Adam,
See comments below.
Reviewer: Adam Montville Review result: Ready
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.
The summary of the review is: Ready; the Security Considerations cover in-transit protections well enough, and recommends controlling access to writable nodes.
One suggestion I have is that the security considerations could do a better job drawing a straight line between "a number of nodes...which are writeable" and the "Examples of notes that are particularly vulnerable..." The example is simply, "...several timeout values put in the protocol to protect against sessions that are not active but are consuming resources." This would suggest that controlling access to writable timeout values would mitigate denial of service, which could be beneficial to state explicitly.
How about this?
OLD: Examples of nodes that are particularly vulnerable include several
timeout values put in the protocol to protect against sessions that
are not active but are consuming resources.
NEW: Examples of nodes that are particularly vulnerable include several
timeout values put in the protocol to protect against sessions that
are not active but are consuming resources. Limiting access to these nodes will limit the ability to launch an attack in network environments.
Are all of the other writable nodes of the same character, or would some lead to, for example, privilege escalation? In other words, while doing so is probably not strictly necessary for the success of the draft, making the security issues as clear as possible for at least each category of writable node seems like a good idea to help those who may not otherwise be aware.
Writing to other writable nodes is probably not as harmful as the timeout value. So while we consider all writeable nodes as vulnerable, we consider timeout value particularly vulnerable, for the reasons stated above.
Cheers.
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