Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-johansson-loa-registry-04

Leif Johansson <leifj@sunet.se> Tue, 03 April 2012 10:32 UTC

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Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:32:15 +0200
From: Leif Johansson <leifj@sunet.se>
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To: Vincent Roca <vincent.roca@inria.fr>
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Cc: draft-johansson-loa-registry.all@tools.ietf.org, IESG <iesg@ietf.org>, secdir@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-johansson-loa-registry-04
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On 04/03/2012 11:18 AM, Vincent Roca wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have reviewed this document as part of the security
> directorate's ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being
> processed by the IESG.  These comments were written primarily for
> the benefit of the security area directors. Document editors and WG
> chairs should treat these comments just like any other last call
> comments.
> 
> I have two comments WRT to section 7:
> 
> 1/ It is said: "An implementor of MUST NOT treat the registry as a
> trust framework or federation [...]"
> 
> As I understand the IANA registry is a record of LOA definitions
> that are part of a trust framework. So that's a different concept,
> I agree. But why is this sentence in the "Security Considerations"
> section? It could be moved to section 3 for instance.

I guess it could.

> 
> 2/ The rest of the sentence is confusing IMHO: "An implementor
> [...] MUST NOT make any assumptions about the properties of any of
> the listed level of assurance URIs or their associated trust 
> frameworks or federations based on their presense in the IANA
> registry."
> 
> Do you mean that the fact an IANA registry exists, by itself, does
> not garranty the trust framework actually provides the expected
> security features (i.e. the IANA registry is merely a definition
> record)?

Yes thats the intent!

> I don't like the term "any assumption". If a LOA tells me I can
> achieve some security level by using it, I'll first **assume** it's
> true and in a second step I'll verify it's indeed the case.
> 

What I want to say is that the fact that the entry exists doesn't
imply any quality of the underlying trust framework.

> 
> Typos and general comments:
> 
> ** section 7: - In the first sentence, something is missing: "An
> implementor of MUST NOT" Of what?
> 

I got this from gen-art too. I'm changing it to ".. of software that
consumes the registry"

> - Later: "...based on their presense in the IANA registry" Don't
> you mean presence (with a "c")?
> 
> 
yup

> ** section 3.1: in the example, it is said: "Defines Level 1 of
> FAF" I didn't understand what FAF stands for. I think you'd better
> avoid using an acronym here.
> 

It was an attempt at humor - FAF is the Foo Assurance Framework.

> ** section 3. There's a missing "." before "This" in: "URI:  A URI
> referencing a Level of Assurance Profile This is the registry
> key."
> 

excellent, thx!

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Vincent

Thanks for a great review!

	Cheers Leif
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