Subject: Re: [Raven] Fly away, raven

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:44:00 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Grenville Armitage <[email-masked]>

> >  They are designed to give people other than
> > the nominal users access to the data in the channel.  In all other cases,
> > everyone calls such things security holes.
>
> Until you, and a few others, can get over this insistence that I'm
> advocating tapping we cannot have discourse. I am not. I'm advocating
> that the IESG impose an auditing requirement on anyone's proposals
> for 'IETF tapping capabilities'.
>
> What you don't seem to have grokked is that I see no problem with
> such an IESG stance forcing the development of specs that no
> self-respecting LEA would want to use. A subtle form of rebellion,
> and apparently too subtle by half.

No, the blind spot is yours.  Yes, you are advocating what you believe
are standards that no self-respecting LEA would want to use.  However,
even ignoring the existence of other than self-respecting LEA and non-LEA
personel who would abuse your protocols (including finding bugs), you are
grossly underestimating self-respecting LEA.  They could and would
profitably use what you are proposing and anything that you might propose
and expect any IETF working group, the IAB, and the IESG to advance with
as much decorum as RFC 2549 and RFC 1149.

Even if you ensured that all IETF tapping protocols announced the tap to
all participants beside providing complete auditing published on the web
and in major newspapers around the world, and if there were no bugs in
any implementations that bad guys could use (e.g. no "debug" commands),
LEA could still use your protocol.  I can immediately see a way to use
it.  I'm sure they would think of more creative ways.

The worst problem with your hope of having the IETF produce a useless
standard is keeping the IETF on that track.  It is at best difficult to
keep a working group on a track that is generally agreed to be a good
idea.  Any WG for a useless IETF protocol would include many interested
in subverting your goal and producing a useful protocol.  It would be
impossible to prevent minor extensions to your idea that would make the
results entirely useful to self-respecting LEA.  For example, there would
be exceptions when auditing could turned off, such as when the auditing
hardware or software is broken or the auditing storage is full.  (No,
permanently breaking the auditing or using tiny auditing tape is not the
way I mentioned above; that one is less technical.)

Besides, if your idea were possible and the IETF could publish a genuinely
useless tapping protocol, it would be a silly waste of time.  There is no
need for the IETF to waste time making rude gestures, even if heartfelt.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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---

From: Grenville Armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:55:15 -0700

Vernon Schryver wrote:
	[..]
> LEA could still use your protocol.

I haven't proposed a protocol. I've been proposing requirements
that the IESG might impose on protocol designers. You're
still thinking of someone else.

gja