[netconf] AD review of draft-ietf-netconf-over-tls13-02

["Rob Wilton (rwilton)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Thanks for this document.  Here is my AD review of draft-ietf-netconf-over-tls13.  I found this document pretty easy to read, and after all, it is quite short but have a few questions/comments:

Moderate level comments:

(1) p 3, sec 5.  Security Considerations

   For implementations that support TLS 1.3, the Security Considerations
   of TLS 1.3 [I-D.ietf-tls-rfc8446bis] apply.

Note, this will create a normative dependency on ietf-tls-rfc8446bis, potentially delaying the doc.  If this was a concern then it would seem that referencing RFC 8446 would be equally valid?


(2) p 3, sec 5.  Security Considerations

      NETCONF is used to access configuration and state information and
      to modify configuration information.  TLS 1.3 mutual
      authentication is used to ensure that only authorized users and
      systems are able to view the NETCONF server's configuration and
      state or to modify the NETCONF server's configuration.  To this
      end, neither the client nor the server should establish a NETCONF
      over TLS 1.3 connection with an unknown, unexpected, or
      incorrectly identified peer; see Section 7 of [RFC7589].  If
      deployments make use of a trusted list of Certification Authority
      (CA) certificates [RFC5280], then the listed CAs should only issue
      certificates to parties that are authorized to access the NETCONF
      servers.  Doing otherwise will allow certificates that were issued
      for other purposes to be inappropriately accepted by a NETCONF
      server.

It is unclear which paragraph in RFC 7589 is being modified, and it is unclear to me whether the intent it to append a new paragraph or replace an existing one.  It looks like this is updating the first paragraph of the security considerations (sec 9).  But it could be interpreted that you are replacing a paragraph that would also apply to TLS 1.2 to only apply to TLS 1.3.  Would it be better to add a new paragraph that only covers TLS 1.3.  I.e., the text that you have above minus the first sentence?



Minor level comments:

(3) p 1, sec 1.  Introduction

   This document updates [RFC7589] to address support
   requirements for TLS 1.2 [RFC5246] and TLS 1.3
   [I-D.ietf-tls-rfc8446bis] and the use of TLS 1.3's early data, which
   is also known as 0-RTT data.

Did you mean "address support".  Perhaps "to update support requirements for TLS 1.2 ..."?  If you agree to change, then it would be worth making a similar change in the abstract.


(4) p 3, sec 4.  Cipher Suites

   NETCONF implementations SHOULD follow the recommendations given in
   [RFC9325].

I'm not sure that this is actionable, but I was wondering how many of the recommendations in RFC 9325 are relevant for NETCONF and haven't already been stated above.  I.e., I presume it doesn't make sense to cherry pick, or highlight the specific recommendations for RFC 9325 that are relevant?  I also note that this comment is within the Cipher Suites section but it wasn't clear whether the intention was to follow the recommendations more broadly?

Regards,
Rob