These is something singularly unnerving about the following statement: "What cheers us about this kind of visit is the fact that the kind of security measures we have in place are getting better and better known," VeriSign Director of Public Policy Michael Aisenberg told Newsbytes. Not "the kind of security measures we have in place increasingly assure our customers of integrity..." but advertising your security measures for their own sake can only have negative security ramifications. Deepak Jain AiNET -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Daniel Golding Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 11:04 AM To: Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Photo Op: You too can have your picture taken with a.root-servers.net Interestingly, this revolving photo op with the A root name server has been going on for several years. To those who are not very technical, there is something uniquely reassuring about the idea that the internet has a "center" or a "brain". It is difficult to say why, but I speculate that the idea that the internet is easier to cripple or destroy helps government officials sleep at night, because it maintains the illusion of control. Distributed systems are much harder to control, and are disconcerting to those who's task is control of systems rather than their perpetuation. - Daniel Golding
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 1:03 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Photo Op: You too can have your picture taken with a.root-servers.net
I don't whether to laugh or cry. Its just a computer.
http://www.washtech.com/news/netarch/13672-1.html
If you destroyed the copy of the US Constitution in the National Archives in Washington DC, would that mean the end of the US Government? If someone broke into NARA and scribbled a new amendment on the tail of the parchment, would the US Government be bound to follow what ever he wrote on the Constitution? No, of course not.
The Root Zone files aren't unique historical documents, and there is nothing special about the copy on a.root-servers.net. If a tornado blew through Verisign's offices tomorrow, would it mean the end of the Internet? No. If someone corrupted Verisign's files, would that mean we have to follow the bogus records? No, we'd clean them up. Or more likely, the other operators would rollback their zone files to the previous known good copy.
Would it disrupt our operations. Yes. Would it be irrecoverable? No. The root files are important business records, and I expect the custodian to take reasonable precautions appropriate for their value. Do I expect to see machine-gun nests outside Verisign's office? No. a.root-servers.net is just a piece of hardware. If it was destroyed, we've got more.