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Network Working Group                                           JJ. Puig
Internet-Draft                                              January 2005
Expires: July 2, 2005


      Generic Security Requirements for Routing Protocols - Opened
                               Questions
               draft-puig-rpsec-rqts-opened-questions-01

Status of this Memo

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document introduces and presents problematics of the 'Generic
   Security Requirements for Routing Protocols' document.










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Table of Contents

   1.   Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.   Scope of the requirements document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.   General issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   4.   Threats  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   5.   Terms and concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   6.   Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   7.   Establishing the neighboring relationship  . . . . . . . . . . 5
   8.   Routing operations which have a strong incidence on
        security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   9.   Routing and time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   10.  Trust  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     10.1   Bootstrapping trust  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     10.2   Levels of trust  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     10.3   What do we do with dubious information ? . . . . . . . . . 7
     10.4   In-transit injections  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   11.  Edges coherence  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   12.  DOS prevention with token-based schemes  . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   13.  Reacting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   14.  Inter-domain specificities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   15.  Getting in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   16.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
        Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
        Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 9


























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1.  Introduction

   This document introduces and presents problematics of the 'Generic
   Security Requirements for Routing Protocols' document.

   This document's goal is to provide a quick start to -and a progress
   report of- the requirements document.  It also presents issues opened
   to discussion.

2.  Scope of the requirements document

   Several topics are related to routing security, among which:

   o  The routing protocol: this is what the requirements document is
      about.  This encompasses protocol's control and data planes
      protection (PDU protection, state machine, functions, data
      protection...).

   o  The routing system: where protection of the routing system is
      considered, routers which propagate the routing information may
      participate to the global security.  Routing protocol's security
      mechanisms may or may not participate to this security.

   o  The routing scheme: the way networks are described (prefixes) and
      the possible evolutions (supernetting) the descriptions may
      experience during operations of the routing protocol have a
      serious impact on security.  But which security ? Those of the
      protocol or those of the routing system ?

   o  The routing device: it's design may affect the routing protocol
      security.

   The relations between these topics should be considered with respect
   to the requirements document.  As an instance, the routing scheme is
   an important cause of the overclaiming threat; is security of the
   routing protocol those of a local instance or those of it's global
   operation within the routing system ? Etc.

   Currently, the requirements document may drift too much toward the
   routing device security; reviews are needed for feedback regarding
   this question.  There should be a noticeable reduction of local
   considerations in future versions.

3.  General issues

   Discussing generic requirements is difficult given current
   specialization of routing protocols.  Review is needed in order to
   appreciate whether current requirements are a correct trade-off with



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   respect to protocol scalability, to the transport subsystem
   (multicast...), etc.

   Of course, strength of requirements (MUSTs, SHOULDs, etc.) must also
   be discussed.

4.  Threats

   The requirements document presents a sorted list of threats, which
   set priorities on them for the development of the requirements.

   Is this approach correct ? Should this section be kept in the
   requirements doc ?

   Regarding the development of requirements, two paths may be followed:

   o  presenting requirements as opposed to threats

   o  presenting requirements as associated with the protection of
      functional parts of the routing protocol (transport subsystem,
      neighbor state maintenance, database maintenance).

   Currently, the requirements doc presents requirements as opposed to
   threats; another section presents protection of functional parts and
   refers to adequate ad-hoc requirements.

   This approach is opened for discussion.  Note the 'protection of the
   functional parts' path may be better adapted for non-generic,
   protocol-specific work.

   A future revision of this companion document should incorporate
   specific notes about specificities of some threats or functions.

5.  Terms and concepts

   Newcomers are invited to have a look at the terminology section of
   the requirements document.

   Parts of this section requires discussion, though.  Specifically, it
   should be decided if the definition of route correctness is
   appropriate.

   Previous versions of the requirements document divided routers into
   two categories: those which were actually participating to the
   routing protocol considered (named 'relayers') and those which were
   intervening as part of the transport subsystem processing (named
   'forwarders').  The terms were unclear, and the underlying concept
   appeared to be not quite necessary.



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   Previous versions of the requirements document had several paragraphs
   whose purpose was to deal with trust we may derive for paths.  As
   this is a difficult topic to address for routing protocols, this was
   discarded.  Discussion is needed in order to figure out if trust
   paradigms for paths should be addressed within the draft or not.

   Terminology section divides local routing operations into: routing
   function, routing decision, forwarding function.  Is this appropriate
   ?

6.  Identities

   A general assumption within the requirements document is that routers
   are associated with identities.  Furthermore, public cryptographic
   material is also associated with identities, which may be those of
   organizations or networks.

   Is there a need to develop on this topic ? Should the requirements
   document make statements regarding the identities allocation scheme ?

7.  Establishing the neighboring relationship

   The requirements document makes the general hypothesis that an
   out-of-the-routing-protocol mechanism allows for neighbors to
   recognize each-others during neighbors relationship establishment.

   Should the requirements document develop on this ? Should it state it
   very explicitly ?

