Subject: [Emu] draft-ietf-emu-chbind and username

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:36:22 -0400

Steve Hanna did a secdir review of draft-ietf-emu-chbind.  One of the
issues he raised is a privacy concern with section 8.  He points out
that we recommend using the user-name attribute in channel binding.  The
concern is that if a server checks user-name in i2 against user-name in
i1, then a NAS might be able to get an EAP server to act as an oracle
for privacy protected identities.

That is:

1) Peer identifies to NAS as @example.com

2) NAS thinks peer might actually be [email-masked].

3) NAS tries that in user-name.

4) If it's not [email-masked]  then channel binding fails.

He suggested documenting this issue.

I'd like to take a step back and ask why you'd ever want to channel-bind
user-name in the first place?  I guess the theory is that your EAP
method supports channel binding but does not have a well-defined concept
of peer ID or support identity protection/transporting method-specific
identity?

My proposal is that we stop recommending channel binding to user-name
rather than documenting the issues associated with doing so.

--Sam