Scope

The principal focus of this workshop was on the cyber security aspects of network middleboxes. The term "middlebox" includes any device between user end-points other than a transparent switch. They embrace an enormous number of functional physical and virtual equipment components that exist in the complex paths typically found between communication endpoints. Middleboxes are essential to the operation of all telecommunication and ICT networks today, and large infrastructures will typically have thousands of ubiquitously deployed middleboxes. By almost any metric, middleboxes also represent perhaps the most active and innovative sector of network technology, research, and product development today with scholar research search engines displaying more than 10,000 published papers over the past decade and hundreds of new ones appearing every month. The published papers treating middlebox and transport cryptographic protocols number in the hundreds over the past three years and represent one of the most critically important developments and challenge in the cyber security field today. The workshop objective was significantly related to five new work items of the ETSI Cyber Security Technical Committee to produce a middlebox cyber security protocol (MSP).

Event Objectives

The workshop intended to:

  • Provide a unique global forum for significant technical papers and dialogue from industry and academia on both in-band and out-of-band secure protocols, techniques, and innovations for discovering and managing implementations of middleboxes within operator networks and virtual instantiations at data centres and their controlled, trusted visibility of encrypted traffic for cyber defence and privacy purposes.
  • Provide related use case examples.
  • Consider the usefulness of instantiating the protocols and techniques in publicly available technical specifications with demonstrations.

Target audience

This event was of interest to Industry and academic R&D researchers, cyber security centres of excellence, network and cloud data centre operators, enterprise network users, and public officials concerned about the challenges of cyber security and management of encrypted network traffic between hosted services and user or device end points – especially for mobile, NFV, 5G, automotive, and IoT uses.

ETSI provided free on-line public availability of all papers with persistent identifiers for widespread reference and citation.

 

  Tuesday 12 June 2018 
08:30 Check-in
09:00 Welcome
Martin Ranhed, Advenica
  Session 1: Business Needs, Requirements and Use Cases
Session Chair: Martin Ranhed, Advenica
09:00 UK's National Health Service Case
Chris Flynn, UK's National Health Service
09:20 Defending the UK: Government, Citizens and Business. What are the Threats and What is Needed for Cyber-Defence into the Future?
Tommy Charles, NCSC
09:40 Encryption: a Double-Edged Sword
Nalini Elkins, Enterprise Data Center Operators
10:00 The Impact of TLS 1.3 on Enterprises
Steve Fenter, US Bank
10:20 Questions & Answers
10:30 Coffee & Networking Break 
11:00 Session 2: Research and Development Progress
Session Chair: Olaf Bonorden, McAfee
11:00 Let's be PATIENT
Arnaud Taddei, Symantec
11:15 Accountable Proxying Over TLS: Real-World Threats and the Need for Formal Proofs
Karthikeyan Bhargavan, INRIA
11:30 ACME STAR as a MSP for TLS traffic
Antonio Pastor, Telefonica
11:45 Middlebox Current Usage and Challenges Requiring Specification
Nicolas Thomas, Fortinet
12:00 Questions & Answers
12:30 Networking Lunch
14:15 Session 3: Joint Efforts
Session Chair: Colin Whorlow, NCSC
14:15 IEEE Encrypted Traffic Inspection (ETI)
Olaf Bonorden, McAfee
14:30 Attestation of SHIELD's Network Infrastructure and Middleboxes
Ludovic Jacquin, HPE
14:45 Questions & Answers
15:00 Coffee & Networking Break 
15:30 ETSI TC CYBER Work on Middlebox Security Protocol:
  • 15:30 Introduction
    Tony Rutkowski, CIS
  • 15:45 Profile Capability Requirements
    Roger Eriksson, Advenica
  • 16:00 Profile for Fine Grained Transport Layer MSP (TLMSP)
    Martin Ranhed, Advenica
  • 16:15 Demonstrator for the Profile for Fine Grained Transport Layer MSP
    Daniel Powell, NCSC
  • 16:30 Questions & Answers
17:00 Wrap up and Closure for the Day
Tony Rutkowski, CIS
17:30 Networking Cocktail 
17:30 Start of the Middlebox Hackathon

Click here to access the Hot Topics in Middlebox Security Presentations

The Programme Committee was composed of the following members:

  • Tony Rutkowski, Center for Internet Security & PC chairman
  • Olaf Bonorden, McAfee
  • Matt Carus, NCSC
  • Roger Ericsson, Advenica
  • Daniel Powell, NCSC
  • Martin Ranhed, Advenica

The Programme Committee was in charge of selecting the presentations that fit the event objectives and build the programme on Middlebox Workshop.

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