RE: secdir review of draft-ietf-simple-msrp-sessmatch

[Christer Holmberg <[e-mail]>]

Hi Ted,

>I join Richard in believing that this document makes changes 
>beyond that which could be understood as "updating" the MSRP 
>URI scheme processing.
> 
>To highlight one particular aspect, RFC 4975 does not require 
>session-ids to be present, a fact noted both in the ABNF and 
>in this text:
> 
>4. The session-id part is compared as case sensitive.  A URI without
>   a session-id part is never equivalent to one that includes one.
> 
>A matching scheme which relies on a URI section which is not 
>guaranteed to be present has some interesting problems ahead 
>of it. If this effectively makes their use mandatory, that 
>requires a change to the fundamental ABNF and text.

An MSRP URI in an SDP offer or answer for an MSRP session MUST include a session-id part, so I believe the comment is based on incorrect assumptions.

Section 6 of RFC 4975 says:

   "The session-id part identifies a particular session of the participant. The absence of the session-id
   part indicates a reference to an MSRP host device, but does not refer to a particular session at that device."


>I also note that the security considerations, in addition to 
>having some fairly disingenuous language about the impact of 
>this change, seems to fail to mention MSRPS URIs and what, if 
>any, impact this would have on them.

There are no impacts to MSRPS URIs. I assumed it would be implicitly understood since MSRPS URIs are not mentioned in the draft.

However, we could explicitly make it clear by modifying the first sentences of section 5:
	
      "The change of session matching procedure does not impact the format of MSRP URIs, 
	disregarding if the "msrp" scheme or the "msrps" scheme is used.
	However, MSRP endpoints can only check that the session-id part of the MSRP URI..."


Regards,

Christer



> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:21 AM, Richard L. Barnes 
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's 
> > ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the 
> > IESG.  These comments were written primarily for the benefit of the 
> > security area directors.  Document editors and WG chairs 
> should treat 
> > these comments just like any other last call comments.
> >
> > This document changes the URI matching algorithm used in 
> MSRP.  MSRP 
> > sessions are typically initiated using SDP bodies in SIP.  
> These SDP 
> > bodies contain MSRP URIs that the peers use to contact each other.  
> > When one peer receives a request to initiate a session, he verifies 
> > that the URI being requested is one that he initiated in 
> SDP, thereby 
> > using the URI as a shared secret to authenticate that the 
> originator 
> > of the session actually received the SDP body in question.
> >
> > According to the current SDP specification, this comparison is 
> > performed over the whole URI; this document restricts the 
> comparison 
> > to the "session-id" component, omitting the host, port, and 
> transport components.
> >  The goal of the document is to facilitate a certain class of 
> > man-in-the-middle attack, namely to allow a signaling 
> intermediary to 
> > insert a media intermediary.  The restriction on the URI 
> comparison is 
> > needed in order for the media intermediary not to have to 
> modify URIs 
> > in MSRP packets to reflect the modifications to URIs in SDP bodies 
> > performed to redirect traffic through the media intermediary.
> >
> > I have a few significant reservations about this document:
> >
> > This extension makes it more difficult for MSRP entities to secure 
> > their communications against attackers in the signaling path.  The 
> > current model provides a basic integrity protection, in 
> that signaling 
> > intermediaries cannot redirect traffic to an arbitrary third party; 
> > they must at least advise the third party about how to modify MSRP 
> > packets.  The proposed modification would remove even this cost.  
> > Moreover, it raises the cost of providing integrity protection to 
> > messages, since Alice must now employ both integrity and 
> > confidentiality protections on an end-to-end basis; if her messages 
> > are only integrity-protected, then a proxy can remove the 
> integrity protection and redirect traffic without it being 
> observable to Alice.
> >
> > The document needs to clarify what the impacts are for 
> authentication 
> > in secure modes of MSRP.  In particular:
> > -- The distinction between "self-signed" and "public" 
> certificates is 
> > inappropriate.  The proper distinction is between the name-based 
> > authentication in Section 14.2 of RFC 4975 and the 
> fingerprint-based 
> > authentication in Section 14.4. -- In either case, changing 
> the host 
> > name need not result in an authentication failure, since the media 
> > intermediary can simply authenticate as itself to both endpoints, 
> > having changed the respective MSRP URIs appropriately.
> > -- There is currently no requirement that a endpoint 
> identity in the 
> > To-Path URI matches the endpoint identity authenticated at the TLS 
> > layer, because these two are required to be the same.  This 
> document 
> > changes that assumption, and should note that these two 
> identities can differ.
> > The document also precludes any name-based multiplexing, where a 
> > single MSRP process (single IP address and port) directs 
> requests to 
> > different virtual recipients based on the domain name in 
> the To-Path 
> > header.  (In analogy to Host-based multiplexing in HTTP, 
> which is very 
> > widely deployed.)  Since with this extension, the domain in the 
> > To-Path is completely unpredictable from the recipient's 
> perspective, it is useless to the recipient.
> >
> > The document has no backward-compatibility.  MSRP 
> implementations that 
> > do not support this extension will not be able to receive MSRP 
> > sessions from implementations that do.   In that regard,  this 
> > document seems more like an new version of MSRP rather than 
> an update.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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