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RPKI-Based Origin Validation Operation
draft-ietf-sidr-origin-ops-13

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7115.
Author Randy Bush
Last updated 2011-11-13 (Latest revision 2011-10-31)
Replaces draft-ymbk-rpki-origin-ops
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draft-ietf-sidr-origin-ops-13
Network Working Group                                            R. Bush
Internet-Draft                                 Internet Initiative Japan
Intended status: BCP                                   November 14, 2011
Expires: May 17, 2012

                 RPKI-Based Origin Validation Operation
                     draft-ietf-sidr-origin-ops-13

Abstract

   Deployment of RPKI-based BGP origin validation has many operational
   considerations.  This document attempts to collect and present them.
   It is expected to evolve as RPKI-based origin validation is deployed
   and the dynamics are better understood.

Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

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 May 17, 2012.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 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

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   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.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Suggested Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  RPKI Distribution and Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   4.  Within a Network  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   5.  Routing Policy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   9.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

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1.  Introduction

   RPKI-based origin validation relies on widespread deployment of the
   Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) [I-D.ietf-sidr-arch].  How
   the RPKI is distributed and maintained globally is a serious concern
   from many aspects.

   The global RPKI is in very initial stages of deployment, there is no
   single root trust anchor, initial testing is being done by the IANA
   and the RIRs, and there is a technical testbed.  It is thought that
   origin validation based on the RPKI will be deployed incrementally
   over the next year to five years.

   Origin validation needs to be done only by an AS's border routers and
   is designed so that it can be used to protect announcements which are
   originated by any network participating in Internet BGP routing:
   large providers, upstreams and down-streams, and by small stub/
   enterprise/edge routers.

   Origin validation has been designed to be deployed on current routers
   without significant hardware upgrade.  It should be used in border
   routers by operators from large backbones to small stub/entetprise/
   edge networks.

   RPKI-based origin validation has been designed so that, with prudent
   local routing policies, there is little risk that what is seen as
   today's normal Internet routing is threatened by imprudent deployment
   of the global RPKI, see Section 5.

2.  Suggested Reading

   It is assumed that the reader understands BGP, [RFC4271], the RPKI,
   see [I-D.ietf-sidr-arch], the RPKI Repository Structure, see
   [I-D.ietf-sidr-repos-struct], ROAs, see [I-D.ietf-sidr-roa-format],
   the RPKI to Router Protocol, see [I-D.ietf-sidr-rpki-rtr], RPKI-based
   Prefix Validation, see [I-D.ietf-sidr-pfx-validate], and Ghostbusters
   Records, see [I-D.ietf-sidr-ghostbusters].

3.  RPKI Distribution and Maintenance

   The RPKI is a distributed database containing certificates, CRLs,
   manifests, ROAs, and Ghostbusters Records as described in
   [I-D.ietf-sidr-repos-struct].  Policies and considerations for RPKI
   object generation and maintenance are discussed elsewhere.

   A local valid cache containing all RPKI data may be gathered from the

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   global distributed database using the rsync protocol, [RFC5781], and
   a validation tool such as rcynic [rcynic].

   Validated caches may also be created and maintained from other
   validated caches.  Network operators SHOULD take maximum advantage of
   this feature to minimize load on the global distributed RPKI
   database.  Of course, the recipient SHOULD re-validate the data.

   Timing of inter-cache synchronization is outside the scope of this
   document, but depends on things such as how often routers feed from
   the caches, how often the operator feels the global RPKI changes
   significantly, etc.

   As inter-cache synchronization within an operator does not impact
   global RPKI resources, an operator MAY choose to synchronize quite
   frequently.

   As RPKI-based origin validation relies on the availability of RPKI
   data, operators SHOULD locate caches close to routers that require
   these data and services.  'Close' is, of course, complex.  One should
   consider trust boundaries, routing bootstrap reachability, latency,
   etc.

   For redundancy, a router SHOULD peer with more than one cache at the
   same time.  Peering with two or more, at least one local and others
   remote, is recommended.

   If an operator trusts upstreams to carry their traffic, they MAY also
   trust the RPKI data those upstreams cache, and SHOULD peer with
   caches made available to them by those upstreams.  Note that this
   places an obligation on those upstreams to maintain fresh and
   reliable caches, and to make them available to their customers.  And,
   as usual, the recipient SHOULD re-validate the data.

   A transit provider or a network with peers SHOULD validate origins in
   announcements made by upstreams, down-streams, and peers.  They still
   SHOULD trust the caches provided by their upstreams.

   Before issuing a ROA for a super-block, an operator MUST ensure that
   any sub-allocations from that block which are announced by other ASs,
   e.g. customers, have correct ROAs in the RPKI.  Otherwise, issuing a
   ROA for the super-block will cause the announcements of sub-
   allocations with no ROAs to be viewed as Invalid, see
   [I-D.ietf-sidr-pfx-validate].

