[AG-TECH] AG Security

[Markus Buchhorn]

Hi Bill

At 10:19 PM 21/07/2002 -0500, Bill Nickless wrote:
>I'm not convinced of the viability of a security/encryption model that operates below the application layer.

Do you count SRTP as below application layer? Just curious. 

How do you feel about IPSec?

>You mention the possibility of an attacker joining the group "and running crack over it".  Quoting Rescorla(?) at the IETF IESG Plenary in Yokohama last week, "the Internet is where you hand your packets off to your attacker to deliver for you."  

love it!

>In other words, the possibility of the attacker getting your traffic is assumed even in the case of unicast.  Granted, multicast traffic is easier to get hold of than by compromising an intermediate router to send you unicast traffic.  But the assumptions should be the same--your attacker has all your traffic.

But couldn't we design something where the onus on attacking multicast is just as hard as for unicast? I know that snooping broadcast traffic is a lot easier than unicast :-) but why treat multicast as being closer to broadcast than to unicast? Since multicast has a model of "you-join-to-get-traffic", it has a hook that we could play with... Ultimately though it may be impossible or "unscalable".

>That being said, you might like to look over some of the IETF MAGMA Working Group discussions on secure IGMP. [...]

>Deb Agarwal of LBNL presented some work at the last Access Grid retreat on securing multicast groups and sessions. [...]

Thanks for those references - I'll dig into them!

Cheers,
        Markus


Markus Buchhorn, ANU Internet Futures Project,        | Ph: +61 2 61258810
Markus.Buchhorn at anu.edu.au, mail: Bldg #108 - CS&IT   |Fax: +61 2 61259805
Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Aust.  |Mobile: 0417 281429