Evaggelos Balaskas - System Engineer

Domain Name Service Response Policy Zones

from PowerDNS Recursor documentation :

Response Policy Zone is an open standard developed by Paul Vixie (ISC and Farsight) and Vernon Schryver (Rhyolite), to modify DNS responses based on a policy loaded via a zonefile.

Sometimes it is called: DNS Firewall

Reading Material

aka useful links:

• DNS Response Policy Zones
• Response Policy Zones (RPZ)
• rpz | PowerDNS Blog

Scheme

An example scheme to get a a better understanding on the concept behind RPZ.

Purpose

The main purposes of implentanting DNS RPZ in your DNS Infrastructure are to dynamicaly DNS sinkhole:

• Malicious domains,
• Implement goverment regulations,
• Prevent users to visit domains that are blocked via legal reasons.

by maintaining a single RPZ zone (or many) or even getting a subscription from another cloud provider.

Althouth for SOHO enviroments I suggest reading this blog post: Removing Ads with your PowerDNS Resolver and customize it to your needs.

RPZ Policies

These are the RPZ Policies we can use with PowerDNS.

• Policy.Custom (default policy)
• Policy.Drop
• Policy.NXDOMAIN
• Policy.NODATA
• Policy.Truncate
• Policy.NoAction

Policy.Custom:

Will return a NoError, CNAME answer with the value specified with
defcontent, when looking up the result of this CNAME, RPZ is not taken into account

Use Case

Modify the DNS responces with a list of domains to a specific sinkhole dns record.

eg.

  thisismytestdomain.com.org ---> sinkhole.example.net.
*.thisismytestdomain.com.org ---> sinkhole.example.net.
  example.org                ---> sinkhole.example.net.
*.example.org                ---> sinkhole.example.net.
  example.net                ---> sinkhole.example.net.
*.example.net                ---> sinkhole.example.net.

DNS sinkhole record

Create an explicit record outside of the DNS RPZ scheme.

A type A Resource Record to a domain zone that points to 127.0.0.1 is okay, or use an explicit host file that the resolver can read. In the PowerDNS Recursor the configuration for this, are these two lines:

etc-hosts-file=/etc/pdns-recursor/hosts.blocked
export-etc-hosts=on

then

$ echo "127.0.0.5 sinkhole.example.net" >> /etc/pdns-recursor/hosts.blocked

and reload the service.

rpz.zone

RPZ functionality is set by reading a bind dns zone file, so create a simple file:

/etc/pdns-recursor/rpz.zone

; Time To Live
$TTL 86400

; Start Of Authorite
@       IN  SOA authns.localhost. hostmaster. 2018042901 14400 7200 1209600 86400

; Declare Name Server
@                    IN  NS      authns.localhost.

Lua

RPZ support configuration is done via our Lua configuration mechanism

In the pdns-recursor configuration file: /etc/pdns-recursor/recursor.conf we need to declare a lua configuration file:

lua-config-file=/etc/pdns-recursor/rpz.lua

Lua-RPZ Configuration file

that points to the rpz.zone file. In this example, we will use Policy.Custom to send every DNS query to our default content: sinkhole.example.net

/etc/pdns-recursor/rpz.lua

rpzFile("/etc/pdns-recursor/rpz.zone", {defpol=Policy.Custom, defcontent="sinkhole.example.net."})

Restart PowerDNS Recursor

At this moment, restart the powerdns recusor

# systemctl restart pdns-recursor

or

# service pdns-recursor restart

and watch for any error log.

Domains to sinkhole

Append to the rpz.zone all the domains you need to sinkhole. The defcontent="sinkhole.example.net." will ignore the content of the zone, but records must be valid, or else pdns-recursor will not read the rpz bind zone file.

; Time To Live
$TTL 86400

; Start Of Authorite
@   IN  SOA authns.localhost. hostmaster. 2018042901 14400 7200 1209600 86400

; Declare Name Server
@                    IN  NS      authns.localhost.

; Domains to sinkhole
thisisatestdomain.org.  IN  CNAME    sinkhole.example.net.
thisisatestdomain.org.  IN  CNAME    sinkhole.example.net.
example.org.            IN  CNAME    sinkhole.example.net.
*.example.org.          IN  CNAME    sinkhole.example.net.
example.net.            IN  CNAME    sinkhole.example.net.
*.example.net.          IN  CNAME    sinkhole.example.net.

When finished, you can reload the lua configuration file that read the rpz.zone file, without restarting the powerdns recursor.

# rec_control reload-lua-config

Verify with dig

testing the dns results with dig:

$ dig example.net.

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;example.net.           IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
example.net.        86400   IN  CNAME   sinkhole.example.net.
sinkhole.example.net.   86261   IN  A   127.0.0.5

$ dig thisisatestdomain.org

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;thisisatestdomain.org.     IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
thisisatestdomain.org.  86400   IN  CNAME   sinkhole.example.net.
sinkhole.example.net.   86229   IN  A   127.0.0.5

Wildcard

test the wildcard record in rpz.zone:

$ dig example.example.net.

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;example.example.net.       IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
example.example.net.    86400   IN  CNAME   sinkhole.example.net.
sinkhole.example.net.   86400   IN  A   127.0.0.5