Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion
RFC 8165
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(May 2017; No errata)
Was draft-hardie-privsec-metadata-insertion (individual in sec area)
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Author | Ted Hardie | ||
Last updated | 2017-05-10 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Reviews | |||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 8165 (Informational) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Yes | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Stephen Farrell | ||
Send notices to | (None) | ||
IANA | IANA review state | Version Changed - Review Needed | |
IANA action state | No IANA Actions |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) T. Hardie Request for Comments: 8165 May 2017 Category: Informational ISSN: 2070-1721 Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion Abstract The IAB published RFC 7624 in response to several revelations of pervasive attacks on Internet communications. This document considers the implications of protocol designs that associate metadata with encrypted flows. In particular, it asserts that designs that share metadata only by explicit actions at the host are preferable to designs in which middleboxes insert metadata. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8165. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Hardie Informational [Page 1] RFC 8165 Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion May 2017 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ....................................................2 2. Terminology .....................................................2 3. Design Pattern ..................................................2 4. Advice ..........................................................3 5. Deployment Considerations .......................................4 6. IANA Considerations .............................................5 7. Security Considerations .........................................5 8. References ......................................................6 8.1. Normative References .......................................6 8.2. Informative References .....................................6 Acknowledgements ...................................................7 Author's Address ...................................................7 1. Introduction To minimize the risks associated with pervasive surveillance, it is necessary for the Internet technical community to address the vulnerabilities exploited in the attacks documented in [RFC7258] and the threats described in [RFC7624]. The goal of this document is to address a common design pattern that emerges from the increase in encryption: explicit association of metadata that would previously have been inferred from the plaintext protocol. 2. Terminology This document makes extensive use of standard security and privacy terminology; see [RFC4949] and [RFC6973]. Readers should be familiar with the terms defined in [RFC6973], including "Eavesdropper", "Observer", "Initiator", "Intermediary", "Recipient", "Attack" (in a privacy context), "Correlation", "Fingerprint", "Traffic Analysis", and "Identifiability" (and related terms). Readers should also be familiar with terms that are specific to the attacks discussed in [RFC7624], including "Pervasive Attack", "Passive Pervasive Attack", "Active Pervasive Attack", "Observation", "Inference", and "Collaborator". 3. Design Pattern One of the core mitigations for the loss of confidentiality in the presence of pervasive surveillance is data minimization, which limits the amount of data disclosed to those elements absolutely required to complete the relevant protocol exchange. When data minimization is in effect, some information that was previously available may be removed from specific protocol exchanges. The information may be removed explicitly (for example, by a browser suppressing cookies Hardie Informational [Page 2] RFC 8165 Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion May 2017 during private modes) or by other means. As noted in [RFC7624], some topologies that aggregate or alter the network path also act toShow full document text