In a letter signed by APNIC Director General, Paul Wilson, and Akinori Maemura, Chairman of the APNIC Executive Council, the APNIC Internet community has called upon ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to press ahead with its plans to use DNSSEC technology to digitally sign the root of the DNS.

DNSSEC is a set of protocol extensions designed to protect the Internet from certain types of malicious attack, such as DNS cache poisoning. The letter called on ICANN to sign the root of the DNS "as soon as is realistically possible".

"There is continuing concern with the slow progress towards getting the root zone signed, and the closing plenary session of APNIC 26 unanimously supported the following statement supporting ICANN's proposals to sign the root zone," said the letter. Signing of the root zone is considered to be a critical improvement in the operation of the DNS that can provide long-term stable mechanisms that materially improve the stability and security of the Internet, it said.

Following discussions at APNIC 26 in Christchurch, members of the regional Internet community agreed that while there are still some matters to be resolved, "urgent consideration" of the matter is required, and the community sought a roadmap for the signing of the root zone. The APNIC community is pressing ahead with its own initiatives to secure the DNS root by embarking on DNSSEC deployment for zones administered by APNIC. However, it "sees the greatest value in this work once the chain of parent zones up to the root of the DNS are signed", said the letter.

ICANN

http://www.dnssec.net/

DNNSEC article at Wikipedia

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