Re: [manet] DLEP-18 Security Considerations

[Henning Rogge <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 5:33 PM, Stan Ratliff <[e-mail]> wrote:
> All,
>
> I think the critical point here is Alvaro's comment:
>
>> The main problem I see with the text below is that it is based on
>> assumptions — even though you do say that "DLEP is restricted to…a single
>> (possibly logical) hop at layer 2", it is based on the deployment
>> assumptions.  What happens if it isn't deployed that way?
>
> It's NOT an "assumption". We've mis-lableld it as an assumption. It's
> actually a requirement.

Yes.

> Henning's response to the above text is correct:
>
> "It will not work because the user traffic will not reach the
> destination. DLEP is the model of a "external radio" which acts as a
> bridge (as in "layer-2 bridge") between the connection to the router
> and the radio network."
>
> Anyone attempting multi-hop deployment will immediately bump into the issue
> of a router issuing packets with a Destination MAC address that's not on the
> local segment. Traffic won't pass. As Henning states, it simply won't work.
>
> I believe we need to move the following text from "Assumptions" to
> "Requirements":
>
>    DLEP assumes that the MAC address for delivering data traffic is the
>    MAC address used by DLEP to identify the destination.  No
>    manipulation or substitution is performed; the MAC address supplied
>    in all destination messages is used as the OSI Layer 2 Destination
>    MAC address.  DLEP also assumes that MAC addresses are unique within
>    the context of a router-modem session.
>
>    The reliance on MAC addresses by DLEP forces the assumption that
>    participating DLEP peers are on a single segment (either physical or
>    logically, via tunneling protocols) at Layer 2.

Correct.

> We also need to take the TLS flag out of the IPv4 and IPv6 Connection Point
> data items (a clear "miss" on our part). I believe this addresses the
> concern, in that 1-hop deployment is no longer an "assumption".

If we really want to do TLS we can always add a "TLS Connection Point"
TLV in a later extension draft.

We could also keep the flags field if we think its useful for later,
but I think the TLV format is flexible enough to deal with it when we
need a flags field.

Henning