Re: [secdir] SECDIR review of draft-ietf-pals-seamless-vccv-02

["Andrew G. Malis" <[e-mail]>]

Phillip,

On behalf of the PALS WG, thanks for your review.

To be clear, this sounds like more a comment on RFC 5085 than it does a
comment on the draft in question. So is there any action requested
regarding the draft?

Also, you many not be aware that pseudowires are almost exclusively used in
well-managed private enterprise services networks, usually either
physically or logically separated from the public Internet for reasons of
both traffic management and assurance to enterprise customers that their
private traffic is well separated from the Internet. Thus interception is
less a threat than it may be for protocols that are used in the public
Internet.

Thanks,
Andy


On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 8:48 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[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 is an incremental change to a layer 2 virtualization
> layer (Software Defined Networking). As such it properly references
> RFC5085 for security considerations.
>
> That said, I am a bit surprised at the security considerations in
> RFC5085 which points out that denial of service is an issue but not
> the introduction of a new set of opportunities for interception. This
> is surprising given that BGP interception had already been used in
> international hostilities when the RFC was published.
>
> Further the proposed solution is to sprinkle on some magic IPSEC dust
> or equivalent. While that might be an appropriate approach in an
> experimental protocol, it is hardly adequate for a production protocol
> with implications for Internet security as a whole.
>
> Given the critical function of this layer and the date of its
> inception, I would expect to see a comprehensive security architecture
> developed as part of the overall scheme.
>