Internet Engineering Task Force E. Chen, Ed.
Internet-Draft Cisco Systems, Inc.
Updates: 1997, 4271, 4360, 4456, 4760, J. Scudder, Ed.
5543, 5701, 6368, 6790 (if Juniper Networks
approved) P. Mohapatra
Intended status: Standards Track Sproute Networks
Expires: December 13, 2014 K. Patel
Cisco Systems, Inc.
June 11, 2014
Revised Error Handling for BGP UPDATE Messages
draft-ietf-idr-error-handling-12
Abstract
According to the base BGP specification, a BGP speaker that receives
an UPDATE message containing a malformed attribute is required to
reset the session over which the offending attribute was received.
This behavior is undesirable as a session reset would impact not only
routes with the offending attribute, but also other valid routes
exchanged over the session. This document partially revises the
error handling for UPDATE messages, and provides guidelines for the
authors of documents defining new attributes. Finally, it revises
the error handling procedures for a number of existing attributes.
This document updates error handling for RFCs 1997, 4271, 4360, 4456,
4760 and 5701.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on December 13, 2014.
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Copyright Notice
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Error-Handling Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Revision to BGP UPDATE Message Error Handling . . . . . . . . 4
4. Attribute Length Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Parsing of NLRI Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.1. Encoding NLRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2. Missing NLRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.3. Syntactic Correctness of NLRI Fields . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.4. Typed NLRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7. Error Handling Procedures for Existing Attributes . . . . . . 9
7.1. ORIGIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7.2. AS_PATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7.3. NEXT_HOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7.4. MULTI_EXIT_DISC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7.5. LOCAL_PREF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7.6. ATOMIC_AGGREGATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7.7. AGGREGATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
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7.8. Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.9. ORIGINATOR_ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.10. CLUSTER_LIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.11. MP_REACH_NLRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7.12. MP_UNREACH_NLRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7.13. Traffic Engineering path attribute . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7.14. Extended Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.15. IPv6 Address Specific BGP Extended Community Attribute . 14
7.16. BGP Entropy Label Capability Attribute . . . . . . . . . 14
7.17. ATTR_SET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8. Guidance for Authors of BGP Specifications . . . . . . . . . 15
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
11. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1. Introduction
According to the base BGP specification [RFC4271], a BGP speaker that
receives an UPDATE message containing a malformed attribute is
required to reset the session over which the offending attribute was
received. This behavior is undesirable as a session reset would
impact not only routes with the offending attribute, but also other
valid routes exchanged over the session. In the case of optional
transitive attributes, the behavior is especially troublesome and may
present a potential security vulnerability. The reason is that such
attributes may have been propagated without being checked by
intermediate routers that do not recognize the attributes -- in
effect the attribute may have been tunneled, and when they do reach a
router that recognizes and checks them, the session that is reset may
not be associated with the router that is at fault. To make matters
worse, in such cases although the problematic attributes may have
originated with a single update transmitted by a single BGP speaker,
by the time they encounter a router that checks them they may have
been replicated many times, and thus may cause the reset of many
peering sessions. Thus the damage inflicted may be multiplied
manyfold.
The goal for revising the error handling for UPDATE messages is to
minimize the impact on routing by a malformed UPDATE message, while
maintaining protocol correctness to the extent possible. This can be
achieved largely by maintaining the established session and keeping
the valid routes exchanged, but removing the routes carried in the
malformed UPDATE from the routing system.
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This document partially revises the error handling for UPDATE
messages, and provides guidelines for the authors of documents
defining new attributes. Finally, it revises the error handling
procedures for a number of existing attributes. Specifically, the
error handling procedures of [RFC1997], [RFC4271], [RFC4360],
[RFC4456], [RFC4760] and [RFC5701] are revised.
