Re: [Anima] [6lo] Comments needed for Security Bootstrapping of IEEE 802.15.4 based Internet of Things

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 23/02/2015 21:21, peter van der Stok wrote:
> Hi Brian, Hannes,
> 
> About negotiation of bootstrapping choice:
> 
> Standardizing components for the "security bootstrapping" of low resource devices, gives a consortium the possibility to agree
> on a selection of building blocks
> which is preloaded in the consortium stamped devices,
> accompanied by parameter settings.

And that is a problem. I mean the word "consortium" is a problem; it
amounts to a cartel and excludes non-consortium members from the market.
That is not what we want in the Internet. We may have to deal with it as
part of reality, but we have to focus on open standards that everybody
can implement. Whether the open standard is based on draft-pritikin or
something else is a separate question, of course.

In the last few days I've had to deal with two vendor-specific wireless
enrollment issues (garage door openers and remote weather sensors) and
I don't think that is a direction we should encourage.

> The parameter setting may further determine the bootstrap actions.
> Prefixing parameter settings is a well-known technique. 

And it's exactly what we want to avoid in autonomic networks.

   Brian

> This can be done in the factory; Servers can also be used for that matter.
> 
> Peter
> 
> Brian E Carpenter schreef op 2015-02-21 19:53:
>> Hannes,
>>
>> "Bootstrapping" is a colloquialism, of course, but it conveys the idea
>> of having no prior knowledge which is the main point here. Of course
>> it's true (as Peter said) that different situations call for differences
>> in the solution. The initial target for Anima is "professionally managed
>> networks" and for that we tend to assume that devices are pre-registered
>> in some sense; that is a false assumption for homenets and (I assume) IoT.
>> I am pretty sure that IoT approaches will be a false assumption for
>> large international carrier networks.
>>
>> I know nothing about Thread, whatever and whoever it is. If they
>> want to repeat the Bluetooth error of working in secret, there is
>> nothing we can do about it, neither can we sit back and do nothing.
>> At least draft-pritikin-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra builds pn
>> IEEE 802.1AR.
>>
>> Regards
>>    Brian
>>
>> On 22/02/2015 00:44, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:
>>> Peter, Brian,
>>>
>>> I would strongly recommend not to use the term bootstrapping. Replacing
>>> it with some other word that explains what you want to do.
>>>
>>> After-all, we are engineers and not marketing guys. I tend to get a bit
>>> nervous when I read terms like "zero-touch" and alike that create the
>>> impression that there is no configuration that needs to be done by
>>> anyone. Of course, that's not the case.
>>>
>>> With all the security drafts in NETCONF (zerotouch) or in ANIMA I get
>>> the impression that we are re-inventing the wheel not only because we
>>> want to work on new stuff but largely because we actually don't
>>> understand the state of the art ourselves anymore. I fear that the
>>> <draft-he-iot-security-bootstrapping-00> document also falls into the
>>> category of not understanding the state-of-the-art. I understand if
>>> someone is not up-to-speed with the most recent efforts in Thread
>>> (because they are only visible to members of that organization) but the
>>> ZigBee-IP work should be known. While ZigBee-IP may be considered dead
>>> by know it also appears to me that any new work in the IETF on
>>> security/routing/etc. for IEEE 802.15.4 will have to compete against
>>> Thread. Thread has seen a dramatic growth rate in terms of membership
>>> and so I doubt that work in the same area has a lot of chances for
>>> success.
>>>
>>> Sorry for the rant but I believe it will help everyone to figure out
>>> that most of the groups are actually developing the same solutions over
>>> and over again.
>>>
>>> Now to the issue of the multi-vendor equipment. Adding new solutions (as
>>> it is done in ANIMA) while other groups and organizations have already
>>> standardized similar technologies (using different terminology) will not
>>> make the interoperability any better. I am sure you know that far too well.
>>>
>>> It would be great to have a conversation (maybe at the next IETF
>>> meeting) how the different environments (home environment, enterprise
>>> environments/industrial environments) are different in terms of
>>> provisioning credentials and configuration information to IoT devices.
>>> Needless to say that there are differences and you can see them when you
>>> look at how existing products work. That does, however, not necessarily
>>> mean that there are no common building blocks.
>>>
>>> Ciao
>>> Hannes
>>>
>>> On 02/21/2015 12:14 PM, peter van der Stok wrote:
>>>> Hi Brian,
>>>>
>>>> Just a small annotation to your default approach comment.
>>>> Bootstrapping is subject to different installation procedures.
>>>> A clear example is the difference between home (plug and play) and the
>>>> building control where bootstrapping is organized from a database.
>>>> In the professional domain the order of things can depend on the
>>>> installer. For example, some may want to bootstrap together with the
>>>> setup of the network, others may want the network to be ready and then
>>>> do the security bootstrap.
>>>>
>>>> Although I agree with your concern expressed as "a default procedure to
>>>> decide on the bootstrap procedure", I think there is room for 2-4
>>>> different security bootstrap procedures.
>>>> These procedures will be chosen as function of the application domain
>>>> and application owner, installer.
>>>>
>>>> Peter
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Brian E Carpenter schreef op 2015-02-20 19:51:
>>>>> Hannes,
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree that we need to compare different approaches. I do have one
>>>>> concern in the anima context that leads me to the conclusion that
>>>>> we *must* pick a preferred solution: if we consider a collection of
>>>>> multivendor equipment in factory condition that we want to bootstrap
>>>>> itself into a secure network when we apply power, I don't see how
>>>>> we can avoid having a single default solution. If not, we get a
>>>>> rather ludicrous situation where we need a single default solution
>>>>> to the problem of choosing which bootstrap solution to use.
>>>>>
>>>>> Regards
>>>>>    Brian
>>>>>
>>>>> On 21/02/2015 01:27, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:
>>>>>> Hi Danping,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would also like to note that
>>>>>> [I-D.pritikin-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra] is only one possible way of
>>>>>> distributing new keys (based on already pre-provisioned certificates). I
>>>>>> would like to understand how it relates to other approaches.
>>>>>> Particularly if you consider an approach "heavy" it would be good to
>>>>>> know what your main concerns are since there is no free lunch with
>>>>>> security and most of the design decisions are trade-offs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ciao
>>>>>> Hannes
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 02/20/2015 12:59 PM, Robert Cragie wrote:
>>>>>>> [I-D.pritikin-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra] proposes a zero-touch
>>>>>>> bootstrapping key infrastructure to allow joining device securely and
>>>>>>> automatically bootstraps itself based on 802.1AR certificate.  It can't
>>>>>>> be directly used in 802.15.4 devices due to the high security
>>>>>>> complexity
>>>>>>> and heavy communication overhead.": I disagree with this statement. We
>>>>>>> used this approach in ZigBee IP. I agree some may think the
>>>>>>> communication overhead "heavy" but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
>>>>>>> The associated security complexity is also becoming less onerous as
>>>>>>> crypto accelerators become built into hardware and cores.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Anima mailing list
>>>>>> [e-mail]
>>>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/anima
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Anima mailing list
>>>>> [e-mail]
>>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/anima
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 6lo mailing list
>> [e-mail]
>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6lo
>