And you know nobody actually has their high-value signing key protected by a series of complex offline vaults and checks and balances like you'd see in Ocean's 11 - at best it's on the other side of a room on an air gapped computer.
This is the second time today that I've seen reference to a "key ceremony", which I hadn't heard of before. Sure I expected root key holders to have some kind of formality around key management, but not a 5 hour event live-streamed on youtube! https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies/45
Right... because the more you lock the key down and try to secure it, the greater the risk something in your security will go wrong, and then you will lose it yourself. Losing the key is not as bad, though still catastrophic, from a corporate perspective. Imagine if Apple couldn't distribute a software update ever again. Much better to not invest in super-strong security that has that risk... but then you have an increased risk of theft...
It's almost like cryptographic signing keys are the modern day Ring of Power...
That's not strictly true. At one point, my desk was next to the room that held the vault for one particular signing key. You'd have to get through the building security, through a room guarded by one access control mechanism, and then into a vault secured by a second mechanism. It wasn't guards and guns but it also seemd sufficient for the task at hand.
Depends on if you are concerned mostly about covert access or overt access. I'd argue the former is quite a bit more serious in the case that keys can be revoked online.
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
That's kind of how I feel trying to access the text of this article. All I can see when I look at the page or view source is a bunch of executable code. You have to do quite a bit to be able to read this security warning.
