The draft charter for the proposed Software Updates for Internet of
Things (suit) WG underwent a few revisions during the external review
process. The current version of the charter is -09, below. The charter
is on the IESG agenda for 2017-12-14.
--
charter-ietf-suit-00-09
Vulnerabilities in Internet of Things (IoT) devices have raised the need
for a secure firmware update mechanism that is also suitable for
constrained devices. Security experts, researchers, and regulators
recommend that all IoT devices be equipped with such a mechanism. While
there are many proprietary firmware update mechanisms in use today,
there is a lack of a modern interoperable approach of securely updating
the firmware in IoT devices. In June of 2016 the Internet Architecture
Board organized a workshop on 'Internet of Things (IoT) Software Update
(IOTSU)', and RFC 8240 documents various requirements and challenges
that are specific to IoT devices.
A firmware update solution consists of several components, including:
* A mechanism to transport firmware images to compatible devices.
* A manifest that provides meta-data about the firmware image (such as a
firmware package identifier, the hardware the package needs to run, and
dependencies on other firmware packages), as well as cryptographic
information for protecting the firmware image in an end-to-end fashion.
* The firmware image itself.
This group will focus on defining a firmware update solution (taking
into account past learnings from RFC 4108 and other firmware update
solutions) that will be usable on Class 1 (as defined in RFC 7228)
devices, i.e., devices with ~10 KiB RAM and ~100 KiB flash. The
solution may apply to more capable devices as well. This group will not
define any new transport or discovery mechanisms, but may describe how
to use existing mechanisms within the architecture.
In particular this group aims to publish several documents, namely:
* An IoT firmware update architecture that includes a description of the
involved entities, security threats, and assumptions.
* One or more manifest format specifications.
The initial focus of this group will be development of the information
model for the contents of a manifest. Once there is general agreement on
the contents, the group will pick a small number of serialization
formats such as CBOR and/or ASN.1 (and their associated cryptographic
mechanisms) to encode the manifest. A small number of formats is
preferred to reduce the complexity of a firmware management solution,
where each IoT device would typically only support one format, but the
same tool or service might support all such formats. To support a wide
range of deployment scenarios, the formats are expected to be expressive
enough to allow the use of different firmware sources and permission
models.
This group does not aim to create a standard for a generic application
software update mechanism, but instead this group will focus on firmware
development practices in the embedded industry. Software update
solutions that target updating software other than the firmware binaries
(e.g., applications) are also out of scope.
This group will aim to maintain a close relationship with silicon
vendors and OEMs that develop IoT operating systems.
Proposed milestones
Date Milestone
Nov 2018 Submit an initial manifest serialization format to the
IESG for publication as a Proposed Standard.
Jul 2018 Submit manifest information model to the IESG for
publication as Informational.
Jul 2018 Calendar item: Second interoperability event at IETF
102.
Mar 2018 Adopt initial manifest serialization format(s) as WG
item(s).
Mar 2018 Calendar item: First interoperability event at IETF 101.
Mar 2018 Adopt a manifest information model as a WG item.
Jan 2018 Adopt "Architecture" document as WG item.
On Nov 3, 2017, at 9:32 AM, The IESG <[email protected]> wrote:
> The Software Updates for Internet of Things (suit) WG in the Security
> Area of the IETF is undergoing rechartering. The IESG has not made any
> determination yet. The following draft charter was submitted, and is
> provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to
> the IESG mailing list ([email protected]) by 2017-11-13.
>
> Software Updates for Internet of Things (suit)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Current status: BOF WG
>
> Chairs:
> Dave Thaler <[email protected]>
> David Waltermire <[email protected]>
> Russ Housley <[email protected]>
>
> Assigned Area Director:
> Kathleen Moriarty <[email protected]>
>
> Security Area Directors:
> Kathleen Moriarty <[email protected]>
> Eric Rescorla <[email protected]>
>
> Mailing list:
> Address: [email protected]
> To subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/suit
> Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?email_list=suit
>
> Group page: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/suit/
>
> Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-suit/
