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July 15, 2010 (yesterday) marked the end of the beginning for DNSSEC, as the DNS root was cryptographically signed. For nearly two decades, security researchers, academics and Internet leaders have worked to develop and deploy Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). DNSSEC was developed to improve the overall security of the DNS, a need which was dramatized by the discovery of the Kaminsky bug a few years ago.

If researchers have been working on this for years, one might ask: why is this only the "end of the beginning?" The answer is, of course, that "overnight changes" usually occur only after a decade or more of hard work. Until recently, DNSSEC was often criticized as a solution in search of a problem. However, the now famous "Kaminsky bug," a cache poisoning exploit that DNSSEC fixes, changed all that in a hurry.

DNSSEC deployment first became real when .SE (Sweden) announced in 2007 that it had signed its zone. Another DNSSEC leader, .ORG, managed by the Public Interest Registry, opened its DNSSEC testbed in the same year. Soon thereafter, the number of countries and other operators deploying DNSSEC in their infrastructure started to swell.

Yesterday, ICANN, VeriSign and the NTIA, after months of careful work, completed the signing of the Root zone, fully enabling DNSSEC queries to be validateable down the "chain of trust." For the first time ever, it became possible to have a DNS query for a signed zone completely validated from an end-user's computer all the way to the root of the DNS.

The seal of trust that DNSSEC now delivers at the root level of the Domain Name System is a testament to an idea whose time has come — an idea chaperoned by scores of engineers, technicians and policy makers, and executed by operators of networks and names. As DNSSEC deployment enters its next phase, let us take a moment to salute the work done by all those who have come before us, and all those who are in this with us.

July 15, 2010 marks the end of the beginning for DNSSEC, and the opening of a new chapter in the task of securing the core infrastructure on which the global Internet relies. We are now in the era of DNS 2.0.

By Ram Mohan, Executive Vice President & CTO, Afilias

Related topics: DNS, DNSSEC, Security