How to Distribute Keys Securely for 20% of the Web
summary
Cloudflare builds a horizontally replicated KMS: a central core that creates managed keys and hundreds of edge KMS replicas which synchronize key rings and policies, protected in FIPS 140-2 L3 HSMs and authenticated with TPM endorsement certificates. Applications fetch wrapped keys via the Linux kernel keystore using request_key; decrypted data keys cache in kernel memory encrypted with TPM-wrapped cache keys. Design aims for global availability across ~285 cities and sub-50ms targets, trading single-region catastrophe for local resilience and low-latency cryptographic ops.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker background
- 1:06Key management challenges overview
- 8:14Distributed KMS architecture design
- 17:04Local key distribution and security
- 32:23Putting it all together workflows
- 35:38Summary and Q&A
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