Slashdot Mirror
Government Begins Securing Root Zone File
Death Metal notes a Wired piece on the US government beginning the process of securing the root zone file. This is in service of implementing DNSSEC, without which the DNS security hole found by Dan Kaminsky can't be definitively closed. On Thursday morning, a comment period will open on the various proposals on who should hold the keys and sign the root — ICANN, Verisign, or the US government's NTIA.
Addendum:
UN
Pros:
Cons:
I'd be interested in hearing reasons why people believe this is a good thing as well though.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
"Are doomed to reimplement it, poorly. Does anyone have any confidence that the US Government WONT mess this up completely? Give the key to Google or AOL or IBM or something. "
Those who don't understand DNS would recommend giving it to IBM.
Hi. I run the root server that was the first runner up in the contest to administer it, ahead of two other groups. We were actually asked by the gov to advise icann which we did until we realized all they were doing is using us to get away with what they wanted to do, instead of listening to advice on horrific problems. Hint: the mandate specifies icann is a membership organization and 10 years later you still can join and have a vote. Ahem.
During this time and for 5 years before that I run the a root to one of the alternative root zones.
If you think dnssec will fix the problem or that it's the right answer or that it will actually secure it then you and Dan Kaminsky haven't thought about it enough.
But if you wanna go ahead with the broken dnssec model the keys should be held by Paul Vixie. This is all his mess anyway and he already holds the keys to usenet.
Need Mercedes parts ?
How about using a threshold signing scheme?
Here's the ten kilofoot view: each participant p_{1..n} gets a piece of the key. If least t of them (for some 2 <= t <= n) cooperate, they can produce a signature on the input message.
It is widely held that separation of power into legislative, executive and judiciary is a good thing. Here, the roles would be symmetric, but you still get the benefit of no one body of people (or single person) being in control.
Here's an interesting thought: include some of the root server operators in the decision. I haven't done the formal proof, but my understanding is that it'd be simple to create weighted threshold schemes, such that if ten of the $n roots all agree, that counts as one "vote" in the usgov-icann-verisign calculation [just apply some general secure Multiparty Computation protocol to the computation of RSA-signing with Shamir secret shares of the private key]. And, as your child poster says, you may want to include the UN. Not being a citizen of 192 sovereign nations, I don't like the idea of any one nation having a disproportionately large influence over critical infrastructure, should we come to rely on a signed root zone [note: we don't now, because it isn't; that may be useful to put this issue into its proper perspective, or not...].
But no matter who the eligible parties are, I don't think any one of them should be in exclusive control. Use a threshold signing scheme to distribute the power.