On Nov 25, 2013, at 10:06 AM, John Levine <johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com> wrote:
Is the DNSSEC root key secure against National Security Letters?
What does that mean? Exactly what threat are you imagining an NSL would be
used to hide?
Hijack someone's DNS traffic, provide a chain of fake servers pointing
to a fake mail or web host, all with valid DNSSEC.
As I'm sure you're aware, for this attack to work, not only would the US
government need to compromise the root KSK HSMs and a rather Byzantine set of
safeguards, they would also presumably need to do so in a way that would reduce
the likelihood that the compromised elements would be noticed. Since the data
is public, this might be a bit tricky -- forcing the attack to occur as close
to the target as possible to minimize the chances some non-target would notice
(which, if it were noticed, would like result in the absolute worst possible
case in DNSSEC-land, the need to do an emergency role of the root KSK in every
resolver on the planet: something we still don't know how to do). Since the
attack would already be down near the validating resolver, I suspect it would
be _far_ easier and infinitely less risky to compromise that validating
resolver (particularly if that resolver is operated by a third party, like it
is for the vast majority of folks -- something I've long felt is fundamentally
broken).
I guess that we need to ask the same question about TLDs that are
hosted in the United States.
I would be surprised if only the US has NSLs.
That would mostly mean Verisign, Afilias and PIR, and Neustar.
ICANN went to significant lengths to make everything done with the KSK
extremely well documented and as public as humanly possible. I personally don't
know what those organizations do (mostly because I haven't looked) but would be
surprised if the level of disclosure is close to what ICANN has done. As such
I feel Joe's response to Ted:
Sounds like a good question to ask ICANN.
was wrong. Professional Operational Security folk should review the root KSK
DPS (https://www.iana.org/dnssec/icann-dps.txt) and identify any weaknesses,
including any vulnerabilities to NSL-like attacks so those weaknesses can be
remedied. Simply waving "NSL" around like a magic wand is unhelpful.
Regards,
-drc
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