Trustworthy Location
RFC 7378

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                     H. Tschofenig
Request for Comments: 7378                                   Independent
Category: Informational                                   H. Schulzrinne
ISSN: 2070-1721                                      Columbia University
                                                           B. Aboba, Ed.
                                                   Microsoft Corporation
                                                           December 2014

                          Trustworthy Location

Abstract

   The trustworthiness of location information is critically important
   for some location-based applications, such as emergency calling or
   roadside assistance.

   This document describes threats to conveying location, particularly
   for emergency calls, and describes techniques that improve the
   reliability and security of location information.  It also provides
   guidelines for assessing the trustworthiness of location information.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   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).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see 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/rfc7378.

Tschofenig, et al.            Informational                     [Page 1]
RFC 7378                  Trustworthy Location             December 2014

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.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................3
      1.1. Terminology ................................................3
      1.2. Emergency Services Architecture ............................5
   2. Threat Models ...................................................8
      2.1. Existing Work ..............................................8
      2.2. Adversary Model ............................................9
      2.3. Location Spoofing .........................................10
      2.4. Identity Spoofing .........................................11
   3. Mitigation Techniques ..........................................11
      3.1. Signed Location-by-Value ..................................12
      3.2. Location-by-Reference .....................................15
      3.3. Proxy-Added Location ......................................18
   4. Location Trust Assessment ......................................20
   5. Security Considerations ........................................23
   6. Privacy Considerations .........................................24
   7. Informative References .........................................26
   Acknowledgments ...................................................30
   Authors' Addresses ................................................30

Tschofenig, et al.            Informational                     [Page 2]
RFC 7378                  Trustworthy Location             December 2014

1.  Introduction

   Several public and commercial services need location information to
   operate.  This includes emergency services (such as fire, ambulance,
   and police) as well as commercial services such as food delivery and
   roadside assistance.

   For circuit-switched calls from landlines, as well as for Voice over
   IP (VoIP) services that only support emergency service calls from
   stationary Devices, location provided to the Public Safety Answering
   Point (PSAP) is determined from a lookup using the calling telephone
   number.  As a result, for landlines or stationary VoIP, spoofing of
   caller identification can result in the PSAP incorrectly determining
   the caller's location.  Problems relating to calling party number and
   Caller ID assurance have been analyzed by the Secure Telephone
   Identity Revisited [STIR] working group as described in "Secure
   Telephone Identity Problem Statement and Requirements" [RFC7340].  In