Hi Marc,

Thanks for the reply and apologies for not being clear enough. More inline.

On 05/28/2014 09:37 AM, Marc Binderberger wrote:
Hello Florin et al.,

interesting discussion and I think some aspects should continue to be
discussed. But I start wondering: where is this thread heading? It doesn't
seem to move forward with respect to the "last call" topic :-)

Florin, your reply seems to indicate that Ronald's scenario is a valid attack
as you describe mitigation strategies. But is Ronald's scenario really _new_
with respect to the draft?  It seems to be covered by section 4.2/4.3.1.1 (?).
It is. We've previously had discussions concerning cache poisoning on the mailing list and I wrongly assumed the subject as known-and-documented in the draft. In fact, Damien mentioned this several times in his replies. My previous email was only meant to bring this up to Ron's attention and answer his specific concerns.

So, to clear up the confusion: Section 4.2 already mentions cache poisoning attacks and offers a pointer to an analysis and possible mitigation strategies.

If the opinion is that Ron's scenario is not covered by the draft yet then do
we need additional text in the draft?  Any proposal, Ron?

IMO, we do not need additional text.

Regards,
Florin

Myself I'm expecting from the draft that it provides an overview of the
potential problems and some attack vectors to stimulate ideas. I do not
assume that the level of details in the draft and the "relevance" of the
attack correspond - what is relevant or not may depend on whom you ask.


Thanks & Regards,
Marc



On Wed, 28 May 2014 07:50:35 +0200, Florin Coras wrote:
Hi Ron,

It turns out that just doing a flat scan of the EID-prefix space, i.e.,
using as source EID an IP in each existing EID-prefix, has the most
damaging consequences (see fig. 5 in [1]). This, if you contrast it with
the case when you try to craft packets whose replies (coming from
intra-domain sources) will always generate misses in the xTR under attack.

If the attack intensity (attack packet rate to legitimate traffic rate
ratio) is high, say above 0.01, you are right to assume that such an attack
could cripple an xTR and generate lots of misses. However, as we mention in
the paper, some simple solutions could be set in place to avoid this. For
instance:

1) When the attack is detected (due to the higher than normal miss rate),
the most important entries in the cache, the most popular (say, Google, Fb,
Amazon ..) can be protected from eviction. Thereby, on the one hand, set up
flows won't have their entries evicted and on the other, this set of
entries will ensure that a very large part of the new outgoing flows will
cache hit.

2) Just add more memory! Besides the TCAM in the xTR we could use a large
second level memory able to cache the whole EID address space.
Alternatively, you could imagine having an xTR per site, capable of holding
the whole EID address space, that could act as default for packets that
miss in all the other sub-provisioned xTRs.

[1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.1378v2.pdf

Florin


On 05/28/2014 12:45 AM, Ronald Bonica wrote:
Hi Paul,

The attack scenario that I envision is slightly different from the on that
you describe below:

- LISP is widely deployed. Tens of thousands of XTRs are deployed
world-wide. The mapping system data base contains hundreds of thousands of
EID prefixes.
- The attack stream is large
- Each packet in the attack stream has a unique source LOC
- All packets in the attack stream have the same destination LOC. This LOC
represents the XTR under attack.
- Each packet in the attack stream has a destination EID that will cause
it to reach a valid destination (i.e., a destination that will respond).
However, all packets in the attack stream don't have the same destination.
The attack stream is spread out across multiple valid EID destinations to
make it less detectable.
- Each packet in the attack stream has a carefully chosen source EID. It
is chosen to maximize the ratio of attack packets to map-requests.

One attack stream attacks an XTR. Multiple simultaneous attacks against
multiple XTRs can DoS the mapping system, itself.

A PxTR probably won't generate this attack stream. However, an attack tool
might.

Hope this helps.

                                                              Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Vinciguerra [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2014 3:28 PM
To: Ronald Bonica; Joel M. Halpern; Damien Saucez
Cc: Roger Jorgensen; LISP mailing list list
Subject: RE: [lisp] Restarting last call on LISP threats

Every host on the Internet is subject to a DoS attack.  An xTR is no more
so.  I
am also not clear on how a DoS attack on an xTR would create any more risk
than an attack directly against the mapping system.

Joel describes Ronald's scenario of an attack where a large stream of
packets
with different inner source addresses to an ETR.  I don't call this an
attack.  I
call this our steady-state.  These would be the PxTR's we operate across
the
US.  The PxTR's on the beta-network are no different.  We take in packets
from anywhere.  This is a "Free" attacker if you will.  All that really
means is
that you do not have to incur the computational cost of encapsulating the
packet.

I would defer to Dino and others on the list, but I do not believe that
the ETR
does a reverse lookup on every packet.  At least that is not the behavior
we
observe.  What we see happen is that the packet is decapsulated and sent
to
the destination.  If a valid destination host responds, then the ITR does
a
map-request for the reply packet.  There is not a 1:1 relationship between
the number of packets and the number of map-requests.

Map-replies for IP addresses return prefixes. These prefixes can cover
larger
address spaces than the map-request and limit the number of future map-
requests needed.

Can you provide more specific details on how you see the xTR rendering the
mapping system unusable?

For what its worth, I still support the decision for last call and not to
place
mitigations within the document.  Without knowing the specifics of a
configuration and implementation, that just leads to a false sense of
security.


________________________________________
From: lisp [[email protected]] on behalf of Ronald Bonica
[[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2014 11:57 AM
To: Joel M. Halpern; Damien Saucez
Cc: Roger Jorgensen; LISP mailing list list
Subject: Re: [lisp] Restarting last call on LISP threats

Inline.....

