Re: [perpass] Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-barnes-pervasive-problem-00.txt

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 10:08 PM, Watson Ladd <watsonbladd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Richard Barnes <rlb@ipv.sx> wrote:
> > Dear PERPASS,
> >
> > Stephen asked me to take a stab at a problem statement for PERPASS.  With
> > some help from Bruce, Cullen, and Ted, the results have just been
> published
> > as draft-barnes-pervasive-problem-00.
> >
> > In general, this draft tries to outline at a technical level what we
> mean by
> > pervasive attack, and what the high level mitigations are.
> >
> > Comments welcome!
>
> Minor quibble:
> Intermediate nodes can also be active attackers, e.g. an ISP could
> insert fake email for its customers.
>

Clearly, anyone on-path can be an active attacker.  And, as some of the
TOR-related revelations show, some off-path entities as well.

> At a higher level this draft feels overly removed from the real
> problem: users assumptions about what is
> public on the Internet have frequently been violated, even when
> technical measures to address these issues
> exist. This gets mentioned in passing, but should be front and centre.
>

That seems like it might be a better topic for
draft-farrell-perpass-attack.  We're trying to stick to technical things in
this draft, so "user assumptions" are kind of out of scope.

> The NSA is not the only organisation doing this: Saudi Arabia, the UK,
> China, Ethiopia, France all have major monitoring
> systems in place that can only work because of how weak the core
> protocols of the internet are against manipulation. (And let's not
> forget the
> Pakistani ISP that accidentally knocked Youtube offline)
>

Indeed.  We cite the Great Firewall as an example.

(And technically, that Pakistani ISP didn't accidentally knock YouTube
offline; the only accident was knocking YouTube offline *outside* *of*
*Pakistan*.)

> Also, BGP tricks mean that anyone can be local.
>

s/local/on-path/

> The point should be very simple: no more cleartext, authenticate
> everything, limit authority, and produce an audit trail for when
> things go wrong.
>

That seems like a concise statement of the mitigations discussed in Section
5.
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-barnes-pervasive-problem-00#section-5>

We can try to make that message clearer in future versions, though.

Thanks,
--Richard

> Now let's see if we can do more about it than the CRYPTO '13 rump
> session accomplished.[1]
> Sincerely,
> Watson Ladd
> [1] For those who are unfamiliar:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVUIk6nXVcw is the best statement of
> the issue and the solution.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --Richard
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: <internet-drafts@ietf.org>
> > Date: Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 9:17 PM
> > Subject: New Version Notification for
> draft-barnes-pervasive-problem-00.txt
> > To: Cullen Jennings <fluffy@cisco.com>, Ted Hardie <ted.ietf@gmail.com>,
> > Bruce Schneier <schneier@schneier.com>, Richard Barnes <rlb@ipv.sx>
> >
> >
> >
> > A new version of I-D, draft-barnes-pervasive-problem-00.txt
> > has been successfully submitted by Richard Barnes and posted to the
> > IETF repository.
> >
> > Name:           draft-barnes-pervasive-problem
> > Revision:       00
> > Title:          Pervasive Attack: A Threat Model and Problem Statement
> > Document date:  2014-01-06
> > Group:          Individual Submission
> > Pages:          23
> > URL:
> >
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-barnes-pervasive-problem-00.txt
> > Status:
> > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-barnes-pervasive-problem/
> > Htmlized:
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-barnes-pervasive-problem-00
> >
> >
> > Abstract:
> >    Documents published in 2013 have revealed several classes of
> >    "pervasive" attack on Internet communications.  In this document, we
> >    review the main attacks that have been published, and develop a
> >    threat model that describes these pervasive attacks.  Based on this
> >    threat model, we discuss the techniques that can be employed in
> >    Internet protocol design to increase the protocols robustness to
> >    pervasive attacks.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of
> submission
> > until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
> >
> > The IETF Secretariat
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > perpass mailing list
> > perpass@ietf.org
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/perpass
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
> Temporary Safety deserve neither  Liberty nor Safety."
> -- Benjamin Franklin
>