[HamWAN PSDR] Traffic protection without encryption

Bart Kus me at bartk.us
Fri Feb 22 15:24:19 PST 2013


Why provide a proxy that ultimately does nothing?  Just don't use IPSec 
on the devices that can't support it, and accept the situation.

--Bart


On 02/22/2013 02:17 PM, Benjamin Krueger wrote:
> I suspect that for those kinds of devices, we would do well to provide 
> them with a proxy service they can use. It won't have any integrity 
> guarantees, but as long as they understand that they it should be ok.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 7:03 AM, steve monsey <stevewa206 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:stevewa206 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Yes, that is how a lot of organizations use it. One of the issues
>     is with small gadgets that do not have that much sophistication in
>     their OS. An echo link gadget probably does not have the facility
>     to do a certificate.
>
>     Steve
>
>     On Feb 22, 2013, at 1:30 AM, Benjamin Krueger
>     <ben.krueger at gmail.com <mailto:ben.krueger at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>>     This would work fine as well.
>>
>>
>>     On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 12:14 AM, Cory (NQ1E) <cory at nq1e.hm
>>     <mailto:cory at nq1e.hm>> wrote:
>>
>>         When you use someone's public key to establish a secure
>>         connection with them, you need a way to verify that it
>>         belongs to the party you intend and not an imposer.  One way
>>         to do that is to make the public keys available ahead of time
>>         via a trusted source (such as DNSSEC).  However, certificates
>>         are an alternative way of doing that without communicating in
>>         advance or with any other online system.  Each party trusts
>>         one or more root certificate authorities and the CAs vouch
>>         for someone by signing their public key.  Each host knows
>>         that "if the root trusts who I'm talking to, they must be
>>         legit".  A certificate is simply a public key with
>>         identifying information which is then signed by a trusted
>>         third party.
>>
>>
>>
>>         On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Benjamin Krueger
>>         <ben.krueger at gmail.com <mailto:ben.krueger at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>             The problem isn't generating keys and certificates, but
>>             distributing them so that hosts which are strangers have
>>             a way to authenticate each other. So far dnssec looks
>>             like a candidate. Check out the rfc for opportunistic
>>             encryption (rfc 4322).
>>
>>             On Feb 21, 2013 8:31 PM, "Cory (NQ1E)" <cory at nq1e.hm
>>             <mailto:cory at nq1e.hm>> wrote:
>>             >
>>             > IPSec(AH) is a great solution for protecting the
>>             availability of services on the network.  Unfortunately,
>>             it does nothing to protect layers 1 and 2 (the more
>>             important ones to the RF rules).  Arguably, only having
>>             layer 2 access to a node will not get you very much, but
>>             it's worth noting.  Because of this 802.1x will likely be
>>             the way to go and I'm currently investigating the details
>>             of what it would look like for our specific use case.
>>             Short of customizing the RF spec, there's not really much
>>             else we could do at the lower layers.
>>             >
>>             > Regarding key exchange, it turns out that the ARRL
>>             already has a PKI trust infrastructure in place.  The
>>             ARRL Logbook of the World service requires that hams jump
>>             though hoops to prove their licence identity and it
>>             issues them a certificate with their call sign when they do.
>>             >
>>             > The certificates are intended to be used for signing
>>             logbook entries, but if you know what you're doing,
>>             there's nothing that would prevent you from exporting the
>>             key pair and using it for other things.  A server that
>>             trusts the ARRL root CA certificate would be able to
>>             prove the identity and call sign of any user connecting
>>             to it with such a user cert.  I setup a test server for
>>             this a while back and it's still up and running at
>>             https://mutual.hamauth.com/  If you have such a cert and
>>             imported it into your browser, you could try it out.  I
>>             also have one running at https://tls-test.nq1e.hm/ that
>>             you may not be able to connect to because it's also using
>>             the little known null (no) encryption cipher spec in SSL
>>             which browsers don't support by default (it can be
>>             enabled in firefox or opera).  This means that if the
>>             client was properly configured, we could use SSL servers
>>             for specific services on the wireless network for
>>             authentication, authorization and integrity without
>>             encryption.
>>             >
>>             > The same rsa key pair can use used for SSH auth as
>>             well, but from my investigations, it would require custom
>>             binaries on both the client and server side to disable
>>             the encryption.
>>             >
>>             > It's a cumbersome hurdle that we wouldn't want to make
>>             people jump through, but if it were more popular, it
>>             could be used for just about anything.  You should all
>>             definitely sign up for LotW just in case (since it can
>>             take a week or two to get verified).  ;)
>>             >
>>             > -Cory
>>             > *infosec geek*
>>             >
>>             >
>>             >
>>             > On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 7:21 PM, Benjamin Krueger
>>             <ben.krueger at gmail.com <mailto:ben.krueger at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>             >>
>>             >> I think we can solve a lot of our crypto-regulation
>>             problems if we explore IPSec in Authentication Header
>>             Transport mode. This signs every IP packet which gets us
>>             connection integrity, origin authentication, and replay
>>             protection without encrypting anything. Then we only have
>>             to take very basic measures to ensure folks don't
>>             intentionally or unintentionally make encrypted
>>             connections (over SSL, SSH, or other commonly encrypted
>>             protocols). The only outstanding question then is how to
>>             handle IKE (key exchange) in an automated way with
>>             certificates.
>>             >>
>>             >> I'm going to speak to some infosec geeks about this
>>             tonight
>>             >>
>>             >> NB: This doesn't handle initial network access
>>             authentication. That's still a problem to be solved,
>>             possibly with 802.1X, though that has its own problem
>>             since RouterOS only supports TLS-EAP which incorporates
>>             crypto.
>>             >>
>>             >> --
>>             >> Benjamin
>>             >>
>>             >> _______________________________________________
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>>             >>
>>             >
>>             >
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>>
>>
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>>
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>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Benjamin
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>
>
>
> -- 
> Benjamin
>
>
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