In order to avoid contacting a spoofed database, a client has to check the 
identity of it. Assuming we use certs, that means that the client has to be 
able to authenticate the db based on its cert (this is currently requirement 
P.6, P.12), but it may also need to check if that cert is valid, so OCSP may 
also be needed (requirement P.13).

It seems to me that you would require the above requirements to make sure you 
avoid talking with a spoofed database, but you may not necessarily require the 
message exchanges be encrypted; integrity protection may be  necessary though, 
as you want to make sure the answer from db is not modified by a mitm.

If that is the case, then we would keep requirements P.6, P.12, P.13 and remove 
integrity protection from requirement P.5

Is my understanding correct?

- Gabor


-----Original Message-----
From: ext Peter Stanforth [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 3:41 PM
To: Patil Basavaraj (Nokia-CIC/Dallas); Bajko Gabor (Nokia-CIC/SiliconValley); 
[email protected]
Subject: Re: [paws] next steps for the wg

This comment is a compound response to the "Security between the database and 
the white space radio".
I have always believed that there is little reason to need to trust the radio - 
after all if it was going to do something malicious or illegal why would it 
even contact the database and request a channel list. In addition the impact of 
a single rouge radio is fairly limited. However the implications of a spoofed 
database that provides "all channels available everywhere" in response to 
channel queries could be catastrophic.  I  am finding it hard to evaluate this 
requirement, and the previous requirements in isolation. I think it would be 
better to consider the various threat levels and then decide how to provide 
reasonable protection against them in a comprehensive way.

On TueJan/17/12 Tue Jan 17, 6:14 PM, "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
>Gabor,
>
>On 1/12/12 8:26 PM, "ext [email protected]" <[email protected]>
>wrote:
>
>>P.13:  A master device MUST be capable of checking the validity of
>>             the WS Database certificate and whether it has been revoked
>>             or not.
>>
>>Note, P.13 requires support for OCSP (RFC2560) in the client, I am not 
>>sure if that is needed, please send your opinions.
>>
>
>
>If certificate based authentication is used by the protocol, then there 
>would be a need to mandate the above requirement. But at this time we 
>have no visibility about the authentication protocol to be used between 
>the master device and the WS database. So it is premature to specify 
>the above requirement. Hence I would favor dropping this requirement.
>
>-Raj
>
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