bind9 got "bad zone transfer request"

Question

My Debian-server acts as a DNS server for the domain I own. Since my ISP also allocated me a sub-domain, my DNS server also has a few entries for that host. In other words, I have /etc/bind/db.domain-i-own.tld with a few entries and /etc/bind/db.192, also with a few entries. And my named.conf.local has

zone "domain-i-own.tld" {
    type master;
    file "/etc/bind/db.domain-i-own.tld";
};

zone "<my-public-ip>.in-addr.arpa" {
    type master;
    notify no;
    file "/etc/bind/db.192";
};

A couple of days ago, the following appeared in my logging:

 client 137.xxx.xxx.xxx#xxxxx: bad zone transfer request: 'my-isp.tld/IN': non-authoritative zone (NOTAUTH)

I don't really understand what happened. Did somebody try to trick my DNS-server into believing it should become the root DNS-server for the whole domain of my ISP (so not only my subdomain)? Should I inform my ISP about that?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 17 '15 at 21:15

Someone (137.xxx.xxx.xxx) asked your nameserver to send them the contents of the my-isp.tld zone, a request which your nameserver responded to saying that it is not authoritative for that zone.

I don't think there's any point bothering your ISP with this, especially if this client IP address does not belong to them.

bind9 got "bad zone transfer request"

1 Answers1