Category: ccTLDs

Nov 01

In September, Singapore and Senegal Signed Their .SN and .SG with DNSSEC

singapore-and-senegal-sign-with-dnssec

Congratulations to the teams in both Singapore and Senegal for signing their country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) with DNSSEC back in September. According to Rick Lamb’s list of DNSSEC-signed TLDs, Singapore’s signature for the .SG domain was added to the root of DNS on September 22, and Senegal’s signature for .SN was added on September 30. [1]

This means that as of those dates, second-level domains under .SG and .SN could start receiving the added layer of security and trust possible with DNSSEC.  In Singapore SGNIC started actively encouraging people to sign their domains. In Africa, ICANN’s Yaovi Atohoun wrote about how Senegal is the third African ccTLD to sign with DNSSEC this year.

I also added both countries to our weekly DNSSEC Deployment Maps so people can see them there. (And here’s a test of your geography: where are Senegal and Singapore?)

This is all great news as the world continues to add a layer of trust to answers from DNS by using DNSSEC. Congrats again to the teams in both countries!

If you would like to get started with DNSSEC, please visit our Start Here page to begin.

[1] To be precise, what happened is that the “Delegation Signer” or “DS” records for each TLD were added to the root of DNS. The DS record is a fingerprint of the DNSKEY used to sign the domain.  It is included in the parent zone to create a “global chain of trust” from the root of DNS on down.

Jun 19

Congratulations to Argentina On DNSSEC-Signing of .AR!

Congratulations to Argentina on becoming the latest country to sign their country-code top-level-domain (ccTLD), with DNSSEC!  Today we are very pleased to update our DNSSEC Deployment Maps and give Argentina a shade of green for .AR!  Here’s how the maps looked between last Monday and today:

Argentina and DNSSEC

Awesome to see!

And obviously perfect timing for the ICANN 53 meeting next week in Buenos Aires where we’ll be talking all about DNSSEC at numerous sessions!

Congratulations to the whole team at NIC.AR for making this happen. Now all the people who register domains underneath .AR will at least have the possibility of adding the layer of security and trust that DNSSEC can provide. They will also be able to potentially use DANE and other new innovations that build upon DNSSEC.

The next step, of course, is for the registrars and DNS hosting providers who support .AR domains to allow registrants to use DNSSEC.  But that wouldn’t be possible without this first step of signing the .AR ccTLD.

Congrats and we’re looking forward to celebrating with the NIC.AR team in Buenos Aires!

P.S. If you would like to get started with DNSSEC, please visit our Start Here page to learn how to begin!   And if you would like to receive our weekly DNSSEC deployment maps, we have information about how you can subscribe.

May 15

Andorra (.AD) Becomes The Latest ccTLD Signed With DNSSEC

Andorra flagYesterday the small Principality of Andorra became the latest country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) to be signed with DNSSEC.  From this point forward any domains registered under .AD will be able to receive the higher level of protection provided by DNSSEC and start being able to use innovative new tools like the DANE protocol… well, to be clear, all of that added protection can come as soon as the registry operating the .AD ccTLD starts accepting DS records from domain name registrars.  What we know today (from sites like this one) is that there is now a DS record for .AD in the root zone of DNS.

I will admit that when I heard the news I wasn’t quite sure where Andorra was other than recalling vaguely it was a very small European state.  The Internet filled in that knowledge gap, of course, with long entries in both Wikipedia and the World Fact Book informing me that Andorra is a “micro-state” sandwiched in between France and Spain whose population is around 85,000 people and whose official language is Catalan.  It seems to have a fascinating political structure as it is a monarchy with two co-princes, one of whom is the President of France and the other is the Spanish/Roman Catholic Bishop of Urgell.  (Yes, I got a bit distracted this morning by my curiosity about Andorra…)

Anyway, congratulations to Andorra for the DNSSEC-signing of .AD.  It will now be added to the database for the weekly DNSSEC Deployment Maps that will come out on Monday. It’s great to see the continued increase in the number of signed TLDs!

Mar 30

Congrats to Aruba for Signing .AW with DNSSEC

dnssecIt was great to see that Aruba is the latest country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) to join the 298 TLDs that have signed their TLD with DNSSEC. With the .AW TLD signed, the first barrier is removed for companies and organizations seeking to sign their .AW domains and achieve the higher level of security possible with DNSSEC. At some point soon the registry for .AW should be able to start accepting DS records and the global chain of trust can then extend down to all signed .AW domains.

If your domain is in one of the other 297 signed TLDs, what are you doing to secure your domain? Have you signed your domain with DNSSEC yet? If not, how can we help you get to that point?

P.S. Aruba will now show up in the DNSSEC deployment maps and CSV files that we publish every Monday. If you are interested in receiving those maps each week via email, please visit the page and sign up.

Jul 05

Wow! Dramatic Growth in DNSSEC-signed Domains in .NL

Wow!  Per a tweet from Bert Hubert of PowerDNS we learned of this very dramatic graph of growth in DNSSEC-signed domains in .NL (click on the image to see the most up-to-date numbers):

DNSSEC-signed domains in .NL

That is quite the “hockey stick” jump in DNSSEC usage!  On July 2nd there were around 15,800 DNSSEC-signed domains in .NL and at the time I write this post there are 84,407!

In response to my query about what occurred, Bert said only that a PowerDNSSEC user enabled DNSSEC. Bert was also quick to point out in other messages I’ve seen that this fantastic growth is not exclusively because of PowerDNSSEC but that the PowerDNSSEC team worked hard to make it happen.

According to discussion on the dnssec-deployment mailing list, there are about 5 million .NL domain names. So in just a couple of days the .NL space has zipped by 1% and is fast on the way to 2% of all .NL domain names being signed!

Excellent work by all involved and it will be interesting to see how much farther it climbs!

P.S. I’ll note that just in the past few minutes while I wrote these last couple of paragraphs, the count climbed from 84,407 to 84,913!