That’s a big improvement, Éric. Thanks!

> On Feb 12, 2021, at 10:31 AM, Eric Vyncke (evyncke) <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Ted,
>  
> As you guessed in your email : we, the authors, do not want to prevent 
> multi-homing ;-)  E.g., we already have several ‘do not apply in all cases’ 
> for several mitigation techniques include the RA-guard one for obvious reason.
>  
> Just to be clear, we have used your suggestion to modify the abstract and add 
> an applicability statement in a -24 version (yet to be published). We would 
> appreciate it if you reviewed the proposed change below.
>  
> --- start of abstract ---
>    Knowledge and experience on how to operate IPv4 securely is
>    available: whether it is the Internet or an enterprise internal
>    network.  However, IPv6 presents some new security challenges.  RFC
>    4942 describes the security issues in the protocol, but network
>    managers also need a more practical, operations-minded document to
>    enumerate advantages and/or disadvantages of certain choices.
>  
>    This document analyzes the operational security issues associated
>    with several types of network and proposes technical and procedural
>    mitigation techniques.  This document is only applicable to managed
>    networks, such as enterprise building networks.  The recommendations
>    in this document are not applicable to residential user cases, even
>    in cases where a Service Provider may be managing the home gateway.
>  
> --- end of abstract ---
>  
> --- start of applicability statement (sub-section of introduction) ---
> 1.1.  Applicability Statement
>  
>    This document is applicable to managed networks, i.e., when the
>    network is operated by the user organization itself.  Indeed, many of
>    the recommended mitigation techniques must be configured with the
>    detailed knowledge of the network (which are the default router,
>    which are the switch trunk ports, etc.).  This covers Service
>    Provider (SP), enterprise networks and some knowledgeable-home-user-
>    managed residential network.  This applicability statement especially
>    applies to Section 2.3 and Section 2.5.4.
>  
>    For example, an exception to the generic recommendations of this
>    document is when a residential or enterprise network is multi-homed.
>  
>  
> --- end of applicability statement (sub-section of introduction) ---
>  
> Regards
>  
> -éric
>  
> From: Ted Lemon <[email protected]>
> Date: Tuesday, 9 February 2021 at 16:59
> To: Eric Vyncke <[email protected]>
> Cc: Merike Kaeo <[email protected]>, Kiran Kumar Chittimaneni 
> <[email protected]>, Enno Rey <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" 
> <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [OPSEC] Iotdir early review of draft-ietf-opsec-v6-21
>  
> Éric, to be clear, your latest changes do not successfully address my 
> comments. For example, you talk about a managed ISP router, and say that it’s 
> okay for such a router to do all kinds of blocking on the home network. It’s 
> not—what does the ISP know of the home network? How is the ISP qualified to 
> set security and reachability policy on the home network?
>  
> This will cause major operational problems. Any network on which this is 
> deployed will break stub networks, such as are used by the HomePod Mini and 
> Google’s Nest gateway to provide reachability to Thread networks.
>  
> The text that I think you added to address my concerns is this:
>  
>    The residential users case assumes a managed ISP CPE
>    device.  Some very specific types of networks such as the Internet of
>    Things (IoT) and unmanaged home networks are not discussed in this
>    document.
>  
> This is not helping. The text should read this way:
>  
>    This document is only applicable to managed networks, such as enterprise
>    building networks. The recommendations in this document are not applicable
>    to residential user cases, even in cases where an ISP may be managing the
>    home gateway.
>  
> If you really want this to apply to the ISP-managed home network router, it 
> should only be in the case where the ISP is providing a value-added 
> service—where the home user is actually paying for a person to manage their 
> network, not just to have an ISP-owned router that maybe gets regular 
> firmware updates and some centrally-managed malware site blocking. If you 
> were to address this use case (which I think is really unnecessary), this 
> document needs to talk about what an ISP would have to do to avoid creating 
> interop problems for IoT networks in the home. This needs to be very explicit 
> and needs to be mentioned in the sections where you talk about RA filtering 
> and ND filtering.
>  
> Sorry to be a sticky wicket, but I am afraid I failed to fully communicate 
> the seriousness of this problem back in 2019.
>  
> Also, I don’t mean to minimize the problem you are trying to address. I’m 
> just saying that we don’t have the technology to address it right now, and 
> trying to address it on an effectively unmanaged network with existing 
> technology will create serious interoperability problems.
