One document matched: draft-ietf-grow-blackholing-02.xml
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<rfc category="info" docName="draft-ietf-grow-blackholing-02">
<front>
<title>BLACKHOLE BGP Community for Blackholing</title>
<author fullname="Thomas King" initials="T." surname="King">
<organization>DE-CIX Management GmbH</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Lichtstrasse 43i</street>
<city>Cologne</city>
<code>50825</code>
<country>Germany</country>
</postal>
<email>thomas.king@de-cix.net</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Christoph Dietzel" initials="C." surname="Dietzel">
<organization>DE-CIX Management GmbH</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Lichtstrasse 43i</street>
<city>Cologne</city>
<code>50825</code>
<country>Germany</country>
</postal>
<email>christoph.dietzel@de-cix.net</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Job Snijders" initials="J." surname="Snijders">
<organization abbrev="NTT">NTT Communications, Inc.</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Theodorus Majofskistraat 100</street>
<code>1065 SZ</code>
<city>Amsterdam</city>
<country>NL</country>
</postal>
<email>job@ntt.net</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Gert Döring" initials="G." surname="Döring">
<organization>SpaceNet AG</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14</street>
<city>Munich</city>
<code>80807</code>
<country>Germany</country>
</postal>
<email>gert@space.net</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Greg Hankins" initials="G." surname="Hankins">
<organization>Nokia</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>777 E. Middlefield Road</street>
<city>Mountain View</city>
<region>CA</region>
<code>94043</code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<email>greg.hankins@nokia.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<date month="July" year="2016" />
<abstract>
<t>
This document describes the use of a well-known Border Gateway
Protocol (BGP) community for destination based blackholing in
IP networks. This well-known advisory transitive BGP community,
namely BLACKHOLE, allows an origin AS to specify that a
neighboring network should discard any traffic destined towards
the tagged IP prefix.
</t>
</abstract>
<note title="Requirements Language">
<t>
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in <xref target="RFC2119" />
only when they appear in all upper case. They may also appear
in lower or mixed case as English words, without normative
meaning.
</t>
</note>
</front>
<middle>
<section anchor="intro" title="Introduction">
<t>
Network infrastructures have been increasingly hampered by DDoS
attacks. In order to dampen the effects of these DDoS attacks,
IP networks have offered BGP blackholing to neighboring
networks via various mechanisms such as described in
<xref target=" RFC3882" /> and <xref target="RFC5635" />.
</t>
<t>
DDoS attacks targeting a certain IP address may cause
congestion of links used to connect to other networks. In order
to limit the impact of such a scenario on legitimate traffic,
networks adopted a mechanism called BGP blackholing. A network
that wants to trigger blackholing needs to understand the
triggering mechanism adopted by its neighboring networks.
Different networks provide different mechanisms to trigger
blackholing, including but not limited to pre-defined blackhole
next-hop IP addresses, specific BGP communities or via an
out-of-band BGP session with a special BGP speaker.
</t>
<t>
Having several different mechanisms to trigger blackholing in
different networks makes it an unnecessarily complex,
error-prone and cumbersome task for network operators.
Therefore a well-known <xref target="RFC1997">BGP
community</xref> is defined for operational ease.
</t>
<t>
Having such a well-known BGP community for blackholing also
supports networks because:
<list style='symbols'>
<t> implementing and monitoring blackholing becomes easier
when implementation and operational guides do not cover
many options that trigger blackholing.
</t>
<t> the number of support requests from customers about how
to trigger blackholing in a particular neighboring
network will be reduced as the codepoint for common
blackholing mechanisms is unified.
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
Making it considerably easier for network operators to utilize
blackholing makes operations easier.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="attribute" title="BLACKHOLE Attribute">
<t>
This document defines the use of a new well-known BGP transitive community,
BLACKHOLE.
</t>
<t>
The semantics of this attribute allow a network to interpret
the presence of this community as an advisory qualification to drop
any traffic being sent towards this prefix.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="recommendation" title="Operational Recommendations">
<section anchor="morespecific" title="IP Prefix Announcements with BLACKHOLE Community Attached">
<t>
When a network is under DDoS duress, it MAY announce an IP
prefix covering the victim's IP address(es) for the purpose
of signaling to neighboring networks that any traffic
destined for these IP address(es) should be discarded. In
such a scenario, the network operator SHOULD attach
BLACKHOLE BGP community.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="scope" title="Local Scope of Blackholes">
<t>
A BGP speaker receiving a BGP announcement tagged with the
BLACKHOLE BGP community SHOULD add a NO_ADVERTISE,
NO_EXPORT or similar community to prevent propagation of
this route outside the local AS.
