The Canadian Who Holds the Key To the Internet

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."

Comments

Really two different halves

[XanC]

The story I read said that any four of these seven must get together at one of these bases. That seems to indicate that each one has half of the key. Two of them, if they were the right two, could do it. But having four out of seven guarantees that you have at least one copy of both halves.