Re: [tcpm] tcpsecure: how strong to recommend?

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 10:21:38AM -0700, touch@ISI.EDU wrote:
> > IMHO, we're already addressing unlikely events - MSL violation or
> > off-path spoofed RST with known addresses and ports.  I think that the
> > cost of one packet exchange to validate that the connection is not about
> > to be terminated by an unlikely event is a reasonable engineering
> > choice. 
> 
> TCP was designed to be able to unilaterally terminate a connection with a RST.
> If you wanted a handshake, why did you not use FIN?

That's an instructive example.

If your RST is lost - they're not sent reliably as a FIN is - the packet
exchange is exactly the one TCPsecure proposes: ACK the last packet.
(Strictly speaking the lost RST doesn't do it of course - that would be
a nice trick.  Either new data goes out (ACKing the last packet as
well), or a retransmission occurs, or a window probe goes off.)
Receiving the ACK triggers a retransmission of the RST and state
synchronizes.  If all the RSTs are lost, the state still synchronizes
with a timeout.  I wouldn't call that an authentication (and I know you
didn't), but the process is very similar to how TCPsecure plays out.

If we were in a drinking establishment or academic symposium where the
navel gazing were appropriate, we could discuss whether that RST packet
"unilaterally terminates the connection" or is a hint that the
connection has been unilaterally terminated by the destruction of the
connection state at one endpoint.   I'm sure you can tell what I
believe, and I'm suggesting that thinking of both these processes as
confirming a hint might be less objectionable to you than thinking of
them as authenticating a message.  It's a sadder world that we're not in
one of those places.

But here on the list, I'm hoping that talking about what a "slightly
unusual" packet is might steer us back toward the
MAY/SHOULD/MUST/applicability statement discussion.

-- 
Ted Faber
http://www.isi.edu/~faber           PGP: http://www.isi.edu/~faber/pubkeys.asc
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