[secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-kitten-gss-loop-04

[Tina TSOU <[e-mail]>]

Dear all,

I have reviewed current version of 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.

* Section 3.2, page 5:
  The initiator calls GSS_Init_sec_context(), using the
  input_context_handle for the current proto-security-context and its
  fixed set of input parameters, and the input_token received from the
  acceptor (if not the first iteration of the loop).

Your use of proto-security-context would make it seem like this is a
parameter specified in RFC2473 but it is not. So I'd recommend to remove
the hyphens. (BTW, at times you refer to "proto-security-context" while
at others to just "security context"... why?)


* Section 3.2, Page 5:

(if not the first iteration of the loop)

Please rephrase as "(if this is not...)"


* Section 3.2, page 5:
However, there are some known
     implementations of certain mechanisms which do produce empty
     context negotiation tokens.  For maximum interoperability,
     applications should be prepa

It would be great if you could provide examples of such implementations.


* Section 3.4, page 6
It is likely appropriate
  for the acceptor to report this error condition to the acceptor via
  the application's communication channel.


It should say:
  It is likely appropriate
  for the acceptor to report this error condition to the initiator via
  the application's communication channel.


* Section 3.5, page 7:
  The GSS acceptor calls GSS_Accept_sec_context(), using the
  input_context_handle for the current proto-security-context and the
  input_token received from the initiator

Again, remove the hyphens


* Section 4.1, page 10
Additional information can be
  available in GSS-API Naming Extensions, [RFC6680].

s/can be/is/


* Section 5.1: You should clarify what's the convention for the return
codes of send_token() and receive_token(). Otherwise it's not clear
whether, when you use these functions, you're checking the return codes
correctly.


Thank you,
Tina