

The foundation for Aurora DNS is PowerDNS together with Python 3.

The API for Aurora DNS has to return the DS-records so that a end-user can use these in the parent zone. I had the DNSKEY, but I didn’t have the DS-record so I had to calculate it using Python 3.

I eventually ended up with this Python code which you can find on my Github Gists page.

"""
Generate a DNSSEC DS record based on the incoming DNSKEY record

The DNSKEY can be found using for example 'dig':

$ dig DNSKEY secure.widodh.nl

The output can then be parsed with the following code to generate a DS record
for in the parent DNS zone

Author: Wido den Hollander 

Many thanks to this blogpost: https://www.v13.gr/blog/?p=239
"""

import struct
import base64
import hashlib


DOMAIN = 'secure.widodh.nl'
DNSKEY = '257 3 8 AwEAAckZ+lfb0j6aHBW5AanV5A0V0IfF99vAKFZd6+fJfEChpZtjnItWDnJLPa3/LAFec/tUhLZ4jgmzaoEuX3EQQgI1V4kp9SYf8HMlFPP014eO+AnjkYFGLE2uqHPx/Tu7/pO3EyKwTXi5fMadROKuo/mfat5AEIhGjteGGO93DhnOa6kcqj5RHYJBh5OZ/GoZfbeYHK6Muur1T16hHiI12rYGoqJ6ZW5+njYprG6qwp6TZXxJyE7wF1JdD+Zhbjhf0Md4zMEysP22wBLghBaX6eDIBh/7jU7dw1Ob+I42YWk+X4NSiU3sRYPaq1R13JEK4zVqQtL++UVtgRPEbfj5RQ8='


def _calc_keyid(flags, protocol, algorithm, dnskey):
    st = struct.pack('!HBB', int(flags), int(protocol), int(algorithm))
    st += base64.b64decode(dnskey)

    cnt = 0
    for idx in range(len(st)):
        s = struct.unpack('B', st[idx:idx+1])[0]
        if (idx % 2) == 0:
            cnt += s << 8
        else:
            cnt += s

    return ((cnt & 0xFFFF) + (cnt >> 16)) & 0xFFFF


def _calc_ds(domain, flags, protocol, algorithm, dnskey):
    if domain.endswith('.') is False:
        domain += '.'

    signature = bytes()
    for i in domain.split('.'):
        signature += struct.pack('B', len(i)) + i.encode()

    signature += struct.pack('!HBB', int(flags), int(protocol), int(algorithm))
    signature += base64.b64decode(dnskey)

    return {
        'sha1':    hashlib.sha1(signature).hexdigest().upper(),
        'sha256':  hashlib.sha256(signature).hexdigest().upper(),
    }


def dnskey_to_ds(domain, dnskey):
    dnskeylist = dnskey.split(' ', 3)

    flags = dnskeylist[0]
    protocol = dnskeylist[1]
    algorithm = dnskeylist[2]
    key = dnskeylist[3].replace(' ', '')

    keyid = _calc_keyid(flags, protocol, algorithm, key)
    ds = _calc_ds(domain, flags, protocol, algorithm, key)

    ret = list()
    ret.append(str(keyid) + ' ' + str(algorithm) + ' ' + str(1) + ' '
               + ds['sha1'].lower())
    ret.append(str(keyid) + ' ' + str(algorithm) + ' ' + str(2) + ' '
               + ds['sha256'].lower())
    return ret


print(dnskey_to_ds(DOMAIN, DNSKEY))

VirtualBox images to experiment with IPv6

Around me I noticed that a lot of people don’t have hands-on experience with IPv6. The networks they work in do not support IPv6 nor does their ISP provide them with native IPv6 connectivity at home.

On my local systems I often use Virtual Box to set up (IPv6) testing environments. I thought I’d create some Virtual Machine images to get some hands-on experience with IPv6.

The images and README can be found on Github and are aimed to be easy to install and work with.

Requirements

To run the images you need to have Virtual Box installed. You also should be able to use the Linux command line as the Virtual Machines are based on Ubuntu 16.04.

More information can be found in the repository on Github in the README file.

Download

You can download the images here.

How to use

Please take a look at the README on Github. It tells you how to use them.

Happy testing!

Hitch TLS Proxy performance with 15k certificates

While testing with the Hitch TLS proxy in front of Varnish I stumbled upon a slow startup with a large amount of certificates.

In this case we (at PCextreme) want to run Hitch with around 50.000 certificates configured.

The webpage of Hitch says:

Safe for large installations: performant up to 15 000 listening sockets and 500 000 certificates.

10 minutes

I started testing on my local desktop with 15.000 certificates. My desktop is a Intel NUC with Ubuntu 14.04.

wido@wido-desktop:~/repos/hitch/src$ time sudo ./hitch -n 4 -u nobody -g nogroup --config=/opt/hitch/hitch.conf

real    9m40.088s
user    9m38.482s
sys 0m0.829s
wido@wido-desktop:~/repos/hitch/src$

A 10 minute startup time for Hitch is rather long. We started searching for the root-cause.

OpenSSL

After some searching we discovered the OpenSSL version in Ubuntu 14.04 was the problem. Testing with Ubuntu 15.10 showed us different results.

root@VM-9d8e8cfd-e30f-4c40-8c4e-2e098b0f11a5:~# time hitch --daemon --pidfile=/run/hitch.pid --user hitch --group hitch --config=/etc/hitch/hitch.conf

real    0m18.673s
user    0m6.780s
sys    0m2.000s

18 seconds is a lot better than 10 minutes!

Ubuntu 14.04 comes with OpenSSL 1.0.1f and Ubuntu 15.10 with 1.0.2d and that is where the difference seems to be.

100.000 certificates

After this we started testing with 100k certificates. It took 48 seconds to start with that amount of certificates configured.

For production we will use Ubuntu 16.04 which has similar results as Ubuntu 15.10.

So if you find Hitch slow when starting, check your OpenSSL version.