Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack
draft-farrell-perpass-attack-03

Network Working Group                                         S. Farrell
Internet-Draft                                    Trinity College Dublin
Intended status: BCP                                       H. Tschofenig
Expires: June 23, 2014                                 December 20, 2013

                   Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack
                  draft-farrell-perpass-attack-03.txt

Abstract

   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
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on June 23, 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
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Farrell & Tschofenig      Expires June 23, 2014                 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft      Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack      December 2013

1.  Pervasive Monitoring is Indistinguishable from an Attack

   The technical plenary of the November 2013 IETF meeting
   [IETF88Plenary] discussed pervasive monitoring (or surveillance)
   which requires the monitoring party to take actions that are
   indistinguishable from an attack on Internet communications.
   Participants at that meeting therefore expressed strong agreement
   that this was an attack that should be mitigated where possible via
   the design of protocols that make pervasive monitoring significantly
   more expensive or infeasible.  This Best Current Practice (BCP, see
   [RFC2026] Section 5) formally documents that consensus.

   For the purposes of this document "pervasive monitoring" means often
   covert and very widespread intrusive gathering of protocol artefacts
   including application content, protocol meta-data such as headers, or
   cryptographic keys used to secure protocols.  Active or passive
   wiretaps, traffic analysis, correlation, timing or measuring packet
   sizes can also be used as part of pervasive monitoring.

   The term "attack" is used here in a technical sense that differs
   somewhat from common English usage.  In common English usage, an
   "attack" is an aggressive action perpetrated by an opponent, intended
   to enforce the opponent's will on the attacked party.  Here, the term
   is used to refer to a behavior that subverts the intent of a
   communicator without the agreement of the parties to the
   communication.  It may change the content of the communication,
   record the content of the communication, or through correlation with
   other communication events, reveal information the communicator did
   not intend to be revealed.  It may also have other effects that
   similarly subvert the intent of a communicator.  [RFC4949] contains a
   more complete definition for the term "attack."  We also use the term
   in the singular here, even though pervasive monitoring in reality may
   require a multi-faceted set of coordinated attacks.

   In particular, the term "attack", when used technically, implies
   nothing about the motivation of the actor mounting the attack.  The
   motivation behind pervasive monitoring is not 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
   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 them to be.  As technology
   advances, techniques that were once only available to extremely well
   funded actors become more widely accessible.  Mitigating this attack
   is therefore a protection against wider usage of pervasive
   monitoring.

Farrell & Tschofenig      Expires June 23, 2014                 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft      Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack      December 2013

2.  The IETF will work to Mitigate Pervasive Monitoring

   "Mitigation" is a technical term that does not imply an ability to
   completely prevent or thwart an attack.  Protocols that mitigate
   pervasive monitoring will not prevent the attack, but can
   significantly change the threat.  (See the diagram on page 24 of RFC
   4949 for how the terms attack and threat are related.)  This can
   significantly increase the cost of attacking, force what was covert
   to be overt, or make the attack more likely to be detected, possibly
   later.

   IETF standards already provide mechanisms to protect Internet
   communications and there are guidelines [RFC3552] for applying these
   in protocol design.  But those generally do not consider pervasive
   monitoring, the confidentiality of protocol meta-data, countering
   traffic analysis nor data minimisation.  [RFC6973] And in all cases,
   there will remain some privacy-relevant information that is
   inevitably disclosed by protocols.

   It is nonetheless timely to revisit the security and privacy
   properties of our standards.  The IETF will work to mitigate the
   technical parts of the pervasive monitoring threat, just as we do for
   other protocol vulnerabilities.  The ways in which IETF protocols
   mitigate pervasive monitoring will change over time as mitigation and
   attack techniques evolve and so are not described here.

   Those developing IETF specifications need to be able to describe how
   they have considered pervasive monitoring, and, if the attack is
   relevant to the work to be published, be able to justify related
   design decisions.  This does not mean a new "pervasive monitoring
   considerations" section is needed in IETF documentation.  It means
   that, if asked, there needs to be a good answer to the question "is
   pervasive monitoring relevant to this work and if so how has it been
   addressed?"

