BIND-9X-001054 - A BIND 9.x server implementation must manage excess capacity, bandwidth, or other redundancy to limit the effects of information flooding types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks - options allow-query

Information

A DoS is a condition when a resource is not available for legitimate users. When this occurs, the organization either cannot accomplish its mission or must operate at degraded capacity.

A denial of service (DoS) attack against the DNS infrastructure has the potential to cause a DoS to all network users. As the DNS is a distributed backbone service of the Internet, various forms of amplification attacks resulting in DoS, while utilizing the DNS, are still prevalent on the Internet today. Some potential DoS flooding attacks against the DNS include malformed packet flood, spoofed source addresses, and distributed DoS. Without the DNS, users and systems would not have the ability to perform simple name to IP resolution.

Configuring the DNS implementation to defend against cache poisoning, employing increased capacity and bandwidth, building redundancy into the DNS architecture, utilizing DNSSEC, limiting and securing recursive services, DNS black holes, etc., may reduce the susceptibility to some flooding types of DoS attacks.

Solution

Configure the authoritative name server to prohibit recursion.

Edit the 'named.conf' file and add the following sub statements to the options statement:

recursion no;
allow-query { none };

Configure each zone to limit queries to authorized hosts:

Edit the 'named.conf' file and add the following sub statement to each zone definition:

allow-query { address_match_list; };

Restart the BIND 9.x process

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_BIND_9-x_V2R2_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|SC-5(2), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-001095, Rule-ID|SV-207553r612253_rule, STIG-ID|BIND-9X-001054, STIG-Legacy|SV-87029, STIG-Legacy|V-72405, Vuln-ID|V-207553

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 877699f08ccbc33a4232cf94e582f573cb696a66d59b91305db04b77eaab2a4d