> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Rescorla [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Well, I don't know what Dean is claiming, but what *I* am claiming
> is that MITM attacks aren't possible as long as at least one side
> uses 4474/4916 and the other side checks the signature. And that
> means that at least in the case of PSTN->SIP calls, we don't
> have an inherent MITM problem.

Although unrelated to your general point above, the PSTN->SIP case seems a bit 
odd to me in practice, for two reasons:
1) What is it you expect a PSTN GW to do differently in these cases, vs. 
unsigned cases?  Since the PSTN GW has no way to pass on strength indications 
on the PSTN, do you expect it to automatically terminate calls which aren't 
4916 signed?  Or play some announcement such as "this call is not secure"?  
(and do we honestly think they'd do that?)  A downgrade attack is trivially 
possible, and leaves the PSTN GW with no idea if the called side could have 
actually done 4916 or not.  So should it just assume if it gets a fingerprint 
which isn't signed then there is probably a MitM?  (and also not do best-effort 
srtp offers)

2) You said in your email that the retargeting case is orthogonal, and that 
either Alice or her UI need to notice this.  But if a PSTN GW is representing 
Alice, I don't see how that's possible.  [this goes back to a previous thread] 
I'm not sure how a PSTN GW can know what the right domain for Bob's signature 
should be.  The PSTN GW only knows a phone number, period.  The 4916 signature 
may well be signed by a common trusted CA, but that really doesn't mean what it 
does in TLS, because there is no domain name verification possible to the PSTN 
GW.  In other words, the GW knows it's calling +123456789, and foo.com signed 
rfc4916 as sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED], with a cert for foo.com.  The common CA did 
verify foo.com is truly foo.com, but so what?  The PSTN GW has no idea if the 
123456789 at foo.com is the same global +123456789 that the PSTN meant to 
reach, or some legitimate open phone hosting service that happens to have 
usernames which collide with Fidelity's E.164, or even just
  another PSTN gateway.  In other words, what stops me (bad guy), from getting 
an account on foo.com with that number, and redirecting calls from PSTN GW to 
my account?

-hadriel

p.s. Personally, I think it very unlikely that PSTN-based calls will use 
DTLS-SRTP to begin with, simply because of the cost-benefit tradeoff.  But that 
doesn't stop me from wanting it to be possible, and more-so for 4474-type of 
signing to be possible for other uses.

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