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Re: draft-farrell-perpass-attack architecture issue

2014-01-13 15:13:15
On 1/13/2014 2:28 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:

NEW

    Those developing IETF specifications need to be able to describe how
    they have considered pervasive monitoring, and, if the attack is
    relevant to the work to be published, be able to justify related
    design decisions.  This does not mean a new "pervasive monitoring
    considerations" section is needed in IETF documentation.  It means
    that, if asked, there needs to be a good answer to the question "is
    pervasive monitoring relevant to this work and if so how has it been
    considered?"

    In particular, architectural decisions, including which existing
    technology is re-used, significantly impact the vulnerability of
    a protocol to pervasive monitoring.  For example, if a protocol
    uses DNS to store information, then a passive attacker can observe
    the queries made to the DNS. Those developing IETF specifications
    therefore need to consider mitigating pervasive monitoring when
    making these architectural decisions and be prepared to justify
    their decisions.  Getting adequate, early review of architectural
    decisions including whether appropriate mitigation of pervasive
    monitoring can be made is important.  Revisiting these architectural
    decisions late in the process is very costly.

I agree with others that the example probably needs work. Its not generic enough. If this is a BCP, that specific example can come back latter in debates as to what level of security/privacy needs to be considered, i.e. are we worry about storage (private data leaks) or the insecure transmission methods or both? So IMO, keeping it makes the argument for informational status stronger.


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HLS