Chroot-BIND HOWTO
Scott Wunsch, scott at wunsch.org
v1.5, 1 December 2001
This document describes installing the BIND 9 nameserver to run in a
chroot jail and as a non-root user, to provide added security and min
imise the potential effects of a security compromise. Note that this
document has been updated for BIND 9; if you still run BIND 8, you
want the Chroot-BIND8 HOWTO instead.
______________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 What?
1.2 Why?
1.3 Where?
1.4 How?
1.5 Disclaimer
2. Preparing the Jail
2.1 Creating a User
2.2 Directory Structure
2.3 Placing the BIND Data
2.4 System Support Files
2.5 Logging
2.5.1 The Ideal Solution
2.5.2 The Other Solutions
2.6 Tightening Permissions
3. Compiling and Installing Your Shiny New BIND
3.1 Doing the Compile
4. Installing Your Shiny New BIND
4.1 Installing the Binaries
4.2 Setting up the Init Script
4.3 Configuration Changes
5. The End
5.1 Launching BIND
5.2 That's It!
6. Appendix - Upgrading BIND Later
7. Appendix - Thanks
8. Appendix - Document Distribution Policy
______________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
This is the Chroot-BIND HOWTO; see ``Where?'' for the master site,
which contains the latest copy. It is assumed that you already know
how to configure and use BIND (the Berkeley Internet Name Domain). If
not, I would recommend that you read the DNS HOWTO first. It is also
assumed that you have a basic familiarity with compiling and
installing software on your UNIX-like system.
1.1. What?
This document describes some extra security precautions that you can
take when you install BIND. It explains how to configure BIND so that
it resides in a ``chroot jail,'' meaning that it cannot see or access
files outside its own little directory tree. We shall also configure
it to run as a non-root user.
The idea behind chroot is fairly simple. When you run BIND (or any
other process) in a chroot jail, the process is simply unable to see
any part of the filesystem outside the jail. For example, in this
document, we'll set BIND up to run chrooted to the directory
/chroot/named. Well, to BIND, the contents of this directory will
appear to be /, the root directory. Nothing outside this directory
will be accessible to it. You've probably encounted a chroot jail
before, if you've ever used ftp to log into a public system.
Because the chroot process is much simpler with BIND 9, I have started
to expand this document slightly, to include more general tips about
securing a BIND installation. Nevertheless, this document is not (and
is not intended to be) a complete reference for securing BIND. If you
do only what is outlined in this document, you're not finished
securing your nameserver!
1.2. Why?
The idea behind running BIND in a chroot jail is to limit the amount
of access any malicious individual could gain by exploiting
vulnerabilities in BIND. It is for the same reason that we run BIND
as a non-root user.
This should be considered as a supplement to the normal security
precautions (running the latest version, using access control, etc.),
certainly not as a replacement for them.
If you're interested in DNS security, you might also be interested in
a few other products. Building BIND with StackGuard
<http://www.immunix.org/products.html#stackguard> would probably be a
good idea for even more protection. Using it is easy; it's just like
using ordinary gcc. Also, DNScache <http://cr.yp.to/dnscache.html> is
a secure replacement for BIND, written by Dan Bernstein. Dan is the
author of qmail, and DNScache appears to follow a similar philosophy.
1.3. Where?
The latest version of this document is always available from the web
site of the Linux/Open Source Users of Regina, Sask., at
<http://www.losurs.org/docs/howto/Chroot-BIND.html>.
There is now a Japanese translation of this document, maintained by
Nakano Takeo nakano at apm.seikei.ac.jp. This is available at
<http://www.linux.or.jp/JF/JFdocs/Chroot-BIND-HOWTO.html>.
BIND is available from the Internet Software Consortium
<http://www.isc.org/> at <http://www.isc.org/bind.html>. As of this
writing, the current version of BIND 9 is 9.2.0. BIND 9 has been out
for some time now, and many people are using it in production.
