Last Call Review of draft-ietf-core-coap-14
review-ietf-core-coap-14-secdir-lc-melnikov-2013-04-04-00

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review-ietf-core-coap-14-secdir-lc-melnikov-2013-04-04

I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's 


ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the IESG. 


These comments were written primarily for the benefit of the security 


area directors.  Document editors and WG chairs should treat these 


comments just like any other last call comments.






This document defines the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), which 


is a specialized web transfer protocol (basically a binary protocol that 


provides a subset of HTTP functionality) for use with constrained nodes 


and constrained (e.g., low-power, lossy) networks.  The nodes often have 


8-bit microcontrollers with small amounts of ROM and RAM, while 


constrained networks such as 6LoWPAN often have high packet error rates 


and a typical throughput of 10s of kbit/s.  The protocol is designed for 


machine-to-machine applications such as smart energy and building 


automation.






The Security Consideration points to Section 15 of RFC 2616 (among other 


things). I think this is quite appropriate, as RFC 2616 covers lots of 


relevant issues, including disclosure of sensitive information.




The Security Consideration section correctly points out
that Protocol Parsing complexity can lead to vulnerabilities,
in particular parsing/processing of URIs.



Section 11.3 talks about risk of amplification attacks (causing bigger 


packets to be sent to a victim based on smaller packets sent by an 


attacker) and possible mitigations. Section 11.4 talks about IP Address 


Spoofing Attacks (message spoofing, making endpoints "deaf", cache 


poisoning, etc.). Section 11.2 talks about Proxying and Caching attacks 


(Denial-of-service, threat to confidentiality and integrity of 


request/response data). Many mitigation techniques depend on use of DTLS 


(modes other than NoSec), but this is fine, as one of DTLS modes is 


mandatory to implement for all compliant CoAP nodes.






I appreciated text describing possible cross protocol attacks, in 


particular when DNS packets are sent to a CoAP endpoint.






Section 9 (Securing CoAP) talks about several modes of securing CoAP 


with DTLS. It talks about how certificate verification should be done 


and provisioning of raw public keys. These sections seem to be well 


written and sufficiently detailed to implement.






Overall I think that the document has very good and detailed security 


considerations.




Minor issues/nits:

9.1.3.2.  Raw Public Key Certificates

   In this mode the device has an asymmetric key pair but without an
   X.509 certificate (called a raw public key).  A device MAY be
   configured with multiple raw public keys.  The type and length of the
   raw public key depends on the cipher suite used.  Implementations in
   RawPublicKey mode MUST support the mandatory to implement cipher
   suite TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CCM_8 as specified in
   [I-D.mcgrew-tls-aes-ccm-ecc],

It looks like this reference is Normative, while you have it as Informative.

   [RFC5246], [RFC4492].  The mechanism
   for using raw public keys with TLS is specified in
   [I-D.ietf-tls-oob-pubkey].

9.1.3.2.1.  Provisioning

   The RawPublicKey mode was designed to be easily provisioned in M2M
   deployments.  It is assumed that each device has an appropriate
   asymmetric public key pair installed.  An identifier is calculated
   from the public key as described in Section 2 of
   [I-D.farrell-decade-ni].  All implementations that support checking
   RawPublicKey identities MUST support at least the sha-256-120 mode
   (SHA-256 truncated to 120 bits).  Implementations SHOULD support also

I think you need a Normative reference to SHA-256 here.

   longer length identifiers and MAY support shorter lengths.  Note that
   the shorter lengths provide less security against attacks and their
   use is NOT RECOMMENDED.


Best Regards,
Alexey



P.S. I have some Apps specific issues with the document, but I send 


these separately in my AppsDir review.