Re: recommendation against publication of draft-cerpa-necp-02.txt

[Keith Moore]

> By now we all should know that it is a bad idea to rely on an 
> unauthenticated IP address as a basis for determining the source of a 
> packet. Similarly. the IP header checksum offers no security.  We 
> have a variety of IETF standard protocols (e.g., IPsec and TLS) that 
> provide suitable assurance for data origin authentication and 
> integrity for application data sent via IP.  Thus, if anyone is 
> really concerned about know with whom they are communicating, and 
> whether a packet was modified in transit, they should be using these 
> standards security technologies.  Many web sites for which these 
> security concerns are significant already make use of SSL/TLS anyway.

While I naturally agree that one should not use unauthenticated
IP addresses to determine the source of a packet, I think it's a 
big stretch to say that the existence of IPsec and TLS means that 
it's okay for third parties to forge source addresses.

and for different reasons, both IPsec and TLS are of fairly limited 
applicability for application-level security - we are still missing
lots of pieces.

Keith