  Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is an internetworking paradigm that
offers an alternative to the current IP\nobreakdash-based Internet
architecture. ICN's most distinguishing feature is its emphasis on information
(content) instead of communication endpoints. One important open issue in ICN
is whether negative acknowledgments (NACKs) at the network layer are useful for
notifying downstream nodes about forwarding failures, or requests for incorrect
or non-existent information. In benign settings, NACKs are beneficial for ICN
architectures, such as CCNx and NDN, since they flush state in routers and
notify consumers. In terms of security, NACKs seem useful as they can help
mitigating so-called Interest Flooding attacks. However, as we show in this
paper, network-layer NACKs also have some unpleasant security implications. We
consider several types of NACKs and discuss their security design requirements
and implications. We also demonstrate that providing secure NACKs triggers the
threat of producer-bound flooding attacks. Although we discuss some potential
countermeasures to these attacks, the main conclusion of this paper is that
network-layer NACKs are best avoided, at least for security reasons.