8.  Routing operations which have a strong incidence on security

   Some routing protocol operations have a strong incidence on security.
   Precisely, the following operations threaten information
   traceability, and prevent routing protocols from building any form of
   transitive authority:

      Routes generalization / specialization (ex: through the prefix
      length)

      Aggregation (ex: BGP path aggregation)

      Filtering

   Current requirements do not prevent against any of these operations.
   Should we set requirements regarding these operations ?

   Regarding route generalization / specialization, another issue may be
   raised: which should take precedence ? As an instance, if prefix P1



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   is shorter than prefix P2, which should be re-advertised ? which
   should be installed ? should we consider that these pieces of
   information are not comparable and use both ? Should the address
   allocation scheme give a kind of legitimacy for some prefixes against
   some others ?

9.  Routing and time

   The requirements document introduces many limitations with regard to
   time validity of cryptographic material, cryptographic evidences and
   routing information.

   Cryptographic material and evidences are related and both have a
   limited lifetime.  The way this limitation is implemented is outside
   the scope of the requirements document.

   Routing information is not time-limited when flooded through the
   routing protocol messages.  However, it is recommended that routing
   information from which the local process can only derive a low level
   of trust will be inserted with an adequate lifetime in the routing
   database.  This way, a routing device may decide to discard a routing
   database entry with knowledge of the trust level, of other routes to
   similar or related destinations, of the age of the information.

   We need to discuss on whether these statements are appropriate or
   not.  Furthermore, do we need to address time granularity and
   elaborate on mechanisms ?

10.  Trust

10.1  Bootstrapping trust

   The requirements document assumes that trust starts with the
   verifiable knowledge of 'who owns what', 'who controls what', 'who is
   authorized to advertised what'.  By advertisers here are actually
   meant originators, even though one may imagine authorizations schemes
   for re-advertisements.  There are several points to discuss:

   o  Is the 'chain' approach relevant ? Note that the approach may map
      to offline or online schemes, in-band or out-band, hierarchic (as
      in PKIs) or non-hierarchic (as in web of trusts), on-demand or
      diffusion.

   o  Should it be worded differently, possibly in a section of it's own
      ?






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10.2  Levels of trust

   Given that routing information may not be entirely trusted when it is
   not learnt first-hand, that all participants may not be involved in a
   fully-trusting relationship, and that, on the other-hand, we may need
   to route to more destinations than the subset we can actually trust,
   use of heuristics to derive trust levels may be a requirement.  This
   should be discussed; may be this should also be presented in a
   stand-alone section.

10.3  What do we do with dubious information ?

   What should be done with routes whose trust level is unknown or low ?
   Currently, requirements state that installing these data is a local
   policy decision, and they should be installed with a limited
   lifetime.  One may also suggest that this data should only be used
   for the routing protocol operations, not for user traffic.

10.4  In-transit injections

   What's the value of an attribute injected by a propagator ? In other
   words, should we study how injection should affect the confidence
   associated with routing information ?

11.  Edges coherence

   Do routing incoherences at the boundary of a routing domain affect
   the security of routing protocols ? Should the requirements document
   discuss this ?

12.  DOS prevention with token-based schemes

   This topic was mentioned on the list some times ago.  As this is
   solution space, it should not be mentioned in the requirements.
   However, should they mention the need for a fast rejection mechanism
   ? Is there a need to elaborate ?

13.  Reacting

   Security mechanisms can not prevent all security issues.  As a
   consequence, should the requirements document express requirements
   regarding incidents detection and reactive / failback procedures ?

   Note that these affect the routing protocol in that, on one hand,
   design of the routing protocol may help for preventing further
   progression of damages and for recovering and, on the other hand,
   local procedures should be able to control the routing protocol
   accordingly.



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14.  Inter-domain specificities

   Inter-domain routing involves organizations which may have different
   interests in the network.  Political aspects of routing are greatly
   exacerbated in this context.  It is therefore much more difficult to
   determine who can be trusted.

   The requirements document make no statement about the architectural
   scheme which should support inter-domain routing security, even
   though the topic is discussed in a section of its own.

15.  Getting in

   People interested in participating are encouraged to read this
   document and at least the requirements document terminology.

   Further readings include other sections of the requirements document
   and the threats document.

   Requirements doc sources, versions and tagged versions can be found
   at: http://www-lor.int-evry.fr/~puig/rpsec-rqts/ .

16.  Security Considerations

   This draft is security related.  Specifically it summarizes opened
   questions with current work on the establishment of generic security
   requirements for routing protocols.


Author's Address

   Jean-Jacques Puig
   CNRS / UMR 5157 (Samovar) / Piece A-108
   9, Rue Charles Fourier
   Evry  91011
   France

   Phone: +33 1 60 76 44 65
   Fax:   +33 1 60 76 47 11
   EMail: jean-jacques.puig@int-evry.fr
   URI:   http://www-lor.int-evry.fr/~puig/










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