Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack
draft-farrell-perpass-attack-00
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen Farrell , Hannes Tschofenig | ||
| Last updated | 2013-11-20 | ||
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draft-farrell-perpass-attack-00
Network Working Group S. Farrell
Internet-Draft Trinity College Dublin
Intended status: BCP H. Tschofenig
Expires: May 24, 2014 November 20, 2013
Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack
draft-farrell-perpass-attack-00.txt
Abstract
The IETF has consensus that pervasive monitoring is a technical
attack that should be mitigated in the design of IETF protocols,
where possible.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on May 24, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
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1. It's an Attack
[[Note: This draft is written as if IETF consensus has been
established for the text.]]
The technical plenary of IETF 88 [IETF88Plenary] discussed pervasive
monitoring and participants had strong agreement that this was an
attack and one that should be mitigated where possible via the design
of protocols that make pervasive monitoring significantly more
expensive or infeasible. Such pervasive surveillance requires the
monitoring party to take actions that are indistinguishable from an
attack on Internet communications. This Best Current Practice (BCP)
documents that consensus.
For the purposes of this BCP "pervasive monitoring" means very
widespread privacy-invasive gathering of protocol artefacts including
application content, protocol meta-data (such as headers) or keys
used to secure protocols. Other forms of traffic analysis, for
example, timing or measuring packet sizes can also be used for
pervasive monitoring. A fuller problem statement with more examples
and description can be found in [ProblemStatement].
Note that the term "attack" is used here in a techincal sense that
differs somewhat from the natural English usage. In particular, the
term, when used technically, implies nothing about the motivation of
the bad-actor mounting the attack, who is still called a bad-actor no
matter what one really thinks about their motivation. We also use
the term in the singluar here, even though pervasive monitoring in
reality may require a multi-faceted set of co-ordinated attacks.
The motivation behind pervasive monitoring is not particularly
relevant for this document, but can range from non-targeted nation-
state surveillance, to legal but privacy-unfriendly purposes by
commercial enterprises, to illegal purposes by criminals. The same
techniques can be used in each case, regardless of motivation, and we
cannot defend against the most nefarious actors while allowing
monitoring by other actors no matter how benevolent some might
consider those. As technology continues to advance rapidly
techniques that have been shown to work but were once only accessible
to nation-state actors become accessible to non-nation-state actors,
so mitigating this threat is not only relevant when considering
nation-state bad actors.
2. And we'll work to Mitigate the Attack
The IETF also have consensus to, where possible, work to mitigate the
technical parts of the pervasive monitoring attack, in just the same
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way as we do with any other protocol vulnerability.
There are various ways in which IETF protocols can be designed in
order to mitigate pervasive monitoring, but those will change over
time as mitigation and attack techniques develop and so are not
described here. This BCP simply records the consensus to design
protocols so as to mitigate the attack, where possible.
Note that more limited-scope monitoring to assist with network
management or that is required in order to operate the network or an
application are not considered pervasive monitoring. There is though
a clear potential for network management mechanisms to be abused as
part of pervasive monitoring, so this tension needs careful
consideration in protocol design: making networks unmanageable in
order to mitigate pervasive monitoring would not be an acceptable
outcome, but equally, ignoring pervasive monitoring in designing
network management mechanisms would go against the consensus
documented in this BCP. An appropriate balance will likely emerge
over time as real instances of this tension are considered.
It is also important to note that the term "mitigation" is also a
technical term that does not necessarily imply an ability to
completely prevent or thwart an attack. In this case, designing IETF
protocols to mitigate pervasive monitoring will almost certainly not
completely prevent such from happening, but can increase the cost
significantly or force what was covert monitoring to be more overt,
or more likely to be detected (possibly later) via other means. And
even where the IETF has done this work well and that has been fully
deployed, there will still be some privacy-relevant information that
will inevitably be disclosed by protocols.
Finally, we note that the IETF is not equipped to tackle the non-
technical aspects of mitigating pervasive surveillance. We hope that
others will step forward to tackle those.
3. Process Note
In the past, architectural statements of this sort, e.g., [RFC1984]
and [RFC2804] have been published as joint products of the IESG and
IAB. However, since those documents were published, the IETF and IAB
have separated their publication "streams" as described in [RFC4844]
and [RFC5741]. This document was initiated by both the IESG and IAB,
but it is being published as an IETF-stream consensus document,
having garnered the consensus of the IETF as approved by the IESG.
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4. Security Considerations
This BCP is all about privacy. More information about the
relationship between security and privacy threats can be found in
[RFC6973]. Section 5.1.1 of [RFC6973] specifically addresses
surveillance as a combined security-privacy threat.
5. IANA Considerations
There are none. We hope the RFC editor deletes this section before
publication.
6. Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the participants of the IETF 88 technical
plenary for their feedback. Additionally, we would like to thank all
those who contributed to their suggestions on how to improve Internet
security on various IETF mailing lists, such as the ietf@ietf.org and
the perpass@ietf.org lists.
Thanks in particular to the following for useful comments: Jari
Arkko, Marc Blanchet, Benoit Claise, Spencer Dawkins, Russ Housley,
Joel Jaeggli, Eliot Lear, Barry Leiba, Ted Lemon, Erik Nordmark, Pete
Resnick,
7. Informative References
[IETF88Plenary]
IETF, "IETF 88 Plenary Meeting Materials", URL:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/88/materials.html,
Nov 2013.
[ProblemStatement]
Richard Barnes, "Pervasive Monitoring: Problem Statement",
URL: To-Be-Published, Nov 2013.
[RFC1984] IAB, IESG, Carpenter, B., and F. Baker, "IAB and IESG
Statement on Cryptographic Technology and the Internet",
RFC 1984, August 1996.
[RFC2804] IAB and IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804,
May 2000.
[RFC4844] Daigle, L. and Internet Architecture Board, "The RFC
Series and RFC Editor", RFC 4844, July 2007.
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[RFC5741] Daigle, L., Kolkman, O., and IAB, "RFC Streams, Headers,
and Boilerplates", RFC 5741, December 2009.
[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
July 2013.
Authors' Addresses
Stephen Farrell
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, 2
Ireland
Phone: +353-1-896-2354
Email: stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie
Hannes Tschofenig
Brussels,
Belgium
Phone:
Email: hannes.tschofenig@gmx.net
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