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Concluded WG Multicast Security (msec)

Note: The data for concluded WGs is occasionally incorrect.

WG Name Multicast Security
Acronym msec
Area Security Area (sec)
State Concluded
Charter charter-ietf-msec-03 Approved
Document dependencies
Personnel Chairs Brian Weis, Vincent Roca
Area Director Sean Turner
Mailing list Address msec@ietf.org
To subscribe https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/msec
Archive https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/msec

Final Charter for Working Group

The purpose of the MSEC WG is to standardize protocols for securing
group communication over internets, and in particular over the global
Internet. Initial efforts will focus on scalable solutions for groups
with a single source and a very large number of recipients. Additional
emphasis will be put on groups where the data is transmitted via
IP-layer multicast routing protocols (with or without guaranteed
reliability). The developed standard will assume that each group has a
single trusted entity (the Group Controller) that sets the security
policy and controls the group membership. The standard will strive
to provide at least the following basic security guarantees:

  • Only legitimate group members will have access to current group
    communication. This includes groups with highly dynamic membership.

  • Legitimate group members will be able to authenticate the source
    and contents of the group communication. This includes cases where
    group members do not trust each other.

An additional goal of the standard will be to protect against
denial-of-service attacks, whenever possible.

Due to the large number of one-to-many multicast applications and the
sometimes conflicting requirements these applications exhibit, it is
believed that a single protocol will be unable to meet the requirements
of all applications. Therefore, the WG will first specify a general
Reference Framework that includes a number of functional building
blocks. Each such building block will be instantiated by one or more
protocols that will be interchanable. The Reference Framework will not
only describe one-to-many multicast, but also many-to-many multicast.

In addition, as a secondary goal the MSEC WG will also focus on
distributed architectures for group key management and group policy
management, where for scalability purposes multiple trusted entities
(such as Key Distributors) are deployed in a distributed fashion. For
this purpose, the Reference Framework will not only describe
one-to-many multicast, but also many-to-many multicast.

MSEC will generate at least the following documents, which could be
considered as base documents:

  1. An RFC describing the security requirements of multicast security
    and
    an RFC describing the MSEC Architecture.

  2. An RFC describing the Group Key Management Architecture and an RFC
    describing Group Policy Management Architecture in MSEC.

  3. Several RFCs describing specifications for protocols that implement
    source authentication, group key management and group policy
    management.
    As multicast security covers a broad range of issues, and therefore
    touches other Working Groups in the IETF, the MSEC WG will work closely
    with othersecurity-related Working Groups (e.g. IPsec, IPSP), as well
    as other Working Groups which maybe considered a 'consumer' of the
    technologies produced in the MSEC WG (e.g. AVT, MMUSIC) or which may
    have a multicast focus (e.g. PIM, RMT, IDRM, MAGMA).

With this in mind, the MSEC WG is open to receiving new work items,
whenever it is considered appropriate to be homed in the MSEC WG. Such
drafts will be matured in conjunction with the MSEC base documents.

Milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Sep 2007 WG re-charter for other work items or disband

Done milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Done WG Last Call on TESLA-Spec
Done WG Last Call on Multicast Extensions to IPsec
Done WG Last Call on MIKEY-RSA-R
Done WG Last Call on Bootstrapping TESLA
Done WG Last Call on The Use of TESLA in SRTP
Done WG Last call on Use of RSA/SHA-1 Signatures within ESP and AH
Done WG Last call on TESLA-Intro draft
Done WG Last Call on MSEC Security Requirements draft
Done WG Last Call on GSAKMP
Done WG Last Call on MSEC Policy Token
Done WG Last Call on Group Key Management Architecture
Done WG Last Call on DHHMAC for MIKEY
Done WG Last Call on MSEC Architecture draft
Done Working Group Last Call on MIKEY Protocol
Done Working Group Last Call on GDOI Protocol