Re: [netconf] Roman Danyliw's Discuss on draft-ietf-netconf-restconf-notif-13: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

["Reshad Rahman (rrahman)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Thank you for the review, please see inline.

On 2019-05-15, 3:38 PM, "Roman Danyliw via Datatracker" <[e-mail]> wrote:

    Roman Danyliw has entered the following ballot position for
    draft-ietf-netconf-restconf-notif-13: Discuss
    
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    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    DISCUSS:
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Per Section 9, [draft-ietf-netconf-netconf-event-notifications] and
    [draft-ietf-netconf-subscribed-notifications] mention concerns about a
    “malicious or buggy subscriber sends a number of establish-subscription
    requests” in their Security Considerations.  Is that not a concern here too?
<RR> Good catch. I can add similar text to the Security Considerations of this draft, would the following text be satisfactory?
    If a buggy or
    compromised RESTCONF subscriber sends a number of "establish-
    subscription" requests, then these subscriptions accumulate and may
    use up system resources.  In such a situation, the
    publisher MAY also suspend or terminate a subset of the active
    subscriptions from that RESTCONF subscriber in order to reclaim resources
    and preserve normal operation for the other subscriptions.    
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    COMMENT:
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    (1) Section 3.1.  “A subscriber can then attempt to re-establish the dynamic
    subscription by using the procedure described in Section 3.”  This seems like a
    circular reference.  This guidance (to go read Section 3) is being given in
    Section 3.1 (which is inside Section 3).
<RR> Ack, will change reference to 3.4.
    
    (2) Section 3.3.  Missing word.
    s/requests with publisher/requests with the publisher/
<RR> Ok.
    
    (3) Section 3.4.  “This initiates the publisher to initiate the flow …”.  I
    stumbled over the double use of “initiate”.  Do you mean “This signals to the
    publisher to initiate the flow …”?
<RR> Yes, will make the change.    
    (4) Section 3.4 suggests that NACM/related methods should be used to authorize
    “modify-subscription, resync-subscription and delete-subscription” RPCs. 
    Section 9, Security Considerations, says “Therefore, even if an attacker
    succeeds in guessing the subscription URI, a RESTCONF username [RFC8040] with
    the required administrative permissions must be used to be able to access or  
    modify that subscription.”  Is there a reason not to say the obvious thing in
    the Security Considerations that these particular RPCs should be protected
    (with NACM/related methods like was stated in Section 3.4).
<RR> We got similar comments from another reviewer. We will be adding text to the Security Considerations.

Regards,
Reshad.