On Oct 11, 2011, at 9:03 PM, Michael Richardson wrote: > However, I am thinking that we can perhaps bootstrap equipment that has > never been configured (or has been factory reset) in some fashion such > that if the equipment is "virginal" that it can essentially always try > some default keys, and bring up enough networking to let all equipment > be discovered and identified. There would be strong nag screens to get > the user to up a network password.
A pre-shared key that is pre-shared to every device is the same as no key. So you might as well not bother with that complexity. Conceivably CGA could be used to publish public/private key pairs allowing devices to automatically recognize each other and present their relationships in a UI for the end user to approve, but that's not precisely plug and play. I think the simplest thing would be to require that each device be able to talk to a USB drive. Each device collects all the public keys on the USB drive, and stores their own there. Devices then share their public key with other devices identified on the USB drive, so that as each device joins the network, the other devices learn about it. This isn't bulletproof—an infected PC that's configured with these keys could be used to gain access to the keys, for example. But it's a lot better than a well-known key. Of course, this isn't quite as plug and play as you seem to want, and it requires that each device have a USB port, which might not be acceptable. Plus, it would mean that the IETF would have to talk about hardware, which seems like a bit of a non-starter. But I think it's the right way to solve the problem.
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