Re: UNH Plugfest 5

["Julian Satran" <Julian_Satran@il.ibm.com>]

Paul,

The aim of the standard is to create
interoperale protocols not administrators.
An administrator may cause initiators
and target NOT TO interoperate in a myriad of ways.

The basic assumptions for the whole
security setup is that the administrator will set them
so that they can intemperate and the
standard setter provides him with the means to do so.

Your assumption that initiators and
target should be able to interoperate regardless of their administrative
entities
is not what standards do.


Julo

Paul Koning <pkoning@equallogic.com>

15/01/03 18:10

To	Julian Satran/Haifa/IBM@IBMIL
cc	ips@ece.cmu.edu, owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu
Subject	Re: UNH Plugfest 5

>>>>> "Julian" == Julian
Satran <Julian_Satran@il.ibm.com> writes:

 Julian> Paul, Initiators are required to implement authentication but
 Julian> may use none. If the administrator insists that
 Julian> authentication must be used with redirectors too the same
 Julian> administrator will have to take care that the redirectors
 Julian> have the required authentication.

 Julian> The standard does not have to say anything about it..

 Julian> We can't take the position of weakening always the security
 Julian> of the redirector nor one of requiring everybody to follow
a
 Julian> stricter authetication.

Do we want interoperability or don't we?  My view of standards is
that
they exist for the purpose of producing interoperability.

What you describe creates interop failures.  If the initiator wants
to
require authentication before redirect, that will fail unless the
target supports that, but there's nothing in the standard requiring
the target to do so.  So I have conforming implementations that can't
talk to each other.  That's not a good idea.

Why do you say "weakening...the security of the redirector"?
 I don't
see any security issue in sending the redirect before completing the
authentication.  Bob Russell explained that in his original note.

If there were a security problem, I'd be the first to argue for
requiring the authentication to be completed first.  But since there
is none, why require it?  And if it's not required, why allow for
configurations that break?

       paul