Subject: [secdir] draft-ietf-opsawg-hmac-sha-2-usm-snmp-new-03 SECDIR review

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 17:17:03 -0500

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

I think this document is pretty much Ready with nits. It is a
replacement for RFC 7630 with the only change being, apparently, that
the MIB MODULE-IDENTITY was incorrect in 7630.

The Security Considerations Section looks good.

Nits:

The Abstract does not mention that this document obsoletes RFC 7630. I
think it is a good practice to include that in the Abstract.

The first paragraph of the Introduction seems odd to me It says
   "This memo defines a portion of the Management Information Base (MIB)
   for use with network management protocols. In particular, it defines
   additional authentication protocols ..."
While I can't actually say this is actually wrong, the portion of the
MIB it defines is trivial and it seems to me that the meat is in the
specification of the additional authentication protocols. Certainly,
those authentication protocol specifications don't appear in the MIB
portion specified, only identifiers for them. Yet the wording of the
Introduction (... defines a portion of the ... MIB.. In particular,
...) seems to imply that the definition of the additional
authentication protocols is a subpart of the portion of the MIB. So I
would say the Introduction should begin with something like:
   "This document specified additional authentication protocols ... In
addition, it defines a portion of the Management Information Base
(MIB) containing identifiers for these authentication protocols for
use with network management protocols."

Section 4.2, line 3: suggest replacing "defined" with "specified" so
that "definition" and "defined" don't occur so close to each other. I
think it reads a bit better with that change.

Thanks,
Donald
=============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
 155 Beaver Street, Milford, MA 01757 USA
 [email-masked]

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From: Johannes Merkle <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2016 11:23:43 +0100

> think it is a good practice to include that in the Abstract.

That's a good hint. I will do that.

> use with network management protocols."

Alternatively, the introduction could be rephrased in the line of that of RFC 3826, e.g.,

   Within the Architecture for describing Simple Network Management
   Protocol (SNMP) Management Frameworks [RFC3411], the User-based
   Security Model (USM) [RFC3414] for SNMPv3 is defined as a Security
   Subsystem within an SNMP engine.  In RFC 3414, two different
   authentication protocols, HMAC-MD5-96 and HMAC-SHA-96, are defined
   based on the hash functions MD5 and SHA-1, respectively.

   This memo specifies new HMAC-SHA-2 authentication protocols for USM...

IMHO that would be a better start.

-- 
Johannes

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From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 16:50:25 -0500

Hi Johannes,

> IMHO that would be a better start.

That alternative text looks fine to me.

Thanks,
Donald