Thanks Chris!

On Wed, Jun 10, 2026 at 8:27 PM Christopher Patton <cpatton=
[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Dhruv, thank you very much for the review! Responses inline.
>
>
>> ## **General Operational Comments Alignment with RFC 5706bis**
>>
>> This document defines a mechanism for preventing downgrade attacks on
>> IKEv2.
>> While the technical approach is sound, it lacks an explicit operational
>> considerations section.
>>
>> The authors could consider adding a brief section if they feel there is
>> useful
>> operational guidance to be provided for upgrading to this extension,
>> interoperability with legacy RFC7296 or on detecting & logging attempts of
>> downgrade attack (is it even possible?), etc.
>>
>
> At the moment, Valery and I don't believe an operational considerations
> section is needed. There are no interoperability issues with RFC7296 that
> we're aware of. There's a possibility that an incorrectly implemented
> initiator or responder would handle the notify message incorrectly, but
> this seems to us to be out of scope for the document.
>
> Detecting a downgrade attack doesn't seem possible. It would manifest as
> an authentication failure: one party would attempt to verify a message that
> its peer didn't actually sign. This case is indistinguishable from any
> signature verification failure.
>
>
>
>> ## **Minor Issues**
>>
>> - Section 1, consider clarifying "the data to be authenticated" means in
>> the
>> context of this document.
>>
>
> Done: https://github.com/smyslov/ikev2-downgrade-prevention/pull/43
>
>
>>
>> - Section 6, is it possible to clearly identify what text from RFC 7296 is
>> being modified because of the update tag
>>
>
> Updates to RFC 7296 are addressed in this paragraph:
>
> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-downgrade-prevention-05.html#section-1-2
>
> It would be hard to pinpoint the exact text that's being updated. As far
> as I understand, text about authentication logic is dispersed throughout
> RFC 7296.
>
>
>
>> - Section 7, are you updating text in RFC 9242 or RFC 5723? If yes, then
>> we
>> should use the update tag; if not, it should be clearer to the reader why
>> RFC
>> 7296 is the only one being updated.
>>
>
> We introduce no changes to the RFC 9242 and RFC 5723 themselves. If an
> implementation does not support this draft and implements only RFC 9242 (or
> RFC 5723) then it may follow these RFCs and ignore this draft without
> breaking interoperability with an endpoint that does support this draft.
>
>
>
>> ## **Nits**
>>
>> - Section 1, s/RFC 7296/[RFC7296]/
>>
>
> Done: https://github.com/smyslov/ikev2-downgrade-prevention/pull/44
>
> Best,
> Chris P.
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