[Gen-art] Re: [Ecrit] WG: Review of draft-ietf-ecrit-security-threats-04.txt

Just to add to this: I think we should state explicitly that we're  
not trying to solve all security problems related to emergency  
services. False dispatch is unlikely to be something that we can  
reasonably address; the best we can do is say that next-generation  
systems may make checking on incident reports easier. For example, a  
call taker might be able to easily see the picture on a surveillance  
camera for the area, to see if there smoke where there's supposed to  
be a large fire. In the UK, this presumably will capture just about  
any corner of the cities. (Whether that's desirable from a privacy  
perspective is probably best left to other discussion forums.) From  
what I can tell, good call takers also develop a hunch that the  
giggling teenager may deserve an additional question or two before  
sending a fire truck. Having additional site information may also  
allow the call taker to ask questions. If you have the new Google  
street-level views, you can ask "what store is this accident next  
to?" or you can see that the supposed house fire is in an open field.  
In many cases, sending a squad car to check things out is a much  
better choice than not responding, since the consequences of that may  
be dire.

All of this is well beyond what a protocol working group can do. We  
shouldn't promise to solve all the emergency services world's  
security problems.

On Aug 20, 2007, at 11:49 AM, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:

>
> The future emergency services infrastructure might be able to  
> handle more media types and accept additional data. However, it is  
> quite likely that the PSAP operator will not be able to use these  
> things for a long time since the capabilities are just not  
> supported by end systems and in some cases it might actually be  
> difficult to expect the emergency caller to take pictures (given  
> the level of stress they are likely to experience during an  
> emergency situation).
>
> Finally, an adversary can easily exploit such a system by not  
> attaching videos or pictures since the emergency call will not  
> rejected anyway.
>
> I think the best we can hope for at the moment is that the  
> capabilities built into SIP are used to a maximum extent and that  
> the PSAP operator accepts supplementary data about the emergency  
> scene.
>
> We are, to some extend, trying to capture some of these attacks.  
> Our focus was more on the attack against the PSAP itself when faked  
> location information was used. We have published a few documents on  
> this subject already, see http://www.tschofenig.com/wp/?p=131. We  
> hope to make some progress on that topic as well since it appeared  
> to be a difficult one.
>
> Ciao
> Hannes
>
>>
>> Best regards,
>> - Christian
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ecrit mailing list
>> Ecrit@ietf.org
>> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ecrit
>

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