Subject: Protocol Action: Protection of BGP Sessions via the TCP MD5 Signature Option to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 11:47:08 -0400

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'Protection of BGP Sessions
via the TCP MD5 Signature Option' <draft-idr-bgp-tcp-md5-01.txt>
as a Proposed Standard.  This document is the product of the
Inter-Domain Routing Working Group.  The IESG contact person is Rob Coltun. 
 
Technical Summary
 
 This protocol extension provide a way for BGP-4 peers to authenticate that
 the TCP messages they are receiving are actually from their peers.  This
 prevents or increases the difficulty of a number of attacks against the
 protocol machinery.

Working Group Summary

 The working group strongly supports this as the best current mechanism
 to address these important security threats.

Protocol Quality

 This specification was reviewed for the IESG by Joel M. Halpern, the
 Routing Area Director.  It is already widely implemented.