Academic group releases plan to enhance the core resiliency of the Internet

A group of scholars centered at Syracuse University has published a plan to decentralize authority over the Internet domain name system (DNS) as it transitions to a new, more secure technology known as DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC).

At a symposium in Washington, D.C., May 17, the Internet Governance Project (IGP) unveiled a plan to decentralize control over the process of digitally signing the root zone file using public key encryption. According to the IGP, the need for the plan was made clear recently when news of a US Department of Homeland Security report on DNSSEC implementation triggered international controversy by raising fears that the US government planned to control the ‘master keys’ to the Internet. The IGP proposal would distribute control over the process of signing the root zone file to multiple organizations, all of them non-governmental in nature, defusing fears that US national security agencies will control the Internet’s DNS root zone keys.

According to IGP spokesperson Brenden Kuerbis, the proposal “increases the resilience of the system, eliminates the threat of political interference in Internet administration, and diffuses liability among the entities involved.”

DNSSEC is a proposed Internet standard that modifies DNS resource records and protocols to provide security for query and response transactions made between domain name resolvers and nameservers.

The international meeting in Washington, ‘“Internet Governance and Security: Exploring Global and National Solutions,’ was jointly hosted by SU’s School of Information Studies (iSchool), the George Mason University Law School’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Program and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne’s Executive Master’s Program in e-Governance. The event brought together legal and policy experts in Internet governance, representatives of the IETF, ICANN, DHS, the US Commerce Department, the Internet Systems Consortium and students from the e-Governance program.

•Date: 22nd May 2007 • Region: US/World •Type: Article •Topic: IT continuity
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