Re: Is the invariants draft really standards track?

[Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>]

When under DOS attack, you want to "minimize blowback", i.e., as much as
possible avoid generating packets in response to attack traffic. So,
yes, a server may choose to not send stateless resets to anyone when
under attack; in fact, my recommendation would be that a server SHOULD
NOT send stateless resets to anyone when under attack.

That said, Igor raised an interesting point about return traffic. It
would be very nice if DOS protection boxes could distinguish between
"validated traffic" that the server presumably intends to process, and
"unsolicited traffic" that will just consume resource. The box can then
reserve some share of the resource for validated traffic, and place the
rest of the traffic in a lower priority queue. Fine, but there needs to
be a test. The classic test is that incoming traffic is "validated" if
the protection box can match it with return traffic coming from the
server -- for some definition of matching.

From that point of view, stateless reset is definitely not helpful. But
problematic traffic goes beyond that. The server will reply to a
client's initial with a server's initial packet. Does that validate the
response traffic? OK, maybe the protection box can programmed to only
validate traffic if it sees 1RTT packets. But many servers will send
1-RTT packets as 0.5 RTT. Does that validate the response traffic?

We might say that traffic is validated when the handshake is confirmed,
but the protection box does not understand the TLS handshake, it just
sees packet types and packet sizes. It cannot distinguish between 0.5RTT
data and 1RTT data, and thus the closest approximation of "validation"
would be seeing more than an initial window worth of traffic coming back
from the server. That does not sound great.

On the other hand, things get much better if the server under attack can
adopt a defensive posture and help the DOS protection box do its job.
Suppose that a server can detect that it is under attack -- or be
explicitly configured so. The simplest defensive posture would be to (1)
disable stateless reset and (2) not send any 0.5RTT packet, including in
response to 0-RTT. The protection boxes can at that point take the 1-RTT
packets from the server as indicating validation.

Maybe we should specify that.

