> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
> Of Alper Yegin
> Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 3:14 PM
> To: Sam Hartman
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [abfab] EAP Applicability: server-initiated re-authentication
> 
> 
> On Nov 14, 2012, at 5:44 PM, Sam Hartman wrote:
> 
> >>>>>> "Alan" == Alan DeKok <[email protected]> writes:
> >
> >    Alan>   For PCP, it's reasonable that the application knows the EAP
> >    Alan> session has timed out.  It can re-establish it before sending
> >    Alan> the next message.  Or, if messages are rare, it can wait and
> >    Alan> re-establish it later.
> >
> > Well, it's a bit tricky to re-establish the session if the next
> > message is coming from the server but only the client can start the
> > authentication.
> > I think you have two general options:
> >
> > 1) Decide it's OK not to re-establish the session until the client
> > wants to do so
> >
> 
> This does not make sense. If we are talking about securing a protocol,
that
> better be a complete security, not a partial security that's
uncontrollably on
> and off. In this case, when the server wants to send a message, if it's
lucky
> it'll find a live security association and send the message securely. If
it's
> unlucky (there is no live SA), then bad luck -- packet is dropped w/o
> transmission. Because sending an unsecure packet does not make sense, it's
> at best useless, at worst harmful if we expect the clients to act on them.


I find this to be a completely appropriate behavior.  Before I left the
e-mail group at Microsoft I had just come to the realization that I no
longer believe that all email messages needed to have S/MIME signatures
verified prior to showing the message to the recipient.  The validation
process could be deferred until one of a number of different trigger events
occurred.  I changed groups because the Outlook group was not interested in
doing another round of changes in behavior so I never had the long
discussions to get my ideas into the program.

However this represents a similar behavior.  As a client I get a message,
would I care about the content of the message?  If so then I can find out if
the message is real.  If I don't care about the content of the message then
why should I care if it is real or spam?  

The act that the client is expected to do is to ask the server if the
message is real (assuming it cares) before performing operations on the
message.  That seems to be a totally reasonable behavior.

Jim

> 
> 
> > 2) Change things and let the server start an EAP session.
> >
> > 3) Require the client to start an EAP session whenever the old session
> > goes away.
> >
> 
> 2&3 make sense.
> 
> I'd say the protocol shall support the capabilities needed for both 2 and
3.
> And leave it to the deployment to decide when to use them.
> 
> > The details as they apply to PCP are best discussed on that list.
> 
> 
> Alper
> 
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