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Re: [Int-area] [ietf-privacy] NAT Reveal / Host Identifiers

Joe Touch <touch@isi.edu> Mon, 09 June 2014 00:27 UTC

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From: Joe Touch <touch@isi.edu>
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To: Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie>
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Subject: Re: [Int-area] [ietf-privacy] NAT Reveal / Host Identifiers
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On Jun 7, 2014, at 6:20 AM, Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie> wrote:

> NATs have both good and bad properties. The slightly better privacy
> is one of the good ones.

Better for the hosts they 'hide'; worse as a common network access point.

Consider an enterprise. There are two things we can learn about it from IP addresses:

	- without a NAT, we learn about activity of individual hosts

	- with a NAT, we learn the common network access point

If I want to track host activity - or attack a host, the former is better.

If I want to know what to DOS to take down the entire enterprise, the latter is better.

Think of it this way: 

	a NAT hides the host *at the expense* of exposing a router

If we're serious about considering privacy issues, there's a LOT more homework to be done.

Joe

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