Re: [Suit] HR Review: Firmware Update Architecture for IoT Devices

[Gurshabad Grover <[e-mail]>]

Hi David,

Thanks. Just to clarify that particular suggestion: we suggested that
the draft mention that the device operator SHOULD have the ability to
accept or reject updates, not "MUST".

In any case, I re-read draft-ietf-suit-architecture, and found the
updated Section 3.10 useful. Because of the great diversity in the
devices in scope of the architecture, I understand that it is hard to
take a call on whether client authorisation is desirable in the general
case. We can leave this suggestion out.

Thank you.
Gurshabad

On Thursday 12 July 2018 05:28 AM, David Brown wrote:
> This depends a lot on who the device operator is referring to.  From a
> security perspective, the vendor may wish to make certain types of
> security updates mandatory.  As stated earlier, for devices say in a
> factory, or installed on a water meter, it is unclear who the device
> operator is.  An organization installing water meeting IoT devices is
> unlikely to allow the individual consumers of water to have any
> authority as to whether firmware is installed.
>
> Realistically, calling this mandatory in the spec would mostly just
> result in that criteria of the spec being ignored.
>
> One challenge with SUIT, in general, is that those producing these
> end-use devices have little motivation to comply with the spec.  The
> benefits gained to them are resources (such as reference code) and
> infrastructure that wouldn't have to be implemented.  They have little
> reason to not modify any behavior of the code that doesn't suit their
> own requirements.
>
> Although there may be good reasons to desire that decisions like this
> be granted to certain parties, the SUIT documents have little
> authority for enforce them.
>
> David