>  
> In addition to the IoT stub networks issue, following this document on a home 
> network would also eliminate multi-homing, which I hope is not something that 
> we are proposing to do.
> 
> 
>> On Feb 9, 2021, at 8:04 AM, Eric Vyncke (evyncke) <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>  
>> Ted,
>> 
>> Just to confirm that the revision -23 should have all your review items 
>> addressed except the 3 cited by Merike.
>> 
>> The section 2.3.2 has been revised extensively.
>> 
>> Thank you again for this review
>> 
>> -éric
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Merike Kaeo <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>>
>> Date: Thursday, 5 December 2019 at 20:13
>> To: Ted Lemon <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>, Eric Vyncke 
>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>, Kiran Kumar Chittimaneni 
>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>, Enno Rey 
>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
>> Cc: <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
>> Subject: Re: [OPSEC] Iotdir early review of draft-ietf-opsec-v6-21
>> 
>>    Hello Ted.
>> 
>>    Very much appreciate the thorough review of the document.  All 4 authors 
>> agree with most of your comments which will be incorporated
>>    in the next revision (also includes the discussion between yourself, Gyan 
>> and Suresh re DHCPv6).  For the comment re  section 2.3.2 and
>>    RAs,  can you point us to the relevant specifications for the TBR (Threat 
>> Boarder Route) so that we can come up with a potential addition that 
>> discusses the (non-) applicability of RA for certain scenarios?
>> 
>>    For 3 comments the authors want to preserve the existing language for 
>> reasons stated below.
>> 
>>    2.1.1 on ULA: The very first draft had some specific language on ULA use 
>> and the topic of ULAs has been a major contention area to get to working 
>> group last call.  Some individuals felt for years that the discussion on ULA 
>> should be to state that they are not required and not recommended while 
>> others wanted to be more explicit on recommended language *if* ULAs are 
>> used.  The current language on ULAs reflects working group rough consensus 
>> after many iterations of language.  Te authors would recommend that the 
>> language not be changed at this point.
>> 
>>    2.1.7 re /64s.  The section references rfc8273 and the working group felt 
>> that re-iterating even in more detail that work, which provides the added 
>> context, was not necessary in the document itself
>> 
>>    Last comment on Isolation of Networks -  While we did not discuss varying 
>> network configurations, usually more explicit details are provided in the 
>> rfcs we reference.  rfc8273 referenced in Section 2.1.7 and rfc7721 
>> referenced in section 2.1.8 are some examples.
>> 
>>    - merike
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> ---
>>> 
>>> The document doesn't talk about its intended audience.  It appears to be the
>>> case based on my reading of it that the intended audience is enterprise
>>> operators and similar.  This should be stated clearly and explicitly.  Some 
>>> of
>>> the advice in this document would be actively harmful if deployed on an
>>> unmanaged network (e.g. in a home).  That doesn't mean that the document is
>>> bad—just that it needs to be scoped appropriately.   I would suggest adding 
>>> a
>>> brief statement of applicability in the abstract and a more detailed
>>> explanation in the introduction.  It is important that this statement make
>>> clear that the advice in this document must not be followed by implementers 
>>> of
>>> home routers and similar devices.   E.g., this advice would utterly break a
>>> Thread (IPv6 over 802.15.4 mesh) Border Router.
>>> 
>>> It's also not clear that this document lives up to its abstract.   The 
>>> abstract
>>> says:
>>> 
>>>  This document analyzes the operational security issues in several
>>>  places of a network (enterprises, service providers and residential
>>>  users) and proposes technical and procedural mitigations techniques.
>>> 
>>> And yet if you look for example at section 2.1.1, there is no actual 
>>> analysis
>>> of the use of ULAs, nor is any advice on their use provided.
>>> 
>>> Section 2.1.4 doesn't mention using DHCP to provide hosts with obfuscated
>>> address that, since known to the operator, can be added to filter lists as
>>> appropriate, while still making probing mathematically challenging to an
>>> outside attacker.
>>> 
>>> Section 2.1.6 incorrectly implies that DHCPv4 binds IP addresses to 
>>> link-layer
>>> addresses.  This is not true.  I don't know that it really matters, but 
>>> since
>>> it's not true, you should fix it.  DHCPv4 uses a "client identifier," which 
>>> is
>>> quite similar to a DUID.  If no client identifier is offered, then the
>>> link-layer address is used, but this is not required, and the behavior
>>> described for DUIDs in this document is also applicable to client 
>>> identifiers.
