Hi Kathleen!

Yes.  A doodle poll to determine the most agreeable time the week of March 4 
was just sent:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/secdispatch/KU3SWW_4UeJ9JMH9abmzaKeXXgc

Roman


From: Kathleen Moriarty [mailto:kathleen.moriarty.i...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2019 12:30 PM
To: Göran Selander <goran.selan...@ericsson.com>
Cc: Richard Barnes <r...@ipv.sx>; Roman Danyliw <r...@cert.org>; John Mattsson 
<john.matts...@ericsson.com>; secdispa...@ietf.org; Francesca Palombini 
<francesca.palomb...@ericsson.com>; ace@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [Ace] [Secdispatch] EDHOC

Will there be an interim for this topic?

Thank you,
Kathleen

On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 2:15 PM Kathleen Moriarty 
<kathleen.moriarty.i...@gmail.com<mailto:kathleen.moriarty.i...@gmail.com>> 
wrote:
Thanks for the very helpful message, Goran.  A couple of comments inline.

On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 11:31 AM Göran Selander 
<goran.selan...@ericsson.com<mailto:goran.selan...@ericsson.com>> wrote:
Hi Richard, Roman, all


Thanks for kind welcome and for progressing the discussion. Apologies for a 
long email.

From: Richard Barnes <r...@ipv.sx<mailto:r...@ipv.sx>>

Summing up where I believe the conversation stands now, it seems like what 
folks are asking for is either:

1.      An analysis that shows that EDHOC is equivalent to an existing AKE 
(e.g., IKE or TLS), or

2. An argument that a new AKE is necessary (vs. a re-encoding of an existing 
AKE)

Göran et al: Do you have thoughts on those points?

Yes. I’ll get back to this later in this email.

It seems like it could be a productive use of an hour or two of virtual interim 
time to help the group understand one of those lines of argument.

Agree.

Anything to prevent further hold ups on this work would be appreciated.


--Richard


As requested in a previous email, here is a background.



The work on EDHOC is motivated by the need for an authentication and key 
exchange protocol for OSCORE (draft-ietf-core-object-security) optimized for 
constrained-node networks (RFC 7228). OSCORE is applied within the IETF, e.g. 
in 6TiSCH minimal security (draft-ietf-6tisch-minimal-security), but also 
requested by other SDOs and industry fora such as OMA Specworks, Open 
Connectivity Foundation and Fairhair Alliance. The properties of OSCORE 
motivating its use include: support for CoAP forward proxies, support for 
change of underlying transports including non-IP, low overhead, low additional 
footprint and memory to existing CoAP implementations, support for multicast 
security, security for end-to-end REST.



Given the large interest in OSCORE already before it has become an RFC we 
anticipate a wide range of deployments. For example, we see an interest for 
OSCORE in Cellular IoT with traffic running over the cellular air interface 
control channel, where we can have end-to-end CoAP, but not necessarily 
end-to-end IP between an application server and a cellular device. Or between 
an application server and a device behind a cellular gateway. Comparing just 
these two cases, the difference in capabilities of the devices can be 
significant which makes it difficult to point at some sort of “reference 
devices” for benchmarking.



In order to support the low end use cases the AKE must be performant in low 
bandwidth deployments with battery powered devices restricted in RAM and ROM. 
Message sizes and round trips have a direct impact on latency, power 
consumption and battery lifetime, and can be calculated which is the reason for 
this being a commonly used metric. While it may be more difficult to compare 
memory and storage requirements, the ability to reuse existing code is an 
important indication. If a device can support a CoAP stack (in the sense of 
memory and flash, etc) it is expected to also be able to support OSCORE. 
Similarly, it is desirable that a device with CoAP and OSCORE implemented 
should be able to support an additional AKE. Considering that EDHOC reuses CBOR 
and COSE primitives from OSCORE the additional code for EDHOC can be very 
limited.



From a security point of view OSCORE requires that the endpoints have agreed on 
a Master Secret with a good amount of randomness, and each other’s Sender IDs, 
and those must be different for a given Master Secret.



Now returning to the questions.

1.      An analysis that shows that EDHOC is equivalent to an existing AKE 
(e.g., IKE or TLS)


Considering EDHOC is a new protocol it should be thoroughly analysed and 
verified against all currently known issues of AKEs. Roman sent a mail to the 
secdispatch list referencing a paper presented at SSR 2018 which could be used 
as a starting point. How do folks want to digest this: Do they want to study 
the model themselves or should we ask the authors if they could present their 
work at the interim?

2. An argument that a new AKE is necessary (vs. a re-encoding of an existing 
AKE)



We have done this comparison with TLS/DTLS for some time now, and what once 
seemed like a reasonable question has turned out to be never ending exercise. I 
do not want to get into IETF archeology but for those who have not followed the 
discussion some data points could be relevant.



Not long ago, the design of security protocols did not take into account 
constrained IoT devices. With OSCORE we showed that the message overhead could 
be reduced by a factor 3 compared to DTLS 1.2 records. Before this comparison 
it was believed that the record layer was performing well, then the difference 
in overhead was characterized as insignificant, and then finally a compact 
format was designed for DTLS 1.3.



With EDHOC we showed that the message overhead of the key exchange can be 
reduced with up to a factor 4 compared to the current version of DTLS 1.3 (see 
Appendix E in EDHOC). Before this exercise it was believed that the TLS/DTLS 
handshake was performing well, then the difference in overhead was 
characterized as insignificant, and now the discussion has shifted to 
downsizing the TLS handshake or other protocol.



We are not against optimizations to the TLS handshake, just as we welcome the 
more optimal DTLS 1.3 records. But TLS was not designed to be an AKE for OSCORE 
optimized for constrained environments. As I remember, optimizing for message 
overhead was an explicit non-requirement of TLS 1.3. Reverting those design 
decisions seems like the wrong way to go: One reason to use TLS would be to 
reuse an existing implementation. But existing TLS implementation would most 
likely not compare favorably in terms of code size and RAM. Adding code for 
compression or re-encoding of the messages would add to that. Re-specifying the 
protocol with the new encoding may require a new formal verification. To make a 
more compact code and processing may involve two incompatible message formats 
of TLS depending on what is being signed. New implementations would be needed.


We think we have done our part of the comparison exercise and that the burden 
of proof should now be reversed. Could we ask those that claim to have a more 
performant key exchange protocol for OSCORE and are prepared to do the work to 
make that plausible and provide the numbers? To be clear: if there is another 
key exchange protocol suitable for OSCORE which outperforms EDHOC in 
constrained characteristics and then we are very interested.

I agree with Goran that they have jumped through enough hoops at this point.  
However, if alternatives come forward, understanding their timelines is also 
critical as not to hold up this work for any substantial amount of time.


And again, with the statements in this mail we neither want to belittle the 
considerable effort made on formal verification, nor claim that DTLS is not fit 
for IoT deployments. It is an important hammer in our IoT security toolbox, but 
at the moment we don’t need a hammer.

The class of IoT device seems to be the critical point here and having one 
protocol that can meet all needs is a nice goal, but not realistic from the 
comparison numbers provided and the varying requirements in the IoT space.

Best regards,
Kathleen





Göran




















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Best regards,
Kathleen


--

Best regards,
Kathleen
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