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ICANN Delays KSK Rollover Because of Lazy ISPs, Technical Faults (bleepingcomputer.com)
ICANN had planned to change the master key used to sign secure Domain Name System records next week for the first time in history. But now an anonymous reader writes:Inattentive ISPs and technical faults have led the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to delay the KSK Rollover for next year. ICANN was supposed to remove the root encryption KSK key from core DNS servers on October 11 and allow a new one to take effect. The key is used for the DNSSEC protocol.
According to ICANN, between 6% to 8% of ISPs did not install the new KSK key to replace the one issued in 2010. The organization says that if it had gone forward with the original KSK Rollover plan, over 60 million Internet users would have been unable to make DNS requests. For the vast majority, ICANN blames lazy ISPs, which failed to update their existing keys. ICANN also believes that many ISPs may not be aware they had not installed the latest KSK. ICANN also distributed software to automatically pull down and install the new KSK. Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK, in some situations.
Because of this, ICANN announced this week it would delay the KSK Rollover final step — of removing and revoking the original KSK key -- to the first quarter of 2018. ICANN has not decided yet on a precise date.
According to ICANN, between 6% to 8% of ISPs did not install the new KSK key to replace the one issued in 2010. The organization says that if it had gone forward with the original KSK Rollover plan, over 60 million Internet users would have been unable to make DNS requests. For the vast majority, ICANN blames lazy ISPs, which failed to update their existing keys. ICANN also believes that many ISPs may not be aware they had not installed the latest KSK. ICANN also distributed software to automatically pull down and install the new KSK. Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK, in some situations.
Because of this, ICANN announced this week it would delay the KSK Rollover final step — of removing and revoking the original KSK key -- to the first quarter of 2018. ICANN has not decided yet on a precise date.
Key Signing Key. DNSSEC is built on public key cryptography. You sign your zone with a Zone Signing Key ZSK, then sign the ZSK with your KSK, the public key part of which is available in your parent zone. The theory goes that you can roll over your ZSK frequently (and you should) without involving your parent zone.
Possible outcomes of moving forward:
1. 60m people call their lazy ISPs and the ISPs get their shit in gear / sued for causing an outage due to negligence.
2. 60m people stop relying on shitty ISP's DNS servers.
Accepting tyranny of minority is not the right way to handle internet infrastructure.
The key capture here comes down to this pair of sentences (especially the second one):
ICANN also distributed software to automatically pull down and install the new KSK. Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK, in some situations.
Instead of "lazy ISPs", as the headline misleadingly states, it sure appears to me that the party actually responsible for the failure of the KSK update rollout is ICANN itself.
Or is there some aspect of, "Some ISPs opted to use this software, which apparently had some bugs and failed to download and install the new KSK," that I'm misapprehending ... ?
(Added emphasis mine, of course.)
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