Possibly questionable security decisions in DNS root management

[bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 09:20:04AM -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Nicolas Williams wrote:
> >Getting DNSSEC deployed with sufficiently large KSKs should be priority #1.
> >
> I agree.  Let's get something deployed, as that will lead to testing.
> 
> 
> >If 90 days for the 1024-bit ZSKs is too long, that can always be
> >reduced, or the ZSK keylength be increased -- we too can squeeze factors
> >of 10 from various places.  In the early days of DNSSEC deployment the
> >opportunities for causing damage by breaking a ZSK will be relatively
> >meager.  We have time to get this right; this issue does not strike me
> >as urgent.
> >
> One of the things that bother me with the latest presentation is that
> only "dummy" keys will be used.  That makes no sense to me!  We'll have
> folks that get used to hitting the "Ignore" key on their browsers....
> 
> http://nanog.org/meetings/nanog47/presentations/Lightning/Abley_light_N47.pdf


	the use of dummy keys in the first round is to test things like 
	key rollover - the inital keys themselves are unable to be validated
	and state as much.  Anyone who tries validation is -NOT- reading 
	the key or the deployment plan.

> 
> Thus, I'm not sure we have time to get this right.  We need good keys, so
> that user processes can be tested.

	next phase.
> 
> 
> >OTOH, will we be able to detect breaks?  A clever attacker will use
> >breaks in very subtle ways.  A ZSK break would be bad, but something
> >that could be dealt with, *if* we knew it'd happened.  The potential
> >difficulty of detecting attacks is probably the best reason for seeking
> >stronger keys well ahead of time.
> >
> Agreed.

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