Hi Chris,

On Nov 20, 2011, at 10:35 PM, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 11:23 PM, Danny McPherson <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> Team,
>> I've updated this draft based on some feedback received already.  Given
>> the discussion at the WG session, and the list discussion as of late, I'd 
>> like
>> to ask that it become a WG item and used to inform the BGP Threat Model
>> document -- particularly with regards to what's an acceptable residual risk 
>> and
>> what is not.  Once that's comprehensive it can be used to inform secure 
>> routing
>> requirements documents in the working group, and then we can begin assessing
>> the feasibility of reducing various risks.
> 
> "The authors believe the capability to prevent leaks should be a      
> first-order engineering objective in any secure routing architecture."
> 
> So, in the simple scenario laid out, the customer is filtered by the
> isp's, no? and the filter data is built with something like:  take irr
> data, meld with rpki data, create filter-lists.
> 
> The rpki data gives the isps an ability to filter the customer
> announcements, which would stop the leaks. Is the thing you really
> want to outline in a draft the process to link the
> resource-certification data with the existing IRR data and create
> better prefix/as-path filters?

As the -01 draft states:
---snip---
  Discussion of out of band methods to mitigate this attack are beyond
  the scope of this document, as it's objective is to inform routing
  protocol design choices currently being considered within the IETF's
  SIDR Working Group.
---snip---


> I think one item that was asked for on the list (or perhaps in the
> meeting) was: How can you know a route you see is a leak?
> 
> Taken another way, in the case of your example:
> 
> victim - isp2 - attacker - isp1
> 
> how is the victim to know that this path isn't proper?
> what in the update says that?

That's the point.  :-)  At present, nothing being "secured" in the UPDATE, 
(specifically AS_PATH wrt BGPSec), will tell you that the UPDATE was sent 
through a legitimate control-plane path vs. an illegitimate control-plane path.

In today's networks, the means to control the propagation of a particular BGP 
route are through configuration of 'policy' locally on routers, (ASBR's/PE's), 
that look for a combination of /one or more/ _BGP_attributes_ in the BGP route 
itself to limit its propagation.  As one specific example, an operator of an AS 
typically configures their ingress ASBR's to assign a specific standard BGP 
community that says something like:
- this is a customer route;
- this is a peer route
(I would note that these BGP standard communities are 'local' to and only have 
meaning within the operator of their particular AS.  An operator should NOT or 
would NOT "trust" third-parties, e.g.: their customers or peers, to set and 
send these communities to them for lots of obvious reasons).

When a BGP route travels to that operator's egress ASBR's, the egress ASBR then 
has a locally configured policy that looks for the locally significant BGP 
community string that says: "this is a customer route", in which case the route 
is sent out of both peer & customer eBGP sessions.  OTOH, if the eBGP policy at 
the egress ASBR determines, based on the locally significant BGP community 
string assigned to a BGP route, "this is a peer route", the action in that 
locally configured policy at peer eBGP sessions is to drop (not announce 
outbound) that particular UPDATE; whereas, the action at customer eBGP sessions 
is to announce that UPDATE outbound.

Locally significant BGP communities + locally configured policy are just one 
method that could be used, but likely the most widely used.  Depending on the 
size of one's network other BGP Attributes + locally configured policy may be 
used.


> is there other data that could be used (outside of bgp) to tell the
> victim that the path is improper?

IMHO, and as I think Russ has pointed out, BGP was only (?) designed to express 
reachability, not to carry or forward _policy_.  At present, nothing in the BGP 
protocol disseminates _policy_[1].  Instead, policy to control propagation of 
BGP routing information is only known to routers via out-of-band configuration 
(through CLI or NETCONF), either manually or through automated methods.

-shane

[1] The only minor exception I can think of to this is the well-known NO_EXPORT 
or NO_ADVERTISE BGP communities.  However, those have an extremely limited 
scope -- specifically, both communities are only exchanged between _directly_ 
connected adjacent ASN's.  I would add that since BGPSec does not make any 
attempt to sign the BGP community Attribute, it follows that even in this most 
limited case BGPSec is not able to certify (authenticate?) that a given BGP 
route *should* or *should not* be propagated to AS'es 2+ hops away.  What if 
one stripped the NO_EXPORT or NO_ADVERTISE community off and re-announced that 
BGP route -- is that not considered a MiTM attack, just as bad (or, worse?) as 
fraudulently inserting one's self into the AS_PATH?
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