[outages] FAA.gov nameserver outage

[Carlos Alvarez]

This belongs on the outages discussion list, NOT here. This is only for outages and the immediate outage info. If you don’t understand why, go ask on THAT list.

--
Carlos Alvarez
602-368-6403
On Mar 26, 2023 at 5:13 PM -0700, T.Suzuki via Outages <outages at outages.org>, wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Mar 2023 08:35:29 -0700
> Hugo Slabbert <hugo at slabnet.com> wrote:
>
> > What would be the symptoms here of a "water torture attack" rather than
> > what John had indicated as a firewall failure in their infrastructure:
> >
> > > Initial looks from the firewall team point to an automatic failover event
> > and the secondary failed.
> >
> > And the symptoms of which lined up with network level info from Paul
> > earlier:
> >
> > > They only seem to have two auth nameservers for faa, both within the
> > faa.gov domain. Don't seem to be anycasted and the 2 v4 and 2 v6 blocks the
> > servers are in all die just within each block run by the FAA.
> > >
> > > Seems like an internal routing meltdown making the only 2 nameservers
> > unreachable reliably.
> >
> > Are you saying that your open resolvers have a per client rate limit
> > applied, that rate limit got tripped, and shortly thereafter the resolvers
> > became unavailable, suggesting query floods for the domain(s) that knocked
> > the resolvers offline (or from the other discussion, possibly was the thing
> > that overwhelmed that firewall layer, causing the initial failover and
> > possibly also causing the firewall secondary to fail to come online)?
>
> Yes. (limitting per client, and per second for all)
> Perhaps, large numbers open resolvers including no ratelimit are used.
> Then massive random subdomain queries caused the firewall symptoms.
> (It's only my guess.)
>
> > On Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 01:13 T.Suzuki via Outages <outages at outages.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi, I'm a researcher of DNS vulnerabilities.
> > >
> > > It loos like random subdomain attacks (water tourtue attack).
> > >
> > > This is the data of my rate-limitted openresolver as a honeypot.
> > > http://www.e-ontap.com/dns/todaydowngov.txt
> > > http://www.e-ontap.com/dns/todaydown.txt
> > > (You can not view these page if you are using 8.8.8.8, sorry.)
> > >
> > > Raw logs of my Unbound (Time is JST)
> > > local/etc/unbound% grep "\.faa\.gov" unbound.log | grep "SERVFAIL" | head
> > > -5
> > > Mar 26 12:00:35 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <
> > > unnamed568.orphaned.faa.gov. A IN>: exceeded ratelimit for zone faa.gov.
> > > Mar 26 12:00:35 unbound[48103:0] reply: 24.199.82.210
> > > unnamed568.orphaned.faa.gov. A IN SERVFAIL 9.226781 0 45
> > > Mar 26 12:04:31 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <amax.faa.gov. A IN>:
> > > exceeded ratelimit for zone faa.gov.
> > > Mar 26 12:04:31 unbound[48103:0] reply: 24.199.82.210 amax.faa.gov. A IN
> > > SERVFAIL 15.112813 0 30
> > > Mar 26 12:04:37 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <dallatx.faa.gov. A IN>:
> > > exceeded ratelimit for zone faa.gov.
> > > local/etc/unbound%
> > > local/etc/unbound% grep "\.faa\.gov" unbound.log | grep "all servers" |
> > > head -5
> > > Mar 26 12:05:26 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <epoxy.faa.gov. A IN>:
> > > all servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. from
> > > 2620:74:27::2:30 no server to query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 12:05:27 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <lyndas365project.faa.gov.
> > > A IN>: all servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. no server to
> > > query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 12:05:28 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <lmn.faa.gov. A IN>: all
> > > servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. no server to query
> > > nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 12:05:30 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <host244.faa.gov. A IN>:
> > > all servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. upstream server
> > > timeout
> > > Mar 26 12:05:33 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <leased-line188.faa.gov.
> > > A IN>: all servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. upstream
> > > server timeout
> > > local/etc/unbound%
> > > local/etc/unbound% grep "\.faa\.gov" unbound.log | grep "all servers" |
> > > tail -5
> > > Mar 26 13:41:08 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <asm.faa.gov. A IN>: all
> > > servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. no server to query
> > > nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 13:41:15 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <sas-uss.edc.nas.faa.gov.
> > > A IN>: all servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. no server to
> > > query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 13:41:22 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <
> > > eforms-stagedev.hq.faa.gov. A IN>: all servers for this domain failed, at
> > > zone faa.gov. no server to query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 13:41:23 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <
> > > faardm-mceast2.idrac.faa.gov. A IN>: all servers for this domain failed,
> > > at zone faa.gov. no server to query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 13:41:28 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <chronos3.faa.gov. A
> > > IN>: all servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. no server to
> > > query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > local/etc/unbound%
> > > local/etc/unbound% grep "\.faa\.gov" unbound.log | grep "SERVFAIL" | tail
> > > -5
> > > Mar 26 13:41:22 unbound[48103:0] reply: 24.199.82.210
> > > eforms-stagedev.hq.faa.gov. A IN SERVFAIL 0.000000 0 44
> > > Mar 26 13:41:23 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <
> > > faardm-mceast2.idrac.faa.gov. A IN>: all servers for this domain failed,
> > > at zone faa.gov. no server to query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 13:41:23 unbound[48103:0] reply: 24.199.82.210
> > > faardm-mceast2.idrac.faa.gov. A IN SERVFAIL 0.000000 0 46
> > > Mar 26 13:41:28 unbound[48103:0] error: SERVFAIL <chronos3.faa.gov. A
> > > IN>: all servers for this domain failed, at zone faa.gov. no server to
> > > query nameserver addresses not usable
> > > Mar 26 13:41:28 unbound[48103:0] reply: 24.199.82.210 chronos3.faa.gov. A
> > > IN SERVFAIL 0.000000 0 34
> > > local/etc/unbound%
> > > local/etc/unbound% grep "\.faa\.gov" unbound.log | grep "all server" | wc
> > > -l
> > > 1408
> > >
> > > --
> > > T.Suzuki
> > > --
> > > T.Suzuki / E.F.シューマッハーとI.イリイチを読もう
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
>
>
> --
> T.Suzuki / E.F.シューマッハーとI.イリイチを読もう
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