Securing Delay-Tolerant Networks with BPSec

9Threat Considerations for BPv7 Networks

As a specification, BPSec defines the building blocks needed to protect and verify data transferred using a BPv7 network. The correctness of the design of the security context is critical in order to ensure that a BPv7 network can actually be secured against anticipated threats in the operating environment. In addition to BPSec, the policies governing the operation of the network play a role in the overall security posture. This chapter describes classes of potential threats that might be encountered in an operational environment and provides discussion on how those threats may apply to delay-tolerant networks.

The overall security posture of a BPSec-enabled BPv7 network can only be determined by evaluated specific aspects of the network deployment, such as chosen security contexts. This chapter provides a broad set of threats to consider when architecting or designing a BPSec-enabled BPv7 network. This chapter forms the basis for further study of threats that may apply to particular security contexts, security mechanisms, and security ecosystem implementations.

This chapter also discusses security implications inherent to the Disruption Tolerant Internet (DTN) architecture and compares these to the Internet Threat Model. Attacker objectives and capabilities are described in order to help understand attacker motivations for a particular delay-tolerant network application. Finally, several key classes of attacks are discussed in the context ...