Re: [Sidrops] Clarification of draft-ietf-sidrops-aspa-verification-03

[Luuk Hendriks <[e-mail]>]

Hi Alexander, all,

On Tue 14 Jan 2020, 18:04, Alexander Azimov wrote:
> In the terms of the draft AS0->AS1->AS2 is an upstream path, while AS3->AS4
> is a downstream path.
> The invalid state of (AS2, AS3) pair triggers the change of the
> 'direction', but the following downstream path verification procedure is
> not applicable to (AS3, AS2) since it can be a peering link, that's why I++
> is used.

Thanks for clarifying, it seems that we did interpret those parts of the draft
correctly then. But we are still wondering whether skipping the check after the
direction change is introducing a problem. (Again, this might be us not having
much operational experience with actual routing, so please bear with me..)


What if a bad actor, AS9, inserts itself in the path like this:

                             +-----+
                    +--------> AS2 +--------+
                    |        +--+--+        |
                 +-----+        |        +--v--+
        +------->+ AS1 |        | +----->| AS3 +--------+
        |        +-----+        | |      +--^--+        |
     +-----+                  +-v-+-+                +--v--+
     | AS0 |                  | AS9 |                | AS4 |
     +-----+                  +-----+                +-----+
                                                        |
                                                     +--v--+
                                                     | AS5 |
                                                     +-----+

No valid (AS2, AS9) ASPA is found, so we assume it is a peering link (the
I++). Direction is changed, so continuing, (AS3, AS9) and (AS4, AS3) are
checked. Now, if and only if any of these yield Invalid, the final result will
be Invalid. Otherwise, the result will be Valid or Unknown, even though there is
a malicious AS in the path. In other words, is the draft in its current revision
beneficial without (close to) 100% adoption?
Or, is this situation not considered a problem in reality due to the longer
AS_PATH and thus a lower preference anyway?


Thanks,
 luuk