Nevertheless, some more conservative sorts still prefer to remain with
BIND 8. If you are such a person, please see my Chroot-BIND8 HOWTO
(available from the same location) for details on chrooting it, but be
warned that BIND 8 is much messier to chroot.
Keep in mind that there are known security holes in many earlier
versions of BIND, so make very sure that you're running the latest
version!
1.4. How?
I wrote this document based on my experiences in setting BIND up in a
chroot environment. In my case, I already had an existing BIND
installation in the form of a package that came with my Linux
distribution. I'll assume that most of you are probably in the same
situation, and will simply be transferring over and modifying the
configuration files from your existing BIND installation, and then
removing the package before installing the new one. Don't remove the
package yet, though; we may want some files from it first.
If this is not the case for you, you should still be able to follow
this document. The only difference is that, where I refer to copying
an existing file, you first have to create it yourself. The DNS HOWTO
may be helpful for this.
1.5. Disclaimer
These steps worked for me, on my system; your mileage may vary. This
is but one way to approach this; there are other ways to set the same
thing up (although the general approach will be the same). It just
happens that this was the first way that I tried that worked, so I
wrote it down.
My BIND experience to date has been installing on Linux servers.
However, most of the instructions in this document should be easily
applicable to other flavours of UNIX as well, and I shall try to point
out differences of which I am aware. I've also received suggestions
from people using other distributions and other platforms, and I've
tried to incorporate their comments where possible.
If you run Linux, you need to make sure that you're running a 2.4
kernel before attempting this. The -u switch (to run as a non-root
user) requires this newer kernel.
2. Preparing the Jail
2.1. Creating a User
As mentioned in the introduction, it's not a good idea to run BIND as
root. So, before we begin, let's create a separate user for BIND.
Note that you should never use an existing generic user like nobody
for this purpose. However, some distributions, such as SuSE and Linux
Mandrake have started providing a specific user (generally called
named); you can simply adapt this user for our purposes, if you like.
This requires adding a line something like the following to
/etc/passwd:
named:x:200:200:Nameserver:/chroot/named:/bin/false
And one like this to /etc/group:
named:x:200:
This creates a user and group called named for BIND. Make sure that
the UID and GID (both 200 in this example) are unique on your system.
The shell is set to /bin/false because this user will never need to
log in.
2.2. Directory Structure
Now, we must set up the directory structure that we will use for the
chroot jail in which BIND will live. This can be anywhere on your
filesystem; the truly paranoid may even want to put it on a separate
volume. I shall assume that you will use /chroot/named. Let's start
by creating the following directory structure:
/chroot
+-- named
+-- dev
+-- etc
| +-- namedb
| +-- slave
+-- var
+-- run
If you use GNU mkdir (such as on a Linux system), you can create this
directory structure like this:
# mkdir -p /chroot/named
# cd /chroot/named
# mkdir -p dev etc/namedb/slave var/run
2.3. Placing the BIND Data
Assuming that you have already done a conventional installation of
BIND and are using it, you will already have an existing named.conf
and zone files. These files must now be moved (or copied, to be safe)
into the chroot jail, so that BIND can get at them. named.conf goes
in /chroot/named/etc, and the zone files can go in
/chroot/named/etc/namedb. For example:
# cp -p /etc/named.conf /chroot/named/etc/
# cp -a /var/named/* /chroot/named/etc/namedb/
BIND would normally need to write to the namedb directory, but in the
interests of tightening security, we will not allow it to do this. If
your nameserver serves as a slave for any zones, it will need to
update these zone files, which means we'll have to store them in a
separate directory, to which BIND does have write access.
# chown -R named:named /chroot/named/etc/namedb/slave
Keep in mind that'll you have to move any slave zones you have into
this directory, and update your named.conf accordingly.
BIND will also need to write to the /var/run directory, to put its
pidfile and statistical information there, so let's allow it to do so:
# chown named:named /chroot/named/var/run
2.4. System Support Files
Once BIND is running in the chroot jail, it will not be able to access
files outside the jail at all. However, it needs to access a few key
files, although not nearly as many as BIND 8 did.
