Future Research Directions on Energy-Aware Security Mechanisms
draft-soares-nmrg-green-security-00

Network Management Research Group                           L. R. Soares
Internet-Draft                                               J. C. Nobre
Intended status: Informational   Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Expires: 5 May 2025                                      1 November 2024

     Future Research Directions on Energy-Aware Security Mechanisms
                  draft-soares-nmrg-green-security-00

Abstract

   With the onset of the climate emergency, all areas of human activity
   are expected to continuously assess their Greenhouse Gas emissions
   and encourage the use of clean energy sources as much as possible.
   The current discussion on green networking in the Network Management
   research field still needs to be expanded to the adjoined areas, such
   as Network Security.  This document summarizes the security
   considerations of the existing works and outlines possible research
   directions for energy-aware security mechanisms.

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 5 May 2025.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

Soares & Nobre             Expires 5 May 2025                   [Page 1]
Internet-Draft               Green Security                November 2024

   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 Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Current Landscape on Green Networking Research  . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Security Considerations of the Existing Works . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Future Research Directions on Energy-Aware Security
           Mechanisms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Sustainability Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   Computer networking and the Internet are no exception to the global
   necessity of reducing carbon footprint.  While the green networking
   effort is not new, the recent escalation of the climate emergency
   inevitably led to intensified discussion on the topic.

   Some of the recent works on the subject of green networking focus on
   improving the efficiency of current network mechanisms as means to
   save energy, such as optimizing the volume of transmitted data and
   improving congestion control mechanisms to avoid re-transmission.
   Another promising approach is to alternate high link utilization with
   power-saving modes in network equipment.  Regardless of the approach,
   the green networking effort must follow from robust measurement
   frameworks capable of providing comprehensive visibility into the
   energy consumption of the network.

   Existing IETF drafts are discussing power consumption metrics based
   on real-time network decisions instead of just measuring overall
   power consumption regardless of the task
   [I.D.draft-cx-green-green-metrics-00].  The standardization effort of
   energy metrics in networking is a key step for energy awareness
   throughout the entire Internet.  Solid standards can avoid
   proprietary, redundant, and even contradictory metrics from taking
   hold across different vendors [RFC9547].  Besides, it is easier for
   developers and researchers to add sustainability considerations at
   the design phase of new protocols than attempting to do so after

Soares & Nobre             Expires 5 May 2025                   [Page 2]
Internet-Draft               Green Security                November 2024

   deployment [I.D.draft-pignataro-green-enviro-sust-terminology-00].
   This reasoning further advocates for the need of standardization in
   all subjects related to energy-aware networking.

   Despite the advancements on green networking, much of the discussion
   still needs to be expanded to adjoined research fields, such as
   network security.  Security protocols are some of the more expensive,
   and are likely to show up in measurement tools as top consumers of
   energy resources.  Policies and guidelines must take this fact into
   account, or risk compromising the security of applications.  This
   document primarily focuses on the current security considerations on
   the existing discussion on green networking, and outlines future
   research directions for energy-aware network security.

2.  Current Landscape on Green Networking Research

   Concerns about the substantial amount of energy used by the Internet
   have been showing up in research over the last 20 years or so.  Some
   of the existing works on the topic of energy-aware solutions include
   Adaptive Link Rate (ALR), energy-aware routing, and measurement ideas
   for assessing power consumption of the general backbone structure.
   The research has progressed over the past two decades, aided by new
   and upcoming technology such as Software Defined Networks (SDNs) and
   Programmable Data Plans.

   More recently, green networking became an emerging topic on the IETF.
   [I.D.draft-irtf-nmrg-green-ps-03],
   [I.D.draft-cx-green-green-metrics-00] provide a initial drafting of
   relevant measurement attributes and related metrics, such as power
   consumption under various loads, energy efficiency, and carbon
   footprint -- each associated with a network, its equipment,
   individual paths, and the services provided over it.  In these
   drafts, Clemm et al. also note that the suggested metrics must be
   taken in combination with one another to result in a more
   comprehensive picture of the network and that no metric could be able
   to present the whole picture by itself.

Soares & Nobre             Expires 5 May 2025                   [Page 3]
Internet-Draft               Green Security                November 2024

   The IAB also organized a program to discuss sustainability-related
   issues within the IETF, encompassing multiple working groups.  The
   e-Impact, Environmental Impacts of Internet Technology, recently
   published a report on the proceedings of their first workshop that
   took place in December 2022 [RFC9547], with the goal of calling
   attention to the topic.  The workshop noted the demand for minimal
   environmental impact within the Internet and the clear need for
   standardized metrics.  Another draft,
   [I.D.draft-pignataro-green-enviro-sust-terminology-00], has a
   detailed glossary of terms and several sustainability considerations
   for network, protocol, and application designers.  They also
   recommend that authors and reviewers include a Sustainability
   Considerations section in future IETF Internet-Drafts and RFCs.