-----Original Message-----
From: Joel M. Halpern [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2014 11:47 AM
To: Ronald Bonica; Damien Saucez
Cc: Roger Jorgensen; LISP mailing list list
Subject: Re: [lisp] Restarting last call on LISP threats

Top posting to make sure I am understanding:

You asssert that any xTR is subject to a DoS attack.  And that such a
DoS attack can render the mapping system unusable.
[RPB]
Exactly!

It targeting an ITR, this would need to be from within ths cope the ITR
serves.
[RPB]
I don't understand this sentence. Please try again.

I believe that is discussed.
[RPB]
Given that I don't understand the sentence above, I have no idea if this
sentence is true.

If I have connected the dots correctly, the attack you are
contemplating is sending a large stream of packets with different
inner source addresses to an ETR.  This would prompt the ETR to check
with the mapping system about each and every address.
[RPB]
Exactly!

If I have understood this properly, while there are several very
effective mitigations, that does not change the basic message that
this is an attack, and as such ought to be described in the threats
document.
[RPB]
Even if there are effective mitigations, the attack should be described.

However, I am not convinced that an effective mitigation exists.

    There are clealry a number of variations on this attack.
[RPB]
True!

    For example, using
the same outer source address makes mitigation easier, while using
different outer source addresses either requires a bot-net or a large
unchecked BCP38 hole (and those can be used for MANY attacks on many
systems.)  Both presumably should be described.
[RPB]
Yes, both should be described.

Also, recall that large BCP38 holes exist in today's internet.

Have I captured your request accurately?
[RPB]
Pretty much.

Thanks for taking the effort.

                      Ron

Yours,
Joel

On 5/26/14, 1:06 AM, Ronald Bonica wrote:
*From:*Damien Saucez [mailto:[email protected]]
*Sent:* Friday, May 23, 2014 9:07 AM
*To:* Ronald Bonica
*Cc:* Dino Farinacci; Roger Jorgensen; LISP mailing list list
*Subject:* Re: [lisp] Restarting last call on LISP threats

Hello Ronald,

On 22 May 2014, at 22:57, Ronald Bonica <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:



      Dino,

      Today's Internet is not as fragile as you think. This mail
traversed
      many routers between my house and yours. If those routers are
      well-managed, there is nothing that I can do from my house that
will
      cause any of those routers to consume control plane resources.
      Therefore, there is nothing that I can do from my house that will
      cause a DoS attack against those routers' control planes.

We tend to disagree with that, for example you have ICMP today...

*/[RPB] Because ICMP is susceptible to DoS attacks, it wouldn't make
a very good routing protocol. That's why we don't use it for
routing. By contrast, LISP map-request messages are susceptible to
DoS attacks and they do carry routing information./*



      In LISP, separation between the forwarding and control plane is
      lost. As a matter of course, forwarding plane activity causes
      control plane activity. Since forwarding plane bandwidth exceeds
      control plane bandwidth, DoS attacks against the control plane are
      possible.

      In order to be complete, the threats document must describe the DoS
      threat. It should also describe mitigations, if any exist.

DoS is already explained and the definition given:

" A Denial of Service (DoS) attack aims at disrupting a specific

      targeted service either by exhausting the resources of the
victim up

      to the point that it is not able to provide a reliable service
to

      legit traffic and/or systems or by exploiting vulnerabilities to
make

      the targeted service unable to operate properly.

"

is covering the case you mention.

*/[RPB] /*

*/You might want to add the following details to section 5.2:/*

*//*

-A DoS attack can be launched by anybody who can send a packet to
the XTR's LOC

-DoS attacks can render an XTR inoperable

-DDoS attacks can render the mapping system inoperable.

This is what differentiates LISP from today's routing system.

                                         Ron

Damien Saucez




Ron



          -----Original Message-----
          From: Dino Farinacci [mailto:[email protected]]
          Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 6:58 PM
          To: Ronald Bonica
          Cc: Roger Jorgensen; [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
          Subject: Re: [lisp] Restarting last call on LISP threats


              The attacker sends a flow of crafted packets to the victim
              XTR. Each packet

          is a well-formed LISP data packet. It contains:


              - an outer IP header (LOC->LOC)
              - a UDP header
              - a LISP Header
              - an IP header (EID->EID)
              - payload


          Just like a regular packet I can send to your home router
today.
          So yes okay.
          So let's continue. See comments below.


              Each packet contains control plane information that is new
              to the victim


          Be more specific about what control information are in these
          encapsulated
          packets.


              XTR. For example, the victim XTR has no mapping information
              regarding

          either the source LOC or source EID prefix. Rather than
gleaning
          this mapping
          information from the crafted packet, the victim XTR sends a
          verifying MAP-
          REQUEST to the mapping system.


              Assume that the attack flow is large (N packets per
second).
              Assume also

          that the XTRs rate limit for MAP-REQUEST messages is less than
N
          packets
          per second. Has the attack not effectively DoS'd the victim
XTR?

          It caches the rate the rate the packets are coming in and
          eventually stops
          sending Map-Requests completely.

          It cannot stop the incoming rate of packets today just like a
          roque BGP
          attacker can send millions of packets per second to a peer
          regardless if it
          does or does not have the peer authentication key.


              To make this attack work, every packet in the attack flow
              may need to have

          a unique, spoofed, source LOC.

          An implementation can detect that after rate limiting 1000s of
          such requests
          are happening that it just stops operation.

          What if I sent a Juniper 20 million routes today?

          The Internet is very fragile and LISP IS NOT making it worse.
          And in some
          cases it is making it better with integrated techniques.

          Dino


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