Hi All,

Some general comments, followed by a few more detailed/minor suggestions.
Thanks to the authors for a very thorough analysis.

Best,
Vina
 

General Comments:

- Abstract:

Draft reads:
"This document analyzes the threats against the security of the
 Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP) and proposes a set of
 recommendations to mitigate some of the identified security risks."

Suggestion: This leaves the reader unclear about what the security state
would be after following the recommendations by this draft. Adding a
sentence such as the following is helpful: "By following the
recommendations of this draft a LISP deployment can achieve a security
level that is comparable to the existing Internet architecture."

- 6.Control Plane Threats

Section 6 talks about control plane threats. A reference to LISP-SEC in
this section seems appropriate. The first 5-6 sections of the threat
analysis draft were originally written before the LISP-SEC draft was
introduced and adopted by the WG (and hence they were very much
impact-full). It would be very helpful if the current version however
points out the security properties LISP-SEC brings to LISP, for instance
adding a sentence to 6.2 to this effect: "By enabling LISP-SEC Map-Reply
based threats are alleviated.".

- 5.2.1. EID-to-RLOC Cache Poisoning

The draft is pointing out that the list of cache poisoning examples here
are mostly enabled by (1) gleaning and (2) attacking the control plane.
>From attacks listed in the control plane in section 6, (a) Map-Reply based
attacks as well as (b) adding Map-Reply data to a Map-Request can lead to
these cache poisoning attacks. From these, Map-Reply based attacks are
alleviated by adopting LISP-SEC. It may be very helpful to bring this
information out by adding a summary at the end of this subsection noting
that: 
"By disabling gleaning and piggybacked Map-Replies, and enabling LISP-SEC,
most (if not all) of the cache poisoning threats are mitigated."

- 11. Suggested Recommendations

Many of the recommendations here are regarding removing risky
optimizations such as gleaning, piggybacked Map-Replies, etc. Depending on
the security requirements of a specific LISP deployment, these risks may
be acceptable. To clarify this, it may be helpful to add a paragraph in
the beginning of this section to the following effect:
"Different deployments of LISP may have different security requirements.
The recommendations in this section mitigate the threats enumerated in
this document."  

- 11. Suggested Recommendations - Last paragraph, page 27:

Page 27 reads:
"In [I-D.ietf-lisp], there is no mechanism that allows an xTR to
   verify the validity of the content a Map-Reply message that it
   receives.  Besides the attacks discussed earlier in the document, a
   time-shifted attack where an attacker is able to modify the content
   of a Map-Reply message but then needs to move off-path could also
   create redirection attacks.  The nonce only allows an xTR to verify
   that a Map-Reply responds to a previously sent Map-Request message.
   In order to allow verifying the validity and integrity of bindings
   between EID-Prefixes and their RLOCS solutions proposed in
   [I-D.saucez-lisp-mapping-security] and [I-D.ietf-lisp-sec] should be
   deployed.  Having such kind of mechanisms would allow ITRs to ignore
   non-verified mappings, thus increasing security."

I think the last sentence can be much stronger. Having LISP-SEC and
lisp-mapping-security in place would alleviate all the threats raised in
this paragraph.


Detailed/minor comments:

1. Introduction

Draft reads: 
"The document is composed of two main parts: the first discussing the LISP
data plane; while the second discussing the LISP control-plane."

Suggestion: A third, and important, part is the Recommendations part.

5.2.2. EID-to-RLOC Cache Overflow

It may be very helpful if a summary paragraph is added pointing out that
"Disabling gleaning and enabling LISP-SEC would protect against the
threats enumerated in this section."

5.3

Last paragraph of this section is more of a suggestion/recommendation.
Same for last paragraphs of section 7. I think it would be helpful in
general if the recommendation information through-out the draft is called
out
, perhaps by adding a Mitigations/Recommendations label to the beginning
of such paragraphs.

8. Threats with Malicious xTRs

Draft reads:
   "The current LISP specification briefly discusses the overclaiming
   problem [I-D.ietf-lisp], but does not propose any specific solution
   to solve the problem.  Nevertheless, [I-D.ietf-lisp-sec] proposes a
   solution to protect LISP against overclaiming attacks under the
   assumption that the mapping system can be trusted."

The last sentence seems a little vague. I suggest changing it to something
like this: " By enabling [I-D.ietf-lisp-sec] overclaiming attacks are
mitigated under the assumption that the mapping system can be trusted."

10.1 Map-Server

Page 24 reads: 
   "Similarly to the previous case, a malicious ETR can register an
   invalid EID-prefix to attract Map-Requests or to redirect them to a
   target to mount a DoS attack. To avoid this kind of attack, the Map
   Server must check that the prefixes registered by an ETR belong to
   that ETR.  One method could be to manually configure EID-prefix
   ranges that can be announced by ETRs."

This is already done today and is explained in the Mapping System draft,
right? Perhaps this paragraph can be removed.

10.2 Map-Resolver

Page 25 reads:
  "A possible way to limit the above-described attacks is to introduce
   strong identification in the Map-Request/Map-Reply by using the
   Encapsulated Control Message with authentication enabled."

Are you referring to LISP-SEC here? Calling it out may be helpful.

11. Suggested Recommendations

Title of this section seems repetitive. "Security Recommendations" or just
"Recommendations" may be better alternatives.

11.

Page 27 reads: 
"In order to allow verifying the validity and integrity of bindings
between EID-Prefixes and their RLOCS solutions proposed in
[I-D.saucez-lisp-mapping-security] and [I-D.ietf-lisp-sec] should be
deployed.  Having such kind of mechanisms would allow ITRs to ignore
non-verified mappings, thus increasing security."

A minor technical question: is it ok to use "should" in "In order to allow
verifying the validity and integrity of bindings between EID-Prefixes and
their RLOCS solutions proposed in [I-D.saucez-lisp-mapping-security] and
[I-D.ietf-lisp-sec] should be deployed. ", considering that
[I-D.saucez-lisp-mapping-security] is an independent draft? Perhaps should
is too strong, "could" may be a better choice here?

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