Re: [dnsext] Historical root keys: The Large Router Vendor Speaks

[Jakob Schlyter <[e-mail]>]

On 28 jan 2011, at 07.37, Brian Dickson wrote:

> What if, rather than starting from "old trust roots", it was starting
> from "privately-signed trust anchors"?
> 
> I.e. have IANA have private keys which are used ONLY for this service.
> The vendors would include the public keys as trust anchors for
> boot-strapping purposes. The key transfer might happen offline, or at
> least out-of-band.

We designed the detached signature [1] over the XML file [2] to work almost like that, although the ICANN Root CA is used for other things as well.

> The same data could be signed with multiple such unpublished keys, as
> needed (e.g. one per vendor, per year, use a new key every year, but
> keep signing with all keys) and/or funded. Vendors might agree to pool
> resources/keys, or not.

Anyone can grab the latest root key CSR [3], sign it and produce a their "own" DNSSEC root key certificate and distribute with their software.

> And, most importantly, it would be off-axis from the root-key
> chaining. The rolling of root keys (for whatever reason, especially
> for compromise) would be orthogonal to this mechanism.

IMHO, any key signing the root key should protected with the same controls as the root key itself. Given how the root key itself is protected, I doubt that very few organizations can match that level of protection (although I know I'm biased when it comes to root key protection).

> Open question:
> Does not publishing the key make it harder to compromise the key?

No.



	jakob


[1] http://data.iana.org/root-anchors/root-anchors.p7s
[2] http://data.iana.org/root-anchors/root-anchors.xml
[3] http://data.iana.org/root-anchors/Kjqmt7v.csr

-- 
Jakob Schlyter
Kirei AB - www.kirei.se