</t>
<t>
Unintentional leaking of more specific IP prefixes to
neighboring networks can have adverse effects. Extreme
caution should be used when purposefully propagating IP
prefixes tagged with the BLACKHOLE BGP community outside
the local routing domain.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="small" title="Accepting Blackholed IP Prefixes">
<t>
It has been observed that announcements of IP prefixes
larger than /24 for IPv4 and /48 for IPv6 are usually not
accepted on the Internet (see <xref
target="RFC7454">section 6.1.3</xref>). However,
blackhole routes should be as small as possible in order to
limit the impact of discarding traffic for adjacent IP
space that is not under DDoS duress.
Typically, the blackhole route's prefix length is as
specific as /32 for IPv4 and /128 for IPv6.
</t>
<t>
BGP speakers SHOULD only accept and honor BGP announcements
carrying the BLACKHOLE community if the announced prefix is
covered by a shorter prefix for which the neighboring
network is authorized to advertise.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="vendor" title="Vendor Implementation Recommendations">
<t>
Without an explicit configuration directive set by the
operator, network elements SHOULD NOT discard traffic
destined towards IP prefixes which are tagged with the
BLACKHOLE BGP community. The operator is expected to
explicitly configure the network element to honor the
BLACKHOLE BGP community in a way that is compliant with the
operator's routing policy.
</t>
<t>
Vendors MAY provide a short-hand keyword in their
configuration language to reference the well-known
BLACKHOLE BGP community attribute value. The suggested
string to be used is "blackhole".
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="iana" title="IANA Considerations">
<t>
The IANA is requested to register BLACKHOLE as a well-known BGP community with global significance:
<list>
<t>
BLACKHOLE (= 0xFFFF029A)
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
The low-order two octets in decimal are 666, amongst network
operators a value commonly associated with BGP blackholing.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="security" title="Security Considerations">
<t>
BGP contains no specific mechanism to prevent the unauthorized
modification of information by the forwarding agent. This
allows routing information to be modified, removed, or false
information to be added by forwarding agents. Recipients of
routing information are not able to detect this modification.
Also, <xref target="RFC6810">RPKI</xref> and <xref
target="I-D.ietf-sidr-bgpsec-overview">BGPSec</xref> do not
fully resolve this situation. For instance, BGP communities
can still be added or altered by a forwarding agent even if
RPKI and BGPSec are in place.
</t>
<t>
The unauthorized addition of the BLACKHOLE BGP community to an
IP prefix by an adversery may cause a denial of service attack
based on denial of reachability.
</t>
<t>
In order to further limit the impact of unauthorized BGP
announcements carrying the BLACKHOLE BGP community, the
receiving BGP speaker SHOULD verify by applying strict
filtering (see <xref target="RFC7454">section 6.2.1.1.2.</xref>)
that the peer announcing the prefix is authorized to do so. If
not, the BGP announcement should be filtered out.
</t>
</section>
</middle>
<back>
<references title="Normative References">
<?rfc include="reference.RFC.1997"?>
<?rfc include="reference.RFC.2119"?>
</references>
<references title="Informative References">
<?rfc include="reference.RFC.3882"?>
<?rfc include="reference.RFC.5635"?>
<?rfc include="reference.RFC.6810"?>
<?rfc include="reference.RFC.7454"?>
<?rfc include="reference.I-D.ietf-sidr-bgpsec-overview"?>
</references>
<section anchor="acknowledgements" title="Acknowledgements">
<t>
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge many people
who have contributed discussions and ideas to the making of
this proposal. They include Petr Jiran, Yordan Kritski,
Christian Seitz, Nick Hilliard, Joel Jaeggli, Christopher
Morrow, Thomas Mangin, Will Hargrave, Niels Bakker and David
Farmer.
</t>
</section>
</back>
</rfc>
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