Re: [v6ops] I-D Action: draft-ietf-6man-grand-01 - additional security concerns

[Nick Hilliard <[e-mail]>]

Lorenzo Colitti wrote on 30/07/2020 11:36:
> I think the fact is that ND is inherently insecure from on-link attacks.
> If security is desired, then it needs to be provided in other ways, such
> as via SEND or SAVI. But it's also not particularly desirable to provide
> security at this layer.

ND is particularly weak from a security point of view due to its
approach to signalling, i.e. some bits use unicast udp with no token
exchange and/or no acknowledgement.  Without significant incompatible
changes to the protocol, it's difficult to see how this can be improved.

SEND has never been deployed widely and has bootstrap problems which are
difficult to resolve.  Most vendors never bothered implementing it.

SAVI moves the complexity into the L2 forwarding device.  This comes at
a cost, and the more complexity that's thrown into the ND protocol, the
more difficult this becomes.  The ND assigned codepoint registry gives
some clue as to the scale of this complexity:

https://www.iana.org/assignments/icmpv6-parameters

> Traffic snooping is not very useful (not zero
> utility, but difficult to use well) when all traffic is encrypted, and
> on-link DoS attacks just aren't very useful these days given that many
> devices have a variety of connectivity options.

Surely you're joking?

Nick