Re: [Last-Call] Secdir last call review of draft-ietf-netconf-tcp-client-server-21

[Kent Watsen <kent+ietf@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nancy,

Thank you for your valuable comments.

Please find my responses below.

Kent

On Feb 16, 2024, at 7:10 PM, Nancy Cam-Winget via Datatracker <noreply@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Reviewer: Nancy Cam-Winget
Review result: Has Nits

I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's 
ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the 
IESG.  These comments were written primarily for the benefit of the 
security area directors.  Document editors and WG chairs should treat 
these comments just like any other last call comments.


This document defines 3 YANG 1.1 modules support configuration of
TCP clients and TCP servers. These three modules encompass the
(1) common configurations, (2) a grouping methodology to enable
Modification of application specific parameters for TCP connections
And (3) configurations specific to clients for traversing proxies.


The document reads well and I have found no issues but have
One nit:

Section 3.1.1 speaks to features such as "socks5-username-password"
and "socks5-gss-api" which have both security and privacy implications.
While there is general mention in the Security Considerations (Section 5),
That care must be taken; given that these parameters are used as examples
in Section 3, it would be note highlighting that care in particular to
these parameters must be properly protected to ensure both confidentiality
and integrity.

I suppose it is a bit silly for the example in Section 3 to configure a proxy.  It’s my quirk to try to make examples present every field possible so that they’re better seen.  In this case, I wonder how popular TCP-proxies are and, if close to “zero”, having a proxy configured in an example may cause more confusion than be helpful.  Would simply removing the “proxy-server” from the example resolve most of your concern?

Separately, I found the Security Considerations about the "password” node to be outdated.  It was written before support for encrypted-passwords was added to the "crypto-types" draft.  So I updated the Security Considerations section to say this:

    The "password" node defined in the "tcp-client-grouping"

    grouping is defined using the "password-grouping" grouping

    presented in <xref target="I-D.ietf-netconf-crypto-types"/>.

    This grouping enables both cleartext and encrypted passwords

    to be configured.  As the referenced document states, configuration

    of cleartext passwords is NOT RECOMMENDED.  However, in 

    the case cleartext values are configured, this node is additionally 

    sensitive to read operations such that, in normal use cases, 

    it should never be returned to a client.  For this reason, the 

    NACM extension "default-deny-all" has been applied to it.

Thanks again,

Kent

-- 
last-call mailing list
last-call@xxxxxxxx
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/last-call