   Use of RPKI-based origin validation removes any need to originate
   more specifics into BGP to protect against mis-origination of a less
   specific prefix.  Having a ROA for the covering prefix should protect

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   it.

   To aid translation of ROAs into efficient search algorithms in
   routers, ROAs SHOULD be as precise as possible, i.e. match prefixes
   as announced in BGP.  E.g. software and operators SHOULD avoid use of
   excessive max length values in ROAs unless operationally necessary.

   One advantage of minimal ROA length is that the forged origin attack
   does not work for sub-prefixes that are not covered by overly long
   max length.  E.g. if, instead of 10.0.0.0/16-24, one issues
   10.0.0.0/16 and 10.0.42.0/24, a forged origin attack can not succeed
   against 10.0.66.0/24.  They must attack the whole /16, which is more
   likely to be noticed because of its size.

   Therefore, ROA generation software MUST use the prefix length as the
   max length if the user does not specify a max length.

   Operators SHOULD be conservative in use of max length in ROAs.  E.g.,
   if a prefix will have only a few sub-prefixes announced, multiple
   ROAs for the specific announcements SHOULD be used as opposed to one
   ROA with a long max length.

   If a prefix is legitimately announced by more than one AS, ROAs for
   all of the ASs SHOULD be issued so that all are considered Valid.

   An environment where private address space is announced in eBGP the
   operator MAY have private RPKI objects which cover these private
   spaces.  This will require a trust anchor created and owned by that
   environment, see [I-D.ietf-sidr-ltamgmt].

   Operators owning prefix P should issue ROAs for all ASs which may
   announce P.

   Operators issuing ROAs may have customers which announce their own
   prefixes and ASs into global eBGP but who do not wish to go though
   the work to manage the relevant certificates and ROAs.  Operators
   SHOULD offer to provision the RPKI data for these customers just as
   they provision many other things for them.

   While an operator using RPKI data MAY choose any polling frequency
   they wish for ensuring they have a fresh RPKI cache.  However, if
   they use RPKI data as an input to operational routing decisions, they
   SHOULD ensure local cache freshness at least every four to six hours.

4.  Within a Network

   Origin validation need only be done by edge routers in a network,

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   those which border other networks/ASs.

   A validating router will use the result of origin validation to
   influence local policy within its network, see Section 5.  In
   deployment this policy should fit into the AS's existing policy,
   preferences, etc.  This allows a network to incrementally deploy
   validation-capable border routers.

   eBGP speakers which face more critical peers or up/down-streams are
   candidates for the earliest deployment.  Validating more critical
   received announcements should be considered in partial deployment.

5.  Routing Policy

   Origin validation based on the RPKI marks a received announcement as
   having an origin which is Valid, NotFound, or Invalid.  See
   [I-D.ietf-sidr-pfx-validate].  How this is used in routing SHOULD be
   specified by the operator's local policy.

   Local policy using relative preference is suggested to manage the
   uncertainty associated with a system in early deployment, applying
   local policy to eliminate the threat of unroutability of prefixes due
   to ill-advised certification policies and/or incorrect certification
   data.  E.g. until the community feels comfortable relying on RPKI
   data, routing on Invalid origin validity, though at a low preference,
   MAY occur.

   As origin validation will be rolled out incrementally, coverage will
   be incomplete for a long time.  Therefore, routing on NotFound
   validity state SHOULD be done for a long time.  As the transition
   moves forward, the number of BGP announcements with validation state
   NotFound should decrease.  Hence an operator's policy SHOULD NOT be
   overly strict, preferring Valid announcements, attaching a lower
   preference to, but still using, NotFound announcements, and dropping
   or giving very low preference to Invalid announcements.

   Some providers may choose to set Local-Preference based on the RPKI
   validation result.  Other providers may not want the RPKI validation
   result to be more important than AS-path length -- these providers
   would need to map RPKI validation result to some BGP attribute that
   is evaluated in BGP's path selection process after AS-path is
   evaluated.  Routers implementing RPKI-based origin validation MUST
   provide such options to operators.

   Local-Preference may be used to carry both the validity state of a
   prefix along with it's traffic engineering characteristic(s).  It is
   likely that an operator already using Local-Preference will have to

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   change policy so they can encode these two separate characteristics
   in the same BGP attribute without negatively impact or opening
   privilege escalation attacks.

   When using a metric which is also influenced by other local policy,
   an operator should be careful not to create privilege upgrade
   vulnerabilities.  E.g. if Local Pref is set depending on validity
   state, be careful that peer community signaling MAY NOT upgrade an
   Invalid announcement to Valid or better.

   Announcements with Valid origins SHOULD be preferred over those with
   NotFound or Invalid origins, if the latter are accepted at all.

