Re: [OSPF] Stephen Farrell's No Objection on draft-ietf-ospf-node-admin-tag-07: (with COMMENT)

[Shraddha Hegde <[e-mail]>]

Hi Stephen,

Pls see inline..

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Farrell [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2015 6:09 PM
To: The IESG <[e-mail]>
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Subject: Stephen Farrell's No Objection on draft-ietf-ospf-node-admin-tag-07: (with COMMENT)

Stephen Farrell has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-ospf-node-admin-tag-07: No Objection

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COMMENT:
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- I think Alavaro and Brian make some good points. I'll be interested in how that discussion turns out.

- Good to see that you recognise that even opaque tag values can expose sensitive information (the attacker isn't limited in how they are allowed interpret what they see). However, given that we recognise that confidentiality ought be provided sometimes, isn't there an onus on us to actually provide some usable way to get that service? If so, then who is looking at that problem? If not, then why is that acceptable? (This isn't a discuss as I don't think there is any PII or similar information being transferred, and the confidentiality requirement here really relates to network topology etc. But please do correct me if one of these tags could be PII-like and I'll make this a discuss if that's better.)

<Shraddha> OSPF in itself does not have  ways to provide confidentiality but in cases where it is needed OSPF can run on top of IPSEC tunnels which can encrypt the OSPF control packets. IPSEC mechanisms can also be applied to OSPF packets using RFC 4552 for OSPFv3. Adding below text to the draft.

Node administrative tags may be used by operators to indicate geographical location or other sensitive information.
 As indicated in <xref target="RFC2328"/> and <xref target="RFC5340"/> OSPF authentication mechanisms do not provide 
 confidentiality and the information carried in node administrative tags could be leaked to an IGP snooper.
Confidentiality for the OSPF control packets can be achieved by either running OSPF on top of IP Security (IPSEC) tunnels or 
by applying IPSEC based security mechanisms as described in <xref target="RFC4552"/>