1.1. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
2. Error-Handling Approaches
In this document we refer to four different approaches to handling
errors found in BGP path attributes. They are as follows (listed in
order, from the one with the "strongest" action to the one with the
"weakest" action):
o Session reset: This is the approach used throughout the base BGP
specification [RFC4271], where a NOTIFICATION is sent and the
session terminated.
o AFI/SAFI disable: [RFC4760] specifies a procedure for disabling a
particular AFI/SAFI.
o Treat-as-withdraw: In this approach, the UPDATE message containing
the path attribute in question MUST be treated as though all
contained routes had been withdrawn just as if they had been
listed in the WITHDRAWN ROUTES field (or in the MP_UNREACH_NLRI
attribute if appropriate) of the UPDATE message, thus causing them
to be removed from the Adj-RIB-In according to the procedures of
[RFC4271].
o Attribute discard: In this approach the malformed attribute MUST
be discarded and the UPDATE message continues to be processed.
This approach must not be used except in the case of an attribute
that has no effect on route selection or installation.
3. Revision to BGP UPDATE Message Error Handling
This specification amends [RFC4271] Section 6.3 in a number of ways.
See also Section 7 for treatment of specific path attributes.
a. The first paragraph is revised as follows:
Old Text:
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All errors detected while processing the UPDATE message
MUST be indicated by sending the NOTIFICATION message with
the Error Code UPDATE Message Error. The error subcode
elaborates on the specific nature of the error.
New Text:
An error detected while processing the UPDATE message for
which a session reset is specified MUST be indicated by
sending the NOTIFICATION message with the Error Code UPDATE
Message Error. The error subcode elaborates on the
specific nature of the error.
b. Error handling for the following case remains unchanged:
If the Withdrawn Routes Length or Total Attribute Length is
too large (i.e., if Withdrawn Routes Length + Total
Attribute Length + 23 exceeds the message Length), then the
Error Subcode MUST be set to Malformed Attribute List.
c. Attribute Flag error handling is revised as follows:
Old Text:
If any recognized attribute has Attribute Flags that
conflict with the Attribute Type Code, then the Error
Subcode MUST be set to Attribute Flags Error. The Data
field MUST contain the erroneous attribute (type, length,
and value).
New Text:
If the value of either the Optional or Transitive bits in
the Attribute Flags is in conflict with their specified
values, then the attribute MUST be treated as malformed and
the treat-as-withdraw approach used, unless the
specification for the attribute mandates different handling
for incorrect Attribute Flags.
d. If any of the well-known mandatory attributes are not present in
an UPDATE message, then "treat-as-withdraw" MUST be used. (Note
that [RFC4760] reclassifies NEXT_HOP as what is effectively
discretionary.)
e. "Treat-as-withdraw" MUST be used for the cases that specify a
session reset and involve any of the attributes ORIGIN, AS_PATH,
NEXT_HOP, MULTI_EXIT_DISC, or LOCAL_PREF.
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f. "Attribute discard" MUST be used for any of the cases that
specify a session reset and involve ATOMIC_AGGREGATE or
AGGREGATOR.
g. If the MP_REACH_NLRI attribute or the MP_UNREACH_NLRI [RFC4760]
attribute appears more than once in the UPDATE message, then a
NOTIFICATION message MUST be sent with the Error Subcode
"Malformed Attribute List". If any other attribute (whether
recognized or unrecognized) appears more than once in an UPDATE
message, then all the occurrences of the attribute other than the
first one SHALL be discarded and the UPDATE message continue to
be processed.
h. When multiple attribute errors exist in an UPDATE message, if the
same approach (either "session reset", "treat-as-withdraw" or
"attribute discard") is specified for the handling of these
malformed attributes, then the specified approach MUST be used.
Otherwise the approach with the strongest action MUST be used.
i. The Withdrawn Routes field MUST be checked for syntactic
correctness in the same manner as the NLRI field. This is
discussed further below, and in Section 5.3.
j. Finally, we observe that in order to use the approach of "treat-
as-withdraw", the entire NLRI field and/or the MP_REACH_NLRI and
MP_UNREACH_NLRI attributes need to be successfully parsed -- what
this entails is discussed in more detail in Section 5. If this
is not possible, the procedures of [RFC4271] and/or [RFC4760]
continue to apply, meaning that the "session reset" approach (or
the "AFI/SAFI disable" approach) MUST be followed.
