Subject: [decade] Are there P2P protocols that would (architecturally) be incompatible with DECADE?

From: "David A. Bryan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:30:30 -0400

As I have been spending some time today thinking about DECADE, I was
wondering if anyone knows of an existing P2P application or protocol
that would not work with decade for security reasons.

The basic idea is that if A shares a file, and B retrieves it, A
provides a response that could be the address of a DECADE server, and
either B retrieves, or B asks it's DECADE server to retrieve on B's
behalf.

If there are P2P protocols that enforce or verify that when I ask A
for a file it is really A via a mechanism like IP address checking (as
opposed to something like signed data), how would we work with this
into DECADE. In other words, what if the protocol, when A says "I have
the file" requires the file to come from A directly, and B would
reject the data if it came from another peer.

In general, I can't think of a situation like this today (and many
security papers in the literature have shown that security based on
source IP or Peer-IDs derived from IPs are inherently insecure), but
was curious if anyone knows of an existing application where this is,
at least today, true? I can certainly imagine that it might *look*
secure to enforce by IP address, and there may be some deployed out
there doing that today. Anyone know?

David

---

From: Song Haibin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:03:56 +0800

Hi David,

>
>If there are P2P protocols that enforce or verify that when I 
>ask A for a file it is really A via a mechanism like IP 
>address checking (as opposed to something like signed data), 
>how would we work with this into DECADE. In other words, what 
>if the protocol, when A says "I have the file" requires the 
>file to come from A directly, and B would reject the data if 
>it came from another peer.
>

I'm not sure if there are any P2P applications doing that IP address
checking. But as I know, peers often connect to each other directly for data
exchange, and there is no mechanism like "redirection" for data retrieving.
In order to support DECADE that A tells B the data address of its in-network
storage, it needs a redirection mechanism. P2P applications need to do a few
message modifications accordingly to support DECADE. If there is something
like IP address checking mechanism for the source peer that would prevent
integrating with DECADE,  it must be corrected accordingly. 

Who knows which P2P application is doing that?

Thanks!
Haibin

>-----Original Message-----
>From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
>On Behalf Of David A. Bryan
>Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 5:31 AM
>To: [email-masked]
>Subject: [decade] Are there P2P protocols that would 
>(architecturally) beincompatible with DECADE?
>
>As I have been spending some time today thinking about DECADE, 
>I was wondering if anyone knows of an existing P2P application 
>or protocol that would not work with decade for security reasons.
>
>The basic idea is that if A shares a file, and B retrieves it, 
>A provides a response that could be the address of a DECADE 
>server, and either B retrieves, or B asks it's DECADE server 
>to retrieve on B's behalf.
>
>If there are P2P protocols that enforce or verify that when I 
>ask A for a file it is really A via a mechanism like IP 
>address checking (as opposed to something like signed data), 
>how would we work with this into DECADE. In other words, what 
>if the protocol, when A says "I have the file" requires the 
>file to come from A directly, and B would reject the data if 
>it came from another peer.
>
>In general, I can't think of a situation like this today (and 
>many security papers in the literature have shown that 
>security based on source IP or Peer-IDs derived from IPs are 
>inherently insecure), but was curious if anyone knows of an 
>existing application where this is, at least today, true? I 
>can certainly imagine that it might *look* secure to enforce 
>by IP address, and there may be some deployed out there doing 
>that today. Anyone know?
>
>David
>_______________________________________________
>decade mailing list
>[email-masked]
>https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/decade
>

---

From: "Woundy, Richard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:35:46 -0400

> I'm not sure if there are any P2P applications doing that IP address
checking.

The Vuze P2P client has an "IP filter" function, and supposedly so does
uTorrent.

You might also need to worry about the NAT functionality in a
subscriber's home gateway, and its sensitivity to IP address checks.

-- Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Song Haibin
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 5:04 AM
To: 'David A. Bryan'; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [decade] Are there P2P protocols that would
(architecturally) beincompatible with DECADE?

Hi David,

I'm not sure if there are any P2P applications doing that IP address
checking. But as I know, peers often connect to each other directly for
data
exchange, and there is no mechanism like "redirection" for data
retrieving.
In order to support DECADE that A tells B the data address of its
in-network
storage, it needs a redirection mechanism. P2P applications need to do a
few
message modifications accordingly to support DECADE. If there is
something
like IP address checking mechanism for the source peer that would
prevent
integrating with DECADE,  it must be corrected accordingly. 

Thanks!
Haibin