Hi, Brian,

The problem is, the master device cannot be authoritative on whether
the slave device is approved for use by the regulator.  It must rely
on the WSDB it uses (has a relationship with) to tell it.

At the least, we need a format for device identifiers that can be
understood by multiple independently operated databases.  Maybe the
WSDB trusts the master device to collect this information securely
from the slave devices using slave-to-master credentials.  Normally,
the allocation authority for the identifier space would be a trust
anchor for the identifier-to-device binding.  I agree that the
master-to-slave interface is out of scope, but there should be some
mechanism in the marketplace for the master device operator to
securely bind the identifier presented by the slave to the communication 
channel with the slave device, in the sense that the master device
is able to know in a secure way that the device it is talking to actually
does own the regulator-assigned device identifier.  It seems natural
for the master device to rely on its relationship with a database to
help with this binding.

-Pete

Rosen, Brian wrote:
> <As individual, and I should have said that on all of my messages on
> this thread> The credentialling system used between the database
> server and its client (the master) are those of its client.  The
> database trusts its client.
> 
> The client (the master) may need its customer, the slave, to present
> credentials for service.
> 
> This means we assume transitive trust on the ID information from the
> client.  The master validates the slave, the database validates the
> master.  I would not advocate trying to make anything more complex.
> 
> Brian
> 
> On Apr 18, 2012, at 11:16 AM, Peter McCann wrote:
> 
>> Right, the master queries the database on behalf of the slave, sending
>> the slave's Device ID and location.  (See Don's message about
>> validating the FCC ID).  My question is, what is the security model for
>> validating the slave's ID?  Is there a secure credential associated
>> with the ID, or is it an insecure check of a number against a
>> whitelist?  If the former, we will need a credential management system
>> that is able to cross between different databases.  If the latter, I
>> wonder if it opens up security problems.
>> 
>> -Pete
>> 
>> Rosen, Brian wrote:
>>> Perhaps I am confused, but I think in a master/slave environment, the
>>> slave does not query the database, the master does.  The slave gets
>>> its allowed spectrum data from the master.  There is always the
>>> question of whether the master queries on its own behalf and the
>>> slaves just get assignments within that database response, or whether
>>> the master queries on behalf of the slaves.  Might have to support
>>> both models. In many cases, I think it's the latter: the master
>>> queries using the slaves location and parameters.
>>> 
>>> The most common master/slave setup is tower and clients, right? The
>>> tower has an Internet connection and can query the database. The
>>> clients of the tower are the slaves.  Does the database query use the
>>> location and type data of the slave or the master?
>>> 
>>> Brian
>>> 
>>> On Apr 18, 2012, at 10:51 AM, Peter McCann wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I think it would be a mistake to assume that the slave & master
>>>> devices both have pre-existing relationships with the same database.
>>>> In a commercial service, the slave devices would all come from
>>>> different manufacturers and would certainly have different owners.
>>>> Wouldn't we want them to interoperate with any master device,
>>>> assuming they are RF-compatible?
>>>> 
>>>> -Pete
>>>> 
>>>> Rosen, Brian wrote:
>>>>> Doesn't the slave get it's database access through the master?
>>>>> If that's true, the problem you are worried about doesn't exist.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Brian
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Apr 18, 2012, at 10:37 AM, Peter McCann wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> I agree with Brian that LoST could be a good model for discovering
>>>>>> the appropriate database for the region you're in.  A nation may
>>>>>> decide to subdivide their territory into provinces or states, each
>>>>>> of which maintains its own database.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I think it would be a mistake to assume that there is a single,
>>>>>> pre-defined relationship for one device with just one database. In
>>>>>> particular, I think there is a thorny issue that will arise with
>>>>>> management of secure credentials on whitespace devices, illustrated
>>>>>> by the first use case in Section 4.2.1 of
>>>>>> draft-ietf-paws-problem-stmt-usecases-rqmts-03.  Step 9 of that use
>>>>>> case says:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 9.   Once the master/AP has met all regulatory domain
> requirements
>>>>>>      (e.g. validating the Device ID with the trusted database, etc)
>>>>>>      the master provides the list of channels locally available to
>>>>>>      the slave/user device.
>>>>>> My question is, what if the master device has a relationship with
>>>>>> one database, but the slave device has a relationship with another?
>>>>>> How is the master's database supposed to validate the credentials
>>>>>> of the slave device, if we don't have some sort of common trust
>>>>>> anchor? Or will this "validation" be simply an insecure check of an
>>>>>> ID against a whitelist/blacklist?  Who will allocate Device IDs?
>>>>>> Will they be specific to a particular database operator, or do we
>>>>>> need some common top-level allocation format?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -Pete
>>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> 
>>



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