Subject: Re: a different approach to site-local's "security"

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:42:31 -0500

In message <[email-masked]>, Tim Chown writes:
>On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:03:11PM +0200, Pekka Savola wrote:
>> 
> 
>> One general worry is whether the RA's are the right place for doing 
>> something like this, and whether this includes "RA explosion".
>
>Indeed.  If hosts trust RAs to determine addressing and default routing,
>then DNS is a next logical step.

It's your local router you're trusting; that's generally reasonable.  
I'm not at all wedded to the idea of using RA, but it's an existing 
message that's already distributing site-specific information such as 
prefix.  I'm open to any other suggestions.

>  Beyond that, how much creeping featurism
>do we wish to add?
>

Personally, I'd rather use real security protocols.  But I'd much 
prefer my scheme to site-locals...

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com ("Firewalls" book)

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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 10:46:42 +0200 (EET)

> prefer my scheme to site-locals...

Totally agree.

Most use cases of site-locals seem to be plain wrong, and if something 
like this could be used to avoid using them ... all the better.

I'd like to hear opinions from pro-site-local people on how it looks like. 

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "Tell me of difficulties surmounted,
Netcore Oy                   not those you stumble over and fall"
Systems. Networks. Security.  -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 10:13:41 +0000

> prefer my scheme to site-locals...

It depends to what extent we want to keep totally open "plug and play" for
those who want to use it (for routing, or for DNS discovery).  Is the
"well-known site-local" DNS discovery draft still alive in the context of
the GUPI proposals?

The work on securing neighbour discovery is new (the SEND WG), but 
potentially promising.  

In Atlanta, it was interesting to see again some of the bizarre things that
do get advertised in a large IPv6 gathering, e.g. on the last day it looked
like someone was running 6to4 off the IPv4 stateless autoconf address space.

Tim