Tag Archive for: Zone

ICANN Announces New Root Zone Key to Enhance DNS Security in 2024 Ceremony

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Internet security is set to receive a significant boost as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) embarks on an initiative to generate a new root zone key signing key (KSK) for the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). This move, scheduled for the 53rd KSK Ceremony on April 26, 2024, marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing effort to safeguard the authenticity of DNS information related to domain names across the globe.

Reviving the Key Generation Process

Following a hiatus caused by the departure of a crucial equipment supplier, ICANN has successfully identified and onboarded a replacement vendor, setting the stage for the generation of the new KSK. This development not only resumes the previously suspended plan but also reinforces ICANN’s commitment to maintaining a secure and stable DNS infrastructure. The new key is anticipated to undergo replication to an alternate facility in the third quarter of 2024, with its pre-publication in the DNS slated for January 2025, and eventual production deployment by late 2026 after a two-year standby period.

A Comprehensive Outreach for Smooth Transition

Understanding the critical importance of this transition for the global Internet community, ICANN is gearing up for an extensive outreach campaign. This campaign aims to educate and prepare stakeholders for the upcoming changes, ensuring a seamless integration of the new key into the DNSSEC framework. This proactive approach seeks to replicate the success of the key rollover exercise conducted in 2018, demonstrating ICANN’s ability to enhance DNS security without disrupting the broader Internet ecosystem.

Future-Proofing DNS Security

In addition to the KSK generation initiative, ICANN is also exploring avenues to further bolster DNS security through the modification of cryptographic algorithms used in signing the root zone. This reflects a broader strategy to adapt to evolving security challenges and maintain the integrity of DNS operations. By continuously evaluating and implementing advanced security measures, ICANN aims to stay ahead of potential threats to the DNS, ensuring its resilience and…

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Chernobyl is now a war zone

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Or we might have to learn the hard way that using pre-deployed radiological weapons to boil water wasn’t such a great idea after all. All the more so given the manifold connections between the ‘peaceful atom’ and nuclear weapons programs.

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine provides a test-case of the above war-gaming. The worst-case scenario of nuclear-powered nations at war would involve evenly matched adversaries fighting a long war. The current conflict isn’t so much a war as an invasion of a weaker nation-state by a powerful adversary.

Most likely it will not drag on for years as some wars do. That said, simmering conflict stretching on for years is likely, so nuclear plants will remain at risk.

Disaster

Russia has several thousand nuclear weapons. Ukraine ceded ownership and control of nuclear weapons located in Ukraine to Russia in the aftermath of the Cold War  – although that hasn’t stopped Putin invoking the spectre of a non-existent Ukrainian nuclear weapons program in recent days.

Russia’s 38 reactors supply 20.6 percent of the country’s electricity. Ukraine’s 15 power reactors across at four sites generate 51.2 percent of the country’s electricity.

The risk of an inadvertent attack on reactors or nuclear waste stores is somewhat higher than a deliberate attack. Russia has just taken control of the Chernobyl nuclear site. The reactors were all closed long ago, but high-level nuclear waste remains on site.

James Acton from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes that Ukraine has constructed a nuclear waste storage facility at Chernobyl for spent fuel from other nuclear plants, but the introduction of spent fuel has probably not yet occurred. Nevertheless, spent fuel from the Chernobyl reactors is still located there.

It’s conceivable that waste stored at Chernobyl could be hit if and when Ukraine attempts to take back control of the site. The next Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster could happen in Chernobyl. The containment dome over the infamous Chernobyl #4 reactor protects a huge inventory of radioactive material. The next Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster could involve the same reactor.

Dystopian

Incursions and fighting around…

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Amazon Web Services to set up local zone in Hà Nội

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VIETNAM, February 19 –  

Amazon Web Services Inc is to launch a new AWS Local Zone in Hà Nội. — Photo Courtesy Amazon Web Services Inc

HCM CITY — Amazon Web Services Inc (AWS) has announced plans to launch a new AWS Local Zone in Hà Nội. 

AWS Local Zones place AWS compute, storage, database, and other services at the edge of the cloud near large populations, industries, and information technology centres, enabling customers to deploy applications that require single-digit millisecond latency closer to end users and on-premises data centres. 

They allow customers to use core AWS services locally while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS Regions with the same elasticity, pay-as-you-go model, application programming interfaces (APIs), and toolsets. 

The Hà Nội facility will give customers in Việt Nam the ability to offer end users single-digit millisecond performance designed to suit applications such as remote real-time gaming, media and entertainment content creation, live video streaming, engineering simulations, augmented and virtual reality, and machine learning inference at the edge. 

Since the company manages and supports the zones, customers do not need to spend money and effort for procuring, operating and maintaining infrastructure to support low-latency applications. 

The Hà Nội facility will join 16 AWS Local Zones in the US and 31 others planned to be launched in 25 countries starting this year.

“AWS Local Zones will empower more public and private organisations, innovative start-ups, and AWS partners to deliver a new generation of leading edge, low-latency applications to end users, taking advantage of the cost savings, scalability, and high availability that AWS provides,” Conor…

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Grey zone actors pose threat of cyber Cold War

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As it comes to the proposed critical infrastructure changes, some corners have honed in on the burden of cost and the peripheral issue of the “government assistance measures” with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) being authorised in extremis to respond to a cyber incident, which have been poorly labelled “step-in powers”. It is time to put these concerns
into perspective.

Rachael Falk

It would be naïve for Australian organisations to believe they would not be targeted, says Rachael Falk, the CEO of the Cyber Security Co-operative Research Centre. 

Imagine if private businesses demanded government help them pay for their physical security — security cameras, security guards, door locks and high fences. Do you think this would pass the pub test?

So why should government help pay for the cyber security of these businesses? Certainly, there is a role for government to play in incentivising cyber uplift via tax levers and supply chain procurement. But the concept that government should somehow help pay for cyber uplift is not sensible, feasible or reasonable.

Likewise, the hand-wringing surrounding so-called step-in powers is unnecessary and unwarranted. These powers of last resort would only be considered in the case of a cataclysmic cyber incident where a victim was unwilling or unable to act.

These include information gathering powers, directions powers and intervention powers. It is important to remember ASD’s mission is “reveal their secrets, protect our own” so it can be assumed they are the experts at countering how both nation states and criminals might act and would move through and disrupt networks.

While there is no doubt these powers are extraordinary, they are necessary, especially in the face of our ever-expanding cyber threat surface and evolving attack vectors. They would also be tightly guarded, with intervention powers only permitted with the approval of the Prime Minister, Minister for Defence and Minister for Home Affairs.

In other words, it would take a catastrophic event with severe ramifications for Australia’s national and economic security for the flick to be switched.
The global spate of ransomware attacks we have seen over the past two years have been…

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