4. Attribute Length Fields
There are two error cases in which the Total Attribute Length value
can be in conflict with the enclosed path attributes, which
themselves carry length values. In the "overrun" case, as the
enclosed path attributes are parsed, the length of the last
encountered path attribute would cause the Total Attribute Length to
be exceeded. In the "underrun" case, as the enclosed path attributes
are parsed, after the last successfully-parsed attribute, fewer than
three octets remain, or fewer than four octets, if the Attribute
Flags field has the Extended Length bit set -- that is, there remains
unconsumed data in the path attributes but yet insufficient data to
encode a single minimum-sized path attribute. In either of these
cases an error condition exists and the treat-as-withdraw approach
MUST be used (unless some other, more severe error is encountered
dictating a stronger approach), and the Total Attribute Length MUST
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be relied upon to enable the beginning of the NLRI field to be
located.
For all path attributes other than those specified as having an
attribute length that may be zero it SHALL be considered a syntax
error for the attribute to have a length of zero. (Of the path
attributes considered in this specification, only AS_PATH and
ATOMIC_AGGREGATE may validly have an attribute length of zero.)
5. Parsing of NLRI Fields
5.1. Encoding NLRI
To facilitate the determination of the NLRI field in an UPDATE with a
malformed attribute:
o The MP_REACH_NLRI or MP_UNREACH_NLRI attribute (if present) SHALL
be encoded as the very first path attribute in an UPDATE.
o An UPDATE message MUST NOT contain more than one of the following:
non-empty Withdrawn Routes field, non-empty Network Layer
Reachability Information field, MP_REACH_NLRI attribute, and
MP_UNREACH_NLRI attribute.
Since older BGP speakers may not implement these restrictions, an
implementation MUST still be prepared to receive these fields in any
position or combination.
If the encoding of [RFC4271] is used, the NLRI field for the IPv4
unicast address family is carried immediately following all the
attributes in an UPDATE. When such an UPDATE is received, we observe
that the NLRI field can be determined using the "Message Length",
"Withdrawn Route Length" and "Total Attribute Length" (when they are
consistent) carried in the message instead of relying on the length
of individual attributes in the message.
5.2. Missing NLRI
[RFC4724] specifies an End-of-RIB message ("EoR") that can be encoded
as an UPDATE message that contains only a MP_UNREACH_NLRI attribute
that encodes no NLRI (it can also be a completely empty UPDATE
message in the case of the "legacy" encoding). In all other well-
specified cases, an UPDATE either carries only withdrawn routes
(either in the Withdrawn Routes field, or the MP_UNREACH_NLRI
attribute), or it advertises reachable routes (either in the Network
Layer Reachability Information field, or the MP_REACH_NLRI
attribute).
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Thus, if an UPDATE message is encountered that does contain path
attributes other than MP_UNREACH_NLRI and doesn't encode any
reachable NLRI, we cannot be confident that the NLRI have been
successfully parsed as Section 3 (j) requires. For this reason, if
any path attribute errors are encountered in such an UPDATE message,
and if any encountered error specifies an error-handling approach
other than "attribute discard", then the "session reset" approach
MUST be used.
5.3. Syntactic Correctness of NLRI Fields
The NLRI field or Withdrawn Routes field SHALL be considered
"syntactically incorrect" if either of the following are true:
o The length of any of the included NLRI is greater than 32,
o When parsing NLRI contained in the field, the length of the last
NLRI found exceeds the amount of unconsumed data remaining in the
field.
Similarly, the MP_REACH_NLRI or MP_UNREACH_NLRI attribute of an
update SHALL be considered to be incorrect if any of the following
are true:
o The length of any of the included NLRI is inconsistent with the
given AFI/SAFI (for example, if an IPv4 NLRI has a length greater
than 32 or an IPv6 NLRI has a length greater than 128),
o When parsing NLRI contained in the attribute, the length of the
last NLRI found exceeds the amount of unconsumed data remaining in
the attribute.
o The attribute flags of the attribute are inconsistent with those
specified in [RFC4760].
o The length of the MP_UNREACH_NLRI attribute is less than 3, or the
length of the MP_REACH_NLRI attribute is less than 5.
