Re: [Smart] Draft Charter For SMART Proposed RG

[Kathleen Moriarty <[e-mail]>]

Hi David,

Thank you very much for the detailed feedback.  I have limited time at the
moment, but was the one who helped remove the word cyber from earlier
versions of the charter in an effort to use terms that are well
understood.  Do you have a suggestion that improves from attack defense,
but doesn't include cyber?  Sorry for the top post on very helpful feedback
(more on that later from at least one of us).

Glad to see you engaged in the conversation!

Best regards,
Kathleen


On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 11:49 AM David McGrew (mcgrew) <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Hi Kirsty and others,
>
> Thanks for doing this; I very much like the idea of forming an RG that
> addresses these issues.  An RG where protocol geeks can talk to the threat
> defense community would be goodness.
>
> Some detailed comments below.   Please don’t misinterpret these comments
> as being negative on the idea of the RG; the intent is to refine the
> charter.
>
> I like Stephen’s suggestions of making it an explicit goal to preserve
> privacy, and citing BCPs.
>
> More inline:
>
>
> On Sep 26, 2018, at 9:36 AM, Kirsty P <
> Kirsty.p=[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> This is the draft charter for the Proposed Research Group: Stopping
> Malware and Researching Threats (SMART).
>
> Your thoughts and suggestions are very welcome - please post to the list
> with your comments! - and keep an eye out for a list of proposed research
> problems soon...
>
>
>
> # Stopping Malware and Researching Threats (SMART) Proposed RG - Draft
> Charter
>
>
> ## BACKGROUND
>
> The first paragraph below probably should precede the Background heading.
>   I suggest adding a background that outlines cybersecurity issues like the
> cost of data breaches and the high time-to-detection.
>
> The Stopping Malware and Researching Threats Research Group (or SMART RG)
> will investigate how cyber attack defence requirements can be met in a
> world of encrypted data.
>
> I suggest moving the “world of encrypted data” out of the intro sentence,
> and relegating it to somewhere further down.  It’s important, but not the
> only consideration, and we don’t want to give people the false impression
> that the RG is about backdoors in crypto or other ulterior motives.  The
> following sentence would be a good opener.
>
> It will research the effects, both positive and negative, of existing,
> proposed and newly published protocols and Internet standards on attack
> defence.
>
> I suggest replacing “attack defense” with “cybersecurity” throughout, and
> defining cybersecurity as including the security of the information and the
> computers and communication systems.   My thinking here is that we should
> emphasize that SMART is considering the security aspects beyond just the
> communication security of the protocols.  It might be worth adding
> something about how endpoint system security is at least as important as
> protocol/communication security, as it doesn’t matter how wise one is about
> cryptography if the attacker can exfiltrate their keys.
>
> On “negative effects”, what we are most concerned with are negative
> externalities in an economic sense, that is, unintended costs or harm that
> people who design, implement, deploy, and operate protocols on the internet
> can cause to others.    It would be good to call this out in the charter.
> It is already best current practice to avoid negative externalities in the
> context of DoS attacks (RFC4732, say), and it would be healthy for the
> internet to have the RG consider externalities around other types of
> threats.  For instance, the interaction between IP blacklisting and Tor, as
> presented by Singh et. al. at ANRW 18 (
> https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3232786&dl=ACM&coll=DL) deserves more
> discussion.
>
> It will gather evidence from information security practitioners on methods
> used to defend against attacks and make this available to protocol
> designers. As a result, designers, implementers and users of new protocols
> will be better informed about the possible impact on attack prevention and
> mitigation.
>
>  I suggest using “protocol designers, implementers, and users” throughout,
> instead of focusing on protocol designers.   Also, it might be good to
> think even more broadly here, because what network and server operators do
> (or don’t do) can have important effects (e.g. spoofing due to the lack of
> ingress filtering, and vulnerable servers used to launch attacks).
>
>
> The IRTF is in a unique position to provide this research and evidence to
> the IETF.
>
> It’s a good idea to focus on research and evidence, especially around
> malicious activity observed on the internet or network behaviors seen in
> malware sandboxes, honeypots, etc.
>
> This research group aims to describe the effect of protocol changes where
> relevant and stimulate methodical research into attack defence methods for
> new protocols. Protocols are already rigorously assessed for their security
> properties, but ensuring attack defence methods are also rigorously
> assessed alongside protocol design changes would provide a fuller
> understanding of the value for such change, enabling a better engineered
