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Re: WG last call for IPv4 AH and ESP



Ran,

I didn't quite follow your reply. Specifically :

>    For that particular case (intermediate router sending an ICMP
>  message and desiring to authenticate the ICMP message back to the
>  sender), if a Security Association does not exist the router
>  could sign it using its private key that is associated with its
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>  Eastlake-Kaufman signed public key available from the DNS and
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>  an RSA signature.  This scales as well as the DNS and hence
>  as well as the Internet as a whole.

Doesn't this introduce a dependency of the routing system on DNS? That is,
aren't you assuming that all routers will have signed certificates in the
DNS? If so, how do you bring up a routing system without having DNS on-line
to begin with? Do you bring it up unsecure and then secure it? Does this
mean you can't secure it without all routers having DNS certificates?

In addition I think there are a number of proposals on the table that assume
an IPv4 key distribution mechanism based on signed Diffie-Hellman certificates.
Since Diffie-Hellman is a key exchange protocol, you can't sign messages
with the Diffie-Hellman private key.

...

>    So I still do not believe that in-band key management is either
>  necessary or desirable in this case.

Given the above observations, I would say the jury is out at this point
on whether in-band signalling is useful or not. I'm not saying it is,
but I think we shouldn't prevent it by not accomodating its use with
either the IPv4 or IPv6 security I-Ds.

Cheers,

Dan


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