[outages] FAA.gov nameserver outage

[Mike Lyon]

Can’t believe it’s still dead…

-Mike

> On Mar 26, 2023, at 17:13, 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Outages mailing list
>>> Outages at outages.org
>>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages
>>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> T.Suzuki / E.F.シューマッハーとI.イリイチを読もう
> _______________________________________________
> Outages mailing list
> Outages at outages.org
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages