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Re: RPKI unknown for superprefixes of existing ROA ?


From: Amir Herzberg <amir.lists () gmail com>
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2023 11:41:49 -0400

Bill, thanks! You explained the issue much better than me. Yes, the problem
is that, in my example, the operator was allocated  1.2.4/22 but the
attacker is announcing  1.2.0/20, which is larger than the allocation, so
the operator cannot issue ROA for it (or covering it). Of course, the RIR
_could_ do it (but I don't think they do, right?). So this `superprefix
hijack' may succeed in spite of all the ROAs that the operator could
publish.

I'm not saying this is much of a concern, as I never heard of such attacks
in the wild, but I guess it _could_ happen in the future. So my question is
only:

So: would it be conceivable that operators will block such 1.2.0/20  -
since it's too large a prefix without ROA and in particular includes
sub-prefixes with ROA, esp. ROA to AS 0?


(note: I mentioned two possible rules for such blocking: overly large
`unknown' prefixes and super-prefixes of AS 0 ROAs - but either could be
applied or even their conjunction)

tks, Amir
-- 
Amir Herzberg

Comcast professor of Security Innovations, Computer Science and
Engineering, University of Connecticut
Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/amirherzberg/home
`Applied Introduction to Cryptography' textbook and lectures:
https://sites.google.com/site/amirherzberg/cybersecurity




On Sat, Oct 21, 2023 at 4:52 PM William Herrin <bill () herrin us> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 21, 2023 at 11:47 AM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
The question is - who gets to decide how much space is "too large"?

I thought Amir's point was that if an announced route is larger than
the RIR allocation then unless you're intentionally expecting it, it's
invalid.

Because there's no alignment with the RIR allocation, it's not
possible to express this invalidity in RPKI.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



--
William Herrin
bill () herrin us
https://bill.herrin.us/


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