Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack
RFC 7258
| Document | Type |
RFC - Best Current Practice
(May 2014; No errata)
Also known as BCP 188
Was draft-farrell-perpass-attack (individual in gen area)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Reviews | |||
| Stream | WG state | Submitted to IESG for Publication | |
| Document shepherd | Sean Turner | ||
| Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2014-01-22) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 7258 (Best Current Practice) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Yes | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Jari Arkko | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
| IANA | IANA review state | Version Changed - Review Needed | |
| IANA action state | No IC | ||
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Farrell
Request for Comments: 7258 Trinity College Dublin
BCP: 188 H. Tschofenig
Category: Best Current Practice ARM Ltd.
ISSN: 2070-1721 May 2014
Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack
Abstract
Pervasive monitoring is a technical attack that should be mitigated
in the design of IETF protocols, where possible.
Status of This Memo
This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice.
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
BCPs 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/rfc7258.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 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.
Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 1]
RFC 7258 Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack May 2014
1. Pervasive Monitoring Is a Widespread Attack on Privacy
Pervasive Monitoring (PM) is widespread (and often covert)
surveillance through intrusive gathering of protocol artefacts,
including application content, or protocol metadata such as headers.
Active or passive wiretaps and traffic analysis, (e.g., correlation,
timing or measuring packet sizes), or subverting the cryptographic
keys used to secure protocols can also be used as part of pervasive
monitoring. PM is distinguished by being indiscriminate and very
large scale, rather than by introducing new types of technical
compromise.
The IETF community's technical assessment is that PM is an attack on
the privacy of Internet users and organisations. The IETF community
has expressed strong agreement that PM is an attack that needs to be
mitigated where possible, via the design of protocols that make PM
significantly more expensive or infeasible. Pervasive monitoring was
discussed at the technical plenary of the November 2013 IETF meeting
[IETF88Plenary] and then through extensive exchanges on IETF mailing
lists. This document records the IETF community's consensus and
establishes the technical nature of PM.
The term "attack" is used here in a technical sense that differs
somewhat from common English usage. In common English usage, an
attack is an aggressive action perpetrated by an opponent, intended
to enforce the opponent's will on the attacked party. The term is
used here to refer to behavior that subverts the intent of
communicating parties without the agreement of those parties. An
attack may change the content of the communication, record the
content or external characteristics of the communication, or through
correlation with other communication events, reveal information the
parties did not intend to be revealed. It may also have other
effects that similarly subvert the intent of a communicator.
[RFC4949] contains a more complete definition for the term "attack".
We also use the term in the singular here, even though PM in reality
may consist of a multifaceted set of coordinated attacks.
In particular, the term "attack", used technically, implies nothing
about the motivation of the actor mounting the attack. The
motivation for PM can range from non-targeted nation-state
surveillance, to legal but privacy-unfriendly purposes by commercial
enterprises, to illegal actions by criminals. The same techniques to
achieve PM can be used regardless of motivation. Thus, we cannot
defend against the most nefarious actors while allowing monitoring by
other actors no matter how benevolent some might consider them to be,
since the actions required of the attacker are indistinguishable from
other attacks. The motivation for PM is, therefore, not relevant for
how PM is mitigated in IETF protocols.
Farrell & Tschofenig Best Current Practice [Page 2]
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