Multicast Security
charter-ietf-msec-03

The purpose of the MSEC WG is to standardize protocols for securing
group communication over internets, and in particular over the global
Internet. Initial efforts will focus on scalable solutions for groups
with a single source and a very large number of recipients. Additional
emphasis will be put on groups where the data is transmitted via
IP-layer multicast routing protocols (with or without guaranteed
reliability). The developed standard will assume that each group has a
single trusted entity (the Group Controller) that sets the security
policy and controls the group membership. The standard will strive
to provide at least the following basic security guarantees:

• Only legitimate group members will have access to current group
  communication. This includes groups with highly dynamic membership.

• Legitimate group members will be able to authenticate the source
  and contents of the group communication. This includes cases where
  group members do not trust each other.

An additional goal of the standard will be to protect against
denial-of-service attacks, whenever possible.

Due to the large number of one-to-many multicast applications and the
sometimes conflicting requirements these applications exhibit, it is
believed that a single protocol will be unable to meet the requirements
of all applications. Therefore, the WG will first specify a general
Reference Framework that includes a number of functional building
blocks. Each such building block will be instantiated by one or more
protocols that will be interchanable. The Reference Framework will not
only describe one-to-many multicast, but also many-to-many multicast.

In addition, as a secondary goal the MSEC WG will also focus on
distributed architectures for group key management and group policy
management, where for scalability purposes multiple trusted entities
(such as Key Distributors) are deployed in a distributed fashion. For
this purpose, the Reference Framework will not only describe
one-to-many multicast, but also many-to-many multicast.

MSEC will generate at least the following documents, which could be
considered as base documents:

1. An RFC describing the security requirements of multicast security
   and
   an RFC describing the MSEC Architecture.

2. An RFC describing the Group Key Management Architecture and an RFC
   describing Group Policy Management Architecture in MSEC.

3. Several RFCs describing specifications for protocols that implement
   source authentication, group key management and group policy
   management.
   As multicast security covers a broad range of issues, and therefore
   touches other Working Groups in the IETF, the MSEC WG will work closely
   with othersecurity-related Working Groups (e.g. IPsec, IPSP), as well
   as other Working Groups which maybe considered a 'consumer' of the
   technologies produced in the MSEC WG (e.g. AVT, MMUSIC) or which may
   have a multicast focus (e.g. PIM, RMT, IDRM, MAGMA).

With this in mind, the MSEC WG is open to receiving new work items,
whenever it is considered appropriate to be homed in the MSEC WG. Such
drafts will be matured in conjunction with the MSEC base documents.