Unfortunate History of Transient Numeric Identifiers
draft-gont-numeric-ids-history-04

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Network Working Group                                            F. Gont
Internet-Draft                                    SI6 Networks / UTN-FRH
Intended status: Informational                                   I. Arce
Expires: September 12, 2019                                    Quarkslab
                                                          March 11, 2019

          Unfortunate History of Transient Numeric Identifiers
                   draft-gont-numeric-ids-history-04

Abstract

   This document performs an analysis of the security and privacy
   implications of different types of "numeric identifiers" used in IETF
   protocols, and tries to categorize them based on their
   interoperability requirements and the associated failure severity
   when such requirements are not met.  It describes a number of
   algorithms that have been employed in real implementations to meet
   such requirements and analyzes their security and privacy properties.
   Additionally, it provides advice on possible algorithms that could be
   employed to satisfy the interoperability requirements of each
   identifier type, while minimizing the security and privacy
   implications, thus providing guidance to protocol designers and
   protocol implementers.  Finally, it provides recommendations for
   future protocol specifications regarding the specification of the
   aforementioned numeric identifiers.

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 https://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 September 12, 2019.

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 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
   (https://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.

   This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may not
   be created, and it may not be published except as an Internet-Draft.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Threat Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  IPv4/IPv6 Identification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  TCP Initial Sequence Numbers (ISNs) . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  IPv6 Interface Identifiers (IIDs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   9.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21

1.  Introduction

   Network protocols employ a variety of numeric identifiers for
   different protocol entities, ranging from DNS Transaction IDs (TxIDs)
   to transport protocol numbers (e.g.  TCP ports) or IPv6 Interface
   Identifiers (IIDs).  These identifiers usually have specific
   properties that must be satisfied such that they do not result in
   negative interoperability implications (e.g. uniqueness during a
   specified period of time), and associated failure severities when
   such properties are not met, ranging from soft to hard failures.

   For more than 30 years, a large number of implementations of the TCP/
   IP protocol suite have been subject to a variety of attacks, with
   effects ranging from Denial of Service (DoS) or data injection, to

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