Re: [secdir] SECDIR review of draft-ietf-manet-nhdp-sec-threats-04

[Matthew Lepinski <[e-mail]>]

Thank you, I found that clarification helpful.

Also, as I indicated, I think the document is quite good. I think it
valuable to document the attacks that can be preformed by a compromised
device in a manet and the impact on the network. (Although, I am mostly
left thinking ... Wow, compromising a routing in an ad hoc network is just
really, really bad :-< )


On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 4:52 AM, Jiazi Yi <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Dear Matthew,
>
> Thanks for your review of the draft. Please check the reply inline:
>
> On Jun 10, 2013, at 06:13 , Matthew Lepinski <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
> > 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 provides a taxonomy of attacks against the Mobile Ad Hoc
> Network Neighborhood Discovery Protocol (NHDP) [RFC 6130]. The document
> also contains a discussion of the impact of these attacks on running on top
> of NHDP (in particular, OLSRv2 and SMF)
> >
> > Having reviewed the document, I do not see substantial issues in the
> document. I believe it is reasonable to publish as an informational RFC.
> >
> > One minor issue: The replay attack described in Section 4.5 did not seem
> substantially different than the attacks described in Section 4.4. It is
> not clear to me how replaying a message from another part of the network is
> any worse (or substantially different) than just fabricating a message
> claiming connectivity that does not exist (i.e., like what is described in
> 4.4.2). I would recommend either deleting 4.5 or else clarifying how these
> attacks are substantially different.
>
> The main difference between 4.4 and 4.5 is that reply attack is based on
> manipulating the transmission channel, while Incorrect HELLO message
> generation is based on wrong HELLO message.
> We proposed more text to describe the difference in the end of section 4.5:
>
> ==
> Compared to Incorrect HELLO Message attacks described in Section 4.4, the
> messages used in Replay attack are legitimate messages sent out by
> (non-malicious) NHDP routers and replayed at a later time or different
> locality by malicious routers. This makes this kind of attack harder to be
> detect and to counteract: integrity checks cannot help in this case as the
> original message ICV was correctly calculated.
> ====
>
> If you are OK with the text, we will add it to the next revision.
>
>
> >
> > Trivial nit: In Section 5, "a Compromised NHDP router will seek to
> manipulate" -- substitute "may seek" instead of "will seek". We don't know
> for certain what a compromised router will do (unless one assigns clear
> motivation to the adversary, which this document does not).
>
> Yes, will be corrected in the next revision :)
>
> thanks again
>
> best
>
> Jiazi