On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 8:25 AM Michel Le Bihan <
[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Hello,
>
> I know that this has been discussed several years ago, but I didn't see
> any definitive final conclusion. In regards to the recent incident
> https://medium.com/s2wblog/post-mortem-of-klayswap-incident-through-bgp-hijacking-en-3ed7e33de600
> that involved the malicious actor reacquiring a valid TLS certificate, I
> think that it might be worth to restart the discussion.
>
> I know that the recommended solution is RPKI, but should there be other
> solutions that would mitigate this issue when RPKI is not deployed?
>
> Some possible solutions:
> 1. Allow restricting validation methods in CAA records
> 2. Require CAs to have multiple vantage points
> 3. Not issue certificates shortly after suspicious BGP events
>

I’m not sure I see how 1 addresses this risk by itself. Are you thinking
about this in isolation, or combined with some other mitigations (like RPKI
and DNSSEC)? And, if combining, do we really need 1 to bind the method,
versus something like account binding?

2 is, effectively, unauditable and, at best, a probabilistic defense whose
quality varies based on the selection of vantage points. Any attempt to
make it auditable (e.g. via documentation about where and how points are
selected) functionally serves to document the means to evade. There’s
nothing wrong, in theory, but it’s akin to saying “Don’t open links from QR
codes”: well meaning advice that, in theory, can mitigate attacks, but in
practice, serves to do very little.

3 requires defining suspicious BGP events in a way that’s automateable
enough to result in programmatic decision making, with limited false
positives (false negatives roughly reduce into the same problem as #2).
While there’s certainly interest in post-incident investigation to declare
something anomalous, hindsight is 20/20, and typically based on combining
perspectives from multiple vantage points.

I would be interested to know if there is something technically concrete,
formalized, and readily accessible to solve #2 and #3, from the technical
experts. My understanding of the state of the art is that it’s generally
regarded that, between those two and RPKI (with ROV), RPKI is orders of
magnitude easier and more measurable, and with less risk of inducing
centralization through “blessed” transit providers/IX viewpoints. Has that
state changed?

I don’t think advisory recommendations for #2 and #3 do much for mitigating
the problem, if only because the weakest link problem of CAs. However, I’d
be curious to know if there was more concrete proposals in this area for
something that can be objectively and independently quantified, whether as
part of an audit or by root program review. At present, it feels a bit like
a tiger-repelling rock: yes, rocks can help mitigate the risk of tigers,
but when and how is very contextual.

>

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