Re: [Secdispatch] [Smart] New Version Notification for draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet-00.txt

[Bret Jordan <[e-mail]>]

Unfortunately I think you are misunderstanding the attack surface how attacks can work and wrongfully assume how threat actors and intrusions sets operate.  It is not always about exfiltrating your super secret “recipe" as you call it.  So database encryption will not always help you, nor will putting your database on a block chain. Yes, it can reduce the attack surface or exposure of your data under legitimate use. But once the server is compromised, the attacker can simply pull decrypted information from memory. Or can continue to move laterally through the organization and pull the data of endpoints that do have access to the data.  Further, the threat actor may not be interested in exfiltrating the data at all.  But may simply be interested in using your “1980s” crypto as you call it to encrypt your database with their own key.  This attack is commonly called Ransomware. 

The key point is that you can not patch your way into security.  This is a common misunderstand that many people have outside of operational security.  End points are always weak and highly vulnerable to attack.  It does not matter if they are end user devices, servers, IoT devices, or components soldered in to SCADA systems.

I would encourage you to look at the MITRE ATT&CK framework to better understand how these attacks work and how threat actors can disrupt, exfiltrate, and destroy a company. 

We have to realize that the security model has changed since some of these documents were written. Yes, pervasive monitoring of users on the internet is a problem, but it is only 1 piece of a large pie of problems.  We in the IETF need to communicate better with operational security, so that we can design solutions that hollistically help improve security and not make one part better at the huge expense of everything else. 



Thanks,
Bret
PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
"Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

> On Jul 11, 2019, at 7:22 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> It is an interesting read. But I see a very important distinction that needs to be made between compromise of user end points and compromise of server end points.
> 
> Most breaches that occur are when an enterprise is penetrated and the firewall is the first and last line of defense. So Percy the Pinhead clicks on a link in an email and six hours later the attacker has root privilege on the corporate server. This is not Percy's fault, the fault is that a single mistake by a single employee results in compromise of data Percy was never authorized to access.
> 
> So right now we have systems where one compromise at any one of 10,000 endpoints results in a breach. 
> 
> Now lets consider using some 1980s style end to end cryptography. So that the ultra important recipe data is only available to the dozen members of group. This improves matters because we have reduced the points of compromise from 10,000 cooks and service staff to 12 trusted employees.
> 
> That is a start but we are still vulnerable to a single end point compromise so lets apply threshold cryptography so members of group W only have one half of the decryption key, the other is on the server and both halves of the key are needed to perform decryption. In this scenario, we now require two separate compromises of two different end points.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 11:29 AM Bret Jordan <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> Dominique,
> 
> I have read over your draft, and I think it highlights some very key things we all need to look at and address. Thanks for putting these ideas down on paper.  Hopefully this I-D can help us all start a broader discussion to improve things.
> 
> SMART / SecDispatch,
> 
> If you have not yet read this I-D, I would encourage you to look at it.  It is a very fast read. 
> 
> Thanks,
> Bret
> PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
> "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
> 
>> On Jul 8, 2019, at 12:54 PM, Dominique Lazanski <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>> 
>> Cross posting to this mailing list.
>> 
>> Dominique 
>> 
>> A new version of I-D, draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet-00.txt
>> has been successfully submitted by Dominique Lazanski and posted to the
>> IETF repository.
>> 
>> Name:        draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet
>> Revision:    00
>> Title:        An Internet for Users Again
>> Document date:    2019-07-08
>> Group:        Individual Submission
>> Pages:        12
>> URL:            https://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet-00.txt <https://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet-00.txt>
>> Status:         https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet/ <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet/>
>> Htmlized:       https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet-00 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet-00>
>> Htmlized:       https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-lazanski-smart-users-internet>
>> 
>> 
>> Abstract:
>>   RFC 3552 introduces a threat model that does not include endpoint
>>   security. In the fifteen years since RFC 3552 security issues and
>>   cyber attacks have increased, especially on the endpoint. This
>>   document proposes a new approach to Internet cyber security protocol
>>   development that focuses on the user of the Internet, namely those
>>   who use the endpoint and are the most vulnerable to attacks. 
>> -- 
>> Smart mailing list
>> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/smart <https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/smart>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Secdispatch mailing list
> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/secdispatch <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/secdispatch>