Friday, December 19, 2008

Storing Arbitrary Messages in Remote DNS Caches

Landon Fuller: "In each DNS query, 7 bits are reserved for a number of flags, one of which is the Recursion Desired (RD) flag. If set to 0, the queried DNS server will not attempt to recurse -- it will only provide answers from its cache.

Combine this with a wildcard zone and it's possible to signal bits (RD on), and read them (RD off). To set a bit to 1 the sender issues a query with the RD bit on. The wildcard zone resolves all requests, including this query. The receiver then issues a query for the same hostname, with the RD bit off. If the bit is 1, the query will return a valid record. If the bit is 0, no record will be returned."