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 2013Copyright Notice
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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
datatracker.ietf.org