5.4. Typed NLRI
Certain address families, for example MVPN [RFC7117] and EVPN
[I-D.ietf-l2vpn-evpn] have NLRI that are typed. Since supported type
values within the address family are not expressed in the MP-BGP
capability [RFC4760], it is possible for a BGP speaker to advertise
support for the given address family and sub-address family while
still not supporting a particular type of NLRI within that AFI/SAFI.
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A BGP speaker advertising support for such a typed address family
MUST handle routes with unrecognized NLRI types within that address
family by discarding them, unless the relevant specification for that
address family specifies otherwise.
6. Operational Considerations
Although the "treat-as-withdraw" error-handling behavior defined in
Section 2 makes every effort to preserve BGP's correctness, we note
that if an UPDATE received on an IBGP session is subjected to this
treatment, inconsistent routing within the affected Autonomous System
may result. The consequences of inconsistent routing can include
long-lived forwarding loops and black holes. While lamentable, this
issue is expected to be rare in practice, and more importantly is
seen as less problematic than the session-reset behavior it replaces.
When a malformed attribute is indeed detected over an IBGP session,
we RECOMMEND that routes with the malformed attribute be identified
and traced back to the ingress router in the network where the routes
were sourced or received externally, and then a filter be applied on
the ingress router to prevent the routes from being sourced or
received. This will help maintain routing consistency in the
network.
Even if inconsistent routing does not arise, the "treat-as-withdraw"
behavior can cause either complete unreachability or sub-optimal
routing for the destinations whose routes are carried in the affected
UPDATE message.
Note that "treat-as-withdraw" is different from discarding an UPDATE
message. The latter violates the basic BGP principle of incremental
update, and could cause invalid routes to be kept.
Because of these potential issues, a BGP speaker MUST provide
debugging facilities to permit issues caused by a malformed attribute
to be diagnosed. At a minimum, such facilities MUST include logging
an error listing the NLRI involved, and containing the entire
malformed UPDATE message when such an attribute is detected. The
malformed UPDATE message SHOULD be analyzed, and the root cause
SHOULD be investigated.
7. Error Handling Procedures for Existing Attributes
In the following subsections, we elaborate on the conditions for
error-checking various path attributes, and specify what approach(es)
should be used to handle malformations. It is possible that
implementations may apply other error checks not contemplated here.
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If so, the error handling approach given here should generally be
applied.
This section addresses all path attributes that are defined at the
time of this writing, that were not defined with error-handling
consistent with Section 8, and that are not marked as "deprecated" in
[IANA-BGP-ATTRS]. Attributes 17 (AS4_PATH), 18 (AS4_AGGREGATOR), 22
(PMSI_TUNNEL), 23 (Tunnel Encapsulation Attribute), 26 (AIGP), 27 (PE
Distinguisher Labels) and 29 (BGP-LS Attribute) do have error-
handling consistent with Section 8 and thus are not further discussed
herein. Attributes 11 (DPA), 12 (ADVERTISER), 13 (RCID_PATH /
CLUSTER_ID), 19 (SAFI Specific Attribute), 20 (Connector Attribute)
and 21 (AS_PATHLIMIT) are deprecated and thus are not further
discussed herein.
7.1. ORIGIN
The attribute is considered malformed if its length is not 1, or it
has an undefined value [RFC4271].
An UPDATE message with a malformed ORIGIN attribute SHALL be handled
using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
7.2. AS_PATH
An AS_PATH is considered malformed if an unrecognized segment type is
encountered, or if it contains a malformed segment. A segment is
considered malformed if any of the following obtains:
o There is an overrun, where the path segment length field of the
last segment encountered would cause the Attribute Length to be
exceeded.
o There is an underrun, where after the last successfully-parsed
segment, there is only a single octet remaining (that is, there is
not enough unconsumed data to provide even an empty segment
header).
o It has a path segment length field of zero.
