Re: [i2rs] Kathleen Moriarty's Discuss on draft-ietf-i2rs-protocol-security-requirements-07: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

["Susan Hares" <[e-mail]>]

Spencer: 

 

Thank you for asking.  The time it would take is the time to move the configuration knob to “always transport-secure” for this model. 

 

Sue 

 

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 10:13 AM
To: Susan Hares
Cc: Andy Bierman; [e-mail]; Alissa Cooper; Juergen Schoenwaelder; [e-mail]; Kathleen Moriarty; IESG; Jeffrey Haas; Joel Halpern; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [i2rs] Kathleen Moriarty's Discuss on draft-ietf-i2rs-protocol-security-requirements-07: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

 

Hi, Susan,

 

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 8:19 AM, Susan Hares <[e-mail]> wrote:

Spencer: 

 

You as asking if:

 

1)      Can Yang Models be revised?  - there is a revision tag on the Yang model. 

2)      How long it takes to deploy revised models in the Internet, and old-models to be timed out?  This is an operational question on yang models that no one has experience to determine.   Andy suggest that the deployment time is 20 years (the Age of the Commercial internet – 1996 -2016) rather than the age of the Internet (1987-2016).  

 

However, the real question you should have asked is: Can operators deploy models which are marked as “non-secure transport” with a  secure transport? 

 

I understood that part. My question was how long it would likely take them to switch to a secure transport if they had deployed a model with an insecure transport and figured out that was problematic.

 

Thanks for the explanation. It was helpful.

 

Spencer

 

The answer is yes.  In fact, several operators in I2RS stated that all I2RS protocol communication needed to be secure.    Therefore, if the people found out that a model was problematic to be insecure – operators and vendors would simply turn the deployment knob switch that says – deploy this always with a secure transport rather than optionally allow an insecure transport.    

 

Now, the real problem is if the IESG has been cycling on this concept – the text needs to change.   I’m going to go ahead and release a version-09.txt that tries to make this very clear.   Please comment on that text to help make this clear. 

 

Sue 

 

 

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 9:08 AM
To: Andy Bierman
Cc: Susan Hares; [e-mail]; Alissa Cooper; Juergen Schoenwaelder; [e-mail]; Kathleen Moriarty; IESG; Jeffrey Haas; Joel Halpern; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [i2rs] Kathleen Moriarty's Discuss on draft-ietf-i2rs-protocol-security-requirements-07: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

 

Dear All,

 

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Andy Bierman <[e-mail]> wrote:

 

 

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:44 PM, Susan Hares <[e-mail]> wrote:

Andy:

 

Thank you – I thought it was on whether we could implement insecure transport in a Yang module. 

 

The requirement text you are working with is:

 

   SEC-REQ-08: The I2RS protocol MUST be able to transfer data over a
   secure transport and optionally MAY be able to transfer data over a
   non-secure transport.

 

I do not understand why approving the ok for non-secure transport for some modules means the following to you: 

 

“ the IETF needs to agree that there could never possibly be any deployment that would not want to allow exposure of the data.

Not now. Not 20 years from now.”

 

 

 

As I understand it, this requirement has another requirement associated with it

that says the data has to be identified as OK-for-nonsecure-transport.

 

An extension in the data model says that all instances of the object in

all possible deployments cannot be considered sensistive and therefore

needs disclosure protection.

 

It may seem like even a simple octet counter is safe to send in the clear,

but not if that opens up correlation attacks.  (e.g., I can send data to some

host.  I can see that index 455992 is incrementing the in-octets counters

in a way that strongly correlates to my test traffic.  Therefore I can learn

that arbitrary index 455992 is really John Doe or really suite #14, etc.

 

Since Kathleen asked what other ADs were thinking ...

 

I'm current on this thread, as of the time I'm sending my note, but replying to Andy's note because it's poking where I am poking.

 

So, if (say) an octet counter is considered safe to send in the clear, and a Yang model that reflects that is approved and widely deployed, and then someone realizes that it's not safe to send in the clear, is that a big deal to fix, and get the updated Yang model widely deployed? 

 

My opinion on this point has a lot to do with how hard it is to recover if a Yang model gets this wrong ...

 

My apologies for not understanding enough about Yang and I2RS to be able to answer my own question, of course.

 

Thanks,

 

Spencer