Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-6man-stable-privacy-addresses-06.txt> (A method for Generating Stable Privacy-Enhanced Addresses with IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC)) to Proposed Standard

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Hi, Alissa!

Thanks so much for your feedback! -- Please find my comments in-line...

On 04/25/2013 06:32 PM, Alissa Cooper wrote:
> 
> There are two places where it is implied that the algorithm in this
> spec mitigates most of the privacy issues associated with embedding
> IEEE identifiers in addresses. The first is in section 1:
> 
> For nodes that currently disable "Privacy extensions" [RFC4941] for 
> some of the reasons stated above, this mechanism provides stable 
> privacy-enhanced addresses which may already address most of the 
> privacy concerns related to addresses that embed IEEE identifiers 
> [RFC4291].  On the other hand, in scenarios in which "Privacy 
> Extensions" are employed, implementation of the mechanism described 
> in this document would mitigate host-scanning attacks and also 
> mitigate correlation of host activities.
> 
> And the second is in section 6:
> 
> Finally, we note that the method described in this document may 
> mitigate most of the privacy concerns arising from the use of IPv6 
> addresses that embed IEEE identifiers, without the use of temporary 
> addresses, thus possibly offering an interesting trade-off for those 
> scenarios in which the use of temporary addresses is not feasible.
> 
> This implication seems misguided. Providing the ability to track and
> correlate the communications of a device that never leaves a single
> network is a significant concern.

In some scenarios, that's impossible. Trivial example: If you have a
network with a single host attached to it, no matter whether you change
your address periodically (*), it will be possible to correlate the
hosts' activities.

(*) That of changing your addresses *periodically* actually helps
correlation.



> It is one concern among several
> that the IEEE-identifier-based mechanism raises, but it is a big one
> IMO. This algorithm does not appear to mitigate that concern, so any
> implication that it does should be avoided.

What the text implicitly means is "This algorithm mitigates all concerns
except correlation of a nde's activity within the same network... but in
some scenarios that's impossible to mitigate, then, in those scenarios,
this algorithm mitigates as much as *can* be mitigated".


> I would suggest using
> "some of the privacy concerns" in place of "most of the privacy
> concerns" in the two sections above.

Is there any other one left to be mitigated other than the one I
mentioned above?


> 
> Nit:
> 
> This link in the [Broersma] reference is broken:
> http://www.ipv6.org.au/summit/talks/Ron_Broersma.pdf

Will fix this.

Thanks!

Best regards,
-- 
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
e-mail: fgont@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Fingerprint: 6666 31C6 D484 63B2 8FB1 E3C4 AE25 0D55 1D4E 7492








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