An UPDATE message with a malformed AS_PATH attribute SHALL be handled
using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
[RFC4271] also says that an implementation optionally "MAY check
whether the leftmost ... AS in the AS_PATH attribute is equal to the
autonomous system number of the peer that sent the message". A BGP
implementation SHOULD also handle routes that violate this check
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using "treat-as-withdraw", but MAY follow the session reset behavior
if configured to do so.
7.3. NEXT_HOP
According to [RFC4271] the attribute is considered malformed if it is
syntactically incorrect. To quote from that document, "Syntactic
correctness means that the NEXT_HOP attribute represents a valid IP
host address", but it does not go on to define what it means to be a
"valid IP host address". Therefore:
An IP host address SHOULD be considered invalid if it appears in the
"IANA IPv4 Special-Purpose Address Registry" [IANA-IPV4] and either
the "destination" or the "forwardable" boolean in that registry is
given as "false". An implementation MAY provide a means to modify
the list of invalid host addresses by configuration -- these are
sometimes referred to as "Martians".
An UPDATE message with a malformed NEXT_HOP attribute SHALL be
handled using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
7.4. MULTI_EXIT_DISC
The attribute is considered malformed if its length is not 4
[RFC4271].
An UPDATE message with a malformed MULTI_EXIT_DISC attribute SHALL be
handled using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
7.5. LOCAL_PREF
The error handling of [RFC4271] is revised as follows.
o If the LOCAL_PREF attribute is received from an external neighbor,
it SHALL be discarded using the approach of "attribute discard",
or
o if received from an internal neighbor, it SHALL be considered
malformed if its length is not equal to 4. If malformed, the
UPDATE SHALL be handled using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
7.6. ATOMIC_AGGREGATE
The attribute SHALL be considered malformed if its length is not 0
[RFC4271].
An UPDATE message with a malformed ATOMIC_AGGREGATE attribute SHALL
be handled using the approach of "attribute discard".
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7.7. AGGREGATOR
The error conditions specified in [RFC4271] for the attribute are
revised as follows:
The AGGREGATOR attribute SHALL be considered malformed if any of the
following applies:
o Its length is not 6 (when the "4-octet AS number capability" is
not advertised to, or not received from the peer [RFC6793]).
o Its length is not 8 (when the "4-octet AS number capability" is
both advertised to, and received from the peer).
An UPDATE message with a malformed AGGREGATOR attribute SHALL be
handled using the approach of "attribute discard".
7.8. Community
The error handling of [RFC1997] is revised as follows:
The Community attribute SHALL be considered malformed if its length
is not a nonzero multiple of 4.
An UPDATE message with a malformed Community attribute SHALL be
handled using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
7.9. ORIGINATOR_ID
The error handling of [RFC4456] is revised as follows.
o If the ORIGINATOR_ID attribute is received from an external
neighbor, it SHALL be discarded using the approach of "attribute
discard", or
o if received from an internal neighbor, it SHALL be considered
malformed if its length is not equal to 4. If malformed, the
UPDATE SHALL be handled using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
7.10. CLUSTER_LIST
The error handling of [RFC4456] is revised as follows.
o If the CLUSTER_LIST attribute is received from an external
neighbor, it SHALL be discarded using the approach of "attribute
discard", or
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o if received from an internal neighbor, it SHALL be considered
malformed if its length is not a nonzero multiple of 4. If
malformed, the UPDATE SHALL be handled using the approach of
"treat-as-withdraw".
