Re: [DNSOP] draft-fanf-dnsop-trust-anchor-witnesses-00.txt

[Matthäus Wander <[e-mail]>]

* Tony Finch [2014-02-13 21:56]:
> There was some discussion last month about dispersing trust in the root.
> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/dnsop/current/msg10977.html
> 
> This inspired me to write up a concrete proposal for the
> quorum-of-witnesses idea that I have vaguely suggested several
> times over the last few years.

The proposed approach disperses the trust into which TA to choose and
when to rollover to a new TA. However, it does not disperse the trust
that the TA is not misused and not compromised. If I have to fully trust
the TA private key holder anyway, my personal assessment would be to
trust their TA publication channel as well, e.g. the ones in
draft-jabley-dnssec-trust-anchor.

The problem I see is the asymmetry of roles between the TA private key
holder and the witnesses. The witnesses have no means to assert that the
TA holder does not share the key with their government or anybody else.
To disperse the trust of a key, you would need a threshold cryptosystem
where the TA private key portions are shared among equal peers.

Regards,
Matt

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