Subject: [secdir] secdir review of draft-ietf-ippm-model-based-metrics-10

From: David Mandelberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2017 17:14:15 -0400

Hi,

I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's
ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the
IESG.  These comments were written primarily for the benefit of the
security area directors.  Document editors and WG chairs should treat
these comments just like any other last call comments.

This experimental draft "provides a framework for designing suites of IP
diagnostic tests" to measure a network path's bulk transport capacity.

As mentioned in the security considerations, actual attempts at
measurement might be subject to manipulation by an attacker. As I
understand it, the framework in this document neither attempts to
prevent such attacks, nor makes them any more likely.

The only other relevant potential security issue I could think of is
whether measurement system(s) using this framework could be co-opted by
an attacker to cause a denial of service to a specific network path. I
think this would depend entirely on the implementation of a system
designed using the framework in this document, and is therefore pretty
far removed from this document itself. An attack like this also might
not be possible because of some part of the framework that I missed. So
I'll trust the authors' and/or working group's judgment on what to do
with this comment.

I think this draft is somewhere between (inclusive) Ready and Ready With
Issues, depending on how far off-base my point about denial of service
is. I'm leaning towards Ready.

-- 
David Eric Mandelberg / dseomn
http://david.mandelberg.org/

---

From: Matt Mathis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 13:14:41 -0700

(Dropping iesg from the follow up chatter).

I am adding a paragraph to the security section:
      <t>Note that in situ measurements sometimes require sending
      synthetic measurement traffic between arbitrary locations in the
      network, and as such are potentially attractive platforms for
      launching DDOS attacks.  All active measurement tools and
      protocols must be deigned to minimize the opportunities for
      these misuses.</t>

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks,
--MM--
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