Hi,

[Posting as a contributor]

I am involved in a number of NM and Security WGs, and I can make these
observations:

Running an NM protocol over SSH has been done in both netconf and
ISMS. I suspect it would be fairly easy to adapt the netconf-over-SSH
draft to work for syslog-over-SSH. I suspect it would take a week or
so to write a syslog-over-SSH draft since most could be cut-and-paste
from the netconf-over-SSH draft. 

I am the author of the ISMS drafts, and I adapted the netconf/SSH
draft for ISMS purposes. Syslog and netconf seem to be closer in their
requirements than syslog and ISMS. ISMS has this whole model of access
control to deal with that is not part of the threat model for syslog
or for netconf at this time. 

There is a parallel discussion of running syslog messages over
netconf. As Rainer has pointed out to Phil, having a consistent
terminology would be very helpful. I think having a consistent
security solution would probably be helpful in that situation as well.

I have concerns about 3195bis as the only alternative we consider,
because I have not seen much interest in RFC3195 yet, nor has there
been much expresseed interest in netconf over BEEP.

Since there may be delay involved in this WG no matter what, would
somebody be willing to volunteer to write a syslog-over-SSH draft, so
the WG can compare the three approaches? 

There are other possibilities as well (and I am being serious here,
not "let's make this absurd by proposing a whole slew of alteratives
documents").
1) Tom mentioned DTLS, which might be a viable alternative given
syslog's UDP roots. Tom would you, or somebody else, be willing to
write a proposal for syslog/DTLS?
2) Andy Bierman observed that if syslog messages are going to be
transported over netconf, then why not simply use syslog/netconf and
let netconf deal with the security issues. That could be an
alternative proposal. Is anybody willing to write a draft proposing
that as a syslog secure transport solution?

My $.02 as a contributor,

David Harrington
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rainer Gerhards [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2006 9:44 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [Syslog] IESG secure transport requirement can be 
> quickly solved...
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I propose to update RFC 3195 in the spirit of syslog-protocol 
> to satisfy
> the IESG secure transport requirement (I will call this 
> derivative work
> RFC3195bis below). I sincerely believe that this option would 
> enable us
> to submit syslog-protocol, -transport-UDP and RFC3195bis within a
few
> weeks. 
> 
> My reasoning for this proposal is as follows:
> 
> We all know that 3195 has limited acceptance in the community and
very
> few implementations. However, it satisfies all IESG criteria 
> we have in
> our charter. Also, it *is* something that can be used in practice
and
> implementing it becomes easier as support libraries become visible.
I
> know it is not an optimal choice. On the other hand, we have
> syslog-transport-tls, which has been encrumbered by a patent claim.
As
> it looks, this will need months to solve. RFC3195bis can not be
taken
> hostage by any patent claims, because there is well-defined 
> prior art in
> RFC 3195. Focussing on RFC 3195bis would enable us to complete our
> mission and finsh work that is in the queue for many years 
> now. I think
> this is urgently needed. We might even put the netconf WG with their
> syslog gateway on hold (because syslog-protocol can not be published
> without resolving the secure transport). Or netconf might 
> choose to drop
> syslog-protocol in order to publish.
> 
> And the good news is that 3195bis can definitely very quickly 
> be done. I
> am saying this on the assumption that we do not revisit the basics
of
> 3195 but just adopt it to syslog-protocol. I've gone through 
> 3195 today
> and the changes are absolutely minimal:
> 
> Section 2:
> Most of it simply needs to be removed because the entity roles are
> defined in syslog-protocol.
> 
> Section 3:
> - the message samples must be upgraded to -protocol-format
> - syslog-framing in section 3.3 must be changed (could be 
> octet-counting
> or disallow of multiple messages per ANS, what I recommend)
> 
> Section 4:
> 4.4.2 
>  - needs to be updated with the new HEADER fields and
STRUCTURED-DATA 
>  - some work on "deviceFQDN" and "deviceIP" needed
>  - some transformation rules (page 15) need to be removed
>  - handling of invalid message formatting must be removed (no longer
a
> concern)
>  - samples must be adjusted
> 
> 4.4.3
>  - sample on page 24 (top) must be checked and/or adjusted
> 
> Section 7:
> - DTD needs to be adjusted
> 
> Section 9:
> - new URIs for 3195bis (also in some other places)
> [we can reuse well-known port 601 for -protocol]
> 
> Overall
> References to 3164 must be changed to -syslog-protocol. This 
> seems quite
> trivial, because the  references are easy to spot and do not touch
any
> substance (except outlined above).
> 
> Other than these minor things, there are *NO* other changes
necessary.
> I'd expect that an initial version of 3195bis can be created within
a
> single working day. Add some quick review and a very limited number
of
> edits to change discovered nits - and we have something to publish
by
> summer.
> 
> I find this extremely tempting. It breaks the deadlock 
> situation we are
> currently in. Especially as we have planned to do 3195bis some time
> later anyhow. I don't know if the authors of 3195 would 
> volunteer to do
> the edit. But I hope so.
> 
> I would appreciate if the chairs could try to reach consensus on my
> proposal.
> 
> Comments are appreciated.
> Thanks,
> Rainer
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Syslog mailing list
> Syslog@lists.ietf.org
> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/syslog
> 


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