BGP Prefix Origin Validation
RFC 6811

• Status
• IESG evaluation record
• IESG writeups
• Email expansions
• History

• Versions
• 03
• 04
• 05
• 06
• 07
• 08
• 09
• 10

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                      P. Mohapatra
Request for Comments: 6811                                 Cisco Systems
Category: Standards Track                                     J. Scudder
ISSN: 2070-1721                                         Juniper Networks
                                                                 D. Ward
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                                 R. Bush
                                               Internet Initiative Japan
                                                              R. Austein
                                                    Dragon Research Labs
                                                            January 2013

                      BGP Prefix Origin Validation

Abstract

   To help reduce well-known threats against BGP including prefix mis-
   announcing and monkey-in-the-middle attacks, one of the security
   requirements is the ability to validate the origination Autonomous
   System (AS) of BGP routes.  More specifically, one needs to validate
   that the AS number claiming to originate an address prefix (as
   derived from the AS_PATH attribute of the BGP route) is in fact
   authorized by the prefix holder to do so.  This document describes a
   simple validation mechanism to partially satisfy this requirement.

Status of This Memo

   This is an Internet Standards Track document.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
   Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6811.

Mohapatra, et al.            Standards Track                    [Page 1]
RFC 6811              BGP Prefix Origin Validation          January 2013

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.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   2.  Prefix-to-AS Mapping Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     2.1.  Pseudo-Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   3.  Policy Control  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.  Interaction with Local Cache  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   5.  Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   7.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     8.2.  Informational References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.  Introduction

   A BGP route associates an address prefix with a set of Autonomous
   Systems (ASes) that identify the interdomain path the prefix has
   traversed in the form of BGP announcements.  This set is represented
   as the AS_PATH attribute in BGP [RFC4271] and starts with the AS that
   originated the prefix.  To help reduce well-known threats against BGP
   including prefix mis-announcing and monkey-in-the-middle attacks, one
   of the security requirements is the ability to validate the
   origination AS of BGP routes.  More specifically, one needs to
   validate that the AS number claiming to originate an address prefix
   (as derived from the AS_PATH attribute of the BGP route) is in fact
   authorized by the prefix holder to do so.  This document describes a
   simple validation mechanism to partially satisfy this requirement.

Mohapatra, et al.            Standards Track                    [Page 2]
RFC 6811              BGP Prefix Origin Validation          January 2013

   The Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) describes an approach
   to build a formally verifiable database of IP addresses and AS
   numbers as resources.  The overall architecture of RPKI as defined in
   [RFC6480] consists of three main components: