Posts Tagged key ceremony

ICANN detailed the first production DNSSEC key ceremony in a high security data center in Culpeper, VA, outside of Washington, DC, pictured here. The ceremony takes place tomorrow, June 16, and is designed to demonstrate the transparency and trust needed to secure the domain name system. The ICANN article describes the process that will be followed tomorrow:

 During the key ceremony the first cryptographic digital key used to secure the Internet root zone will be generated and securely stored.

Each key ceremony consists of a series of detailed procedures designed to allow the private key material for the root zone to be managed in a transparent yet secure manner. The goal is for the whole Internet community to be able to trust that the procedures involved were executed correctly, and that the private key materials are stored securely.

Security of the private key is important because it ensures that any signature made by that key is known to originate from a legitimate key ceremony, and not by an untrusted third party.