Re: [bess] Mirja Kühlewind's Discuss on draft-ietf-bess-mvpn-expl-track-12: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

["Mirja Kuehlewind (IETF)" <[e-mail]>]

Thanks you very much! Just cleared my discuss!


> Am 28.11.2018 um 17:31 schrieb Eric Rosen <[e-mail]>:
> 
> Mirja,
> 
> I believe draft-ietf-bess-mvpn-expl-track-13 addresses your issues. I 
> have expanded the Security Considerations section per your suggestions, 
> which IMO are all very reasonable.
> 
> Please let me know whether this is satisfactory.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Eric
> 
> On 11/26/2018 9:03 AM, Mirja Kuehlewind (IETF) wrote:
>> Hi Eric,
>> 
>> thanks for your detailed reply. Please see below.
>> 
>>> Am 15.11.2018 um 19:07 schrieb Eric Rosen <[e-mail]>:
>>> 
>>> On 10/24/2018 8:28 AM, Mirja Kühlewind wrote:
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> DISCUSS:
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> 
>>>> In section 9 (security considerations):
>>>> Thanks for discussing network load here! However, I find this sentence a bit
>>>> unsatisfactory:
>>>>    „The specification of counter-measures for this problem is outside the scope
>>>>    of this document.“
>>>> Isn’t there any easy way to make some more recommendations for counter measures
>>>> that could be discussed here? E.g. implement some rate limiting or filtering.
>>>> Or only accept LIR-PF request from preconfigured hosts (given that LIR-PF
>>>> support must anyway be pre-configured)? I’m not an expert on this topic and
>>>> therefore don’t know if any of such recommendations make sense, however, I
>>>> would quickly like to discuss if it is potentially possible to say more than
>>>> what’s current said. Thanks!
>>> These particular suggestions don't really work in this context.
>>> 
>>> - The set of Provider Edge routers (PEs) that attach to a given VPN is
>>> always auto-discovered, never pre-configured.  That's an important part
>>> of the L3VPN value proposition.   There are already mechanisms in place
>>> to ensure that the S-PMSI A-D route gets sent only to the proper set of
>>> egress PEs.  Also, a properly functioning egress PE will only respond
>>> with a Leaf A-D route if it has already auto-discovered the ingress PE.
>>> (You might want to question the security of the L3VPN mechanisms, but
>>> that would certainly be outside the scope of this document .)
>>> 
>>> - Rate limiting the generation of Leaf A-D routes wouldn't work, because
>>> the problem is not that one PE generates too many, but that too many PEs
>>> may generate them.  Rate limiting the processing of received Leaf A-D
>>> routes is also problematic.  In normal operation, you might correctly
>>> get a whole bunch of them in quick succession, and if you don't process
>>> them in a timely manner, the customers will see a high multicast "join
>>> latency".
>>> 
>>> In the particular sort of attack mentioned in the Security
>>> Considerations section, an ingress PE originates an S-PMSI A-D route
>>> with LIR-pF clear, but somehow the bit gets set before the route is
>>> received by the egress PEs.   As Alvaro has suggested, if an attacker
>>> can modify the control messages, quite a bit of havoc can result, and
>>> the particular attack under discussion is just one of many that can
>>> occur if the control plane is not secure.  I can certainly put in a
>>> reference to RFCS 6192 and 7454 (as Alvaro suggests), if you think that
>>> is helpful.  Properly protecting the control plane should prevent this
>>> kind of attack.
>> Okay, then I would simply suggest to say this ("Properly protecting the control plane should prevent this kind of attack“) instead of just calling it out of scope.
>> 
>>> In the event such an attack occurs, mitigating it is unfortunately not
>>> very straightforward.  The ingress node can take note of the fact that
>>> it is getting Leaf A-D routes with LIR-pF set, in response to an S-PMSI
>>> A-D route with LIR-pF clear.  Withdrawing the S-PMSI A-D route could put
>>> a stop to the attack.  However, there are a few problems with this:
>>> 
>>> - Under normal operation, there are some race conditions that may cause
>>> the ingress node to think it is being attacked, when in fact it is not.
>>> 
>>> - If some egress nodes have a bug that causes them to set LIR-pF when it
>>> should be clear, withdrawing the S-PMSI A-D route will stop the flow of
>>> multicast data traffic to all the egress nodes, causing an unnecessary
>>> customer-visible disruption.
>>> 
>>> - The same situation that caused the S-PMSI A-D route to be originated
>>> in the first place will still exist after the S-PMSI A-D route is
>>> withdrawn, so the route will just be re-originated.
>>> 
>>> In other words, any action that would ameliorate the effects of this
>>> sort of attack would have a negative effect during normal operation.
>>> Therefore it is really better to rely on security mechanisms that
>>> protect the control plane generally, rather than having a mechanism that
>>> is focused on this one particular type of attack.
>> This suggest that there is no good counter measure which would be more appropriate  to say instead of calling it out of scope. I think it could even be helpful to add some of your explanation above to the security consideration section (instead of leaving this as an exercise to the reader).
>> 
>>> We could say that if an ingress PE receives a Leaf A-D route with LIR-pF
>>> set, and that route is a response to an S-PMSI A-D route that did not
>>> have LIR-pF set, the event MUST be logged.  This would generate some
>>> noise in the log during normal operation, but could provide at least a
>>> hint that an attack is occurring.
>> I think this would be a good recommendation. I guess it actually does have to be a MUST, or you could say something like MUST be logged by default but can be configured differently if the protection mechanism used for the control plan is monitored. As I said, I’m really no expert here and you need to decide if that makes any sense though.
>> 
>> Mirja
>> 
>> 
>>> What do you think?
>>> 
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> COMMENT:
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> 
>>>> Some other minor comments:
>>>>  1) section 2: „Use of this flag in the PTA carried by other route types is outside
>>>>    the scope of this document.  Use of this flag in the PTA carried by
>>>>    an S-PMSI A-D routes whose NLRI does not contain a wildcard is
>>>>    outside the scope of this document.“
>>>> Maybe you also want to say something like „The flag SHOULD be ignored in these cases.“..?
>>> Agreed.
>>> 
>>>>  2) section 3
>>>> s/The result (if any) is the match for tracking“/The result (if any) is the “match for tracking“/
>>>> (missing quotes)
>>> Fixed in the next revision.
>