Re: [IPsec] WGLC of draft-ietf-ipsecme-labeled-ipsec

[Tobias Brunner <[e-mail]>]

Hi Paul,

>> 8. Section 3.2:
>>    It would be unlikely that the traffic for TSi and TSr would have a
>>    different Security Label, but this specification does allow this to
>>    be specified.
>>
>> Can you please provide some examples of possible semantics of
>> different TS_SECLABELs in TSi and TSr? Sending different
>> security labels in different directions? Just for curiosity.
> 
> I cannot, but I wanted to ensure not to accidentally forbid it. What
> we do see with our implementation though, that we end up with two
> IPsec Sa's where each is only used in one direction. For example,
> image you have an SElinux context for nfs-server and nfs-client. What
> happens is that the NFS client triggers one label on the outgoing
> connection, triggers ACQUIRE, sets up an IPsec SA with a label
> "nfs-client". The first packet hits the NFS server, which to reply
> hits a different SElinux context of "nfs-server". So it will trigger
> an ACQUIRE and setup a second IPsec SA with a label "nfs-server". Both
> IPsec SA's will only be used in one direction. I did not add any
> of this into the document, as it is very SElinux specific, where as
> the draft is agnostic on the meaning of SEC_LABEL and allows for
> other mechanisms that might not have this complexity.

In the SELinux case, and using your example, could the client actually 
propose "nfs-client in TSi and "nfs-server" in TSr?  So the server could 
set "nfs-client" on the inbound SA/policy and "nfs-server" on the 
corresponding outbound SA/policy of the CHILD_SA (and vice-versa on the 
client)?  Or won't that work?  If it's a valid use case, should the 
document specify which of the two labels is to be applied to what 
SA/policy?  Or is that an implementation aspect that you explicitly want 
to keep out of it?

Also, I don't fully get the multiple label in TSi part.  If multiple 
labels are allowed/supported per SA by the implementation (not sure how 
that would work inbound, but let's assume there is a way to mark packets 
with some kind of meta label that covers multiple negotiated ones), why 
would any narrowing take place for TSr?

On the other hand, if multiple labels are not supported, in what 
situation could proposing multiple labels be useful?  Wouldn't traffic 
with the omitted labels just get dropped afterwards?  Or is the 
assumption that this triggers a new acquire/SA?  If so, would the 
request not contain multiple labels again and, if that's the case, what 
prevents the peer from selecting the same label as before?  Is it to 
keep track of what label it selected previously and that the intention 
of the initiator now might be that another should get selected?  Or is 
it up to the initiator not to propose multiple labels the second time 
around (or just omit the ones it already has an SA for)?  If so, why 
would it send multiple the first time (in particular if the SA was 
triggered by an acquire)?

I think either the narrowing to a single label should be optional, or 
sending multiple labels in TSi should be prohibited in the first place.

Regards,
Tobias