ICANN announced modified DNS root zone key-signing key ceremony

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Public Technical Identifiers (PTI) have announced special conditions for the 41st domain name system (DNS) root zone key-signing key (KSK) ceremony. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ceremony – scheduled for 23 April 2020 – will have a reduced agenda and minimal in-person participation. The ceremony will be held in the key management facility in El Segundo, California (instead of Culpeper, Virginia, as originally planned) and only a minimum number of ICANN and PTI staff will be present in the room. The staff will act as surrogates for four trusted community representatives who have transmitted their safe deposit keys to the staff to be used in the KSK ceremony. The community representatives will attend the ceremony online and monitor their credentials’ use. More details about the ceremony and how it is different from a usual KSK ceremony are available on this dedicated page. The special conditions of this ceremony have been approved by the ICANN Board during their 16 April meeting; the Board discussed four options for the KSK ceremony, including suspending the signing of the root zone altogether (this last resort option, the Board noted, could generate a ‘risk of widespread outages’).