One file that BIND will need inside its jail is good ol' /dev/null.
Note that the exact command necessary to create this device node may
vary from system to system; check your /dev/MAKEDEV script to be sure.
Some systems may also require /dev/zero, which can created similarly.
It's reported that the BIND 9.2.0 release candidates now require
/dev/random as well. For most Linux systems, we can use the following
commands:
# mknod /chroot/named/dev/null c 1 3
# mknod /chroot/named/dev/random c 1 8
# chmod 666 /chroot/named/dev/{null,random}
For FreeBSD 4.3, this is:
# mknod /chroot/named/dev/null c 2 2
# mknod /chroot/named/dev/random c 2 3
# chmod 666 /chroot/named/dev/{null,random}
You also need another file in the /etc directory inside the jail. You
must copy /etc/localtime (this is sometimes known as
/usr/lib/zoneinfo/localtime on some systems) in there so that BIND
logs things with the right time on them. The following command will
take care of this:
# cp /etc/localtime /chroot/named/etc/
2.5. Logging
Unlike a conventional jailbird, BIND can't just scribble its log
entries on the walls :-). Normally, BIND logs through syslogd, the
system logging daemon. However, this type of logging is performed by
sending the log entries to the special socket /dev/log. Since this is
outside the jail, BIND can't use it any more. Fortuantely, there are
a couple options to work around this.
2.5.1. The Ideal Solution
The ideal solution to this dilemma requires a reasonably recent
version of syslogd which supports the -a switch introduced by OpenBSD.
Check the manpage for your syslogd(8) to see if you have such a
version.
If you do, all you have to do is add the switch ``-a
/chroot/named/dev/log'' to the command line when you launch syslogd.
On systems which use a full SysV-init (which includes most Linux
distributions), this is typically done in the file
/etc/rc.d/init.d/syslog. For example, on my Red Hat Linux system, I
changed the line
daemon syslogd -m 0
to
daemon syslogd -m 0 -a /chroot/named/dev/log
Interestingly, as of Red Hat 7.2, Red Hat has apparently made this
process even easier. There is now a file called /etc/sysconfig/syslog
in which extra parameters for syslogd can be defined.
On Caldera OpenLinux systems, they use a daemon launcher called ssd,
which reads configuration from /etc/sysconfig/daemons/syslog. You
simply need to modify the options line to look like this:
OPTIONS_SYSLOGD="-m 0 -a /chroot/named/dev/log"
Similarly, on SuSE systems, I'm told that the best place to add this
switch is in the /etc/rc.config file. Changing the line
SYSLOGD_PARAMS=""
to read
SYSLOGD_PARAMS="-a /chroot/named/dev/log"
should do the trick.
And, last but not least, for FreeBSD 4.3 you can apparently just edit
the rc.conf file and put in the following:
syslogd_flags="-s -l /chroot/named/dev/log"
The -s is for security reasons, and is part of the default settings.
The -l is a local path on which to put another logging node.
Once you've figured out how to make this change for your system,
simply restart syslogd, either by killing it and launching it again
(with the extra parameters), or by using the SysV-init script to do it
for you:
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/syslog stop
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/syslog start
Once it's been restarted, you should see a ``file'' in
/chroot/named/dev called log, that looks something like this:
srw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 Mar 13 20:58 log
2.5.2. The Other Solutions
If you have an older syslogd, then you'll have to find another way to
do your logging. There are a couple programs out there, such as
holelogd, which are designed to help by acting as a ``proxy'' and
accepting log entries from the chrooted BIND and passing them out to
the regular /dev/log socket.
Alteratively, you can simply configure BIND to log to files instead of
going through syslog. See the BIND documentation for more details if
you choose to go this route.
2.6. Tightening Permissions
First of all, feel free to restrict access to the whole /chroot
directory to the root user. Of course, not everybody may want to do
this, especially if you have other software installed in that tree
that doesn't appreciate it.
