On Thursday, November 7, 2013, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
On Nov 6, 2013, at 6:23 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The IETF needs to press for careful attention to privacy
> concerns in its work, including protection against surveillance.
>
> [ ] No
> [ ] Yes
> [ ] Don't Yet Know
> [ ] Don't Care
I guess that as a technologist I need a little more information.
First, as the questions were asked this morning and as you suggested they might have been reworded, the implication of a "yes" is that we will go back to each protocol we have deployed or in design and "do something" to make it more private, including protection against surveillance.
I think the implication is to be how we do things should change, designing without considering security is wrong and we need more cross WGs to avoid future problems, making design simple is ok to do parts but not full work/protocol. We need to UPDATE all protocols. The old designers should admit that there are mistakes no ones perfect.
. I'm not sure we're likely to, for example, change RFC 791 to make it less available to surveillance, or for that matter RFC 2640.
May be more options of security techniques not only few security algorithms which may affect other protocols.
I'm not sure exactly how to change UDP, TCP, SCTP, and so on. Yes, there are some fields that could probably be encrypted, and doing so using IPsec ESP has some value in terms of integrity checking end to end. But I'm not sure that this would have an impact on privacy. ICMP? ARP? ND? OSPF? IS-IS?
We should be sure, and we should update protocols for the best services to the world.
So if the question is "all protocols", I'm not sure it is appropriate for all of our protocols to be changed, because I'm not sure that they face threats that we can effectively mitigate.
IMHO, We need to update all the Internet transport and application protocols for security focus.
As we get further up-stack, the application of TLS or DTLS, and anything that would help with pervasive use of OpenPGP-or-whatever, would be a good thing. Where we have protocols that could usefully use TLS/DTLS and don't, we can address that, and I suspect it might be appropriate for the relevant working groups to amend their charters accordingly. In those cases, I would agree that the IETF SHOULD (not "needs to", this is a question of will and direction, not necessity) pay careful attention to privacy concerns in its work, including protection against surveillance.
Agree
After that, it's operational. If a site it deploying http and we might prefer it used https, running out and changing the protocol isn't going to fix anything. The operator of the site in question needs to change protocols to https - or something like that.
At least we report breaks and possible attacks, and do or best updates for our users. If operators don't fix and update,we then blame them, the community of users are very intelligent.
So, which protocols are under discussion, and what security/monitoring/privacy threats does each face? Where our protocols face legitimate threats, yes, we SHOULD address them.
Why privacy threats were not addressed before users noticed the attacks and that the designers failed? The IETF way of work and structure needs to change, I already suggested it in past. Once an AD suggested more cross area, but I think it is better to have cross WGs and changing structure of IETF areas.
I'm not sure feel-good statements say much.
Yes, It is easy to say or implement but what matters is what happens and how we work to adapt and develop quicker than our attackers.
AB