7.11. MP_REACH_NLRI
[RFC4760] references the error-handling of the base BGP specification
for validation of the next hop. ("The rules for the next hop
information are the same as the rules for the information carried in
the NEXT_HOP BGP attribute".) Thus just as in Section 7.3 we must
consider what it means for the Next Hop field of the MP_REACH
attribute to be a "valid host address":
o If the Next Hop field is an IPv4 address, it SHOULD be considered
invalid if it appears in the "IANA IPv4 Special-Purpose Address
Registry" [IANA-IPV4] and either the "destination" or the
"forwardable" boolean in that registry is given as "false".
o If the Next Hop field is an IPv6 address, it SHOULD be considered
invalid if it appears in the "IANA IPv6 Special-Purpose Address
Registry" [IANA-IPV6] and either the "destination" or the
"forwardable" boolean in that registry is given as "false".
o If the Next Hop field is some other form of address, it should be
considered invalid in circumstances analogous to the above -- if
it is found in the relevant IANA special-purpose address registry
(if any) and its "destination" or "forwardable" boolean is given
as "false".
o An implementation MAY provide a means to modify the list of
invalid host addresses by configuration -- these are sometimes
referred to as "Martians".
Section 3 and Section 5 provide further discussion of the handling of
this attribute.
7.12. MP_UNREACH_NLRI
Section 3 and Section 5 discuss the handling of this attribute.
7.13. Traffic Engineering path attribute
The error handling of [RFC5543] is revised as follows.
TBD
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7.14. Extended Community
The error handling of [RFC4360] is revised as follows:
The Extended Community attribute SHALL be considered malformed if its
length is not a nonzero multiple of 8.
An UPDATE message with a malformed Extended Community attribute SHALL
be handled using the approach of "treat-as-withdraw".
Note that a BGP speaker MUST NOT treat an unrecognized Extended
Community Type or Sub-Type as an error.
7.15. IPv6 Address Specific BGP Extended Community Attribute
The error handling of [RFC5701] is revised as follows:
The IPv6 Address Specific Extended Community attribute SHALL be
considered malformed if its length is not a nonzero multiple of 20.
An UPDATE message with a malformed IPv6 Address Specific Extended
Community attribute SHALL be handled using the approach of "treat-as-
withdraw".
Note that a BGP speaker MUST NOT treat an unrecognized IPv6 Address
Specific Extended Community Type or Sub-Type as an error.
7.16. BGP Entropy Label Capability Attribute
The error handling of [RFC6790] is revised as follows.
No syntax errors are defined for the Entropy Label Capability
attribute (ELCA). However, if any implementation does for some local
reason determine that a syntax error exists with the ELCA, the error
SHALL be handled using the approach of "attribute discard".
7.17. ATTR_SET
The final paragraph of Section 5 of [RFC6368] is revised as follows:
Old Text:
An UPDATE message with a malformed ATTR_SET attribute SHALL be
handled as follows. If its Partial flag is set and its
Neighbor-Complete flag is clear, the UPDATE is treated as a
route withdraw as discussed in [OPT-TRANS-BGP]. Otherwise
(i.e., Partial flag is clear or Neighbor-Complete is set), the
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procedures of the BGP-4 base specification [RFC4271] MUST be
followed with respect to an Optional Attribute Error.
New Text:
An UPDATE message with a malformed ATTR_SET attribute SHALL be
handled using the approach of "treat as withdraw".
Furthermore, the normative reference to [OPT-TRANS-BGP] in [RFC6368]
is removed.
8. Guidance for Authors of BGP Specifications
A document that specifies a new BGP attribute MUST provide specifics
regarding what constitutes an error for that attribute and how that
error is to be handled. Allowable error-handling approaches are
detailed in Section 2. The treat-as-withdraw approach is generally
preferred. The document SHOULD also provide consideration of what
debugging facilities may be required to permit issues caused by a
malformed attribute to be diagnosed.
For any malformed attribute that is handled by the "attribute
discard" instead of the "treat-as-withdraw" approach, it is critical
to consider the potential impact of doing so. In particular, if the
attribute in question has or may have an effect on route selection or
installation, the presumption is that discarding it is unsafe, unless
careful analysis proves otherwise. The analysis should take into
account the tradeoff between preserving connectivity and potential
side effects.