-- Christian Huitema

On 6/19/2020 1:42 PM, Lubashev, Igor wrote:
>
> > There is no need for servers to decrypt CIDs in QUIC-LB. Presumably
> the server has a lookup table for its CIDs.
>
>  
>
> Sending a stateless reset in response to a junk packet would cost more
> CPU than verifying CID integrity.  But, yes, a server may choose to
> not send stateless resets to anyone when under attack.
>
>  
>
>  
>
> *From:* Martin Duke <[e-mail]>
> *Sent:* Friday, June 19, 2020 2:44 PM
>
> >Unfortunately, Retry system protects only server's memory state and
> some CPU cycles spent on crypto.  (Servers still need to decrypt CID
> to decide it is invalid, and if the attacker is clever enough to
> establish one valid connection and use that CID in a flood, the server
> will also be decrypting packets.)  
>
>  
>
> There is no need for servers to decrypt CIDs in QUIC-LB. Presumably
> the server has a lookup table for its CIDs.
>
>  
>
> It is true that Retry Services (and indeed, the Retry concept as a
> whole) does nothing to protect network capacity.
>
>  
>
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 8:08 AM Lubashev, Igor <[e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     It looks like
>     https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-load-balancers-02#section-5
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__tools.ietf.org_html_draft-2Dietf-2Dquic-2Dload-2Dbalancers-2D02-23section-2D5&d=DwMFaQ&c=96ZbZZcaMF4w0F4jpN6LZg&r=Djn3bQ5uNJDPM_2skfL3rW1tzcIxyjUZdn_m55KPmlo&m=eTT-BoZ1fMitywKRVSxpU3js0lhO0qkspYTKljvj-ys&s=1x7AN2a51X_zV5xSyK0uCL8vZ5cugD3n4lbFWZDqVQg&e=>
>     is an excellent discussion of Retry mechanics.  It definitely
>     deserves a reference from this manageability draft.
>
>      
>
>     The Retry mechanisms described in LB draft are all cooperating
>     boxes, and servers must be aware of them.  Unfortunately, Retry
>     system protects only server's memory state and some CPU cycles
>     spent on crypto.  (Servers still need to decrypt CID to decide it
>     is invalid, and if the attacker is clever enough to establish one
>     valid connection and use that CID in a flood, the server will also
>     be decrypting packets.)  Retry does nothing to protect network
>     resources.
>
>      
>
>     The PR I opened (https://github.com/quicwg/ops-drafts/pull/94
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_quicwg_ops-2Ddrafts_pull_94&d=DwMFaQ&c=96ZbZZcaMF4w0F4jpN6LZg&r=Djn3bQ5uNJDPM_2skfL3rW1tzcIxyjUZdn_m55KPmlo&m=eTT-BoZ1fMitywKRVSxpU3js0lhO0qkspYTKljvj-ys&s=VpvhQ9n79rANIk3O5Sm7PZyToFQEennoPt9iqFpWbq8&e=>)
>     is about uncooperating devices that try to mitigate volumetric
>     network attacks.
>
>      
>
>      
>
>     *From:* Martin Duke <[e-mail]
>     <mailto:[e-mail]>>
>     *Sent:* Wednesday, June 17, 2020 8:16 PM
>
>     Hi Igor, you might want to check out the "Retry Services" bit of
>     the QUIC-LB draft. This has something to do with the DDoS use case
>     you discuss.
>
>      
>
>     On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 9:07 AM Lubashev, Igor
>     <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>         I’m working on a manageability draft PR for this (how to rate
>         limit UDP to reduce disruption to QUIC if you have to rate
>         limit UDP).  ETA end of the week (if I do not get pulled into
>         something again).
>
>          
>
>         The relevant observation is that DDoS with UDP that is
>         indistinguishable from QUIC will happen.  UDP is already the
>         most prevalent DDoS vector, since it is easy for a compromised
>         non-admin app to send a flood of huge UDP packets (with TCP
>         you get throttled by the congestion controller).  So there
>         WILL be DDoS protection devices out there to try to mitigate
>         the problem, possibly by observing both directions of the flow
>         and deciding whether a packet belongs to a valid flow or not.
>
>          
>
>         Since such middle boxes will be created, the more explicit and
>         normative Invariants are about what one can expect, the less
>         such middle boxes may decide for themselves.  For example (I
>         did not think long about it), if some elements of path
>         validation could land into Invariants (roughly, “no more than
>         X packets/bytes can be sent on a new path w/o a return
>         packet”), a DDoS middle box may use this fact and active
>         connection migration might still have a chance during an
>         attack (NAT rebinding could be linked by DDoS boxes to an old
>         connection via unchanged CID).
>
>          
>
>           * Igor
>
>          
>
>          
>
>         *From:* Christian Huitema <[e-mail]
>         <mailto:[e-mail]>>
>         *Sent:* Wednesday, May 27, 2020 11:34 AM
>
>         On 5/27/2020 8:28 AM, Kyle Rose wrote:
>
>             On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 10:34 AM Ian Swett
>             <ianswett=[e-mail]
>             <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>                 I was agreeing with MT, but I'm happy to see some more
>                 MUSTs added if people feel that'd be helpful.
>
>              
>
>             Coincidentally, we were just talking about this internally
>             at Akamai yesterday. IMO, an invariants document isn't
>             really helpful if it isn't normative, and for it to be
>             normative it (or a related practices doc for operators)
>             really needs to spell out clear boundaries for operators
>             with MUSTs..
>
>              
>
>             The example that came up yesterday was around operators
>             filtering QUIC in the event of a DDoS: one recommendation
>             based on some conversations going back at least to Prague
>             2019 was to hash packets on 4-tuple and filter those below
>             a hash value chosen for a desired ingress limit instead of
>             doing what most operators do with UDP today, which is to
>             cap UDP throughput and just drop packets randomly or tail
>             drop.
>
>         Interesting. Did they consider using the CID, or a fraction of
>         it? This looks entirely like the scenario for which we
>         developed stateless retry.
>
>              
>
>             This recommendation certainly imposes some constraints on
>             future protocol development that motivate new invariants:
>             for instance, it would preclude sharding a connection
>             across multiple source ports (not that there is
>             necessarily a reason to do this; it's just an example).
>             But more importantly, it goes beyond invariants: it's one
>             among many practices compatible with the current set of
>             invariants, some reasonable and some terrible.
>
>         This would break the "preferred address" redirection.
>         Preferred address migration may or may not be spelled out in
>         the invariants.
>
>              
>
>             Operators are going to do things to QUIC traffic, so it
>             would be good to offer them recommendations that are
>             compatible with broad deployability.
>
>          
>
>         Yes, we do need the invariants for that.
>
>         -- Christian Huitema
>