Subject: [manet] Kathleen Moriarty's No Objection on draft-ietf-manet-olsrv2-dat-metric-10: (with COMMENT)

From: "Kathleen Moriarty" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2015 14:13:23 -0800

Kathleen Moriarty has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-manet-olsrv2-dat-metric-10: No Objection

When responding, please keep the subject line intact and reply to all
email addresses included in the To and CC lines. (Feel free to cut this
introductory paragraph, however.)

Please refer to https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/discuss-criteria.html
for more information about IESG DISCUSS and COMMENT positions.

The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-manet-olsrv2-dat-metric/

----------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENT:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is just a comment as the text is mostly there, but I feel like it
could be stated more clearly...

In the Security considerations section, the first part of the discussion
could call out "Denial of Service" attacks explicitly in addition to the
description that is included that describes altering traffic patterns.  I
would recommend making this a distinct paragraph for readability.

The next part of the security considerations section (starts with the
last sentence of the first paragraph) seems it could also be a result of
the lack of integrity protections on this measurement technique.  It
might help to state that first and that active attacks may result as a
consequence, leaving in the active attacks you already describe and the
solution already included starting with the second sentence of the second
paragraph.  If that's not the case, please just let me know why.

How is warning about MiTM attacks out-of-scope?  It seems these are
possible, and even mentioned with rogue routers.  Wouldn't it be easier
to state that without session encryption, MiTM is a threat?  If this is
acknowledged, then at least the consideration is there for the reader to
understand.  Addressing the threat may be out-of-scope, but warning about
it shouldn't be.  This last comment is much closer to a discuss, so I'd
appreciate a response.

Thank you!

---

From: Henning Rogge <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2015 09:10:13 +0100

MITM attacks are always a threat, even with TLS support. As long as
both sides support "no-TLS", a MITM can easily downgrade the
connection.

Henning Rogge

---

From: Kathleen Moriarty <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2015 08:18:57 -0500

Hi Henning,

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 3, 2015, at 3:10 AM, Henning Rogge <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

Sure, but that wasn't my request, it was to update the text to reflect the threat.  There's a lot that can be done to reduce the threat and the reader needs to be aware of such threats in the security considerations section.

Thanks,
Kathleen