# chown root /chroot
# chmod 700 /chroot
You can also safely restrict access to /chroot/named to the named
user.
# chown named:named /chroot/named
# chmod 700 /chroot/named
For even more tightening, on Linux systems we can make a few of the
files and directories immutable, using the chattr tool on ext2
filesystems.
# cd /chroot/named
# chattr +i etc etc/localtime var
Equivalently, on FreeBSD 4.3, you want to look into chflags if you
wish to make things immutable. As an example, the following should
change everything in the /chroot/named/etc directory to immutable:
# chflags schg /chroot/named/etc/*(*).
It would be nice to do this for the dev directory too, but
unfortunately that would prevent syslogd from creating its dev/log
socket. You may also choose to set the immutable bit on other files
in the jail as well, such as your primary zone files, if they aren't
expected to change.
3. Compiling and Installing Your Shiny New BIND
3.1. Doing the Compile
Compiling BIND 9 for use in a chroot jail should be a much more
pleasant experience than BIND 8 was. In fact, you don't have to do
anything special; the standard ./configure && make should suffice.
Keep in mind that if you want to enable IPv6 support in BIND
(--enable-ipv6) on Linux systems, you need matching versions of kernel
and glibc. If you have kernel 2.2, you need glibc 2.1, and if you
have kernel 2.4, you need glibc 2.2. BIND is quite picky about this.
4. Installing Your Shiny New BIND
I should mention that if you have an existing installation of BIND,
such as from an RPM, you should probably remove it before installing
the new one. On Red Hat systems, this probably means removing the
packages bind and bind-utils, and possibly bind-devel and caching-
nameserver, if you have them.
You may want to save a copy of the init script (e.g.,
/etc/rc.d/init.d/named), if any, before doing so; it'll be useful
later on.
If you are upgrading from an older version of BIND, such as BIND 8,
you will want to read the migration documentation in the file
doc/misc/migration in the BIND source package. I don't deal with any
migration issues in this document; I simply assume that you are
replacing an existing, working installation of BIND 9.
4.1. Installing the Binaries
This is the easy part :-). Just run make install and let it take care
of it for you. Really, that's it!
4.2. Setting up the Init Script
If you have an existing init script from your distribution, it would
probably be best simply to modify it to run the new binary, with the
appropriate switches. The switches are... (drumroll please...)
· -u named, which tells BIND to run as the user named, rather than
root.
· -t /chroot/named, which tells BIND to chroot itself to the jail
that we've set up.
· -c /etc/named.conf, which tells BIND where to find its
configuration file within the jail.
The following is the init script I use with my Red Hat 6.0 system. As
you can see, it is almost exactly the same as the way it shipped from
Red Hat. I haven't tried the rndc commands yet, but I can't see any
reason why they shouldn't work.
______________________________________________________________________
#!/bin/sh
#
# named This shell script takes care of starting and stopping
# named (BIND DNS server).
#
# chkconfig: 345 55 45
# description: named (BIND) is a Domain Name Server (DNS) \
# that is used to resolve host names to IP addresses.
# probe: true
# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
# Source networking configuration.
. /etc/sysconfig/network
# Check that networking is up.
[ ${NETWORKING} = "no" ] && exit 0
[ -f /usr/local/sbin/named ] || exit 0
[ -f /chroot/named/etc/named.conf ] || exit 0
# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
# Start daemons.
echo -n "Starting named: "
daemon /usr/local/sbin/named -u named -t /chroot/named -c /etc/named.conf
echo
touch /var/lock/subsys/named
;;
stop)
# Stop daemons.
echo -n "Shutting down named: "
killproc named
rm -f /var/lock/subsys/named
echo
;;
status)
status named
exit $?
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
exit $?
;;
reload)
/usr/local/sbin/rndc reload
exit $?
;;
probe)
# named knows how to reload intelligently; we don't want linuxconf
# to offer to restart every time
/usr/local/sbin/rndc reload >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo start
exit 0
;;
*)
echo "Usage: named {start|stop|status|restart|reload}"
exit 1
esac
exit 0
______________________________________________________________________
As with syslogd, as of Red Hat 7.2 this process is now even easier.
