BGP over TLS (was: Re: "Using Cloud Resources to Dramatically Improve Internet Routing")

[lists.nanog at monmotha.net (Brandon Martin)]

On 10/21/19 4:41 PM, Jeffrey Haas wrote:
> I'm not someone qualified, but I'll regurgitate what I've distilled from past conversations with those who are.:-)
> 
> Presuming your key is strong enough, it may be infeasible to break it in a time that's of interest to the parties involved.  The primary issue is the usual issue of trying to keep anything secret: eventually disclosure becomes an issue.  And if you have no procedure for periodically updating your keys, it becomes a problem.

Going back to my thought of using IKE vs. a static SPI, we run into the 
same problem with rekeying the long-term secret.  If it's symmetric, you 
have to get both parties involved.  That will be true if it's IKE with a 
PSK, a static SPI, or TCP-MD5.

I guess the meat of my question is, given modern cryptography 
(algorithms, best practices, actual system implementations, etc.), is 
the periodic re-keyed offered by IKE with PSK any better than simply 
establishing a static SPI (treating the SPI session secret as a slightly 
less human-friendly PSK)?  If not, then you can do away with IKE 
entirely which drastically simplifies things.  It's also the status quo 
for many implementations of OSPFv3-over-IPsec that I've seen.

My impression is that any means by which a long-lived session using the 
same symmetric cipher secret can compromise the security of either that 
session or any other session keyed using the same "parent" keying 
material is now considered a weakness in the cipher or cryptosystem, as 
appropriate, and modern ciphers and systems as such do not exhibit such 
deficiencies.

It's also no worse than TCP-MD5 which, as you pointed out, requires both 
ends to cooperate in a re-keying, too.  I'm not even aware of any 
mechanisms to allow key overlap during a re-keying process in TCP-MD5 
which might otherwise be one advantage of IKE using PSK.  If your SPI 
secret gets disclosed, you re-key manually.  If your TCP-MD5 secret gets 
disclosed, you rep-key manually.  If your IKE PSK secret gets disclosed, 
you re-key manually.

My only real goal, here, is to be as good or better than TCP-MD5 to 
address earlier concerns about people not liking TCP options while also 
not resorting to TLS.  (As a note, I'm thinking out loud with all this, 
not trying to suggest policy proposal)

-- 
Brandon Martin