Internet DRAFT - draft-farrell-iotsi

draft-farrell-iotsi







Network Working Group                                         S. Farrell
Internet-Draft                                    Trinity College Dublin
Intended status: Informational                                 A. Cooper
Expires: August 22, 2016                                           Cisco
                                                       February 19, 2016


     It's Often True: Security's Ignored (IOTSI) - and Privacy too.
                         draft-farrell-iotsi-00

Abstract

   Designers of information models for challenged devices connected to
   the Internet, and most especially for devices that will be carried by
   people or that will be operating in people's homes, need to not
   forget that people own the devices and the data, and expect those to
   work for them, not against them.  This draft discusses some security
   and privacy issues that may be relevant for the IAB's IOTSI workshop
   on information models for such devices and related services.

Status of This Memo

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   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Ownership and Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.2.  Life Cycle  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     1.3.  Imperfection  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   2.  Commercial Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  Privacy Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     7.1.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     7.2.  URIs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7

1.  Introduction

   This is a contribution to the IAB IOTSI workshop.  [1] It is not
   expected to ever become an RFC.

   The IETF has recognised the need for strong security mechanisms
   [RFC3365] to be defined for all IETF protocols.  The IETF has further
   recognised the potential for pervasive monitoring and that work to
   counter that is needed [RFC7258] and the IAB has produced guidelines
   for handling privacy in Internet protocols.  [RFC6973].  This draft
   aims to identify some issues with the above that may arise with
   respect to the information models that are the topic of the IOTSI
   workshop, but that might othewise get forgotten.  Let's start from
   just a few high-level principles that ought inform designs:

   1.  Don't forget that the user owns the device and, arguably, the
       data produced related to that device.

   2.  Don't forget that the device needs to be updated and that the
       vendor will end-of-life the device, but the above still needs to
       be remembered.

   3.  Don't forget that while we can secure information elements in
       transit and in storage, that will always be imperfect and
       information will leak out.

   It is worth noting that the IOTSI call for submissions itself did
   ignore all of these issues.



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   For each of the above, we'll list a few issues, with some references
   that may help in further discussion.  A full analysis of how each of
   these ought be reflected in requirements, in specifications of
   information models and subsequently in data models and protocols is
   not a goal here, nor is completeness, the goal for now is simply to
   try ensure that these issues are considered in the IOTSI workshop.

1.1.  Ownership and Privacy

   1.  Regardless of the current legal situation in any particular
       jurisdiction, it is inevitable that somewhere, sometime, the user
       will be considered the legal owner of the data emitted by devices
       relevant to this discussion, sometimes in inventive or disruptive
       ways.  [2] Information models need to not assume that all
       information elements are "fair game" for all uses by service
       providers, e.g. no matter how problematic it may be for service
       providers, explicitly informed consent may be needed to include
       some data in aggregates.  And that might impose a need for what
       could end up being overly-complex permissions handling for pretty
       much any element in information models.  Managing that without
       being overwhelmed by complex models may be hard.

   2.  Don't depend on opaque end-user or legal agreements - users do
       not, and you are likely to generate terrible publicity if your
       device or service gets popular. [3] Information models that avoid
       this error are likely to involve additional entities, such as
       local controllers that might allow an end-user some control over
       what their devices are doing.

   3.  Don't include long-term stable unique identifiers anywhere, and
       do seriously attempt to avoid all such.  You will never know how
       your information model will be reused or abused.
       [ishtiaq2010security] While this may seem obvious, it will get
       forgotten even by people who generally are attempting to be
       privacy-friendly.  In particular using MAC addresses
       ([I-D.jennings-core-senml] Section 6.1.2) in this way is actively
       harmful to privacy and in the case of the DHCP protocol, fixing
       that years later requires a significant specification
       [I-D.ietf-dhc-anonymity-profile] and implementation effort, and
       it remains to be seen if such work will get widely deployed or
       not.  It is far better to be highly conservative in the initial
       stages of work, (where IOTSI is) so that such remedial efforts
       are not required later.

   4.  In some circumstances designing systems involving constrained
       devices involves trade-offs between efficient use of resources
       and privacy.  For example, leveraging hardware identifiers at the
       application layer may allow for compression or help conserve



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       bandwidth usage, but may also create additional avenues for
       attack as compared to using compartmentalized application-layer
       identifiers.  At the point of specifying information models,
       decisions about how individual systems will navigate these trade-
       offs should not be taken for granted.  Rather, information models
       should be specified to support privacy-enhancing decisions at the
       system level, with optional support for less-privacy-enhancing
       decisions in situations where deployment constraints are expected
       to warrant such support.

   5.  Traffic patterns or content, even if "anonymised" can be
       identifying in unexpected ways, either intrinsically [4] or via
       correlation.  [5] Even the existence/non-existence and timing of
       application or inftastructure (e.g.  DNS, DHCP) traffic can
       reveal presence or more.  Naive information models that don't
       consider these issues are more likely to result in vulnerable
       systems.