There is a file called /etc/sysconfig/named in which extra parameters
for syslogd can be defined. The default /etc/rc.d/init.d/named on Red
Hat 7.2, however, will check for the existance of /etc/named.conf
before starting. You will need to correct this path.
On Caldera OpenLinux systems, you simply need to modify the variables
defined at the top, and it will apparently take care of the rest for
you:
NAME=named
DAEMON=/usr/local/sbin/$NAME
OPTIONS="-t /chroot/named -u named -c /etc/named.conf"
And for FreeBSD 4.3, you can edit the rc.conf file and put in the
following:
named_enable="YES"
named_program="chroot/named/bin/named"
named_flags="-u named -t /chroot/named -c /etc/namedb/named.conf"
4.3. Configuration Changes
You will also have to add or change a few options in your named.conf
to keep the various directories straight. In particular, you should
add (or change, if you already have them) the following directives in
the options section:
directory "/etc/namedb";
pid-file "/var/run/named.pid";
statistics-file "/var/run/named.stats";
Since this file is being read by the named daemon, all the paths are
of course relative to the chroot jail. As of this writing, BIND 9
does not support many of the statistics and dump files that previous
versions did. Presumably later versions will; if you are running such
a version, you may have to add additional entries to cause BIND to
write them to the /var/run directory as well.
5. The End
5.1. Launching BIND
Everything should be set up, and you should be ready to put your new,
more secure BIND into action. Assuming you set up a SysV-style init
script, you can simply launch it as:
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/named start
Make sure you kill any old versions of BIND still running before doing
this.
5.2. That's It!
You can go take a nap now ;-).
6. Appendix - Upgrading BIND Later
So, you had BIND 9.1.2 all nicely chrooted and tweaked to your
taste... and then you hear this nasty rumour that BIND 9.1.3 is
finally out, and you just have to give it a try right away. Do you
have to go through this whole long process to install this new
version?
Nope. In fact, you really just need to compile the new BIND and
install it over top of the old one. Just don't forget to kill the old
version and restart BIND, or it'll still be the old version running!
7. Appendix - Thanks
I'd like to thank the following people for their assistance in the
creation of this HOWTO:
· Lonny Selinger <lonny at abyss.za.org> for "testing" the first
version of this HOWTO and making sure that I didn't miss any steps.
· Chirik <chirik at CastleFur.COM>, Dwayne Litzenberger <dlitz at
dlitz.net>, Phil Bambridge <phil.b at cableinet.co.uk>, Robert Cole
<rcole at metrum-datatape.com>, Colin MacDonald <colinm at
telus.net>, and others for pointing out errors, omissions, and
providing other useful advice to make this HOWTO even better.
· Erik Wallin <erikw at sec.se> and Brian Cervenka <brian at
zerobelow.org> for providing good suggestions for further
tightening the jail.
· Robert Dalton <support at accesswest.com> for suggesting a couple
more example commands, and pointing out BIND 9.2.0's need of
/dev/random.
· Eric McCormick <hostmaster at cybertime.net> for the FreeBSD 4.3
information.
· Tan Zheng Da <tzd at pobox.com> for the details about the changes
in Red Hat 7.2 that make this a little easier.
And last but certainly not least, I'd like to thank Nakano Takeo
<nakano at apm.seikei.ac.jp> for translating the Chroot-BIND HOWTO
into Japanese. You can find his translation at
<http://www.linux.or.jp/JF/JFdocs/Chroot-BIND-HOWTO.html>.
8. Appendix - Document Distribution Policy
Copyright © Scott Wunsch, 2000-2001. This document may be distributed
only subject to the terms set forth in the LDP licence at
<http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/COPYRIGHT.html>.
This HOWTO is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the LDP licence. It is distributed in
the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without
even the impled warranty of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. See the LDP licence for more details.
