Subject: RE: trust security claims of incoming packets?

From: "CAVANNA,VICENTE V (A-Roseville,ex1)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 10:33:29 -0600

Bill,
Thanks for the confirmation that the spec requires verification of policy.
I too have come accross more than one vendor who does not lookup the policy
after ESP processing - they assume that this double-checking is redundant
since a check already occurred when the Security Association was
established. I had been somewhat willing to accept that although I now think
this is also a security hole. 
What I could not accept is not checking the policy at all when the packet
arrives in the clear since in such a case there has been no prior check that
the packet _should_ be in the clear.
Vince

|-----Original Message-----
|From: Bill Strahm [mailto:[email-masked]]
|Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 2:50 PM
|To: CAVANNA,VICENTE V (A-Roseville,ex1); [email-masked]
|Cc: SHEEHY,DAVE (A-Americas,unix1); ALBERTSON,LYLE (A-PaloAlto,ex1)
|Subject: RE: trust security claims of incoming packets?
|
|
|I can't vouch for other implelmentors, but the implementation 
|I worked on
|checked... It is required in the specification.  This 
|basically turned into
|a single look into a hash table... not a huge overhead... some, but not
|much, and we were able to get darned close to theoretical wire speed at
|100Mbps full duplex...  I know that some vendors did not check 
|after ESP
|processing if the packet should have been covered by the 
|negotiated SA...
|We didn't initially, we did in a second version that never 
|made it to market
|(to my knowledge)
|
|I'd like to know what vendors you talk to that don't follow 
|the standard, I
|can actually see many VPN vendors not doing this, because they 
|will turn
|around and drop all clear packets anyway...
|
|Bill
|+========+=========+=========+=========+=========+=========+=========+
|Bill Strahm     Software Development is a race between Programmers
|Member of the   trying to build bigger and better idiot proof software
|Technical Staff and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better
[email-masked] idiots.
|(503) 601-0263  So far the Universe is winning --- Rich Cook
|
|-----Original Message-----
|From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of
|CAVANNA,VICENTE V (A-Roseville,ex1)
|Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 1:46 PM
|To: [email-masked]'
|Cc: CAVANNA,VICENTE V (A-Roseville,ex1); SHEEHY,DAVE 
|(A-Americas,unix1);
|ALBERTSON,LYLE (A-PaloAlto,ex1)
|Subject: trust security claims of incoming packets?
|
|
|Most vendors of IPSec components that I have talked to do not verify,
|against their local policy database, if an inbound packet has 
|claimed and
|been afforded the security processing that the local policy 
|specifies. Doing
|this verification may, of course, introduce a performance 
|bottleneck in the
|processing of unsecured packets which would be undesireable, 
|as most users
|would expect performance not to degrade unless secured packets 
|are being
|processed.
|
|If a packet arrives demanding security processing (e.g. has an 
|ESP header)
|then, after processing, the local policy is inspected to 
|confirm that the
|appropriate processing was applied  but if the packet arrives 
|unsecured  all
|security processing is bypassed, trusting instead that the 
|packet was indeed
|meant to be insecure.
|
|This method of handling unsecured packets goes against my 
|interpretation of
|the IPSec specs and seems to be a security hole.
|
|What point am I missing that will mitigate my concern?
|
|Thanks.
|
|Vicente Cavanna
|Agilent Technologies
|