Introduction
As happened in the last few years, the eduGAIN Security Team run a challenge to assess a critical part of the eduGAIN communication infrastructure: the security contacts of the eduGAIN Participants (where available). The security contacts email addresses has been retrieved from the eduGAIN Database using the APIs published on the technical site. The procedere used to collect the email addresses is available on the GEANT gitlab:
The security contacts stored in the eduGAIN Database can also be browsed on the Member Federations page:
https://technical.edugain.org/status
Participants
In the eduGAIN Communication Challenge 2022-12, 47 eduGAIN Participants have been challenged:
| AAF |
| AAI-EDUHR |
| ACONET |
| AZSCINET |
| BELNET |
| BIF |
| CAF |
| CAFE |
| CARSI |
| CYNET-IF |
| DFN-AAI |
| EDUID-AFRICA |
| EDUID-CZ |
| EDUID-HU |
| EDUID-NG |
| FENIX |
| FER |
| GAKUNIN |
| GRNET |
| HAKA |
| IDEM |
| INCOMMON |
| IRFED |
| LEAF |
| LITNET-FEDI |
| LK-LIAF |
| OMREN |
| PIONIER-ID |
| RAFIKI |
| RCTSAAI |
| RIF |
| ROEDUNETID |
| SA-MIF |
| SAFEID |
| SAFIRE |
| SIF |
| SIFULAN |
| SIR |
| SURFCONEXT |
| SWAMID |
| SWITCHAAI |
| TAAT |
| THAILDF |
| TIGERFED |
| TUAKIRI |
| UK-FEDERATION |
| WAYF |
eduGAIN participants that didn't communicate their security contacts were excluded from the challenge.
Challenge timeline
- 2022-12-07T00:00:00+01 (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS, time is UTC) - Start of the challenge.
- 2021-12-11T00:00:00+01 - End of the challenge.
- 2021-12-13 - Public report available (this wiki page).
What was assessed
Besides the validity of the available contact addresses also the reaction time was measured. This information was collected to be used as input for a later discussion on response times. The community would need to define target reaction times, which are regarded to be useful to be used in security incident coordination situations.
Results
Validity of the contact addresses
Assuming that all contacted participants received the challenge e-mail and understood what action was expected from them, we have a 81% success rate. In absolute numbers, 38 participants out of 47 have reacted within the challenge time frame (5 days). This results are in line with the 2021 Communication Challenge.
Reaction times
The graph above shows that the all reactions were recorded within 120 hours, with the majority within approximately 15 hours. Given that almost all time zones were covered in this global exercise the reaction times are very good and indicate that the security contact addresses of the participants are also monitored during out-of-office hours.
Follow Up
The participants that have not reacted to the challenge will be contacted by the eduGAIN support via alternative channels and a solution for the communication issues will be implemented and tested.