Issue with Noction IRP default setting (Was: BGP route hijack by AS10990)

Sat Aug 1 23:12:48 UTC 2020

Ryan,

The reason Noction is being singled out here as opposed to other BGP
speakers is that it inherently breaks several BGP protection mechanisms as
a means to achieve its purpose. BGP was never intended to be "optimized",
it was intended to be stable and scalable. While i'm sure there are
hundreds of operators that use these optimizers without incident, they are
a significant paint point for the rest of the internet.

They have created a platform that has the ease of use of a residential CPE,
but with the consequences of misuse of any DFZ platform. This allows users
who have little experience speaking BGP with the world to make these
mistakes because they don't know any better, whereas the other platforms
you mention require some knowledge to configure. It's not a perfect filter,
but it does create a barrier for the inept.

Since Noction has made it easy enough to configure their software so that
anyone can do it, with or without experience on the DFZ, they have SOME
responsibility to keep their software from accidentally breaking the
internet.

-Matt

On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 2:30 PM Ryan Hamel <ryan at rkhtech.org> wrote:

> Job,
>
> I disagree on the fact that it is not fair to the BGP implementation
> ecosystem, to enforce a single piece of software to activate the no-export
> community by default, due to ignorance from the engineer(s) implementing
> the solution. It should be common sense that certain routes that should be
> advertised beyond the local AS, just like RFC1918 routes, and more. Also,
> wasn't it you that said Cisco routers had a bug in ignoring NO_EXPORT?
> Would you go on a rant with Cisco, even if Noction add that enabled
> checkbox by default?
>
> Why are you not on your soap box about BIRD, FRrouting, OpenBGPd, Cisco,
> Juniper, etc... about how they can possibly allow every day screw ups to
> happen, but the same options like the NO_EXPORT community are available for
> the engineer to use? One solution would be to implement "BGP Group/Session
> Profiles" (ISP/RTBH/DDOS Filtering/Route Optimizers/etc) or a "BGP Session
> Wizard" (ask the operator questions about their intentions), then
> automatically generate import and export policies based on known accepted
> practices.
>
> Another solution could be having the BGP daemon disclose the make, model
> family, and exact model of hardware it is running on, to BGP peers, and add
> more knobs into policy creation to match said values, and take action
> appropriately. That would be useful in getting around vendor specific
> issues, as well as belt & suspenders protection.
>
> Ryan
> On Aug 1 2020, at 9:58 am, Job Snijders <job at instituut.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 06:50:55AM -0700, Ca By wrote:
> > I am not normally supporting a heavy hand in regulation, but i think it
> is
> > fair to say Noction and similar BGP optimizers are unsafe at any speed
> and
> > the FTC or similar should ban them in the USA. They harm consumers and
> are
> > a risk to national security / critical infrastructure
> >
> > Noction and similar could have set basic defaults (no-export, only create
> > /25 bogus routes to limit scope), but they have been clear that their
> greed
> > to suck up traffic does not benefit from these defaults and they wont do
> > it.
>
> Following a large scale BGP incident in March 2015, noction made it
> possible to optionally set the well-known NO_EXPORT community on route
> advertisements originated by IRP instances.
>
> "In order to further reduce the likelihood of these problems
> occurring in the future, we will be adding a feature within Noction
> IRP to give an option to tag all the more specific prefixes that it
> generates with the BGP NO_EXPORT community. This will not be enabled
> by default [snip]"
> https://www.noction.com/blog/route-optimizers
> Mar 27, 2015
>
> Due to NO_EXPORT not being set in the default configuration, there are
> probably if not certainly many unsuspecting network engineers who end up
> deploying this software - without ever even considering - to change that
> one setting in the configuration.
>
> Fast forward a few years and a few incidents, on the topic of default
> settings, following the Cloudflare/DQE/Verizon incident:
>
> "We do have no export community support and have done for many
> years. The use of more specifics is also optional. Neither replaces
> the need for filters."
> https://twitter.com/noction/status/1143177562191011840
> Jun 24, 2019
>
> Community members responded:
>
> "Noction have been facilitating Internet outages for years and
> years and the best thing they can say in response is that it is
> technically possible to use their product responsibly, they just
> don't ship it that way."
> https://twitter.com/PowerDNS_Bert/status/1143252745257979905
> June 24, 2019
>
> Last year Noction stated:
>
> "Nobody found this leak pleasant."
> https://www.noction.com/news/incident-response
> June 26, 2019
>
> Sentiment we all can agree with, change is needed!
>
> As far as I know, Noction IRP is the ONLY commercially available
> off-the-shelf BGP route manipulation software which - as default - does
> NOT set the BGP well-known NO_EXPORT community on the product's route
> advertisements. This is a product design decision which causes
> collateral damage.
>
> I would like to urge Noction to reconsider their position. Seek to
> migrate the existing users to use NO_EXPORT, and release a new version
> of the IRP software which sets NO_EXPORT BY DEFAULT on all generated
> routes.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Job
>
>

-- 
Matt Erculiani
ERCUL-ARIN
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