Re: [secdir] secdir review of draft-ietf-netconf-monitoring

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 02:26:33AM +0200, Sam Hartman wrote:
 
> I'll admit that if I read the netconf document and it described
> something as "secure transport," it would raise a concern in my mind.
> "secure" as an adjective is generally meaningless.  Typically it's
> applied to make people feel that security objectives are met without
> actually stating those objectives.
> 
> Presumably by secure, you mean something like:
> 
> * Transport authenticates identity of server to client and client to
>   server
> * Transport provides integrity protection and confidentiality for data
>   transported
> * Transport provides replay protection on a per-session level as well as
>   within a session
> 
> I'd be far more interested in the core document making these security
> services explicit than in having it replace all instances of transport
> with "secure transport."

There is text in section 2 of draft-ietf-netconf-4741bis-02 talking
about security requirements of the transports - and this text is
pretty much the same as the text that can be found in section 2 of RFC
4741. I will go over the text to see whether it can be further
tightened or detailed (e.g. I see replay protection is not explicitely
mentioned). But it definitely not the case that "secure transport" is
a meaningless adjective in the NETCONF world even today.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany
Fax:   [phone]         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>