The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#1

Post by jgrahamc » Wed, Nov 11, 2015, 11:10 AM UTC

The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony
cloudflare.com

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#2

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 1:59 AM UTC

Access requires the cooperation of 7 individuals, all of whom must be present for a Root Signing Ceremony to take place:

The Ceremony Administrator

An Internal Witness

The Credentials Safe Controller

The Hardware Safe Controller

Crypto Officer #1

Crypto Officer #2

Crypto Officer #3

Fascinating. What's the signing ceremony for .IO look like? .COM? .NET? .CO.UK? .COM.AU?

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#3

Post by Laforet » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 2:32 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #2

Access requires the cooperation of 7 individuals, all of whom must be present for a Root Signing Ceremony to take place: The Ceremony Administrator An Internal Witness The Credentials Safe Controller The Hardware Safe Controller Crypto Officer #1 Crypto Officer #2 Crypto Officer #3 Fascinating. What's the signing ceremony for .IO look like? .COM? .NET? .CO.UK? .COM.AU?

It will probably involve a similar roll of controllers, plus supervisors/representatives from operators of all DNS root servers[0].

[0]:https://lwn.net/Articles/647459/

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#4

Post by ta0o0o0 » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 2:36 AM UTC

So how is this logically different than the replacement of all CAs with a single one?

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#5

Post by Fuzzwah » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 2:41 AM UTC

I can imagine a Neal Stephenson book which makes a number of 50 year jumps into the future and explains how this ceremony becomes more and more religious in nature. Toss in a few dramatic changes based on either fanciful ideas of new ways to compromise the process or in reaction to actual attack attempts (or successes).

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#6

Post by admax88q » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 2:45 AM UTC

ta0o0o0 wrote: post #4

So how is this logically different than the replacement of all CAs with a single one?

This was talked about a lot on the last DNSSEC story on HN. I don't have a link to the story but this site was linked to from discussions.

http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/

DNSSEC does seem pretty unnecessary at this point for security. It hands more power over the internet to fewer hands, whilst not providing any improved security.

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#7

Post by swiley » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 2:48 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #2

Access requires the cooperation of 7 individuals, all of whom must be present for a Root Signing Ceremony to take place: The Ceremony Administrator An Internal Witness The Credentials Safe Controller The Hardware Safe Controller Crypto Officer #1 Crypto Officer #2 Crypto Officer #3 Fascinating. What's the signing ceremony for .IO look like? .COM? .NET? .CO.UK? .COM.AU?

.com and .net are pretty similar if I understand correctly.

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#8

Post by yuhong » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 2:54 AM UTC

admax88q wrote: post #6

ta0o0o0 wrote: post #4

So how is this logically different than the replacement of all CAs with a single one?

This was talked about a lot on the last DNSSEC story on HN. I don't have a link to the story but this site was linked to from discussions. http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ DNSSEC does seem pretty unnecessary at this point for security. It hands more power over the internet to fewer hands, whilst not providing any improved security.

I have suggested DNSSEC2 several times and it would likely use ECC not RSA. At least the root keys are 2048-bit RSA now, right?

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#9

Post by toast0 » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 3:21 AM UTC

ta0o0o0 wrote: post #4

So how is this logically different than the replacement of all CAs with a single one?

DNS is already a a distributed chain of trust. I trust that the well know ftp site will give me a good hints file to get to the root servers. I trust that the root servers will provide me with the proper ns and glue records for the tld servers. I trust that the tld servers will provide the correct ns and glue records for the domain I want to resolve. DNSSEC just formalizes the trust with digital signatures.

A traditional CA validates empirically that a customer controls a domain at some point in time. DNSSEC is a stronger validation of control of the domain, because it's a property of the domain itself.

Trusting the domain registry to indicate who controls a domain makes a lot more sense to me than trusting a third party. If I can't trust the DS records, I can't trust the NS records either.

A DS record doesn't indicate a connection between an organization and a domain though, which a traditional CA supposedly might.

Re: The DNSSEC Root Signing Ceremony

#10

Post by wtallis » Thu, Nov 12, 2015, 3:32 AM UTC

admax88q wrote: post #6

ta0o0o0 wrote: post #4

So how is this logically different than the replacement of all CAs with a single one?

This was talked about a lot on the last DNSSEC story on HN. I don't have a link to the story but this site was linked to from discussions. http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/ DNSSEC does seem pretty unnecessary at this point for security. It hands more power over the internet to fewer hands, whilst not providing any improved security.

DNSSEC only seems unnecessary under the assumption that you're already making full use of existing security measures everywhere else in the stack. If you live in a world where unencrypted HTTP still exists then it's nice to have some defense against ISPs who like to lie in DNS responses. And even if I am connecting over HTTPS through a shady ISP, I'd prefer not to send any packets at all to the wrong IP rather than wait until it presents the wrong certificate.