Re: [rmcat] Secdir last call review of draft-ietf-rmcat-nada-11

[Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]>]

Hi Sean, hi Gorry,

Thanks for your review and feedback. Please see below.

> On 13. Aug 2019, at 09:56, Gorry Fairhurst <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> See  below:
> 
> On 13/08/2019, 02:08, Sean Turner via Datatracker wrote:
>> Reviewer: Sean Turner
>> Review result: Has Nits
>> 
>> Hi! I'm no congestion control expert so nothing in the main body jumped out at
>> me.  I did take a little time to review some security considerations for other
>> congestion control RFCs and just wanted to make sure the same kind of
>> information is getting addressed.  I indicated the result of this review as
>> "has nits" because there is a pretty good chance I am just suggesting some
>> editorial tweaks.
>> 
>> The security considerations rightly points out that this mechanism is
>> susceptible to the same kind of attacks as TCP (e.g., hijack, replacement) and
>> what mitigations to use (i.e., integrity protection of the RTCP feedback
>> messages).  But, what is missing is what happens if these attacks succeed: DoS
>> or in the worst case congestion collapse?  So, maybe instead of:
>> 
>>    As such, it is vulnerable to attacks where feedback
>>    messages are hijacked, replaces, or intentionally injected with
>>    misleading information, similar to those that can affect TCP.
>> 
>> Maybe:
>> 
>>    As such, it is vulnerable to attacks where feedback
>>    messages are hijacked, replaces, or intentionally injected with
>>    misleading information resulting in denial of service, similar
>>    to those that can affect TCP.
>> 
>> Also, unless I've completely misread this paragraph it seems like you are
>> talking about two things: 1) it's just like TCP, and 2) "The modification of
>> sending rate ...".  So, maybe split the paragraph along those lines.

I think this is actually based on text that we used for scream (now RFC8298) which is another congestion control developed in rmcat. I think we refined that text also based on a SEC (or GEN?) review comment at that time and people were at the end satisfied with it. However, your proposed change above could surely be integrated and I leave it to the authors if they want to refine the text further. 

>> 
>> Further questions:
>> 
>> 1. Are there any concerns related to a greedy receiver who wants to gobble up
>> more than its fair share of network bandwidth?

This is a very general point for all congestion control schemes, and for rmcat it is also discussed in draft-ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements (which is sitting in the RFC editor queue for a while as part of the 238 cluster…). I personally don’t see too much value in discussing this here once again (given the generic nature of the problem and very unclear definition of “fair”).

>> 
>> 2. Seems like maybe you also need to refer to the RTP/RTCP security
>> considerations because it seems like security primarily needs to be considered
>> in the context of a specific transport protocol and its authentication
>> mechanisms.

Hm, also not sure here because, while this congestion control scheme is developed for RTP/RTCP, it's defined in a more generic way and there are actually no real dependencies on a specific protocol.

>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> spt
> I also think that text (or similar) would also be valuable in the security considerations section.
> 

Gorry: Can you further explain what part this comment related to?

Thanks!
Mirja



> Gorry
>