Yoav,

I ask for some latitude in my choice of words to describe some of the
use cases that interest me. It feels to me (possibly its must me being
naive) that we are tip-toeing around the dual use of some EAP methods to
support some interesting use cases. These use cases are out of scope for
EMU.

 

Explicitly I am interested in both authentication which is in scope for
EMU and NAC which is out of scope. The tunneled EAP methods, esp.
EAP-FAST and EAP-TTLS, are used for both purposes. We can easily create
methods that would only meet the needs of authentication and useless for
NAC. I am not interested in spending efforts to such an outcome.

 

Gene

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Eugene Chang (genchang)
Cisco Systems

Office:   603-559-2978
Mobile:  781-799-0233

Skype:  gene02421

 

 

 

________________________________

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Yoav Nir
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 8:13 AM
To: emu@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [Emu] EMU charter revision

 

Gene Chang said:

 

        Dan,
        I am not sure I am able to clearly understand the end result you
seek.
        It seems there is a clear consensus for a tunneled method. Are
you
        pushing for the addition of a tunneled method? 
        
        Ok... I am easily baited. What would you like to see to achieve
more
        than a snail race? I am assuming we both believe the term "snail
race"
        is a pejorative. Thus I ask you, how do we do better?
        
        I clearly hear your comment that there have been a paucity of
comments,
        if nothing else, simply to affirm we are on track. I agree with
the
        proposed charter. I am open to a discussion to add a
non-tunneled method
        if there is sufficient demand. A non-tunneled method does not
seem to
        promise enough features for the use cases that interest me.
        
        Gene

 

Hi Gene,

 

You did not specify what the uses that interest you are, and I don't
know about the use cases that interest Dan either, but I can speak for
the use cases that interest me.

 

EAP has been used in several cases as a magic way to use legacy
credentials in protocols. I'll cite three examples:

 

1. L2TP/IPsec (RFC 3193) as implemented by Microsoft, Apple, Cisco and
others, where an EAP method is used to authenticate the user.

2. IKEv2 (RFC 4306) where EAP is used to magically authenticate the
initiator using non-cert and non-PSK credentials.

3. TEE (draft-nir-tls-eap-03) where EAP is used to authenticate the
user.

 

In all three cases EAP is used by a protocol inside an encrypted tunnel,
where the server, which is either trusted by the authenticator or
co-located with it is already authenticated by a certificate or PSK.
IMO EAP was used in all cases an some magical way of making passwords
into a secure authentication mechanism.  The problem is that there
really is no publicly available EAP method for passwords.

 

Tunneled methods don't really make sense here.  There's no benefit in
putting a TLS tunnel inside an IKEv2 exchange just to pass the password.
Something like EAP-SRP would be great if it (a) existed and (b) didn't
have all that IPR baggage. The method that Dan is proposing would also
be beneficial here, if we could get a WG behind it so we can get some
solid security review.  Instead, what implementors are doing is EAP-MD5
or EAP-GTC, which don't quite meet the requirements for any of the above
protocols.

 

Yoav

 

 

 

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