   6.  Distinctions between "data" and "meta-data" may not be
       significant when considering privacy and security - an
       information or data model or protocol that assumes that e.g. only
       "data" needs confidentiality is likely broken, as meta-data and
       traffic patterns may fully breach privacy.  There is also a
       tendency to re-inject data that is carried in ciphertext form
       into wrappers or headers that are considered meta-data and
       carried in clear or exposed at too many middleboxes.  That anti-
       pattern is one to be strongly discouraged.
       [I-D.hardie-privsec-metadata-insertion]

1.2.  Life Cycle

   1.  All devices of any kind will include vulnerabilities.  If device
       software/firmware is not updated, those will eventually be
       exploited somewhere, sometime.  Crawling the network to find
       those vulnerble devices is a solved problem. [6]

   2.  The end-user will want the device to continue working and
       continue getting updated even after all vendors and service
       providers initially involved have end-of-life'd everything
       involved.  In principle, everything (DNS names, services, roots
       of trust for software update) needs to be something that can be
       updated even then.  End-of-life is clearly a more complex issue
       than is typically considered (as shown by the list at [7] which
       was just a first hit for a search).







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1.3.  Imperfection

   1.  We do have ways to protect data in transit and in storage, but we
       cannot depend on those protecting any information element all of
       the time.  Even with best practices, eventually, some fields from
       some protocols will leak.  All layers need to do as much as
       possible to provide security and avoid privacy leaks.  [8]

   2.  Even where (structured) data is encrypted, there may still be
       ways to analyse the traffic to expose the information content.
       [RFC6562] for example shows that variable bit rate audio with
       secure RTP can expose audio.  And encoded audio is often much
       more complex than the information considered here.

2.  Commercial Considerations

   At present, many devices and services are sold and operate in ways
   that do not take account of the considerations listed here.  That is
   often done for pragmatic and/or commercial reasons, due to the
   inability to reliably contact devices from the parts of the Internet
   about which we care, or sometimes in an effort by a vendor or
   service-provider to achieve "lock-in" so that a user has a hard time
   mixing and matching the devices and services that the user prefers.
   And sometimes, users won't have sufficient technical ability to make
   a device and/or service work for them, even if the vendor or service-
   provider does expose interfaces allowing for security and privacy
   friendly deployment.

   In this document, the term "service provider" is used consistent with
   the above, to mean some application service that is not under the
   control of the device owner or end-user, but rather is controlled by
   someone else, likely the device vendor or a partner of theirs.

   While such cases are a reality and the norm today, and while it is
   often unclear how to move from there towards a situation where
   devices and services promote interoperability, the basic information
   models developed for these devices and services should not preclude a
   future in which a user can exert independent control over these
   deployments.

   It seems likely from the above that information models will need to
   include some conception of the device owner as a first-class, but
   hopefully pseudononymous, entity and not be solely limited to
   consideration of characteristics of devices and services.







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3.  Security Considerations

   Yes, there are.  Are you shocked?

4.  Privacy Considerations

   Yes, there are.  Aren't you shocked yet? :-)

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no requests for IANA action.  This section would
   be removed except it won't be as we're not aiming for publication as
   an RFC.

6.  Acknowledgements

   TBD - your name here for comments or beer!

7.  References

7.1.  Informative References

   [I-D.hardie-privsec-metadata-insertion]
              Hardie, T., "Design considerations for Metadata
              Insertion", draft-hardie-privsec-metadata-insertion-00
              (work in progress), October 2015.

   [I-D.ietf-dhc-anonymity-profile]
              Huitema, C., Mrugalski, T., and S. Krishnan, "Anonymity
              profile for DHCP clients", draft-ietf-dhc-anonymity-
              profile-07 (work in progress), February 2016.

   [I-D.jennings-core-senml]
              Jennings, C., Shelby, Z., Arkko, J., and A. Keranen,
              "Media Types for Sensor Markup Language (SENML)", draft-
              jennings-core-senml-04 (work in progress), January 2016.

   [RFC3365]  Schiller, J., "Strong Security Requirements for Internet
              Engineering Task Force Standard Protocols", BCP 61, RFC
              3365, DOI 10.17487/RFC3365, August 2002,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3365>.

   [RFC6562]  Perkins, C. and JM. Valin, "Guidelines for the Use of
              Variable Bit Rate Audio with Secure RTP", RFC 6562, DOI
              10.17487/RFC6562, March 2012,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6562>.





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   [RFC6973]  Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
              Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
              Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973, DOI
              10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6973>.

   [RFC7258]  Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
              Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
              2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.

   [ishtiaq2010security]
              Ishtiaq Roufa, R., Mustafaa, H., Travis Taylora, S., Xua,
              W., Gruteserb, M., Trappeb, W., and I. Seskarb, "Security
              and privacy vulnerabilities of in-car wireless networks: a
              tire pressure monitoring system case study", 2010.

7.2.  URIs

   [1] https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/iotsi/

   [2] https://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/06/who-owns-your-
       personal-data

   [3] http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/08/telescreen/

   [4] http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/06/who-owns-your-
       personal-data

   [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_prize#Privacy_concerns

   [6] https://www.shodan.io/

   [7] https://www1.good.com/support/end-of-life-notices.html

   [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak

Authors' Addresses

   Stephen Farrell
   Trinity College Dublin
   Dublin  2
   Ireland

   Phone: +353-1-896-2354
   Email: stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie






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   Alissa Cooper
   Cisco
   707 Tasman Drive
   Milpitas, CA  95035
   USA

   Email: alcoop@cisco.com












































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