[routing-wg] Penetration Test Report for RPKI

Hi Job, Randy,

> On 21 Dec 2021, at 23:57, Job Snijders via routing-wg <routing-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 01:23:01PM -0800, Randy Bush wrote:
>>> We hope you will find these reports useful
>> 
>> very much so.  thank you.
> 
> Yes, I'd like to echo what Randy says. Thanks for sharing this.
> 
>> btw, re RIPE-009 - Unencrypted Communication
>> 
>> in the up/down protocol, objects are cms wrapped and hence signed and
>> objct authenticated; i.e. i would not panic about transport cia. 
> 
> Indeed. But I can imagine that in a world where virtually all
> (originally HTTP-only yolo) APIs now have been migrated to HTTPS, any
> API which ** by design ** is HTTP-only, would indeed stand out to
> pentest researchers.
> 
> I think it is good the testers noticed this aspect, and also good that
> RIPE NCC noted in the response "Up-down remains on HTTP and uses a CMS
> wrapper for authentication."
> 
> The up/down protocol is somewhat similar in terms of security
> considerations to how one can transport signed RPKI data from
> Publication Point (repositories) to Relaying Party (validator
> instances). In that context too, the use of unencrypted transport (like
> RSYNC, or PIGEON) is deemed acceptable because the threat model is based
> on a robust interpretation of object-security** to such an extend that
> transport-security is inconsequential.

I agree with that assessment. Any plaintext endpoint that could use TLS stands
out. And in general, that is for a good reason, TLS provides encryption,
authentication, and integrity - which are good properties to have. For published
RPKI objects, encryption is not needed and the object-security model offers
authentication and integrity.

>> otoh, i suspect there could be a path to move your delegated CAs to
>> TLS; which might be conservative in the long run.
> 
> Would you mind elaborating on what you mean with the phrase "might be
> conservative in the long run?".

Moving delegated CAs to TLS would protect against currently unknown attacks. It
is defence in depth. I would strongly prefer this endpoint to use TLS; there is
a story on the RPKI backlog to move the delegated CAs to TLS.

Kind regards,

Ties
—
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Job
> 
> ** One crucial corner stone to the concept of 'RPKI object security' is
>   a thing called "RPKI Manifests". Manifests are an elegant and very
>   powerful idea in the X.509 universe: the ability to securely group 
>   objects together. All modern validators use manifests: make sure your
>   validator is updated to the latest version! Read more about what
>   Manifests are here:
>   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-sidrops-6486bis-09
>   This doc is now going through IETF last-call.
> 
> -- 
> 
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