RE: [Design] Re: the KEY debate

["Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@verisign.com>]

I don't think that the allegations of FUD are justified, however it is clear
that this group does not have a clear understanding of the security issues
surrounding key distribution.

Single point of failure sounds scary, however that is not the main reason
why it is a canonically bad idea to reuse DNS as a key distribution system.

The real problem is that DNS is designed operated and deployed as a name
infrastructure. The majority of the DNS servers are deployed without any
form of security analysis. Only a small number of TLDs have a comprehensive
security profile in place.

It is a very bad idea to make a change in a deployed protocol that changes
its status from a non-security infrastructure to a critical security
infrastructure.

From a technical point of view it is quite possible to integrate a Kerberos
style key distribution mechanism into DNS and if DNS was being designed from
scratch that is exactly what I would propose. However retrofitting any type
of primary key distribution scheme into a deployed service is completely
unacceptable.


There is a solution to this problem.

		DNS -> SRV -> XKMS



		Phill

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