[ncc-announce] [news] Ending Support for the RIPE NCC RPKI Validator

Dear colleagues,

On Thursday, 1 July 2021, we will stop supporting the RIPE NCC RPKI Validator. This will have no impact on any of our core activities around the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI). We are still committed to strengthening the RPKI infrastructure and our main priority is to maintain a secure, stable and resilient RPKI Certificate Authority.

Our RPKI Validator is one of several Relying Party software [1] that network operators can use to download and validate the global RPKI data set. This data is used to support their BGP decision making process.

We created the RIPE NCC RPKI Validator over a decade ago, when RPKI had only just been implemented and there were not many options available. While there were other validators, ours came with an intuitive web-interface, which allowed operators to see in a UI how BGP announcements would be impacted by Route Origin Validation. Since then, RPKI has been widely adopted in the industry and other software developers have spent significant resources on testing and introducing new Relying Party software. 

After discussions we had with our members and the wider community at the Routing Working Group mailing list and my presentation at the RIPE NCC Services Working Group at RIPE 81, we agreed that this approach will allow us to focus on the core of RPKI. We strongly recommend that any network operators still running our RPKI Validator switch to an alternative software before 1 July. Some alternatives include:

- Routinator
- Fort
- RPKI-client
- OctoRPKI
- Prover

It is important to note that continuing to use the RIPE NCC RPKI Validator after 1 July 2021 may lead to security incidents, as we will no longer be making updates to the software.

If you are interested in the rationale behind this decision, you can find out more on RIPE Labs [2] or in my presentation at RIPE 81 [3].

Best regards,

Nathalie Trenaman
Routing Security Programme Manager
RIPE NCC
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Links:

[1] Relying Party software:
https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/resource-management/rpki/tools-and-resources

[2] (RIPE Labs Article) Lifecycle of the RIPE NCC RPKI Validator:
https://labs.ripe.net/author/nathalie_nathalie/lifecycle-of-the-ripe-ncc-rpki-validator/

[3] (RIPE 81 Presentation) The Life Cycle of the RPKI Validator:
https://ripe81.ripe.net/archives/video/478/