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The Canadian Who Holds the Key To the Internet

Posted by Soulskill on from the hope-nothing-breaks-during-hockey-season dept.

drbutts writes "The Toronto Star has an interesting story on how they are securing DNS: 'It's housed in two high-security facilities separated by the North American landmass. The one authenticated map of the Internet. Were it to be lost — either through a catastrophic physical or cyber attack — it could be recreated by seven individuals spread around the globe. One of them is Ottawa's Norm Ritchie. Ritchie was recently chosen to hold one of seven smartcards that can rebuild the root key that underpins this system' called DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions). In essence, these seven can rebuild the architecture that allows users to know for certain where they are and where they are going when navigating the Web."

3 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. seven? nine? three? by chub_mackerel · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ritchie was recently chosen to hold one of seven smartcards that can rebuild the root key that underpins this system' called DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions).

    I thought the dwarves got seven cards. And, the humans got nine... and the elves three. Or, am I mixing something up?

  2. Seven, heh ? by zzyzyx · · Score: 5, Funny

    One Card to rule them all, One Card to find them,
    One Card to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

  3. My first thought... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Heart!

    It'd be awesome if they yelled that out as they each scanned their cards.