I sent out a note on SA Usage Leakage
a while back and then lost track of this item. David Black responded
with "I don't see a problem
with this in
principle. The original IKEv2
allows state to be discarded at will."
The original note is:
===========
We have concerns related to SA usage
leakage. That is, it is possible for application clients to create
enough SA's in a device server - with the timeout values long enough -
that the device server is out of resources to create another. While
the answer seems obvious - allow the device server to implicitly abandon
an SA for vendor-specific reasons, there is no explicit mention of this
in SPC-4 that we can find. If the DS is not allowed to implicitly
abandon an SA, the opens up the avenue for Denial of Service attacks -
an attacker could use up all the SA resources with maximum timeout values.
Key points being:
A) the DS needs to be able to clear space for a new SA
B) no notification of lost SA should be reported to AC until the AC attempts
to use an SA
C) the expected behaviors of the DS and the AC should be explicitly stated
in SPC-4 and be general (i.e., not tied to each usage defined (e.g., ESP-SCSI))
D) There should be a unique additional sense code for when an attempt to
use an unknown SAI is made
===========
Also there should be a high-level statement/behavior
in the usage model about attempts to use an unknown SA (not just 5/2600
pointing to the SA field).
Does anybody disagree with this or agree
that this would be a good thing to do?
Thanks,
Kevin D. Butt
SCSI & Fibre Channel Architect, Tape Firmware
MS 6TYA, 9000 S. Rita Rd., Tucson, AZ 85744
Tel: 520-799-2869 / 520-799-5280
Fax: 520-799-2723 (T/L:321)
Email address: kdbutt@us.ibm.com
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/