Subject: [secdir] secdir review of draft-ietf-pce-of

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:31:27 +0000

I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's  
ongoing effort
to review all IETF documents being processed by the IESG.  These  
comments
were written primarily for the benefit of the security area  
directors.  Document
editors and WG chairs should treat these comments just like any other  
last call
comments.

Apologies for the lateness - executive summary - nothing to worry  
about.

The document descibes a mechanism for path computation clients to  
request and receive the criteria by which a route was selected. These  
criteria are classed as Objective Functions, and include such  
criteria as "shortest", "fastest", etc, and are defined elsewhere.

The security considerations section is fairly short, and I think it  
covers everything. Specifically, it states that:

a) The security provided by PCEP itself isn't changed by the addition  
of OF objects in messages - the new objects are attached to existing  
messages, and secured as part of the PCEP session itself. (PCEP  
itself uses TCP-MD5, which isn't hugely secure, but given the nature  
of the deployments, seems reasonable in the short term).

b) The additional possibilities for an attack offered by the addition  
of OF objects are not considered significant. I agree with this  
assessment - objective functions need not be disclosed by the PCE,  
and a PCC's mandatory requests can be rejected. I don't see any  
useful attack that could be mounted purely by changing the routing  
criteria in a running session by injection, nor any useful disclosure  
found by passive observation of the objective functions used.

Dave.
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