Re: [conex] Stephen Farrell's No Objection on draft-ietf-conex-destopt-09: (with COMMENT)

[Bob Briscoe <[e-mail]>]

Stephen, Suresh,

As the person that contributed some of the text for this IPsec section, 
I can see what's happened during the evolution of the doc...

In section 4 it says

CDO MUST be placed as the first option in the destination option
header before the AH and/or ESP (if present).  IPsec Authentication
Header (AH) MAY be used to verify that the CDO has not been modified.

We started out writing Section 7 "Compatibility with use of IPsec" to 
answering the question:
"What if IPsec is being used; how do we ensure ConEx is still visible?"
The answer was the above rule about placing CDO before AH and/or ESP.

In the process, we showed how endpoints that were already authenticating 
their IP headers with IPsec would automatically get coverage for the 
ConEx header. By some perverse document evolution process, this has become:

[Old]

If the transport network cannot be trusted, IPsec Authentication
should be used to ensure integrity of the ConEx information.

So I suggest the following change:

[Proposed]

If the endpoints are using the IPsec Authentication Header (AH) [RFC4302] to detect alteration of
IP headers along the path, AH will also ensure the e2e integrity of the CDO header.

Actually, both parts of the subsequent sentence are wrong as well:

[Old]

If an attacker would be able to remove the ConEx marks, this could cause an
audit device to penalize the respective connection, while the sender
cannot easily detect that ConEx information is missing.

a) Removing ConEx marks would make audit ignore those packets, not drop 
them.
b) And It's not hard to design a protocol for the sender to detect 
tampering with ConEx information.

So I suggest instead:

[Proposed]
A network-based attacker could alter ConEx information to fool an audit 
function in a downstream network into discarding packets. An attack on 
one network from another by changing an immutable field can be traced, 
so it would be unlikely givennetwork operators care about their 
reputation.Nonetheless, if ConEx information was being altered within a 
network, IPsec AH or other more stealthy e2e integrity checks could be 
useful tools to help pin-point the attack location.

No need to say this, but a similar attack is already possible: decrement 
TTL in one network to cause another network to drop packets. This is 
less easy to trace too, because it uses a mutable field.


BTW, I designed the precursor to ConEx (re-ECN) to make it possible for 
networks to identify other rogue networks mounting such attacks, without 
needing e2e authentication. But all the inter-network security only 
works with ECN, not drop. When we decided to use ConEx to expose drop as 
well as ECN, I couldn't make the drop-based aspects support these nice 
security properties. That is admitted in conex-abstract-mech. But the 
ECN side of ConEx still supports all the inter-domain security. None of 
the inter-domain security techniques are written in the ConEx drafts, 
but they're in my PhD thesis, and referenced from conex-abstract-mech 
Security Considerations.




Bob



On 01/10/15 09:31, Stephen Farrell wrote:
> Hiya,
>
> On 01/10/15 04:52, Suresh Krishnan wrote:
>> Hi Stephen,
>>     Thanks for your comments. Please find responses inline
>>
>> On 09/30/2015 08:06 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>>> Stephen Farrell has entered the following ballot position for
>>> draft-ietf-conex-destopt-09: No Objection
>>>
>>> When responding, please keep the subject line intact and reply to all
>>> email addresses included in the To and CC lines. (Feel free to cut this
>>> introductory paragraph, however.)
>>>
>>>
>>> Please refer to https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/discuss-criteria.html
>>> for more information about IESG DISCUSS and COMMENT positions.
>>>
>>>
>>> The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
>>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-conex-destopt/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> COMMENT:
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>> - section 7: "If the transport network cannot be trusted, IPsec
>>> Authentication should be used to ensure integrity of the ConEx
>>> information." Hmm. Transport networks cannot be trusted so the
>>> first condition is always met. That means you are saying IPsec
>>> should be used. I don't see how the key management required is
>>> going to happen and even if it did, would that affect conex
>>> calculations? I'm ok with an experiment on that basis though,
>>> but it'd be better if the real relationship between this and IPsec
>>> were more fully fleshed out somewhere as part of the experiment.
>> I am not sure if the form of key management chosen would affect the
>> conex calculations at all.
> My point is that the key management implied here is basically not
> going to happen. That means IPsec will not be used and hence conex
> calculations will need to take into account the potential for routers
> to mess with the CDO.
>
> And I think the text of this would be better if it recognised the
> improbability of IPsec being used in the wild, or else spoke to how
> one could arrange experiments so that use of IPsec is more likely.
>
> Cheers,
> S.
>
>> I did read RFC5406 and I am still not sure
>> what can be said here about key management. I would really appreciate
>> some pointers/suggestions/text here.
>>
>>> - The secdir review [1] touches on similar issues. I'm not sure if
>>> that got a response, but it raises a good point that seems to me to
>>> deserve a response.
>>>
>>>      [1] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/secdir/current/msg05957.html
>> I have added the following text in the Security Considerations section
>> of my local copy. Will submit this version after the telechat will check
>> with Robert. There is one item pending regarding audit in the Gen-ART
>> review and that may end up affecting this text.
>>
>>      This document does not define how audit mechanisms work in protocols
>>      that use this option and how those protocols can protect themselves
>>      from likely attacks.  This option MUST only be used alongside
>>      protocols that define the audit mechanisms and the means for
>>      protecting against likely attacks on such mechanisms.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Suresh
>>
>>
>>
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> Bob Briscoe                               http://bobbriscoe.net/