Re: [Ace] (details on use case scenario?) Re: [Lwip] EDHOC standardization

[Göran Selander <[e-mail]>]

Hi Rene,

Sorry for slow response to your mails.

From: Rene Struik <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Date: Friday, 15 March 2019 at 15:28
To: Göran Selander <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>, John Mattsson <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Cc: "[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>" <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>, 'Benjamin Kaduk' <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>, "[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>" <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>
Subject: Re: [Ace] (details on use case scenario?) Re: [Lwip] EDHOC standardization

Hi Goran:

As you recall, I suggested to look at some details of 6TiSCH enrollment (see my message of March 4, 2019 [1]). During the SecDispatch interim of March 5, 2019, this was provided as one use case scenario [2] and reiterated in your email of yesterday, March 14, 2019 [3]. Nevertheless, details on how this could be realized in practice are still missing.

I had another look at the 6TiSCH minimal security draft [1] (now in 2nd WGLC) and the "zero-touch" write-up [5] -- which you both referenced in your email [3] of yesterday.

To my understanding, the intention with 6TiSCH is to reuse the protocol flows of [4] to implement a public-key based enrollment scheme in the future. This seems to be what [5] aims for, if I try and read in between the [still unwritten] lines, and the impression I got from some people. From looking at the protocol details, though, I do not understand how this can be done in practice. This begs the question what I am missing here.

Hence, my question of March 4th on details of use case scenarios still stands. In fact, I do not see how one could implement EDHOC on top of [4], even if one only uses symmetric-key only variant of EDHOC.

If you could shed some light on this, this would help. Or, should we simply abandon that use case as being unrealistic at this point?

6TiSCH minimal security [4] specifies how a Pledge joining a new network communicates using CoAP with the JRC via a Join Proxy and over additional hops. The proxy operations in the Join Proxy incurs certain overhead in the communication between Proxy and JRC. The exact procedure for the zero-touch is not yet defined, but it is expected to reuse features of the Join Proxy in the minimal security setting. The benchmark in [2] is based on this setting but replacing the OSCORE protection of CoAP with the AKE protocol messages carried over CoAP. Is it more clear now?

Finally, your email [1] suggests "reports of massive breaches with PSK provisioning systems". If so, I would strongly suggest having another look at [4] and commenting on this.

I’m not sure exactly what you want me to comment on. Clearly there are weakness with PSK based systems w/o PFS. But PSK w/o PFS is still used for various reasons, including inability to deploy better security. This inability may be real due to performance limitations or only perceived, for example due to unawareness of intermediary provisioning schemes between PSK and certificates, but in any case PSK w/o PFS is clearly a better alternative than no security at all. One purpose of the work we discuss here is to lower the threshold for PFS.

You mentioned in a previous mail other limitations in the multi-hop setting besides message sizes, and that is indeed true - this is just one benchmark. Is there some specific characteristic you want to highlight in this context?

RS>> My 10-hop enrollment use case was aimed to force consideration of
not just abstract "protocol flow arrows", but also effects on the
network and its actors. A simple byte-count is not enough...
<<RS

Göran

Ref:
[1] Details on Use Case Scenarios, email RS of March 4, 2019. Seehttps://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ace/On0iIFAb_OWeBqLjlryi1rBHwhk
[2] Slides on EDHOC during SecDispatch meeting of March 5, 2019. Seehttps://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/interim-2019-secdispatch-01/materials/slides-interim-2019-secdispatch-01-sessa-edhoc.pdf
[3] Pitch for EDHOC, email Goran Selander of March 14, 2019. Seehttps://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/secdispatch/vNR7nT20fsvYjYXhAPjOpLjZGCU
[4] draft-ietf-6tisch-minimal-security-09
[5] draft-ietf-6tisch-dtsecurity-zerotouch-join-03