[Pce] Eric Rescorla's Discuss on draft-ietf-pce-rfc6006bis-03: (with DISCUSS)

Eric Rescorla <ekr@rtfm.com> Wed, 30 August 2017 23:41 UTC

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From: Eric Rescorla <ekr@rtfm.com>
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Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 16:41:44 -0700
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Subject: [Pce] Eric Rescorla's Discuss on draft-ietf-pce-rfc6006bis-03: (with DISCUSS)
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Eric Rescorla has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-pce-rfc6006bis-03: Discuss

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----------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCUSS:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Security Considerations is worrisome, as it points to RFC 5440; Section
10.2, which basically recommends TCP-MD5:

   At the time of writing, TCP-MD5 [RFC2385] is the only available
   security mechanism for securing the TCP connections that underly PCEP
   sessions.

   As explained in [RFC2385], the use of MD5 faces some limitations and
   does not provide as high a level of security as was once believed.  A
   PCEP implementation supporting TCP-MD5 SHOULD be designed so that
   stronger security keying techniques or algorithms that may be
   specified for TCP can be easily integrated in future releases.

   The TCP Authentication Option [TCP-AUTH] (TCP-AO) specifies new
   security procedures for TCP, but is not yet complete.  Since it is
   believed that [TCP-AUTH] will offer significantly improved security
   for applications using TCP, implementers should expect to update
   their implementation as soon as the TCP Authentication Option is
   published as an RFC.

   Implementations MUST support TCP-MD5 and should make the security
   function available as a configuration option.

TCP-AO has now been published as an RFC for quite some time, so it's
probably not really appropriate to just point to a document which recommends
TCP-MD5.