DNSSEC and the Geopolitical Future of the Internet

synsynackack writes "The Register reports that the DNSSEC protocol could have some very interesting geopolitical implications, including erosion of the scope of state sovereign powers. The chairman of ICANN, Peter Dengate-Thrush, explained, 'We will have to handle the geo-political element of DNSSEC very carefully.' Experts also explained that split DNS and the DNSSEC protocol don't match very well; technically, it is possible for someone at the interface of the global Internet and a country-wide Internet to strip electronic certificates attached to data and repackage the data with a new one."

Comments

Re:DNSSEC is an arduous solution

[Burdell]

Put down the djb Kool-Aid. DNSCurve and DNSSEC do not address the same thing. DNSCurve is essentially SSL for DNS, which requires some way to establish trust with each server you talk to. Since end-users typically only talk to their ISP's recursive servers, that's not too much work, but it only protects the path from the ISP's servers to the end-users (which ISPs can typically protect themselves). DNSCurve does nothing to authenticate the DNS data itself. DNSSEC, on the other hand, authenticates the data at the source. If you look up foo.bar.com, that record can be signed in the bar.com zone, which has trust anchors in .com, which has trust anchors in the root. It doesn't matter who serves the record to you; you can be sure that the data is valid.

Some ISPs would prefer people to use DNSCurve and think DNS is secure, because it does nothing to protect the data. Those ISPs would still be able to change the results (e.g. all the NXDOMAIN web pages, URL redirects, etc. are still possible). That can't happen with DNSSEC and an authenticating resolver.

DNSSEC is not set-it-and-forget-it because true security requires maintenance. It isn't just a response to cache poisoning attacks, it addresses the security of the whole system.

Re:distributed solutions please?

[grcumb]

This generation of the internet was initially dismissed as a toy by most companies and governments and the genie got out of the bottle. They won't make that mistake with the next generation.

I disagree with your diagnosis, but I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusion.

Having worked on the Internet since the early 90s, and having benefited from the massive ignorance of how the Internet works that pervaded business past the end of the decade, I feel it's more like business was able to characterise the symptoms but didn't understand the nature of the disease.

In the 90s, people talked a lot about Disruptive Technologies and (forgive me) Paradigm Shifts. They knew that early adopters reaped the greatest rewards, but beyond that they were more or less aimless.

I think of it as the difference between cleverness and intelligence. The people who actually built the Internet had vision, but only learned how to be clever over time. Businesses working on the Internet got clever first, but even today they're just barely beginning to develop a vision about what they want it to be.

Given that their vision resembles Iran- and China-style Internet more than anywhere else, I too find it a troubling one. I worry that some day I'll be the moral equivalent of an aged hippie, longing for the lost freedom of my youth....