Subject: Re: [multipathtcp] Clarification on the attack type on which I spoke about on-mic at the meeting

From: Roberto Peon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:16:08 +0200

On Jul 30, 2013 2:55 PM, "Roberto Peon" <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> The premise of this attack is that some 3rd party wishes to snoop upon
communications and perform detailed analysis on the content of a
conversation.
>
> To "attack" a TCP stream, the in-path device must either store, forward,
or analyze the data itself.
> These are all relatively costly options.
>
> With MPTCP as it exists today, this cost is vastly reduced for such an
in-path attacker as an in-path attacker could instead (via ADD_ADDR or
other methods) cause the connection to be re-routed to an entity running on
centralized resources.
>
> As I'm sure we'll hear from the security folks, the only way to deal with
this, assuming it is serious enough that we must (and I believe it probably
is, given similar attacks against application-layers that we've seen
published), is to have reasonable (cryptographic) proof that either party
is actually generating the changes in the control-plane.
> -=R