Re: Leveraging trust

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> It seems to me that it is worth strengthening the security of the root
> rather than just dismissing them out of hand.

nice in principle, essentially impossible to do in practice.  first,
there's no such thing as a single party that is trusted by everyone. 
and no matter how inherently trustworthy the party, the very fact that 
the root zone maintainer had such power would increase the liklihood of 
that a determined and well-funded attacker would try to compromise it, 
and (perhaps for that reason, perhaps not) cause people to have reason 
to distrust it. second, even without that kind of power, control of the 
root zone has been the goal of some extremely dirty political battles 
in the past. some would say that those battles continue to this day. 
giving the root additional power just makes the war more attractive
for those who wish to wage it, and decreases DNS stability for everyone
else.  

if we want the DNS root to hold together, we need to place as little 
strain on it as possible.  giving the root additional responsibility
doesn't strike me as a good way to do this.

Keith