> Internet.
>
> Instead of “attack defence methods” in the above, I suggest something like
> “impact on cybersecurity”.
>
>
>
> ## AIMS
>
> This research group has these major aims:
>
>    - To bring *evidence on attacks* and the methods that are or could be
>    used to defend against them to the attention of the IETF.
>
> More generally, I think we would like to see research on malicious network
> behavior.
>
>
>    -
>    - To highlight the *attack mitigation impact*, both positive and
>    negative, *of new protocols* and updates to existing protocols.
>
> Instead of “new protocols” I suggest “protocol design, deployment, and
> operation”.
>
>
>    -
>    - *To stimulate and generate research into attack defence methods* for
>    new protocols, and to increase awareness in the technical community of new
>    and existing methodology for detecting and mitigating attacks.
>    - To provide *systematic guidance* to designers of new protocols as to
>    what attack defence considerations to review, and to inform implementers by
>    default about the effects of new protocols on attack defence.
>    - To produce *problem statements* that describe key issues in cyber
>    security for the group to research (initial research project ideas are
>    listed below).
>
> I suggest putting the problem statements bullet right after the first
> bullet, as the RG should be presenting research findings first, then
> creating problem statements, then proposing solutions.
>
> I think “systematic guidance to designers of new protocols” is an
> ambitious goal.  It would be nice to have the goal written in a way that it
> would be easier to make progress against.   It can be difficult for an RG
> to make timely progress, so from the point of view of the process and the
> IRTF chairs and the RG chairs, it would be nice to have some more modest or
> intermediary goals against which headway could be made.
>
> I would like to see a goal like “To stimulate and generate research on
> network protocols and practices that minimize impact on third parties” or
> something like that.
>
>
>
> ## OUTPUTS
>
> The research group plans to create documents that may include, but are not
> limited to, the following:
>
>    - *Internet drafts*, some of which may be published through the IRTF
>    RFC stream. These will include outline problem statements, use cases, case
>    studies and convey research results. They will be written for use by other
>    groups to inform protocol design.
>
> A nit: we also want drafts whose intended audience are just the RG
> members.   Also, I think it best to say “design, deployment, and use”.
>
>
>    -
>    - *Policy papers*, for in-depth analysis and discussion of the
>    relationship between attack defence and the Internet architecture and
>    protocols.
>    - *Research papers*, containing quantitative evidence of actual
>    attacks and the success of defence methods against them, as well as
>    theoretical and formal analyses of the implications of proposed protocols
>    on attack defence. Defence methods will be analyzed to determine if there
>    are ways to optimize in order to better scale attack detection and
>    mitigation.
>    - *Survey* of current and historic IETF material to discover existing
>    deliberations on attack defence.
>    - *Best practice papers*, describing methodologies that will enable
>    researchers to conduct experiments and report results that are useful to
>    designers of protocols. These methodologies will give descriptions of the
>    effects of protocols on attack defence backed by evidence from real-world
>     attacks, laboratory-based testing and theoretical analysis of
>    protocols, through the analysis lens of attacks, detection methods and
>    systematic assessment methodologies.
>
> It is not clear how the papers would relate to the drafts and the RFCs.
> It is probably best to say that the RG will invite presentations and
> discussions of research, policy, and survey papers published elsewhere.
> That would help to bring researchers and their results into the RG, while
> still allowing them to publish in peer-reviewed venues.
>
> I suggest having a goal like “Promoting communication between the IETF
> community and the cyber threat defense community, through discussions
> online and in regular meetings”.
>
>
> Within the first year, the research group aims to:
>
>    - Survey existing attack detection methods and determine the relative
>    effectiveness of these methods against different attack defence threats
>    (e.g. phishing, DDoS, spambots, C&C, endpoint malware)
>    - Publish case studies of historical attacks and make recommendations
>    where attacks could have been stopped more quickly, or even prevented
>    - Publish an Informational RFC, titled: "Important Attack Defence
>    Considerations for Protocol Design and Deployment".
>
>
> ## MEMBERSHIP
>
> Membership is open to any interested parties who intend to remain current
> with the published documents and mailing list issues. Wide participation
> from industry, academia, government and non-profits is encouraged.
>
> This is really good, thanks again for taking the initiative with this.
>
> Best regards,
>
> David
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 

Best regards,
Kathleen