Re: [sidr] draft-ietf-sidr-bgpsec-protocol-13's security guarantees

[David Mandelberg <[e-mail]>]

On 2015-09-08 21:07, Rob Austein wrote:
> Hmm, I would have thought we'd want to keep the chaining, in the 
> sense
> that non-originating would sign the previous signature.  I've no real
> objection to signing everything else again, it's just removal of the
> previous signature that I find odd here.
>
> The benefit I see to keeping the signature chaining is that it adds 
> an
> ordering constraint to the signatures (signature A must have been
> created after signature B), corresponding to the order in which we
> expect the update to travel between signers.  This seems like a good
> thing, and I don't see why we'd want to remove it.  As you've
> demonstrated, it doesn't remove all possible forms of mischief, but 
> it
> raises the bar a bit, and it's cheap, so why not?

I agree that signature chaining provides the guarantee you stated, that 
signatures were generated in order. But in the presence of 
non-validating signers, I don't think it provides any other guarantee.

What does the guarantee about signature order provide? I don't see how 
it's useful, but I could be missing something.


> Am I missing something?  Where's the benefit in removing the 
> chaining?

There's no benefit to removing it, except that I don't see any benefit 
to keeping it (if we sign the full data, as I described).


-- 
David Eric Mandelberg / dseomn
http://david.mandelberg.org/