Authors can refer to Section 7 for examples.
9. IANA Considerations
This document makes no request of IANA.
10. Security Considerations
This specification addresses the vulnerability of a BGP speaker to a
potential attack whereby a distant attacker can generate a malformed
optional transitive attribute that is not recognized by intervening
routers (which thus propagate the attribute unchecked) but that
causes session resets when it reaches routers that do recognize the
given attribute type.
In other respects, this specification does not change BGP's security
characteristics.
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11. Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Juan Alcaide, Deniz Bahadir, Ron Bonica,
Mach Chen, Andy Davidson, Bruno Decraene, Rex Fernando, Jeff Haas,
Chris Hall, Joel Halpern, Dong Jie, Akira Kato, Miya Kohno, Tony Li,
Alton Lo, Shin Miyakawa, Tamas Mondal, Jonathan Oddy, Tony
Przygienda, Robert Raszuk, Yakov Rekhter, Eric Rosen, Shyam Sethuram,
Rob Shakir, Naiming Shen, Adam Simpson, Ananth Suryanarayana, Kaliraj
Vairavakkalai, Lili Wang and Ondrej Zajicek for their observations
and discussion of this topic, and review of this document.
12. References
12.1. Normative References
[IANA-BGP-ATTRS]
"BGP Path Attributes", <http://www.iana.org/assignments/
bgp-parameters/bgp-parameters.xhtml#bgp-parameters-2>.
[IANA-IPV4]
"IANA IPv4 Special-Purpose Address Registry",
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/
iana-ipv4-special-registry>.
[IANA-IPV6]
"IANA IPv4 Special-Purpose Address Registry",
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/
iana-ipv6-special-registry>.
[RFC1997] Chandrasekeran, R., Traina, P., and T. Li, "BGP
Communities Attribute", RFC 1997, August 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.
[RFC4360] Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, February 2006.
[RFC4456] Bates, T., Chen, E., and R. Chandra, "BGP Route
Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
(IBGP)", RFC 4456, April 2006.
[RFC4724] Sangli, S., Chen, E., Fernando, R., Scudder, J., and Y.
Rekhter, "Graceful Restart Mechanism for BGP", RFC 4724,
January 2007.
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[RFC4760] Bates, T., Chandra, R., Katz, D., and Y. Rekhter,
"Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4", RFC 4760, January
2007.
[RFC5543] Ould-Brahim, H., Fedyk, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Traffic
Engineering Attribute", RFC 5543, May 2009.
[RFC5701] Rekhter, Y., "IPv6 Address Specific BGP Extended Community
Attribute", RFC 5701, November 2009.
[RFC6368] Marques, P., Raszuk, R., Patel, K., Kumaki, K., and T.
Yamagata, "Internal BGP as the Provider/Customer Edge
Protocol for BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)",
RFC 6368, September 2011.
[RFC6790] Kompella, K., Drake, J., Amante, S., Henderickx, W., and
L. Yong, "The Use of Entropy Labels in MPLS Forwarding",
RFC 6790, November 2012.
[RFC6793] Vohra, Q. and E. Chen, "BGP Support for Four-Octet
Autonomous System (AS) Number Space", RFC 6793, December
2012.
12.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-l2vpn-evpn]
Sajassi, A., Aggarwal, R., Bitar, N., Isaac, A., and J.
Uttaro, "BGP MPLS Based Ethernet VPN", draft-ietf-l2vpn-
evpn-07 (work in progress), May 2014.
[RFC7117] Aggarwal, R., Kamite, Y., Fang, L., Rekhter, Y., and C.
Kodeboniya, "Multicast in Virtual Private LAN Service
(VPLS)", RFC 7117, February 2014.
Authors' Addresses
Enke Chen (editor)
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Email: enkechen@cisco.com
John G. Scudder (editor)
Juniper Networks
Email: jgs@juniper.net
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Pradosh Mohapatra
Sproute Networks
Email: mpradosh@yahoo.com
Keyur Patel
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Email: keyupate@cisco.com
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