>>> 
>>> 2.1.7 seems to be continuing a thought that was started in 2.1.4.  It would 
>>> be
>>> worth stating that explicitly, and comparing and contrasting these 
>>> approaches.
>>> 
>>> Although the abstract explicitly excludes applicability to IoT networks, the
>>> advice in this document will necessarily be taken as applicable in 
>>> situations
>>> where IoT networks are leaf networks or even infrastructure that is present
>>> alongside the networks that _are_ covered by this document.  This has some
>>> specific impacts that aren't talked about here and should be.   For 
>>> instance,
>>> Manufacturer Usage Descriptions (MUD) are not mentioned, and should be.   
>>> MUD
>>> is applicable to infrastructure devices and really any special-purpose 
>>> device;
>>> e.g., MUD would be highly appropriate for use in hospital environments where
>>> many devices are connected to the network that absolutely must have their
>>> accessibility controlled; MUD is a good candidate for doing this.   The
>>> omission of this approach from section 2,1 is a major gap, since the issues
>>> discussed in section 2.1 directly impact the feasibility of using MUD (since
>>> MUD specifies firewall behavior for devices, and devices are necessarily
>>> identified by source address).
>>> 
>>> The conclusion I'm drawing having gotten to the end of section 2.1, in 
>>> addition
>>> to what I've said above, is that some of the issues introduced in 
>>> subsections
>>> of section 2.1, like filterability of host addresses, really belong in the
>>> initial section 2.1 introduction, so that the subsections of 2.1 can refer 
>>> back
>>> and give the reader a coherent picture, rather than requiring the reader to
>>> synthesize this as they read through the subsections.
>>> 
>>> Section 2.3.2 talks about the threat of a MITM attack through the use of 
>>> forged
>>> RAs, but doesn't actually describe how prevalent such on-link attacks are 
>>> (this
>>> would be an on-link attack) nor does it talk about how such an on-link 
>>> attack
>>> would be more effective than an attack the attacker could do without this
>>> capability.  Without a threat model, this is somewhat hypothetical.
>>> 
>>> Section 2.3.2 goes on to talk at length about how to make RA Guard work,
>>> without talking about when it is useful, what attacks it prevents, and what
>>> problems it causes when deployed incorrectly.  We have actually run into
>>> serious problems working on the Thread Border Router specification because 
>>> of
>>> uncertainty about whether RA Guard may be present on a network to which the 
>>> TBR
>>> is attached.  If it is, then the easiest way for the TBR to advertise
>>> reachability is gone, and we have to resort to bypasses such as ND Proxy,
>>> reverse NAT64, NAT66, or tunnels, just in order to ensure reachability of 
>>> the
>>> leaf network.
>>> 
>>> I think it's actively harmful to recommend the use of RA guard without 
>>> talking
>>> about the problems it causes and how to mitigate them.  This section should
>>> explicitly say that RA guard should never be enabled by default: it should 
>>> be
>>> the case that the operator enables it explicitly, and that in cases where 
>>> there
>>> is no operator with the authority to set routing policy for a link, RA guard
>>> should not be used on that link.
>>> 
>>> SAVI is another extremely useful technology that can't really be deployed
>>> automatically without creating similar problems.  To be clear, my goal here 
>>> is
>>> not to say that the document shouldn't recommend RA guard or SAVI, but 
>>> rather
>>> that it should be very clear about when to deploy it and when not to.
>>> 
>>> In section 2.3.5, what is a "generic operating system?"   I don't know what
>>> this term means.   Can you use a term with a clearer meaning?
>>> 
>>> One thing I didn't see discussed in section 2 that I think belongs there is 
>>> the
>>> concept of isolation of networks.  Networks that provide connectivity to
>>> general-purpose devices like phones and comouters may need to provide
>>> flexibility of addressing for privacy reasons.  Infrastructure devices,
>>> particularly those for which MUD is applicable, may need to be on networks
>>> where filtering is present and addressing is tightly controlled.  There's no
>>> discussion fo this kind of separation in the document, and I think it's a
>>> serious gap.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> OPSEC mailing list
>>> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/opsec
>>> 

_______________________________________________
OPSEC mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/opsec

Reply via email to