Measuring the KSK Roll

When viewed as a network infrastructure, looks can be very deceiving when looking at the DNS. It appears to be a simple collection of resolvers and servers. Clients pass their DNS name resolution queries to resolvers, who then identify and ask an appropriate authoritative name server to resolve the DNS…


The Law of Snooping

There is a saying, attributed to Abraham Maslow, that when all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. A variation is that when all you have is a hammer, then all you can do it hit things! For a legislative body, when all you can do…


DNSSEC and DNS over TLS

The APNIC Blog has recently published a very interesting article by Willem Toorop of NLnet Labs on the relationship between Security Extensions for the DNS (DNSSEC) and DNS over Transport Layer Security. Willem is probably being deliberately provocative in claiming that “DoT could realistically become a viable replacement for DNSSEC.”…


Measuring ECDSA in DNSSEC – A Final Report

Back in 2014 I wrote on the use of the elliptical curve cryptographic algorithm in generating digital signatures for securing the DNS (DNSSEC). The conclusion at the time was hardly encouraging: “Will ECDSA ever be a useful tool for DNS and DNSSEC? As good as ECDSA is in presenting strong…


An Update on Securing BGP from IETF 102

One way or another we’ve been working on various aspects of securing the Internet’s inter-domain routing system for many years. I recall presentations dating back to the late ’90’s that point vaguely to using some form of digital signature on BGP updates that would allow a BGP speaker to assure…


The Uncertainty of Measuring the DNS

The period around the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century saw a number of phenomenal advances in the physical sciences. There was J.J. Thompson’s discovery of the electron in 1897, Max Planck’s quantum hypothesis in 1900, Einstein’s ground-breaking papers on Brownian motion, the photoelectric…


Another 10 Years Later

Ten years ago, I wrote an article that looked back on the developments within the Internet over the period from 1998 to 2008. Well another ten years has gone by, and it’s a good opportunity to take a little time once more to muse over what’s new, what’s old and…


What Drives IPv6 Deployment?

It’s been six years since World IPv6 Launch day on the 6th June 2012. In those six years we’ve managed to place ever increasing pressure on the dwindling pools of available IPv4 addresses, but we have still been unable to complete the transition to an all-IPv6 Internet. Nobody predicted this…


Measuring ATR

The Problem It’s pretty clear that the Internet has a problem. If you want to include Facebook’s misuse of personal information in ways that closely resemble unconstrained abandon, then the Internet probably has hundreds of millions of problems! More prosaically, lets confine our view of problems to the Internet Protocol…


Measuring the Root Zone KSK Trust

In September 2017 the proposed roll of the Root Zone Key Signing Key (KSK), scheduled for 11th October 2017 was suspended. I wrote about the reasons for this suspension of the key roll at the time. The grounds for this action was based in the early analysis of data derived…