   Finally, the IEEE also launched a Special Interest Group about
   Sustainable Network Operations aiming to encourage the development of
   solutions on topics concerning network management, such as the design
   efficiency of data planes and protocols, network optimization,
   reducing energy waste in overprovisioned network structures, and so
   on.

   Some additional points addressed across these works are the need for
   specialized energy metrics for virtualized environments, because
   simply measuring the energy consumption of the CPU or the datacenter
   won't translate accordingly in network decisions being made.  Also
   worth pointing out is the possibility of decentralized network
   structures contributing to energy saving since they would spare the
   packet a unnecessarily long travel to a central server -- the same
   concept is already applied to CDNs.  Finally, the current green
   networking research and discussion needs to be expanded to include
   more security considerations.

3.  Security Considerations of the Existing Works

   As the research on green networking progressed, it naturally expanded
   to adjoined fields such as energy-aware security.  Security
   mechanisms from all layers of the network protocol stack are widely
   considered as overhead since they often increase both computational
   and energy demands of a system.  However, to dismiss security
   concerns on the modern-day Internet is unthinkable.  The available
   alternative energy-wise is to use the appropriate mechanism for each
   task without either overprovisioning or failing to allocate enough
   resources.

   In most of the works presented so far, the security considerations to
   the energy-aware networking discussion are mostly regarding extra
   attack surface brought by the energy measurement tools and controls.
   An attacker might use these mechanisms to put resources to sleep in

Soares & Nobre             Expires 5 May 2025                   [Page 4]
Internet-Draft               Green Security                November 2024

   critical moments, drain energy to cause damage such as overheating
   and battery loss, and finally, to tamper with the energy measurement,
   which would cause misguided energy saving policies being put in place
   [I.D.draft-irtf-nmrg-green-ps-03].  Though these are all important
   considerations, they are security risks for energy-saving mechanisms
   and not energy-saving techniques for security mechanisms.

4.  Future Research Directions on Energy-Aware Security Mechanisms

   A possible research direction builds on the initial assumptions about
   energy measurement to encompass widely used security mechanisms.
   Comparing energy usage with the afforded security benefits can
   provide valuable insight for network administrators to select the
   appropriate tool for each task.  Therefore, the first step towards
   efficient green security is to avoid the two extremes -- saving
   energy at the cost of endangering the application, and allocating
   unrestricted resources to secure a much simpler task.  An example
   widely discussed in both literature and the media is the use of
   crypto assets, which should be avoided where other mechanisms suffice
   due to their huge energy consumption [RFC9547].

   This document presents a non-exhaustive list of possible research
   challenges regarding energy-aware security mechanisms, outlined from
   the existing works on green networking:

   1.  How can the energy consumption of existing network security
       mechanisms be measured?  This research challenge borrows from the
       general research on green networking for the assessment of
       metrics and the frameworks capable of providing them.

   2.  Which of these metrics are up for industry-wide standardization?
       Security protocols often have greater costs if compared with
       other networking protocols.  Energy consumption metrics should
       take functionality into account to avoid compromising security
       properties.

   3.  Is it possible to perform a cost-benefit analysis comparing
       performance with energy usage, to assess if energy can be saved
       with little harm to safety and functionality?

   4.  How to best compare two or more security mechanisms to assess
       which one is best for a task, energy-wise?  This broad research
       challenge encompasses the previous items, depending on the
       definition of categories and metrics for comparison regarding
       both security and energy usage.

Soares & Nobre             Expires 5 May 2025                   [Page 5]
Internet-Draft               Green Security                November 2024

5.  Security Considerations

   To be added.

6.  Sustainability Considerations

   To be added.

7.  Informative References

   [RFC9547]  Arkko, J., Perkins, C. S., and S. Krishnan, "Report from
              the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impact of Internet
              Applications and Systems, 2022", RFC 9547,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9547, February 2024,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9547>.

   [I.D.draft-irtf-nmrg-green-ps-03]
              Clemm, A., Westphal, C., Tantsura, J., Ciavaglia, L., and
              C. Pignataro, "Challenges and Opportunities in Management
              for Green Networking", June 2024.

   [I.D.draft-cx-green-green-metrics-00]
              Clemm, A., Pignataro, C., Schooler, E., Ciavaglia, L.,
              Rezaki, A., Mirsky, G., and J. Tantsura, "Green Networking
              Metrics for Environmentally Sustainable Networking",
              October 2024.

   [I.D.draft-pignataro-green-enviro-sust-terminology-00]
              Pignataro, C., Rezaki, A., and H. ElBakoury,
              "Environmental Sustainability Terminology and Concepts",
              October 2024.

Authors' Addresses

   Laura Rodrigues Soares
   Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
   Porto Alegre-
   Brazil
   Email: lrsoares@inf.ufrgs.br

   Jeferson Campos Nobre
   Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
   Porto Alegre-
   Brazil
   Email: jcnobre@inf.ufrgs.br

Soares & Nobre             Expires 5 May 2025                   [Page 6]