Subject: [karp] design guidelines document editorial comments

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:48:01 -0400

Stephen noted that Section two refers to phase 2 of the work, but the 
first description of the phases is later.
We should have a description of the phases in the introduction.

The remaining comments he has also need action:

- Section 3.1: "will be very secret" seems optimistic (and is
presumably referring only to the private component of the key
pair). "will not be subject to change" seems to make a lot of
assumptions. I've never heard tell of a dictionary attack on
an asymmetric key pair - why even mention it?

- Section 3.1: asymmetric algorithm key lengths are discussed
in rfc 3766 and in the literature, some references would be
good here (and maybe better than the current text) in particular
to the "NIST guidlines" cited but not referenced.

- 3.1: s/Once asymmetric key pair/Once an asymmetric key pair/

- 3.1 is missing references to rfcs related to PKI (5280 etc.)

- 3.2 says "using the key chains" - what are those? There is at
least a missing reference. And use "key chain" or "keychain" but not
both.

- 4.1: The first paragraph here is confusing. I don't get what "KARP
parameters" might mean.

- 4.1: References for "inter-connection replay" and "two time pads"
would be good.

- Section 6 says: "Design teams while defining the new
authentication and security mechanisms MUST design in such a manner
that the routing protocol authentication mechanism remains oblivious
of how the keying material is derived." What does that mean? How
does one validate the MUST there? Does it really mean that a
'pluggable' KDF must be used to generate keying material? If so, why
not say so?

- There are many typos. Too many to identify.

- Section 7.1 says "...use of a KMP network-wide increases peer-wise
security so greatly." I don't think that can be justified in the
absence of a specific KMP.

- Section 7.3 says: "In this context, the attack target size
represents the number of unique routing exchanges across a network
that an attacker may be able to observe in order to gain security
association credentials, i.e. crack the keys." I disagree with that.
I don't know how "attack size" is defined, but it sounds like you
should be discussing the impact of a successful attack. Also,
"cracking" keys by observing routing exchanges should really not be
possible and doesn't distinguish between key management schemes - if
that's possible, the routing protocol's security mechanism is just
broken at least for any sensible number of (pairs of) nodes, or else
a weak key has been chosen.

- Section 7.4: I've no idea what "one routing peer-to-peer key
management protocol exchanges" means.

- Section 7.4: I think peer-to-peer isn't a great term here. Maybe
router-to-router would be better?

- Section 7.4: " The desired end goal for KARP WG is develop a
strong peer-to- peer KMP as an Out-of-and external Key Management
protocol is out of scope." Huh?