Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies January 2002 doc.: IEEE 802.11-02/xxxr0 July 2003 Security Maintenance Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies John Doe, His Company

July 2003 What is Security? Security is hard. (W. Arbaugh: “Wireless Security is Different”, IEEE Computer, August 2003, p99) Security is not a value-added feature (not like e.g. QoS). Security is all or nothing. Security is untestable. Broken security is non-obvious. Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies

January 2002 doc.: IEEE 802.11-02/xxxr0 July 2003 Problem Once TGi finishes their task and has a good secure solution in 802.11, how do we make sure that this security will persist? Subsequent amendments and revisions may accidentally ruin security. According to Bernard Aboba, 802.11f is already broken securitywise. Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies John Doe, His Company

Appropriate Forum? IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802, IEEE SA? July 2003 Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies

Wait until letter ballot, and then comment about security problems. July 2003 Possible Solution 1 Wait until letter ballot, and then comment about security problems. This may be too late in the development process. In many cases, it is impossible to bolt security onto an existing proposal. As a modification, have a special comment category for security issues, and treat the resolution in a different manner. Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies

July 2003 Possible Solution 2 Require security to be a consideration for all subsequent amendments and revisions Like IETF requirement for all I-Ds and RFC to have a section on security Unfortunately, cannot be imposed on existing Task Groups In practice, this doesn’t work for IETF Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies

Standing Committee to vet work for Security considerations July 2003 Possible Solution 3 Standing Committee to vet work for Security considerations Standing committee rules allow everybody to vote, not just members (is this a problem?) Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies

Maintenance Task Group July 2003 Possible Solution 4 Maintenance Task Group Task Group can only create one standard, and then dies A long time between problem and resolution, so the security hole will exist for a while Clint Chaplin, Symbol Technologies