Threats relating to IPv6 multihoming solutions
draft-nordmark-multi6-threats-02
Discuss
Yes
No Record
Deb Cooley
Erik Kline
Francesca Palombini
Gunter Van de Velde
Jim Guichard
John Scudder
Mahesh Jethanandani
Murray Kucherawy
Orie Steele
Paul Wouters
Roman Danyliw
Warren Kumari
Zaheduzzaman Sarker
Éric Vyncke
Summary: Needs a YES.
Deb Cooley
No Record
Erik Kline
No Record
Francesca Palombini
No Record
Gunter Van de Velde
No Record
Jim Guichard
No Record
John Scudder
No Record
Mahesh Jethanandani
No Record
Murray Kucherawy
No Record
Orie Steele
No Record
Paul Wouters
No Record
Roman Danyliw
No Record
Warren Kumari
No Record
Zaheduzzaman Sarker
No Record
Éric Vyncke
No Record
Russ Housley Former IESG member
Discuss
Discuss
[Treat as non-blocking comment]
(2004-10-27)
Unknown
In addition to the TBD already identified by Scott, I have a few other concerns. This document is, perhaps necessarily, somewhat incomplete. It is difficult to do a real analysis without pinning down specific protocol details, which this draft cannot do given the topic it is trying to cover. It includes a general analysis of redirection attacks based on multihoming solutions that allow locator changes. As such, it should point out that additional work is needed, especially in the following areas: 1) If we were to make the split between locators and identifiers, then we probably want to tie most application security mechanisms to the identifier, not to the locator. Therefore, work is needed to understand how attacks on the identifier mechanism affect security, especially, in my mind, attacks on any mechanism(s) that bind locators to identifiers. 2) Does multicast make matters worse? It usually does. 3) Connectionless transport protocols need more attention. They are already difficult to secure, even without a locator/identifier split.
Scott Hollenbeck Former IESG member
Discuss
Discuss
[Treat as non-blocking comment]
(2004-10-25)
Unknown
Section 3.1 asks this unresolved question: [TBD: Does one-way authentication, without mutual authentication, add a different class of applications?] This should be cleaned up before IESG review.
Ted Hardie Former IESG member
Discuss
Discuss
[Treat as non-blocking comment]
(2004-10-27)
Unknown
None of these issues are reasons to block this document, but the combination was enough to put this into DISCUSS rather than Comment. After we've had a chance to discuss them, I anticipate shifting to no-ob or yes. In section 2., the draft says: address - an IP layer name that contains both topological significance and acts as a unique identifier for an interface. Is it important that it be a unique identifier? I know of cases where the same IP address is bound both to an ethernet interface and a tunnel interface. Those interfaces are unique at some layer, just not at the IP layer. I'm not sure the distinction is worth raising here, in the terminology section, but I also wasn't sure how important "unique" was to the authors. In section 3.1, the draft says: Applications that use security mechanisms, such as IPsec or TLS, with mutual authentication have the ability to "bind" the FQDN to the cryptographic keying material, thus compromising the DNS and/or the routing system can at worst cause the packets to be dropped or delivered to an entity which does not posses the keying material. The binding isn't always to the FQDN; it can be to an address. Could this be rephrased as: Applications that use mutually authenticating security mechanisms, such as IPSEC or TLS, have the ability to bind an address or FQDN to cryptographic keying material. Compromising the DNS and/or routing system can result in packets being dropped or delivered to an attacker in such cases, but since the attacker does not possess the keying material the application will not trust the attacker. This section also uses "class of applications", where I believe they are talking about "class of security configurations for applications". The same application (or class of applications) could employ each of these. Do the authors consider "leap of faith" trust arrangements to fall into their 5th category? They certainly lack strong identity, but they seem to provide assurance that a particular peer is the same peer over a number of interactions; there may be no assurance as to who that peer is with reference to an external system, but that may not be required. 4.1.2 touches on this, but it wasn't clear to me whether these trust arrangements fell under 5 or were some other category. In Section 7, the draft says: A possible approach that solutions might investigate is to defer verification until there appears to be two different hosts (or two different locators for the same host) that want to use the same identifier. Does this mean simultaneous hosts/locators? I'm concerned that a combination here of a DoS and impersonation could make simultaneous appearance rare: A is talking to B; X DoS'es A while impersonating A to B; B sees a "new A", but no longer has the ability to verifiy the first A.
David Kessens Former IESG member
Yes
Yes
(2004-10-21)
Unknown
The draft doesn't have an IANA Considerations section, which should be a null one if present. Also Appendix A will need to be removed.