Subject: 10 years and no ubiquitous security

From: William Allen Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 18:49:35 -0500

10 years ago this week, we had an IETF meeting in San Diego.

10 years ago on Tuesday, Phil Karn sprawled out across my hotel room bed 
and drew the packet header that became ESP.  (Remember when we were 
small enough to have hotel room BOFs?)  

10 years today, at a lunch meeting, Phil Karn gathered a group of us, 
and we agreed to pursue IP Security, as "the most important thing 
missing from the Internet".  (Most real work was still done in lunch and 
dinner BOFs last time I attended IETF, and presumably that tradition 
continues now.)

10 years ago tomorrow, Brian Lloyd and I had a "rubber hose" lunch 
meeting with Steve Kent, who as a member of the IAB had refused to allow 
the PPP WG to publish CHAP in our RFC as an official authentication 
protocol.  (He had previously mandated that we remove all security 
protocol negotiation.)  He backed down, but we had to change the name 
from "cryptographic" to "challenge".

Steve Kent refused to charter the IPSec WG.  We had to reform the 
structure of the IAB (removing Steve Kent) -- which was good for many 
other reasons, although its efficacy was short-lived.

After all these years, ESP itself is remarkably unchanged.  (The 
sequence field is 32 bits instead of 16 bits, but we did that in 1993.)  
Remember, by 1995 we had multiple interoperable implementations.

Roughly 5 years ago, IPSec was supposed to be disbanded, because its 
work was complete.  Instead, somebody named Steve Kent secretly took 
over the WG editorship (with no consensus, or even WG discussion), and 
his "appointment" was enforced upon the new "reform" WG Chairs. 

For 5 more years, IPSec WG has slowly turned out unworkable documents, 
generating endless and fruitless discussion.

Today, IPSec has insignificant deployment, and the WG goeth on forever.

...

Should I remind folks that at that same San Diego IETF, JI and Phil and 
Steve Deering and others of us had a lunch BOF on Mobile-IP?
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

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From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 18:08:34 -0500

On Wednesday, March 13, 2002, at 06:49 , William Allen Simpson wrote:
> 10 years ago on Tuesday, Phil Karn sprawled out across my hotel
> room bed and drew the packet header that became ESP.

Actually, that packet header wasn't directly related to ESP,
though there aren't but so many ways a security encapsulation
can be framed.

The SP3 spec, published by NIST more than 10 years ago, was the
direct predecessor to ESP.  This was noted in RFC-1827, I believe.
Credit is due to the (mostly DoD sponsored) group that came up
with SP3 long ago.  I didn't happen to be at that ad-hoc meeting
in San Diego, so I wasn't influenced by it -- and I'm the one
who wrote the ESP spec in the early 90s, initially inside the
IPng WG as an individual contribution.

I decline to comment on the other portions of your posting.

Ran
[email-masked]

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From: William Allen Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 20:01:08 -0500

> though there aren't but so many ways a security encapsulation
I don't know why you want to denigrate the efforts of long-time IETF 
participants such as Phil Karn, JI, Perry Metzger and myself, but I just
took a bit of time to review the WG meeting minutes. ...

> direct predecessor to ESP.

Paul Lambert (an early co-chair) was a big proponent of SP3.  Even when 
we thought we had "rough consensus", Paul would present SP3 yet again!  
We rejected it every time (at least 3 times).

We finally put the matter to rest at Toronto, where the minutes record:
  "The problems with SP3 include a difficult to read specification, 
unnecessary fields in the clear header (very minor problem), and closely 
tied to ISO TP (makes support of TCP and other Internet protocol [sic] 
slightly harder.)"
  "Few of these implementations interoperate (a feature?)"

You should understand, when the WG is making comments like "failure to 
interoperate is a feature", that means "wow, what a ***** protocol."   
(substitute your favorite explicative.)

Even Rob Glenn of NIST wasn't advocating SP3!

>  This was noted in RFC-1827, I believe.

We don't usually quibble with your acknowledgments section, or what you 
felt "influenced" you.

> ... I didn't happen to be at that ad-hoc meeting
> in San Diego, so I wasn't influenced by it

No, but you were at the meetings where swIPe was demonstrated -- 
ACTUALLY DEMONSTRATED -- and where the the packet headers were 
discussed.  

And you also acknowledge "the proposed swIPe security protocol"!

So, it would seem your message is rather disingenuous.

> and I'm the one
I believe I have a copy of that early draft.  It would be hard to tell 
whether it is based on SP3, as it is remarkably devoid of packet 
formats.  But "SP3" is not mentioned.

Anyway, as recorded in the minutes, I'm the one who wrote the early 
"requirements draft" for the packet header (circa 1993), and I can 
testify SP3 **wasn't** an influence....

I'll note that Steve Deering's viewgraphs for Amsterdam (July 1993) 
specify that SIP Security will be based on "recent IPSec work".  

Those same viewgraphs document that I already had an implementation, in 
a KA9Q base -- that would be with Karn's swIPe implementation.

Were you there?

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From: Brian Lloyd <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 13:12:59 -0800

>from "cryptographic" to "challenge".

Well, I am not sure it was a "rubber hose" lunch although I do remember
being annoyed.  As I recall Steve pointed out that CHAP was not strong by
cryptographic authentication standards and he did not want to attach a
seal-of-approval on that basis.  As I recall, I argued that the alternative
then in use was clear-text passwords and asked if he felt that CHAP was
superior to that.  He did and agreed to sign-off on CHAP on that basis.  I
understood that he wanted good cryptographic authentication but we finally
agreed that anything better than passwords was a good thing to have.

I am not entirely sure that I would blame the failure to adopt a coherent
set of security standards entirely on Steve Kent.

Brian Lloyd
[email-masked]
+1.530.676.1113 - voice
+1.360.838.9669 - fax

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From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:19:50 -0500

> So, it would seem your message is rather disingenuous.

We had ESP up and running MUCH MUCH earlier than you seem
to think.  And the swIPe documents describe something with
visible differences from the ESP that resulted in RFC-1827.

Your atttempt to rewrite history is noted, but neither appreciated
nor accurate.

Ran
[email-masked]

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From: William Allen Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 13:44:10 -0500

RJ Atkinson wrote:
> to think.  

Ran, you are listed in the proceedings of July 1992 as having attended 
the IPSec BOF.  Did you have an SP3 implementation at that time?  If so, 
why didn't you demonstrate it?

> And the swIPe documents describe something with
The ESP in RFC-1827 has one and only one field:

  +-------------+--------------------+------------+---------------------+
  |             Security Association Identifier (SPI), 32 bits          |
  +=============+====================+============+=====================+

(A field that *I* named, Security Parameters Index ("SPI"), which *you* 
mis-typed, for the record!)

That, amazingly enough, bears no resemblence to what-so-ever to SP3, 
but is exactly what was implemented for the version of swIPe that I was 
using.

> Your atttempt to rewrite history is noted, but neither appreciated
You cannot even keep your lies straight when the documents are readily 
available on-line.

Your acknowlegments read:

   Many of the concepts here are derived from or were influenced by the
   US Government's SP3 security protocol specification, the ISO/IEC's
   NLSP specification, or from the proposed swIPe security protocol....

Ran, you are a disgrace to the profession.

I refuse to comment further on your posts.
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32