Point well taken, Christian;

Please note that this is an update of RFC 6775, and we inherit from that; I can 
add text to make that more explicit.

RFC 6775 section 11<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6775#section-11> “  Security 
Considerations” has

“

   This specification assumes that the link layer is sufficiently
   protected -- for instance, by using MAC-sublayer cryptography.  Thus,
   its threat model is no different from that of IPv6 ND 
[RFC4861<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4861>].  The
   first trust model listed in Section 3 of 
[RFC3756]<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3756#section-3> applies here.
   However, any future 6LoWPAN security protocol that applies to ND for
   the 6LoWPAN protocol is out of scope of this document.

“

Now, this particular text and the rest of the section do not seem to really 
address your point beyond “we trust devices on the network, therefore it is 
expected that they won’t perform a DOS attack on the 6L(B)R NCE”. With RFC 
6775, we were addressing 6LoWPAN, this implicitly to IEEE Std. 802.15.4, so we 
did not expect that the 6LR or the 6LBR will be overwhelmed by non-aggressive 
registration due to the constrained nature if the IOT devices that we address.

On the one hand, trusting IOT devices may be quite optimistic. OTOH, 6lo 
addresses a larger variety of devices beyond the inherited scope of 6LoWPAN, 
and we care that this work may be applicable for multiple cases of IPv6 over 
foo, to be validated by the WG in charge of the particular foo.

All in all, seems clear to me that we need the text that you suggest.

What about:

“ as indicated in section < 2.  Considerations On Registration Rejection >, 
this protocol does not aim at limiting the number of addresses that a device 
can form, and a host should be able to register any address that is 
topologically correct in the subnet(s) advertised by the 6LR/6LBR.

On the other hand, the registration mechanism may be used by a rogue node to 
attack the 6LR or the 6LBR with a Denial-of-Service attack against the 
registry. It may also happen that the registry of a 6LR or a 6LBR is saturated 
and cannot take more registration, which effectively denies the requesting a 
node the capability to use a new address.

In order to alleviate those concerns, this specification RECOMMENDS the 
following:

-         A node that ceases to use an address should attempt to deregister 
that address from all the 6LR to which it is registered, using an EARO with a 
registration lifetime of 0.

-         The nodes should be configured with a registration lifetime that 
reflects their expectation of how long they will use the address with the 6LR 
to which it is registered. In particular, use cases that involve mobility or 
rapid address changes should use lifetimes that are homogeneous with the 
expectation of presence.

-         The router (6LR or 6LBR) should be configurable so as to limit the 
number of addresses that can be registered by a single node, as identified at 
least by MAC address and preferably by security credentials. When that maximum 
is reached, the router should use a Least-Recently-Used (LRU) logic so as to 
clean up the addresses that were not used for the longest time, keeping at 
least one Link-Local address, and attempting to keep one or more stable 
addresses if such can be recognized, e.g. by of the way the IID is formed or 
because they are used over a much longer time span than other (privacy, 
shorter-lived) addresses.

-         Administrators should take great care to deploy adequate numbers of 
6LR to cover the needs of the nodes in their range, so as to avoid a situation 
of starving. It is expected that the 6LBR is usually a much more capable node 
then the average 6LR, but if it may be saturated, a particular deployment may 
leverage a high speed backbone and Backbone Routers to aggregate multiple LLNs 
into a larger subnet.
“

Please note also that this discussion raises the problem of a 6LR that receives 
a deregistration for a particular address. Does that mean that the node ceases 
to use the address, or that it will stop using that particular 6R, e.g. in a 
mobility scenario. Seems that there is a need to signal the difference to the 
6LR, so it notifies the 6LBR only in the former case. Proposal: add a flag in 
the EARO for the registering node to indicate the case to the 6LR.

Also, there is a distinction on the status 2  “Neighbor Cache Full”, when 
received by the node from the 6LR in a NA message. Does that indicate that the 
6LR reaches an administrative maximum number of addresses, in which case the 
node may give up another address first, that the 6LR is completely saturated, 
in which case the node can try with a different 6LR, or is it the 6LBR that is 
saturated, in which case the node must look for another LLN. We may hide the 
first case with the LRU behavior in the routers, but we still need to at least 
indicate whether the saturation is local to the 6LR or global to the LLN.

What do others think?

Pascal

From: Christian Huitema [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: jeudi 20 avril 2017 20:06
To: Pascal Thubert (pthubert) <[email protected]>; Lorenzo Colitti 
<[email protected]>; Gabriel Montenegro <[email protected]>
Cc: Erik Nordmark <[email protected]>; [email protected]; 
Suresh Krishnan <[email protected]>; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [6lo] Draft applicability for 6775bis




On 4/20/2017 9:15 AM, Pascal Thubert (pthubert) wrote:
What about :

«
    This implies that a 6LR or 6LBR which is intended to support N hosts MUST 
have space to register at least on the order of 10N IPv6 addresses.
«
->
«
    This implies that the capabilities of 6LR and 6LBRs in terms of number of 
registrations must be clearly announced in the router documentation, and that a 
network administrator should deploy adapted 6LR/6LBRs to support the number and 
type of devices in his network, based on the number of IPv6 addresses that 
those devices require.
«

Works ?

I don't have a strong opinion on this wording, but I have a recommendation for 
the authors of the draft. This discussion outlined a couple of concerns about 
potential abuses. For example, I noted the following:

1) Registration procedure could be used to deny access, by abusing the 
administrative rejection option.

2) Nodes registering a large number of IID could overwhelm the registration 
system.

I would also add a generic concern about unique identifiers and privacy. This 
is an obvious concern in mobility scenarios, but even for static networks it 
also is a concern if the option can be observed outside the network. I 
understand that the encrypted link provides some mitigation, but having 
provisions to vary the IID over time would be even better.

It might be a good idea to document these issues in the security considerations.

-- Christian Huitema
_______________________________________________
6lo mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6lo

Reply via email to