Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-roll-trickle-mcast-05

Michael Richardson <mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca> Wed, 27 November 2013 00:57 UTC

From: Michael Richardson <mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca>
To: Tero Kivinen <kivinen@iki.fi>
In-Reply-To: <21133.64571.158642.421795@fireball.kivinen.iki.fi>
References: <21133.64571.158642.421795@fireball.kivinen.iki.fi>
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Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 19:57:13 -0500
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Sender: mcr@sandelman.ca
Cc: iesg@ietf.org, draft-ietf-roll-trickle-mcast.all@tools.ietf.org, secdir@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-roll-trickle-mcast-05
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Tero Kivinen <kivinen@iki.fi> wrote:
    > I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's
    > ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the

Thank you.

Tero Kivinen <kivinen@iki.fi> wrote:
    > This document describes the Multicast protocol for Low and Lossy
    > Networks. This protocol uses trickle algorithm. I am not familiar
    > enough to trickle to really analyze what the protocol does. Security
    > considerations section mentions that the protocol uses sequence
    > numbers to keep track of messages, and attacker who can insert
    > messages can mess up with those sequence numbers, and attacker can
    > then flush messages from the buffered messages list, and can also
    > allow setting it high enough so recipients will not get any messages
    > as they have too small sequence number.

All correct observations.

    > The protocol has no protection against this attack, but notes that
    > both of those are denial-of-service attacks and devices can protect
    > against them by using link-layer security mechanisms. It also claims
    > that those mechanisms are typically employed without specifying which
    > security methods it is pointing to. I do not know how often those
    > link-layer security methods are really used. Perhaps it would be
    > useful to list some of those security methods here.

At this pointin LLNs, use of layer-2 security *ONLY* is pretty much 100%.
It's "WEP" == Wired Equivalent Privacy.

No layer-3, no other authorization distinction between devices, etc.

(Zigbee IP sometimes uses per-link keying as well, so it also defends against
nodes inside the tent going corrupt)

--
]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        | network architect  [
]     mcr@sandelman.ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails    [



--
Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF@sandelman.ca>, Sandelman Software Works
IETF ROLL WG co-chair.    http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/roll/charter/

[secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-roll-trickle… Tero Kivinen
Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-roll-tri… Michael Richardson
Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-roll-tri… Donald Eastlake
Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-roll-tri… Michael Richardson