The IESG has approved the following document: - 'Privacy considerations for protocols relying on IP broadcast and multicast' (draft-ietf-intarea-broadcast-consider-09.txt) as Informational RFC This document is the product of the Internet Area Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Suresh Krishnan and Terry Manderson. A URL of this Internet Draft is: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-intarea-broadcast-consider/ Technical Summary A number of application-layer protocols make use of IP broadcasts or multicast messages for functions like local service discovery or name resolution. When using broadcasts or multicast messages, a passive observer in the same broadcast/multicast domain can trivially record these messages and analyze their content. This document highlights potential privacy issues that occur when protocol designers make use of broadcast / multicast messages to exchange information that can expose individuals to privacy threats. Working Group Summary The document was discussed at length in the WG, following some experiments that were made over the IETF network. Because of the obviousness of the issues and usefulness of the document, there was little real discussion about the intention the document. There were comments for completeness from C. Huitema, T. Chown, T. Hebert, J. Touch, and the document shepherd, and these were all addressed. Document Quality The document is based on protocol behavior observed during experiments on operational networks (including the IETF meeting network) Personnel The document shepherd is Juan Carlos Zuniga. The responsible Area Director is Suresh Krishnan.
