Kathleen,

> On May 2, 2016, at 7:48 PM, Manav Bhatia <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Kathleen,
> 
> DISCUSS:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This should be pretty easy to address.  In the security consideration
> section, the following recommendation appears:
> 
>  o  SBFDReflector MUST NOT look at the crypto sequence number before
>       accepting the packet.
> 
> Could you please add text to say what happens (what attacks are possible)
> if this is looked at?  There is nothing to stop the crypt sequence number
> from being looked at, right?  Is there a way to actually prevent that?
> 
> 
> SBFD is state-less. The SBFDReflector is NOT maintaining any BFD peer state, 
> and is thus incapable of doing the crypto-sequence checks. It has no idea of 
> last sequence number that it had seen from a BFD peer, and hence CANNOT 
> compare the new sequence number. Its for this reason that we mandate that the 
> reflectors MUST NOT look at the sequence numbers.
> 

Further to this, the SBFDReflector can be receiving S-BFD packets from multiple 
SBFDInitiators. Hence, the authentications can be used from BFD but not the 
sequence numbers.

> We cant prevent a peer from looking at the sequence number -- thats an 
> implementation specific issue. The implementation is violating the standard. 
> Not sure what we can do to prevent that.
> 
> Does this help?
> 

We could also explain the rational behind this requirement a bit better. Would 
that help?

Thanks,

— Carlos.

> Cheers, Manav
> 

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