Re: [tcpm] poll for adopting draft-gont-tcp-security

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

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Fernando Gont wrote:
> Hello, Matt,
...
> I had promised to come back to you on this one. FreeBSD ignores those
> options whose length is not equal to the expected value.
...
> Linux does exactly the same thing.
...
> This suggests that extending SACK while still using the same option type
> is not a good idea, or at least not a backwards-compatible one. 
...

It may also suggest a bug.

This is a key flaw in the approach taken in this document. A proper scan
of all aspects of TCP for security vulnerabilities would be useful, but
the doc focuses on implementations as if they provide unique or correct
insight into the issue. The state of implementations may provide a
reason to look at this issue, but do not necessarily provide the right
basis for determining how to proceed.

TCP is not secure; it was not intended to be. We cannot make it secure
simply by dropping vulnerable components. We cannot make it secure by
focusing on poor implementation choices.

If the WG is to proceed on this, there are two viable choices:

	1) a from-scratch analysis of every aspect of TCP
	for security, not just the ones implementers have
	either tripped over or misdesigned

	2) a from-scratch design of a new secure transport
	protocol (in TSVWG)

Joe
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