DNSSEC KSK Rollover Postponed
Let&#x27;s just be clear:<p>The IETF fervently requests that you enroll your domain names in their DNSSEC program. Doing so will provide your users with essentially no security improvements, even at the margin, that they wouldn&#x27;t get from simply using LetsEncrypt.<p>At the same time, once enrolled, the weird little pockets of the Internet that actually look for DNSSEC records when they do DNS lookups will instantly become susceptible to forgetting that your domain exists entirely if any misconfiguration occurs. That&#x27;s not a hypothetical concern: the week HBO launched HBO Now, their cord-cutting all-online streaming service, it vanished for Comcast users whose DNS servers at the time enforced DNSSEC.<p>Now, faced with the requirement to perform what needs to be a totally routine management operation for the DNSSEC PKI --- periodically rotating keys --- ICANN is <i>postponing for months</i> because ISPs can&#x27;t reliably handle the rollover. DNSSEC usage is growing every day, the DNSSEC advocates say. Huge portions of the Internet now resolve DNSSEC records. But if ICANN tries to rotate keys, the whole system will break.<p>The reality is that if the root DNSSEC private keys were leaked to Pastebin today, not a single mainstream site on the Internet would be jeopardized. To a first approximation, <i>nobody on the Internet relies on DNSSEC</i>. TLS was designed to assume the DNS was insecure. No browser implements DNSSEC. Your operating system --- thankfully --- probably won&#x27;t disappear sites based on DNSSEC misconfigurations, or, for that matter, check DNSSEC at all.<p>DNSSEC is 1990s crypto. Every new DNSSEC resolver that gets deployed makes it that much harder to eventually deploy modern cryptography to solve real security problems in the DNS, whatever they may be. Enough is enough! Kill DNSSEC and go back to the drawing board.