[secdir] SecDir review of draft-iana-special-ipv4-registry-01

[Yaron Sheffer <[e-mail]>]

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.

 

This document consists of a directive to IANA on creating and managing an
IPv4 Special Purpose Address registry. It took me some time to realize this
document is about all of two hundred fifty six IP addresses. It sure seems
to be a lot of effort for very few addresses.

 

General

 

-        The document is missing a reference to [rfc3330bis] (which should
be Normative). Does "[date]" refer to this document's publication date?

-        The document is copied from RFC 4773, in places a bit too verbatim.
In particular it mentions "scoped, local, or private contexts", which rarely
apply to IPv4. Today even link-local IPv4 addresses are usually treated as
error indications, unfortunately.

 

Security

 

I would have been much happier with a Security Considerations section that
said there are no such considerations. The current text includes:

 

"This registry is intended to provide an authoritative source of information
regarding the currency and intended purpose of IPv4 Special Purpose address
blocks that are designated from the IANA-administered IPv4 Special Purpose
address pool.  This is a small step towards the creation of a comprehensive
registry framework that can be used as a trust point for commencing a chain
of address validation."

 

I am not aware of specified mechanisms to securely allocate, deallocate and
query the ownership and status of IP addresses. Perhaps it's just my
ignorance, but if any such mechanisms exist, they should be referenced from
the document. In the absence of such security mechanisms, the above
paragraph doesn't make sense to me, in particular when the scope current is
just 256 addresses.