Re: [secdir] Fwd: Secdir review of draft-paxson-tcpm-rfc2988bis-02

[Mark Allman <[e-mail]>]

I agree with everything Vern said.  But, two more points.

> Thus, it is a natural target for exploitation for a denial of service
> attack, in which an attacker convinces a sender to lower its RTO to an
> unsafe value, causing it to retransmit its packets that are not really
> lost, and thus lead to congestion.

First, I don't think this makes sense.  Even if some attacker can
convince a sender to reduce its RTO and hence trip the RTO early this
will *reduce* the sender's rate (RFC5681).  That is certainly an
impairment attack on the connection itself, but that does not "lead to
congestion".  I.e., it is not somehow an attack on the broader network.
In fact, the connection would "lead to congestion" with a higher
probability if it were to continue unimpaired at a higher sending rate.

Second, I am loathe to change a security considerations section that has
been good enough for 11 years unless there are actually new security
considerations.

allman