Re: [sidr] Gen-ART review of draft-ietf-sidr-bgpsec-threats-06

[Stephen Kent <[e-mail]>]

David,

> Major issue:
>
> This draft contains more than just a threat model.
agreed.
>   It also contains
> a high level security analysis of the security architecture/approach
> that applies the RPKI to secure use of BGP.
yes. we didn't create a threat model doc for the RPKI, and this seemed
like a good time to address that omission, since the SIDR charter mandates
use of the RPKI as a basis for the path security design.
> That analysis appears to
> be good, but it's somehow disconnected from the rest of the sidr WG's
> work, by what I hope is simply a terminology problem:
> 	- This draft refers to the security architecture/approach for
> 		BGP as PATHSEC.
> 	- Many of the other sidr WG draft refer to that security as
> 		BGPsec
> In effect, the PATHSEC security architecture/approach appears to be
> implicit in this draft.
The term PATHSEC is used to refer to a generic path security solution
approach, consistent with the WG charter, rather than to the specific
solution approach, BGPsec, that has been developed. The rationale for
using the different term is that this threat doc should precede the
requirements doc, which should precede the solution design. In reality,
the requirements doc was generated before the threat analysis, and the
BGPSEC design was well along before this doc was finalized. Earlier versions
of the doc did refer to BGPsec, but the term was changed for the reasons
cited above. This doc does embed assumptions about what a general path 
security architecture would entail, e.g., based on prior work on such 
architectures, e.g, S-BGP.
> Something's missing - if those two terms were meant to be the same,
> BGPsec should probably be used in this draft, otherwise, the relationship
> should be described.  I've tagged this as a major issue, as it makes
> text like the following in Section 4.2 rather unclear:
I hope my explanation above explains why the terminology was adopted.
>        Stale Path Announcement: If PATHSEC-secured announcements can
>        expire, such an announcement may be propagated with PATHSEC data
>        that is "expired".  This behavior would violate the PATHSEC goals
>        and is considered a type of replay attack.
>
> What is "PATHSEC data"?  What are "the PATHSEC goals"?  The statement
> in the abstract that " We use the term PATHSEC to refer to any BGP
> path security technology that makes use of the RPKI" doesn't seem to
> answer these questions.
PATHSEC data is whatever data is sent via a path security design to enable
an AS to verify that the UPDATE has traversed the indicated set of ASes. The
goals for PATHSEC are the ones stated in the SIDR WG charter . (The relevant
charter text used to appear up front, but was removed at the request of the
WG chairs and the cognizant AD. The relevant text appears in this version on
page 16, as part of the residual vulnerabilities discussion.)
> Minor Issue:
>
> Section 4.4 seems somewhat loose on caching by RPs, considering the
> importance of that caching in countering a number of the attacks described
> in that section - in multiple cases, RP detection of an attack relies
> upon the RP noticing that something has changed at the publication point
> wrt the RP's cached copy in a fashion that should not have happened.
> Statements such as "the RPKI calls for RPs to cache" and "RPs are
> expected to make use of local caches" strike me as a weak foundation
> for the level of security dependence on that caching.  A pointer to a
> SHOULD or MUST requirement for caching by RPKI RPs in another document
> would alleviate this concern; surely that language exists somewhere.
The RPKI mandates caching (see RFCs 6480 and 6481), and since use of the 
RPKI
as a basis for PATHSEC is mandated by the SIDR charter, I didn't feel it 
was
necessary to repeat that here. But we can include a cite:

    Note first that the RPKI calls for RPs to cache the data they acquire
    and verify from the repository system *[RFC6480, RFC6481]*.
> Nits/editorial comments:
>
> Also in Section 4.4:
>
>     (The RP would be very unhappy if
>     there is no CRL for the CA instance anyway.)
>
> Please rewrite to describe how the RP reacts to failure to find a CRL
> - the RP surely does something in addition to becoming "very unhappy" ;-).
> Some of that may already be in the sentence immediately following the
> "very unhappy" text.
I'll remove the flippant parenthetical. You're right that it isn't useful.
> idnits 2.12.17 complains about a missing reference:
>
>    == Missing Reference: 'TCPMD5' is mentioned on line 114, but not defined
>
> That citation is embedded in a quote from RFC 4272, nonetheless, [TCPMD5]
> should be informatively referenced here - it was RFC 2385, which has been
> obsoleted by RFC 5925, which is referenced here.  The fact that RFC 2385
> is obsolete will generate a different idnits warning, which is ok to ignore.
I disagree, and I discussed this with Stewart previously. The reference 
appears in a
quote and was appropriate at the time the quoted text was generated.