Re: [Hipsec] NULL encryption mode in RFC 5202-bis

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Thanks Tom,

On 08/07/14 05:54, Tom Henderson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Apologies for cross-posting, but Stephen Farrell raised a DISCUSS
> (seconded by Kathleen Moriarty) in the IESG evaluation of RFC 5202-bis:
>   Using the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) Transport Format with
> the Host Identity Protocol (HIP).  Stephen asked me to raise this
> question for discussion on both the HIP and SAAG lists.
> 
> Stephen's discuss questions the specification of "MUST to implement" for
> the NULL encryption option of the ESP_TRANSFORM parameter:
> 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-hip-rfc5202-bis-05#section-5.1.2
> 
> Stephen asks why is this a MUST to implement?  The history behind this
> that I'm aware of is that since HIP does not have an AH, only ESP, the
> ESP with NULL encryption mode can provide authentication.  It was also
> stated in previous drafts that this mode supports debugging.
> 
> Null encryption was also specified as a MUST to implement in RFC5202 and
> dates back to earlier versions of the HIP base draft (to 2003:
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moskowitz-hip-06#section-11.3).

Right. I guess my discuss has a generic part and a hip specific
part.

Generic: is it still considered a good plan to have null
confidentiality suites such as these? Or for those to be
Mandatory-To-Implement (MTI)? That clearly was the generic
consensus as we have these in a number of protocols. The
new reasons to move from that I think are: 1) we no longer
need this for debugging purposes really since libraries
and dev tools have moved on and are better now, and we
specifically no longer need these for protocols that are
no longer new, 2) BCP188 could be considered to argue
against having these as they could be misused. (All the
old arguments of course do still apply, but I think the
above are the ones that are new.) So is that enough to
shift the consensus away from having these or having
them be MTI?

Specific: is there anything specific about hip that would
trump the general point above? Note that there could be,
regardless of where consensus lies on the generic question.

FWIW, my own answers for these are that its probably a better
plan today to not have (or make MTI) these null confidentiality
ciphersuites, and I don't know that hip would have any specific
reason to diverge from that. But I'd really like to see if
there is a modified consensus on this or not. (To be clear,
if there's not a new consensus then the current one would
seem to still apply here and I'll clear my discuss.)

Cheers,
S.



> 
> - Tom