XEP-0268: Incident Reporting

WARNING: Consideration of this document has been Deferred by the XMPP Standards Foundation. Implementation of the protocol described herein is not recommended.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

As XMPP technologies have been deployed more widely, the open XMPP network has become a more significant target for attacks. This specification defines ways for XMPP server deployments to share information with each other and therefore to handle such attacks in a more real-time fashion. In particular, it defines a format for sharing incident reports among XMPP server deployments. (For some related considerations, see RFC 2350 [1], RFC 3067 [2], and RFC 5070 [3].)

2. Incident Reports

An incident report consists of an XMPP <message/> stanza containing an <incident/> child element that includes an 'id' attribute whose value is a UUID as described in RFC 4122 [4]. An example is shown below. A server deployment SHOULD send incident reports only to peer servers that it trusts, for example peers that are in its "server roster" as described in Server Rosters [5].

Example 1. An incident report

<message from='jabber.org' to='im.flosoft.biz'>
  <incident xmlns='urn:xmpp:incident:0'
            id='BA51A035-7710-4558-9BBF-34838A4C5B24'>
    <description>
      <discuss>
        <admin>stpeter@jabber.org</admin>
        <muc>operators@conference.jabber.org</muc>
      </discuss>
      <info>
        <category>muc</category>
        <type>presence</type>
        <type>long-messages</type>
      </info>
      <locs>
        <loc>jdev@conference.jabber.org</loc>
        <loc>jabber@conference.jabber.org</loc>
      </locs>
      <rels>
        <rel>133BCE2E-E669-4ECE-B0F8-766B9E65630D</rel>
      </rels>
      <severity>2</severity>
      <source>
        <jids>
          <jid>abuser@abuse.lit</jid>
          <jid>loser@abuse.lit</jid>
        </jids>
      </source>
      <text xml:lang='en'>lots of MUC spammers from abuse.lit!</text>
      <time>
        <begin>2009-04-13T19:05:20Z</begin>
        <end>2009-04-13T19:27:22Z</end>
        <report>2009-04-13T19:31:07Z</report>
      </time>
    </description>
  </incident>
</message>
  

The defined children of the <description/> element are as follows:

3. Incident Solutions

If the reporting entity determines a solution to the problem or a receiving entity has a suggested solution to the problem, it SHOULD send out a revised incident report containing a <solution/> element (alternatively, the reporting entity can include a solution in its initial report). The solution element can include any of the elements defined for the <description/> element, such as the <ip/> element (since the XMPP server of a source JID might know the IP address and port of the connected entity).

Example 2. An incident solution

<message from='jabber.org' to='im.flosoft.biz'>
  <incident xmlns='urn:xmpp:incident:0'
            id='BA51A035-7710-4558-9BBF-34838A4C5B24'>
    <description>
      ...
    </description>
    <solution>
      <source>
        <ips>
          <ip>192.0.2.1:53667</ip>
        </ips>
      </source>
      <text xml:lang='en'>iptables -A INPUT -s 192.0.2.1 -j DROP</text>
    </solution>
  </incident>
</message>
  

4. Processing of Incident Reports

Unless explicitly configured to do so, a receiving server SHOULD NOT automatically modify its configuration based on receipt of an incident report, even from a trusted server, but instead SHOULD prompt the human administrators so that they can take appropriate action.

A receiving server MAY accept incident reports from peers that are not on its "trust list", but SHOULD treat such reports with caution and provide them to the human administrator(s) of the server.

A receiving server MAY forward reports that it receives to other servers it trusts.

5. Security Considerations

This technology is designed to help mitigate attacks on the XMPP network. However, incident reporting is itself vulnerable to the following attacks:

• False reports could lead a server to deny service to legitimate users or peer servers (see also Best Practices to Discourage Denial of Service Attacks [11]). To help mitigate such attacks, a server SHOULD treat with caution any incident reports that it might receive from untrusted entities.
• If traffic between two servers is not protected using Transport Layer Security (TLS), a passive eavesdropper could gain access to incident reports and therefore adjust its behavior in response. To prevent such attacks, servers SHOULD use TLS.

6. IANA Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [12].

7. XMPP Registrar Considerations

8. XML Schema

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>

<xs:schema
    xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
    targetNamespace='urn:xmpp:incident:0'
    xmlns='urn:xmpp:incident:0'
    elementFormDefault='qualified'>

  <xs:element name='incident'>
  </xs:element>

  <xs:simpleType name='empty'>
    <xs:restriction base='xs:string'>
      <xs:enumeration value=''/>
    </xs:restriction>
  </xs:simpleType>

</xs:schema>
  

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0268
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Deferred
Type: Standards Track
Version: 0.3
Last Updated: 2009-11-17
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: XMPP Core
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: NOT_YET_ASSIGNED
Source Control: HTML
This document in other formats: XML  PDF

Appendix B: Author Information

Appendix C: Legal Notices

Appendix D: Relation to XMPP

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 3920) and XMPP IM (RFC 3921) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Appendix E: Discussion Venue

There exists a special venue for discussion related to the technology described in this document: the <operators@xmpp.org> mailing list.

The primary venue for discussion of XMPP Extension Protocols is the <standards@xmpp.org> discussion list.

Discussion on other xmpp.org discussion lists might also be appropriate; see <http://xmpp.org/about/discuss.shtml> for a complete list.

Errata can be sent to <editor@xmpp.org>.

Appendix F: Requirements Conformance

The following requirements keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".

Appendix G: Notes

Appendix H: Revision History

Note: Older versions of this specification might be available at http://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/

END