[secdir] secdir review of draft-ietf-netmod-smi-yang-04

[Leif Johansson <[e-mail]>]

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Hi,

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.

The document specifies a translation between SMIv2 (and by reference
to RFC 3584, SMIv1) and YANG. YANG is the information model language
used in NETCONF.

This draft is outside my subject-matter expertise but the core
security issue seems to be around translation of the SMIv2 MAX-ACCESS
macro to YANG. Since YANG doesn't define any corresponding element
an extension to YANG is defined.

However there doesn't seem to be any requirement to implement that
extension. The security considerations section refers the reader to
the security considerations sections for YANG, NETCONF, SMI etc but
claims that "The translation itself has no security impact on the
Internet.".

I would have liked to see a clear normative statement to the effect
that if you relied on MAX-ACCESS in the SMIv2 version of a MIB then
you MUST implement the YANG extension for SMI and that the NETCONF
implementation used MUST respect the resulting smiv2:max-access
statements.

	Cheers Leif
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