Re: draft-ietf-opsec-infrastructure-security-01 - Infrastructure Hiding

[Pekka Savola <pekkas@netcore.fi>]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Tony Rall wrote:
>   "Hiding the infrastructure of the network provides one layer of
>   protection to the devices that make up the network core."
>
> Please reconsider.  Not only does this whole section provide no better
> than weak protection, it violates numerous suggestions and mandates in
> other RFCs.
...

I have stated this before,but I'll have to say I'll agree with a lot 
of Tony's comments.

In September 2006 Donald Smith said as follows about this document 
after the previous round of comments and discussion why this should 
be BCP instead of Informational:

  "If its not done as a BCP it will be harder to get some ISPs to
   adopt. Some of the features in this draft will prevent your network
   elements from becoming reflectors in a dos attack and therefore
   general adoption is better for the internet at large."

Which is (IMHO) exactly the backwards logic.  "Best Current" practice 
should come first, and when it has been deployed wide enough and there 
are no obvious bad effects, it shouldn't need the power of 'BCP' to 
coerce others to deploy networks in a similar manner.

Further in the thread, people have stated that most of these 
techniques have already been deployed in many large provider networks. 
Could you please name a couple?  I'd like to run traceroute etc. 
through them to see if my requirements (as a customer of said transit 
operators) for usability are being met or not.

I could imagine that it could be possible to hide some infrastructure 
in a manner that doesn't __necessarily__ hurt the users very badly, 
but as shown by this thread, the understanding of what infrastructure 
hiding means (just iBGP loopback addresses vs everything including 
interface addresses as an example) implies that there's likely still 
some work to do.

--
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings