The separation of critical components was not functioning or was not in place. We have strong indications that the CA-servers, although physically very securely placed in a tempest proof environment, were accessible over the network from the management LAN.These guys at DigiNotar are living in the nineties. These days the most important attack vector by far is through the network and not physical access. DigiNotar, like many others, invested more effort in defending against the less important attack.
But don't mock them. If you use a disk encryption technology like PointSec or PGP Disk and think it gives you any signficant protection, you may be making the same mistake - assuming an attack involving physical access. It's quite likely hackers already have control of your computer even though it's physically in your possession. You should do what you can to prevent network-based attacks (firewall, anti-virus), but even then you must not assume you're 100% secure. If you have anything that is truly secret just don't put it on a computer you connect to the Internet.
There's been a paradigm shift in the world of corporate security. Instead of traveling and trying to physically access the information of a single company, hackers can use technologies like Remote Access Trojans to attempt attacks on hundreds of companies from the comfort of their own home and with less risk of getting caught by law enforcement. Too many security teams, not just RSA and DigiNotar, haven't yet fully adjusted to this situation.
BTW, the full paragraph in the report begins with another sentence:
The most critical servers contain malicious software that can normally be detected by anti-virus software. The separation of critical components was not functioning or was not in place. We have strong indications that the CA-servers, although physically very securely placed in a tempest proof environment, were accessible over the network from the management LAN.Which reminds me yet again of this XKCD classic:
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