Subject: Comments on draft-ietf-v6ops-teredo-security-concerns-02

From: Dave Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:14:23 -0700

While almost all of the points in this document are valid,
I have many comments (66 of them, not including the grammatical
corrections) on the text in this document.
Attached is a PDF with my comments in context.

My most general feedback can be summed up with:

It would be better to either recast this document as a "Tunnel
Security Concerns" document, or to split it into two docs or
sections, one for Teredo and one for generic tunneling issues.
Personally, I would find it most useful as two separate docs,
so that the first can be referenced from other "<blah> Security
Concerns" docs that might be specific to other tunneling protocols.
As is, I believe the current doc organization is harmful in two respects:
1) It may lead people to people that other tunneling protocols are
more secure than they really are if they believe the lack of a
similar statement/document means they don't have the problem.
2) It creates more work for the IETF when doing a "<blah> security
Concerns" document for another tunneling protocol, since all the
same points have to be repeated.

-Dave

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From: Dave Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:43:00 -0700

I have a bunch of comments on the text in this document.
Attached is a PDF with my comments in context.
(Yeah I could try to put them all into plain text,
but that's a lot more work, so I hope comments in PDF
are viewed as better than none... :)

-Dave

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From: Erik Nordmark <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:18:32 -0700

> same points have to be repeated.

Dave,

I suspect it isn't tunneling in general that has these issues. For 
instance, I don't see these issues in RFC 4213.

Thus I think the class is restricted to tunneling protocols that are 
designed to bypass NAT boxes, since in many cases that means they also 
bypass the firewalls. Example protocols are IPsec (IKE/ESP) over UDP, IP 
over SSH or SSL.
At least those examples are associated with a protocol providing some 
security, but there are probably other tunneling protocols designed to 
bypass NATs using UDP that do not come with required security.

But my point is that the class is smaller than all tunneling protocols.

     Erik

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From: Dave Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:43:00 -0700

-Dave