Re: [bess] Kathleen Moriarty's Discuss on draft-ietf-bess-mvpn-extranet-04: (with DISCUSS)

[Kathleen Moriarty <[e-mail]>]

Hi Eric,

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 10:24 AM, Eric C Rosen <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 12/17/2015 8:47 PM, Kathleen Moriarty wrote:
>>
>> I just have one question/request to improve the security consideration
>> section.  The only security mentioned in this draft is what's called a
>> "security violation", where traffic may go to the incorrect "VPN"
>> endpoint.  If you are worried about traffic winding up in the wrong
>> place, why is there no consideration for observing this traffic on the
>> wire?  Since there is no encryption, wouldn't this also be a security
>> consideration to call out specifically?
>>
>> Mention of the possibility of active attacks that could alter or tamper
>> with the traffic or passive attacks that could observe the traffic as a
>> risk due to lack of encryption (confidentiality protection) would help or
>> a reason why this doesn't matter.
>
> The reason I didn't mention this in the Security Considerations section is
> that the issues are not specific to Extranet MVPN, which is the topic of
> this document.   The Security Considerations section mentions those issues
> that could result in misdelivery of traffic if the procedures of the
> document are not properly executed; this set of issues is certainly within
> the scope of the document.
>
> I understand that there are issues having to do with the possibility of
> observing or altering the traffic on the wire.  Certainly I could mention
> that the procedures of this document do not provide encryption, and hence do
> not by themselves ensure the privacy/integrity of the data against attacks
> on the backbone network.   Would that be sufficient?

Yes, just having that warning would go a long a way.  I'm not asking
you to solve it (although that would be nice), but rather to make sure
it is included as a security consideration.

Let me know when the text has been added and I'll clear.

Thanks!
Kathleen
>
> I don't want to make any specific recommendations for mitigating those
> attacks, because:
>
> - Issues of how to provide privacy/integrity for multicast traffic in
> general would seem to be out of scope for this document;
>
> - Issues of how to provide privacy/integrity for various
> tunneling/encapsulation methods would seem to be out of scope for this
> document;
>
> - Issues of how to provide privacy/integrity for the base L3VPN technology
> would seem to be out of scope for this document;
>
> - Issues of how a Service Provider can protect its backbone network against
> various attacks would also seem to be out of scope for this document.
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 

Best regards,
Kathleen