   Announcements with NotFound origins SHOULD be preferred over those
   with Invalid origins.

   Announcements with Invalid origins SHOULD NOT be used, but MAY be
   used to meet special operational needs.  In such circumstances, the
   announcement SHOULD have a lower preference than that given to Valid
   or NotFound.

   Validity state signialing SHOULD NOT be accepted from a neighbor AS.
   The validity state of a received announcement has only local scope
   due to issues such as scope of trust, RPKI synchrony, and
   [I-D.ietf-sidr-ltamgmt].

6.  Notes

   Like the DNS, the global RPKI presents only a loosely consistent
   view, depending on timing, updating, fetching, etc.  Thus, one cache
   or router may have different data about a particular prefix than
   another cache or router.  There is no 'fix' for this, it is the
   nature of distributed data with distributed caches.

   It is hoped that testing and deployment will produce advice on
   relying party cache loading and timing.

   There is some uncertainty about the origin AS of aggregates and what,
   if any, ROA can be used.  The long range solution to this is the
   deprecation of AS-SETs, see [I-D.wkumari-deprecate-as-sets].

   Operators who manage certificates SHOULD associate RPKI Ghostbusters
   Records (see [I-D.ietf-sidr-ghostbusters]) with each publication
   point they control.  These are publication points holding the CRL,
   ROAs, and other signed objects issued by the operator, and made
   available to other ASs in support of routing on the public Internet.

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7.  Security Considerations

   As the BGP origin AS of an update is not signed, origin validation is
   open to malicious spoofing.  Therefore, RPKI-based origin validation
   is designed to deal only with inadvertent mis-advertisement.

   Origin validation does not address the problem of AS-Path validation.
   Therefore paths are open to manipulation, either malicious or
   accidental.

   As BGP does not ensure that traffic will flow via the paths it
   advertises, the data plane may not follow the control plane.

   Be aware of the class of privilege escalation issues discussed in
   Section 5 above.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA Considerations.

9.  Acknowledgments

   The author wishes to thank Shane Amante, Rob Austein, Steve Bellovin,
   Jay Borkenhagen, Steve Kent, Pradosh Mohapatra, Chris Morrow, Sandy
   Murphy, Keyur Patel, Heather and Jason Schiller, John Scudder,
   Kotikalapudi Sriram, Maureen Stillman, and Dave Ward.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-sidr-arch]
              Lepinski, M. and S. Kent, "An Infrastructure to Support
              Secure Internet Routing", draft-ietf-sidr-arch-13 (work in
              progress), May 2011.

   [I-D.ietf-sidr-ghostbusters]
              Bush, R., "The RPKI Ghostbusters Record",
              draft-ietf-sidr-ghostbusters-15 (work in progress),
              October 2011.

   [I-D.ietf-sidr-ltamgmt]
              Reynolds, M. and S. Kent, "Local Trust Anchor Management
              for the Resource Public Key Infrastructure",
              draft-ietf-sidr-ltamgmt-02 (work in progress), June 2011.

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   [I-D.ietf-sidr-pfx-validate]
              Mohapatra, P., Scudder, J., Ward, D., Bush, R., and R.
              Austein, "BGP Prefix Origin Validation",
              draft-ietf-sidr-pfx-validate-03 (work in progress),
              October 2011.

   [I-D.ietf-sidr-repos-struct]
              Huston, G., Loomans, R., and G. Michaelson, "A Profile for
              Resource Certificate Repository Structure",
              draft-ietf-sidr-repos-struct-09 (work in progress),
              July 2011.

   [I-D.ietf-sidr-roa-format]
              Lepinski, M., Kent, S., and D. Kong, "A Profile for Route
              Origin Authorizations (ROAs)",
              draft-ietf-sidr-roa-format-12 (work in progress),
              May 2011.

   [I-D.ietf-sidr-rpki-rtr]
              Bush, R. and R. Austein, "The RPKI/Router Protocol",
              draft-ietf-sidr-rpki-rtr-19 (work in progress),
              October 2011.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC5781]  Weiler, S., Ward, D., and R. Housley, "The rsync URI
              Scheme", RFC 5781, February 2010.

10.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.wkumari-deprecate-as-sets]
              Kumari, W., "Deprecation of BGP AS_SET, AS_CONFED_SET.",
              draft-wkumari-deprecate-as-sets-01 (work in progress),
              September 2010.

   [RFC4271]  Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
              Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.

   [rcynic]   "rcynic read-me",
              <http://subvert-rpki.hactrn.net/rcynic/README>.

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Author's Address

   Randy Bush
   Internet Initiative Japan
   5147 Crystal Springs
   Bainbridge Island, Washington  98110
   US

   Phone: +1 206 780 0431 x1
   Email: randy@psg.com

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