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Re: [RRG] Tunnel fragmentation/reassembly for RRG map-and-encaps architectures



Noel,

On Jan 17, 2008, at 6:08 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
Well, I'm not so sure. I'm not a crypto math expert, but...
Neither am I, but...

AFAIK, this isn't an issue with public-private encryption, so I don't see a need to do periodic key rollover. (If I'm wrong about any of the crypto
aspects of all this, someone please enlighten me! :-)
My understanding is that you need to periodically replace keys in  
order to thwart brute force attacks (among other reasons).  RFC 4641  
discusses this in the context of DNSSEC in section 3.3.
And how much 'touching' of the trust hierarchy you want to impose on
the lookup agents.
Sorry, didn't follow that - can you expand a bit?
Typically, the lookup agents will need to have the trust anchors  
configured by some means (usually, manually).  If you have multiple  
trust anchors, you'll need to reconfigure those trust anchors in the  
lookup agents every time there is a change.  In RFC 4641, the  
recommended period for key rollover is 12 months.  If you're  
partitioning the namespace into 256 pieces, this implies making (at  
least) 256 changes to the configuration of each lookup agent you are  
responsible for per year where one implication of doing it wrong is to  
completely disable routing of systems dependent on that lookup agent  
for some or all of the partitions of the namespace.
while only having 2 things to break when you configure your lookup
agent...
I don't expect people to be typing the master keys in! Yes, they  
would be
distributed out-of-band ("printed in the newspaper", one wag  
suggested), but
I was assuming they would more be included in software distributions  
as a
file.
This puts much trust in the software distribution mechanism (chicken- 
or-egg problems may lie here).  In the case of DNSSEC, this turns out  
to be a non-trivial problem.  This may be because of the  
idiosyncrasies of the DNS (e.g., distributed authority) and may not be  
applicable to what we're discussing here, however one of the lessons  
DNSSEC has taught me (over the 10+ years I've been involved in it,  
either directly or on the periphery): ignoring operational key  
management requirements can render whatever you come up with  
completely useless.  FWIW.
Regards,
-drc


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