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[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] iSCSI: Proxies (was Security in iSCSI)Julian, > You seem to missing my main point. I am ready to take out the > table but not the general notion of a cryptographic digest. > To do the later I have to have the community understand that > their are left with no protocol provided means to authenticate > data that pass through iSCSI proxies. Actually, I was hoping that you weren't going there. Just when one thinks one has obtained a good understanding of a network technology/protocol/solution/etc., adding the notion of proxies is almost certain to restore the previous state of confusion. Multicast also has this property, but fortunately, I haven't seen anyone in the WG take any serious interest in it (and woe betide anyone who takes this as an invitation ;-) ). My primary concern is one of schedule - if full support for proxies is a requirement for the first version of the iSCSI RFC, the schedule guesstimate I posted yesterday is probably optimistic by 6+ months. Issues that come up in the area of proxies that will take a while to resolve will likely include: - What's the right scope of proxy support? How much consideration for SCSI level proxies to which other transports needs to be reflected in the iSCSI standard? - SCSI is not an end-to-end transport independent protocol. T10 had the opportunity to go in this direction in the SCSI GPP work) and chose not to do so. Extensive iSCSI work on proxies risks running into SCSI architecture, and our experience with ACA suggests that they'll take a while to resolve. - Security interaction with proxies is a very complicated subject. IPsec and NATs is a well-known tarpit that is finally getting resolved years later. I hesitate to promise that the iSCSI proxy issues will be significantly simpler by comparison. - There is precedent for proxies adapting to the requirements of protocols - TLS requires http proxies to accommodate it rather than the other way around. Whether proxies should drive iSCSI security architecture or iSCSI security architecture should drive proxy design will at the minimum be fodder for serious debate. If we want to get the iSCSI spec done in a reasonable timeframe, I suggest closing the lid on this Pandora's box labeled "proxies" and deferring serious work on iSCSI proxy support to a future revision. The separate header and data CRCs are a useful step towards making life better for those who want to build proxies, but I hesitate to go much further in that direction, particularly in the area of security. As things currently stand, one way to authenticate data passing through an iSCSI proxy is to have the iSCSI proxy participate in the authentication which seems like an acceptable situation (and one that has a straightforward security explanation). Comments? Thanks, --David --------------------------------------------------- David L. Black, Senior Technologist EMC Corporation, 42 South St., Hopkinton, MA 01748 +1 (508) 435-1000 x75140 FAX: +1 (508) 497-8500 black_david@emc.com Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754 ---------------------------------------------------
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