Here is a suggestion for how to plug the main vulnerabilities that
were discussed in the meeting.

Problem (as I understand it): the main issue is that there are some
(non-link local scope) addresses that may be assigned to an interface
(e.g., manually configured, temporary addresses, DHCP assigned, etc.),
but for which there is no corresponding link-local address using the
same interface identifier. The stateless addrconf document (RFC 2462)
says that a node can skip DAD for global (and site local) scope
addresses generated from the same interface ID as the link-local
address. This opens up a potential hole where a node (doing normal
addrconf) has run DAD on the link-local address, but has not yet
configured a global-scope address using the same interface
identifier. Then, some other node (e.g., via DHCP, a temporary address
etc.) chooses the same interface identifier and creates such an
address, runs DAD successfully (since no other node is currently using
that address), and then assigns the address to its interface.  Later,
the first node (which is running normal addrconf) also generates the
address, but skips DAD, and now there are two nodes using the same
address. Oops.

Proposal: update specs to require that nodes MUST run DAD on all
addresses for which the interface identifier is NOT globally unique
(per the setting of the 'u' bit in interface identifier). DAD can be
skipped on addresses that contain IEEE EUI-64-derived interface
identifiers (and for which DAD has already been run on the
corresponding link-local address).

This means: still no need to run DAD on global addresses when doing
normal addrconf, provided the interface identifier comes from an IEEE
identifier. But one would have to run DAD for links with randomly
generated identifiers (e.g., some PPP links). One would also still
need to run DAD for temporary addresses. For DHCP addresses, we'd need
to make sure that the server sets the 'u' bit properly, and clients
would need to run DAD if the 'u' bit indicated locally unique only.

Does this solve the underlying problem in an acceptable fashion?

Thomas


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