   While pervasive monitoring is an attack, other forms of monitoring
   can be beneficial and not part of any attack, e.g. network management
   functions monitor packets or flows, anti-spam mechanisms see mail
   message content and monitoring can even be a mitigation for pervasive
   monitoring in the case of Certificate Transparency.  [RFC6962] There
   is though a clear potential for monitoring mechanisms to be abused
   for pervasive monitoring, so this tension needs careful consideration
   in protocol design.  Making networks unmanageable to mitigate
   pervasive monitoring is not an acceptable outcome, but ignoring
   pervasive monitoring 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.

Farrell & Tschofenig      Expires June 23, 2014                 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft      Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack      December 2013

   Finally, the IETF, as a standards development organisation, does not
   control the implementation or deployment of our specifications
   (though IETF participants do develop many implementations), nor does
   the IETF specify all layers of the protocol stack.  And the non-
   technical (e.g. legal and political) aspects of mitigating pervasive
   monitoring are outside of the scope of the IETF.  The broader
   Internet community will need to step forward to tackle pervasive
   monitoring, if it is to be fully addressed.

3.  Process Note

   In the past, architectural statements of this sort, e.g., [RFC1984]
   and [RFC2804] have been published as joint products of the Internet
   Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and the Internet Architecture Board
   (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 is published as an IETF-stream consensus document,
   in order to ensure that it properly reflects the consensus of the
   IETF community as a whole.

   [[Note (to be removed before publication): This draft is written as
   if IETF consensus has been established for the text.]]

4.  Security Considerations

   This BCP is entirely 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.  Thanks in particular to the following
   for useful suggestions or comments: Jari Arkko, Fred Baker, Marc
   Blanchet, Tim Bray, Scott Brim, Randy Bush, Brian Carpenter, Benoit
   Claise, Alissa Cooper, Dave Crocker, Spencer Dawkins, Avri Doria,
   Wesley Eddy, Adrian Farrel, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Ted Hardie, Sam

Farrell & Tschofenig      Expires June 23, 2014                 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft      Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack      December 2013

   Hartmann, Bjoern Hoehrmann, Phillip Hallam-Baker, Russ Housley, Joel
   Jaeggli, Stephen Kent, Eliot Lear, Barry Leiba, Ted Lemon,
   Subrahamian Moonesamy, Erik Nordmark, Pete Resnick, Peter Saint-
   Andre, Andrew Sullivan, Sean Turner, and Stefan Winter.
   Additionally, we would like to thank all those who contributed
   suggestions on how to improve Internet security and privacy or who
   commented on this on various IETF mailing lists, such as the
   ietf@ietf.org and the perpass@ietf.org lists.

7.  Informative References

   [IETF88Plenary]
              IETF, "IETF 88 Plenary Meeting Materials",  URL:
              https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/88/materials.html,
              Nov 2013.

   [RFC1984]  IAB, IESG, Carpenter, B., and F. Baker, "IAB and IESG
              Statement on Cryptographic Technology and the Internet",
              RFC 1984, August 1996.

   [RFC2026]  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
              3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.

   [RFC2804]  IAB and IESG, "IETF Policy on Wiretapping", RFC 2804,
              May 2000.

   [RFC3552]  Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
              Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
              July 2003.

   [RFC4844]  Daigle, L. and Internet Architecture Board, "The RFC
              Series and RFC Editor", RFC 4844, July 2007.

   [RFC4949]  Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2",
              RFC 4949, August 2007.

   [RFC5741]  Daigle, L., Kolkman, O., and IAB, "RFC Streams, Headers,
              and Boilerplates", RFC 5741, December 2009.

   [RFC6962]  Laurie, B., Langley, A., and E. Kasper, "Certificate
              Transparency", RFC 6962, June 2013.

   [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.

Farrell & Tschofenig      Expires June 23, 2014                 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft      Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack      December 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

Farrell & Tschofenig      Expires June 23, 2014                 [Page 6]