[tech-whois] A follow up session in San Francisco?

Tue Mar 8 22:05:47 UTC 2011

Hi Michael

The idea that authentication is a better basis for rate limiting for WHOIS than IP rate limiting is a fallacy.

If we did add authentication then instead of people querying from multiple IP addresses to get around rate limiting, people would use multiple credentials to get around it.  We could not stop that by vetting/limiting who gets credentials because:

a.  It is just too expensive for what is a free service.
b.  The basic premise of WHOIS is that it is a public service so we would still have to give credentials to anyone who asks

Thereby defeating entirely the purpose of authentication while also adding a great deal of cost into the process.

Even where there is vetting/limiting of credentials, if the rewards are high enough then people will game the system, just look at the number of shell gTLD registrars for evidence.  

The principles that determine the effectiveness of any rate limiting mechanism are:

1.  How high a cost is it to overcome for the data poachers.
2.  How low a cost is it to implement for the data gamekeepers.
3.  How asymmetric is the cost in favour of the gamekeepers.

IP rate limiting wins on all three.  It is easy to implement, not trivial to overcome and the cost is reasonably asymmetric as it costs the data poachers more than it costs the data gamekeepers.

Authentication on the other hand fails on the last two.  Yes it is expensive for data poachers but it is also expensive for data gamekeepers (anything involving human beings providing credentials is) and the asymmetry is now in the wrong direction as it costs more to implement than abuse.

Separately, I should point out that a great deal of WHOIS interaction is automated, often for good reasons.  The automation is not the problem, the excess queries are.  IP rate limiting deals with that problem transparently but introducing authentication would require all that automation to be rewritten.

And finally, perhaps you could explain why IPv6 changes the effectiveness of rate limiting?

Jay

On 9/03/2011, at 10:30 AM, Michael Young wrote:

> Specifically, having the ability to enforce data usage policies above the
> IP level.
> 
> One example of this:
> 
> Many whois providers restrict the use of Whois for systematic wholesale
> data mining purposes. They discourage use of the service for this purpose
> by applying controls through IP based rating limiting approaches.  With
> the advent of IPv6 this type of control becomes much less effective, some
> might even say it becomes ineffective.
> 
> Michael
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Smith, Bill [mailto:bill.smith at paypal-inc.com]
> Sent: March-08-11 4:02 PM
> To: Michael Young
> Cc: Dave Piscitello; Smith, Bill; tech-whois at icann.org
> Subject: Re: [tech-whois] A follow up session in San Francisco?
> 
> Exactly what problem are we trying to solve by requiring authentication
> for access to WHOIS data?
> 
> On Mar 8, 2011, at 11:51 AM, Michael Young wrote:
> 
>> Absolutely, a user ID accessing a whois system does not have to be
>> tied to known identity if the overall policy supports anonymity.  The
>> elements of usage enforcement can be applied against the user ID just
>> the same.  Of course you would want some control heuristics preventing
>> the automated creation of those anonymous user ID's in any sort of
>> scale, but that's a well understood problem with many existing tools
> that can help with that.
>> 
>> Best Regards,
>> 
>> Michael Young
>> M:+1-647-289-1220
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Dave Piscitello [mailto:dave.piscitello at icann.org]
>> Sent: March-08-11 2:49 PM
>> To: Michael Young; 'Smith, Bill'
>> Cc: tech-whois at icann.org
>> Subject: Re: [tech-whois] A follow up session in San Francisco?
>> 
>> Michael you raise an excellent point re: IPv6.
>> 
>> I also think you touch on important benefits of "knowing the source":
>> accountability and auditing. Anonymity is very different from
>> accountability but the Internet fails to make this distinction and thus
> abuse flourishes.
>> 
>> There are several forms of authentication that can provide auditing or
>> a basis for rate limiting that do not require disclosure of personal
>> information or creation of an identity, e.g., guest accounts that can
>> be bound to sessions, connections, validated origin IP addresses.
>> There's a lot of room between "unknown origin, unknown querying party"
>> to "non-reputiable originator of a request".
>> 
>> 
>> On 3/8/11 2:20 PM, "Michael Young" <michael at mwyoung.ca> wrote:
>> 
>>> "- access control, which most WHOIS providers have implemented at the
>>> TCP/IP level
>>> 
>>> Without source address validation, IP level access control is not
>>> sufficient. Even with IP level access control, the granularity of
>>> access control is arguably less than one might want in a future
>>> incarnation of a Whois service. For example, an IP level access
>>> control does not accommodate a future policy that might block a user
>>> of group X from accessing to a subset of registration data elements
>>> {b} while allowing a user of group Y access to those elements. A
>>> robust directory service protocol ought to accommodate this."
>>> 
>>> First of all I agree with this point but let me reinforce/add that
>>> the current rate limiting methodologies based on traffic from source
>>> IPs becomes much trickier with IPv6.  I don't see any practical
>>> reason why every user of a whois service shouldn't have to
>>> authenticate to get a response. Just because its a free public
>>> service doesn't mean someone seeking the data can't sign up for a
>>> user ID.  Sign up systems can be automated and protected from machine
>>> based registration, subsequent whois lookups would always be tied to
>>> User ID and usage policy enforcement can be made against individuals
> instead of IP addresses.
>>> You can also create classes of users with different traffic policy
>>> expectations (provided you were still in compliance with any
>>> contractual
>> obligations).
>>> 
>>> I know this is a fundamental change from today, but the more I think
>>> about it, the more I see the practicality and operational sensibility
>>> in going that route.
>>> 
>>> Best Regards,
>>> 
>>> Michael Young
>>> M:+1-647-289-1220
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: tech-whois-bounces at icann.org
>>> [mailto:tech-whois-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Smith, Bill
>>> Sent: March-08-11 1:22 PM
>>> To: Dave Piscitello
>>> Cc: tech-whois at icann.org
>>> Subject: Re: [tech-whois] A follow up session in San Francisco?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mar 7, 2011, at 12:13 PM, Dave Piscitello wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 3/7/11 2:45 PM, "Jay Daley"
>>> <jay at nzrs.net.nz<mailto:jay at nzrs.net.nz>>
>>> wrote:
>>> [snipped]
>>> 
>>> The only two that cannot be addressed this way are:
>>> 
>>> - authentication, which is the feature where I think we are talking
>>> about a very different protocol from WHOIS
>>> 
>>> Agree.
>>> 
>>> Why would we consider requiring authentication when accurate WHOIS
>>> information is available to the public?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> - access control, which most WHOIS providers have implemented at the
>>> TCP/IP level
>>> 
>>> Without source address validation, IP level access control is not
>>> sufficient. Even with IP level access control, the granularity of
>>> access control is arguably less than one might want in a future
>>> incarnation of a Whois service. For example, an IP level access
>>> control does not accommodate a future policy that might block a user
>>> of group X from accessing to a subset of registration data elements
>>> {b} while allowing a user of group Y access to those elements. A
>>> robust directory service protocol ought to accommodate this.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> With respect, I trust we aren't talking about a directory service for
>>> the Internet public.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tech-whois mailing list
>>> tech-whois at icann.org<mailto:tech-whois at icann.org>
>>> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/tech-whois
>>> 
>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
>> 
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