Hi, On 2009-2-14, at 0:25, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
If I am reading this correctly the UK Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure wants the IETF (or some other body) to produce a "companion document to the IETF specifications that discusses the security aspects and implications of the protocols, identifies the existing vulnerabilities, discusses the possible countermeasures, and analyses their respective effectiveness."
during the discussions around the TCP implementation deficiencies publicized by the Outpost24 last fall, we discussed with CERT-FI and others in that community that the IETF would offer to be the venue for publishing such a document. The goal would be to document techniques that stack vendors are employing to harden their stacks. They asked us to wait until vendors had a chance to deploy patches to the latest round of vulnerabilities, and we haven't heard back from them since late last year. (Which reminds me to shoot them an email.)
I believe such a document would be fully in scope for TCPM, but obviously the involvement of the stack vendors is critical to ensure this is a document that has practical relevance.
Lars
Begin forwarded message:From: Fernando Gont <fernando.gont@xxxxxxxxx> Date: February 12, 2009 5:38:35 PM EST To: bugtraq@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, full-disclosure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Security Assessment of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Hello, folks, The United Kingdom's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure has just released the document "Security Assessment of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)", on which I have had the pleasure to work during the last few years.The motivation to produce this document is explained in the Preface ofthe document as follows: - ---- cut here ---- The TCP/IP protocol suite was conceived in an environment that was quite different from the hostile environment they currently operate in. However, the effectiveness of the protocols led to their early adoption in production environments, to the point that to some extent, the current world?s economy depends on them. While many textbooks and articles have created the myth that the Internet protocols were designed for warfare environments, the top level goal for the DARPA Internet Program was the sharing of large service machines on the ARPANET. As a result, many protocol specifications focus only on the operational aspects of the protocols they specify, and overlook their security implications. While the Internet technology evolved since it early inception, the Internet?s building blocks are basically the same core protocols adopted by the ARPANET more than two decades ago. During the last twenty years, many vulnerabilities have been identified in the TCP/IP stacks of a number of systems. Some of them were based on flaws in some protocol implementations, affecting only a reduced number of systems, while others were based in flaws in the protocolsthemselves, affecting virtually every existing implementation. Even inthe last couple of years, researchers were still working on security problems in the core protocols. The discovery of vulnerabilities in the TCP/IP protocol suite usually led to reports being published by a number of CSIRTs (Computer Security Incident Response Teams) and vendors, which helped to raise awareness about the threats and the best mitigations known at the time the reports were published. Unfortunately, this also led to the documentation of the discovered protocol vulnerabilities being spread among a large number of documents, which are sometimes difficult to identify. For some reason, much of the effort of the security community on the Internet protocols did not result in official documents (RFCs) being issued by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). This basically led to a situation in which ?known? security problems have not alwaysbeen addressed by all vendors. In addition, in many cases vendors haveimplemented quick ?fixes? to the identified vulnerabilities without a careful analysis of their effectiveness and their impact on interoperability. Producing a secure TCP/IP implementation nowadays is a very difficult task, in part because of the lack of a single document that serves as a security roadmap for the protocols. Implementers are faced with the hardtask of identifying relevant documentation and differentiating between that which provides correct advice, and that which provides misleadingadvice based on inaccurate or wrong assumptions. There is a clear need for a companion document to the IETFspecifications that discusses the security aspects and implications ofthe protocols, identifies the existing vulnerabilities, discusses thepossible countermeasures, and analyses their respective effectiveness.This document is the result of a security assessment of the IETF specifications of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), from a security point of view. Possible threats are identified and, where possible, countermeasures are proposed. Additionally, many implementation flaws that have led to security vulnerabilities have been referenced in the hope that future implementations will not incur the same problems. This document does not aim to be the final word on the security aspects of TCP. On the contrary, it aims to raise awareness about a number of TCP vulnerabilities that have been faced in the past, those that are currently being faced, and some of those that we may still have to deal with in the future. Feedback from the community is more than encouraged to help this document be as accurate as possible and to keep it updated as new vulnerabilities are discovered. - ---- cut here ---- The document is available at CPNI's web site: http://www.cpni.gov.uk/Products/technicalnotes/Feb-09-security-assessment-TCP.aspx Additionally, I have posted a copy of the document on my personal web site: http://www.gont.com.ar Any comments will be more than welcome. Kind regards, - -- Fernando Gont e-mail: fernando@xxxxxxxxxxx || fgont@xxxxxxx PGP Fingerprint: 7809 84F5 322E 45C7 F1C9 3945 96EE A9EF D076 FFF1 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJJlKTFAAoJEJbuqe/Qdv/xbBgH/0CRAO7VttW8IlSs6ocKl8Xi pQkuUZOKAZrkok0T4GOkRPBmIv+5K8ZQT8hBBdTL6TOdZ+LOIHvmwpOMRqosijbm +KXTuHYws/zVbReCZXdYFhHfxRUn75G9s0mafNRpkiQV07hoHpD38UcGJYUnQXNy 7uuV3HXJDENgE0L8pAK8HhgNKlX3clcV3sBJEzHMsvVVT1Jh1XsS+krAD7JguN95 nhjOTcTp1Ggq+F6wqucm9Kf193O78REEz/FGeaoPGSDfzD0EBGg4IG1qu6Bo3e++ ALLEOhARQJ0l12dC+84N0/mrGBSe45pUbMddT6xZzDXa6INcmTE6dc1VSQL8EAo= =IVlY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----_______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
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