A unique Transaction Signature (TSIG) key must be generated for each pair of communicating hosts.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-259410	SRG-APP-000176-DNS-000076	WDNS-22-000090	SV-259410r1081086_rule	2025-02-25	2

Description
To enable zone transfer (requests and responses) through authenticated messages, it is necessary to generate a key for every pair of name servers. The key also can be used for securing other transactions, such as dynamic updates, DNS queries, and responses. The binary key string generated by most key generation utilities used with DNSSEC is Base64 encoded. TSIG is a string used to generate the message authentication hash stored in a TSIG Resource Record (RR) and used to authenticate an entire DNS message.

Description

To enable zone transfer (requests and responses) through authenticated messages, it is necessary to generate a key for every pair of name servers. The key also can be used for securing other transactions, such as dynamic updates, DNS queries, and responses. The binary key string generated by most key generation utilities used with DNSSEC is Base64 encoded. TSIG is a string used to generate the message authentication hash stored in a TSIG Resource Record (RR) and used to authenticate an entire DNS message.

ℹ️ Check
This check is not applicable for Windows DNS Servers that only host Active Directory-integrated zones or for Windows DNS servers on a classified network. Review the DNS implementation. Verify that each pair of communicating hosts has a unique TSIG key (i.e., a separate key for each secondary name server to authenticate transactions with the primary name server, etc.). If a unique TSIG key has not been generated for each pair of communicating hosts, this is a finding. If using DNSSEC, this requirement is not applicable.

ℹ️ Check

This check is not applicable for Windows DNS Servers that only host Active Directory-integrated zones or for Windows DNS servers on a classified network. Review the DNS implementation. Verify that each pair of communicating hosts has a unique TSIG key (i.e., a separate key for each secondary name server to authenticate transactions with the primary name server, etc.). If a unique TSIG key has not been generated for each pair of communicating hosts, this is a finding. If using DNSSEC, this requirement is not applicable.

✔️ Fix
Regenerate a unique TSIG key for each pair of communicating hosts within the DNS architecture.