Re: [tcpm] Privacy problems of TCP Fast Open

[Michael Tuexen <[e-mail]>]

> On 21. May 2019, at 21:22, Erik Sy <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 5/21/19 18:34, Michael Tuexen wrote:
>>> On 21. May 2019, at 14:25, Erik Sy <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 5/21/19 12:18, Michael Tuexen wrote:
>>>>> On 21. May 2019, at 09:52, Erik Sy <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi Michael,
>>>>> 
>>>>> thanks for this question!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes, TFO cookies are bound to the clients (local) IP address. However, a
>>>>> client with a static local IP address in a home network will use the
>>>>> same TFO cookie independently of it's publicly visible IP address. As a
>>>>> result, TFO cookies present an independent tracking mechanism, which
>>>>> does not necessarily rely on the client's publicly visible IP address.
>>>> How often do the public addresses change?
>>> I do not have a general answer to your question. In the case of my home
>>> network, my ISP assigns me at least every 24 hours a new IPv4 address.
>> I also had this on my DSL line (I guess we both live in Germany),
>> but since my telephone line was moved to "all IP", the assignment stays
>> up for months.
>>> Additionally, I can initiate a change of my network's public IP address
>>> at anytime.
>> Sure.
>>> TFO cookies allow basically unlimited tracking periods because they do
>>> not have an expiration mechanism. Thus, even infrequently changed IP
>>> addresses can be correlated.
>> An implementation can do implement such a thing and even allow an API for it.
> 
> Yes, I agree with you that implementations can go beyond RFC 7413 and
> implement an expiration mechanism limiting feasible tracking periods.
> 
>> For testing I'm flushing the cookie cache quite often...
>>>> One could extend the TFO API in
>>>> a way that the application can request a new cookie by only sending 
>>>> a cookie request.
>>> I do not think this is an appropriate countermeasure.
>>> 
>>> From my perspective, caching TFO cookies in the kernel is a more
>>> fundamental privacy problem. This design requires applications to share
>>> a pool of TFO cookies, which allows tracking across several
>>> applications. For example, this prevents user's to separate their online
>>> activities across different browsers.
>> They would share the IP address. If they decide to trigger a new address
>> binding on the access router, why couldn't they trigger flushing the
>> cache?
> 
> Flushing the cache presents a performance versus privacy trade off
> because flushing increases the chance of a cache miss preventing a 0-RTT
> handshake.
Sure it does. It was just meant as an equivalent to resetting the
public IP address of your access router. This also affects all outgoing
connections.
> Thus, an application that often flushes the cache degrades the
> performance of all other applications sharing the same pool of TFO cookies.
> As a result, the application with the highest privacy requirements
> limits the TFO performance of all other applications.
> 
> Furthermore flushing has difficulties to separate applications running
> at the same time. For example, running a browser window in the normal
> browsing mode and another window in the private browsing mode
> (incognito). In this scenario, only excessive flushing can prevent an
> online tracker to link the user's online activities across both browser
> windows.
Can't they both be linked by the IP address being used?
> 
> From my perspective, an approach that delegates the caching to the
> application itself, is the better solution to address this privacy
> versus performance trade off. Moreover, I believe users tend to make the
How does this prevent "tracking by IP-address" compared to "tracking
by TFO cookie"?

Best regards
Michael
> application/browser vendor responsible to protect their privacy. Thus,
> these vendors require appropriate measures to control their users' privacy.
> 
> Best regards,
> Erik
> 
>> Best regards
>> Michael
>>>>> Returning to your example, onion routing does not necessarily protect
>>>>> you against tracking via TFO cookies.
>>>> Yepp, that is what I wanted to say. 
>>>> But using TFO in that case doesn't
>>>> make much sense.
>>> Yes, TFO does not make sense if user privacy is at stake. Thus, we
>>> should warn users about these risks of RFC 7413.
>>> 
>>> Best regards,
>>> Erik
>>> 
>>>