There is a value in not making cleartext versions of services
available though - I've personally seen a number of cases where
http:// URLs were sent via mail with instructions to login at
that URL using e.g. a datatracker or tools login. Yes, that ought
not happen (https:// URLs should be sent), but it does happen
and will so long as the http:// URLs work, and it'd be naive of
us to assume that everyone sending out such mails would be aware
that doing so isn't a good plan.
Your problem is with the servers, not the users.
that can be addressed by server-side redirection from http:// to https://
whever a login is required. Either a 301 permanent redirect, or a 401
unauthorised. A number of other services already do this.
Indeed, as an example
http://datatracker.ietf.org/accounts/login/?next=/
autoredirects to
https://datatracker.ietf.org/accounts/login/?next=/
lynx will report 'access without authorisation denied, retrying' ie 401
So the http urls still 'work' but the considered-necessary level
of security is imposed without requiring the users to know the
difference in the URL. Transparent 'upgrade', if you like. What
is sent in mail - http or https - does not matter.
Whether you can trust DNS (whatever happened to the trailing dot,
anyone? You'd think that would be widespread) is another matter...
I'm not convinced that https is required to all material throughout
once past login. Certainly not to public drafts or published rfcs/minutes.
A couple of people expressed concern that this was a bit of a
"blanket statement,"
well, yes. That's perpass in a nutshell. "OMG never again, this
was fine after 9/11 for foreigners, but not to Americans!" etc.
Lastly, I'm heartbroken that Lloyd has sussed out my formerly
secret plan to try to take over the world;-)
In retrospect, your plans have always failed on their own merits.
In retrospect.
But why take chances?
Lloyd Wood
http://about.me/lloydwood
Lack of past performance is no guarantee of future failure.
________________________________________
From: ietf [ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Stephen Farrell
[stephen(_dot_)farrell(_at_)cs(_dot_)tcd(_dot_)ie]
Sent: 06 April 2014 16:52
To: IETF-Discussion
Subject: Re: Security for various IETF services
As others have said, I think the questions posed have been
answered pretty much. I also got some good offlist wording
suggestions, the result of which is:
"The IETF is committed to providing secure and private
access to information via the web, mail, jabber and
other services. While most data on IETF services is
public, individual accesses to that data should be
kept private to the extent possible. However, as
there are numerous existing tools that have been built
that require access via cleartext, the IETF will
continue to allow such access so as not to break such
tooling. New services will however generally only be
made available in ways that use security protocols
such as TLS."
And just adding some stuff that's not been said before...
I agree that IETF services aren't the most sensitive in the
world, but think we all nonetheless win if we up the ante for
attackers of whatever kind when we reasonably can.
There is a value in not making cleartext versions of services
available though - I've personally seen a number of cases where
http:// URLs were sent via mail with instructions to login at
that URL using e.g. a datatracker or tools login. Yes, that ought
not happen (https:// URLs should be sent), but it does happen
and will so long as the http:// URLs work, and it'd be naive of
us to assume that everyone sending out such mails would be aware
that doing so isn't a good plan.
Using e.g. TLS for confidentiality also helps counter attacks
where cleartext HTTP cookies etc. are being used for monitoring
which has been shown to be the case. [1] IMO that's already a
good enough reason to turn on TLS or equivalent as much as
possible since most services will expose some similar
fingerprint when run in clear.
For those who expressed a wish for data origin authentication
over and above TLS server auth, that is already in place for
I-Ds. [2]
A couple of people expressed concern that this was a bit of a
"blanket statement," while that is true, the statement is not
absolutist, e.g. it says "generally" in the last sentence
which I think is about right.
A number of people made mechanism-specific points which were
mostly reasonable but of course we shouldn't put those in
this proposed iesg statement. One person said that e.g. this
statement should not be used to require client authentication
which is of course correct.
Someone mentioned having an IETF privacy policy for services
which sounds like a fine thing to me, and which is something
that I think Alissa has done a bit of work on in the past and
the IESG has chatted about resurrecting that. That is trickier
to get right though, and more work to get agreed, so not sure
if it'll happen.
Lastly, I'm heartbroken that Lloyd has sussed out my formerly
secret plan to try to take over the world;-) Ah well, I'll
just have to try again tomorrow.
S.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25333663
[2] https://www.ietf.org/id-info/idsignatures.html
On 04/03/2014 05:21 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
Hi all,
From time to time the issue of how to secure IETF services
comes up e.g. whether to turn on TLS for some IETF web server
or jabber or mail etc.
The most recent such was a request to turn on HSTS [1] for
the IETF web site, which I don't think we can do without
breaking old tools etc. Nonetheless we would like to turn
on things like TLS more often going forward as seemed to
me to be the outcome of a long thread on here late last
year.
So, the IESG are considering the following as an IESG
statement to offer some guidance about this:
"The IETF are committed to providing secure and privacy
friendly access to information via the web, mail, jabber
and other services. While most (but not all) data on IETF
services is public, nonetheless access to that data
should use best practices for security and privacy.
However, as there are numerous legacy tools that have been
built that require access via cleartext, the IETF will
continue to allow such access so as not to break such
tooling. New services will however generally only be made
available in ways that use security protocols such as
TLS."
If you have wordsmithing changes to suggest please just send
those to me or the iesg. More substantive comments should go
here I guess. I hope the only bit worth discussing (except
for the few folks who would rather we do none of this;-)
might be the last sentence.
A few weeks after any discussion here dies down I'll put the
resulting text on an IESG telechat for approval if that seems
like the right thing to do.
Thanks,
S
[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797