Erik Nordmark wrote:
> 
> > It seems that in mobileip wg, reflector attack scenarios were
> > identified for routing headers in Savola's draft. One solution,
> > which seems to me feasible to implement (no state needed),
> > was to mandate segments left to 1 and check that the address
> > in the routing header is owned by the receiving MN host.
> > Seems these scenarios are not necessarily mobileip-specific.
> > I am wondering, are routing headers in this wg considered
> > a special-purpose mechanism that cannot be used?
> 
> While such a check is reasonable for a host, a firewall can't actually
> check this since it doesn't know the relationship between Care of Addresses
> and Home Addresses.
> I don't know how significant this issue is but given the concerns
> expressed in Savola's draft about allowing general routing headers through
> firewalls it seems worth-while to think about this and not immediately dismiss
> it - having a separate packet format for routing headers (specifying
> addresses of one ore more hops) from the ability to specify an extra
> IP address for the destination *might* be the better thing to do.

I have some doubt on this being better. How I would understand this issue
to apply is when a firewall e.g. would like to enforce: don't let source
routed packets through but only packets with both addresses in the same
end-host.

Though the firewall can't know CoA-HAddr associations, it might not
want to enforce these packets only to concern MNs. The same reflector
attacks could also be done using non-MN hosts. When enforcing the above
example firewall policy, maybe it could be less change-requiring to
recommend the host-check rule also for non-MN's (CNs). Then, a firewall
would allow only rthdrs with segments left 1 through. If reflector scenarios
need to be avoided in the domain, end nodes need to enforce this. This because
also tunneling to an end host can be made to reflect the inner packet to
another host. Hence, a format change in a protocol may not be what is
needed to address this issue, a rule in one form or another in the
end hosts might be needed anyway. Inventing a new format could make the
rule look implicit, though it needs to be enforced anyway in an
implementation.

Comparing to having a new message format, all hosts using it would
anyway need to implement the new format. The host rule for rthdr would
have the same scope of implementation change but with existing protocol
messages, and the change would only be an added check in implementation
of existing protocols, without protocol specification. Does this address
the issue?

>   Erik

BR,

-Jari
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List
IPng Home Page:                      http://playground.sun.com/ipng
FTP archive:                      ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng
Direct all administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Reply via email to