Subject: Re: [secdir] secdir review of draft-ietf-6lo-btle-13

From: Chris Lonvick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Jul 2015 09:34:19 -0500

Hi,

I have re-reviewed this document. Overall, a lot of very good changes 
have been made.
I appreciate the additions to the Security Considerations section. Both 
of those are well
written and give appropriate guidance.

I went back and re-read what I had asked about discussing multicast as a 
malicious
attack vector. My apologies, but I didn't make myself clear. I was 
asking about what
would happen if a device on the Internet were to start sending multicast 
packets to
the 6LBR attempting to get it to forward them to the 6LNs. I'm thinking 
that would
cause a great deal of overhead processing on the 6LBR and perhaps 
overwhelm the
Bluetooth network. Is there a way to prevent or mitigate that?

Best regards,
Chris

On 6/3/15 6:23 PM, Chris Lonvick wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 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.
>
> Overall, the document is well written and explains the concepts well.
>
> I saw that a "test interface" is defined in Section 2.1.  I would like
> to see some guidance in the Security Considerations section about this.
> Hopefully the guidance will describe how the interface is secured, or
> that it can be secured by an operator.
>
> Multicast is mentioned several times throughout the document mostly
> saying that the Bluetooth LE link layer does not support it.  I
> would like to see this addressed in the Security Considerations section
> as well to alert implementers and operators that this may be a point
> of attack.  Any guidance on how to prevent an active, malicious denial
> of service attack using multicast would be appreciated.
>
<remainder elided for brevity>