Network Working Group M. Bagnulo Internet-Draft UC3M Updates: 3972 (if approved) J. Arkko Expires: December 10, 2006 Ericsson June 8, 2006 Support for Multiple Hash Algorithms in Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGAs) draft-bagnulo-multiple-hash-cga-00 Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on December 10, 2006. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). Abstract This document analyzes the implications of recent attacks on commonly used hash functions on Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGAs) and updates the CGA specification to support multiple hash algorithms. Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Impact of collision attacks in CGAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Options for Multiple Hash Algorithm Support in CGAs . . . . . . 4 3.1. Where to encode the hash function? . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. CGA generation procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. IANA considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 9 Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 1. Introduction Recent attacks to currently used hash functions have motivated a considerable amount of concern in the Internet community. The recommended approach [3] [9] to deal with this issue is first to analyze the impact of these attacks on the different Internet protocols that use hash functions and second to make sure that the different Internet protocols that use hash functions are capable of migrating to an alternative (more secure) hash function without a major disruption in the Internet operation. This document performs such analysis for the Cryptographically Generated Addresses (hereafter CGAs) defined in [1]. The first conclusion of the analysis is that the security of the protocols using CGAs is not affected by the recently available attacks against hash functions. The second conclusion of the analysis is that the hash function used is hard coded in the CGA specification. This document updates the CGA specification [1] to enable the support of alternative hash functions. In order to do so, this documents creates a new registry managed by IANA to register the different hash algorithms used in CGAs. 2. Impact of collision attacks in CGAs Recent advances in cryptography have resulted in simplified attacks against the collision-free property of certain commonly used hash functions [3] [9], including SHA-1 that is the hash function used by CGAs [1]. The result is that it is possible to obtain two messages M1 and M2 that have the same hash value with much less than 2^(L/2) attempts. We will next analyze the impact of such attacks in the currently proposed usages of CGAs. As we understand it, the attacks against the collision-free property of a hash function mostly challenge the application of such hash function for the provision of non-repudiation capabilities. This is so because an attacker would be capable to create two different messages that result in the same hash value and it can then present any of the messages interchangeably (for example after one of them has been signed by the other party involved in the transaction). However, it must be noted that both messages must be generated by the same party. As far as we understand, current usages of CGAs does not include the provision of non-repudiation capabilities, so attacks against the collision-free property of the hash function do not enable any useful attack against CGA-based protocols. Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 Current usages of the CGAs are basically oriented to prove the ownership of a CGA and then bind it to alternative addresses that can be used to reach the original CGA. This type of application of the CGA include: o The application of CGAs to protect the shim6 protocol [4]. In this case, CGAs are used as identifiers for the established communications. CGA features are used to prove that the owner of the identifier is the one that is providing the alternative addresses that can be used to reach the initial identifier. This is achieved by signing the list of alternative addresses available in the multihomed host with the private key of the CGA. o The application of CGAs to secure the IPv6 mobility support protocol [5] as proposed in [6]. In this case, the CGAs are used as Home Addresses and they are used to prove that the owner of the Home Address is the one creating the binding with the new Care-off Address. Similarly to the previous case, this is achieved by signing the Binding Update message carrying the Care-off Address with the private key of the CGA. o The application of CGA to Secure Neighbour Discovery [7]. In this case, the CGA features are used to prove the address ownership, so that it is possible to verify that the owner of the IP address is the one that is providing layer 2 address information. This is achieved by signing the layer 2 address information with the private key of the CGA. Essentially, all the current applications of CGAs rely on CGAs to protect a communication between two peers from third party attacks and not to provide protection from the peer itself. Attacks against the collision-free property of the hash functions suppose that one of the parties is generating two messages with the same hash value in order to launch an attack against its communicating peer. Since CGAs are not currently used to provide this type of protection, it is then natural that no additional attacks are enabled by a weaker collision resistance of the hash function. 3. Options for Multiple Hash Algorithm Support in CGAs CGAs as currently defined in [1] are intrinsically bound to the SHA-1 hash algorithm and no other hash function is supported. Even though the attacks against the collision-free property of the hash functions does not result in new vulnerabilities in the current applications of CGAs, it seems wise to enable multiple hash function support in CGAs. This is so mainly for two reasons: first, potential future applications of the CGA technology may be susceptible to attacks against the collision free property of SHA-1. Supporting alternative hash functions would allow applications which have Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 stricter requirements on the collision- free property to use CGAs. Second, one lesson learned from the recent attacks against hash functions is that it is possible that one day we need to move to alternative hash functions because of successful attacks against other properties of the commonly used hash functions. Because of that, it seems wise to modify protocols in general and the CGAs in particular to support this transition to alternative hash functions as easy as possible. 3.1. Where to encode the hash function? The next question we need to answer is where to encode the hash function used. There are several options that can be considered: One option would be to include the hash function used as an input to the hash function. This basically means to create an extension to the CGA Parameter Data Structure as defined in [8] that codifies the hash function used. The problem is that this approach is vulnerable to bidding down attacks or downgrading attacks as defined in [9]. This means that even if a stronger hash function is used, an attacker could find a CGA Parameter Data Structure which hash value using the weaker function is the same than the original hash value (created using the stronger hash function). In other words, the downgrading attack would work as follows: suppose that Alice generates a CGA CGA_A using the strong hash function HashStrong using a CGA Parameter Data Structure CGA_PDS_A The selected hash function HashStrong is encoded as an extension field in the CGA_PDS_A. Suppose that an attacker X finds, using a brute force attack, an alternative CGA Parameter Data Structure CGA_PDS_X which hash value, using a weaker hash function, is CGA_A. At this point the attacker can pretend to be the owner of CGA_A and the stronger hash function has not provided additional protection. The conclusion from the previous analysis is that the hash function used in the CGA generation must be encoded in the address itself. Since we want to support several hash functions, we are likely to need at least at least 2 or 3 bits for this. One option would be to use more bits from the hash bits of the interface identifier. The problem with this approach is that the resulting CGA is weaker because less hash information is encoded in the address. In addition, since those bits are currently used as hash bits, it is impossible to make this approach backward compatible with existent implementations. Another option would be to use the "u" and the "g" bits to encode this information, but this is probably and not such a good idea, since those bits have been honoured so far in all interface identifier generation mechanisms which allow them to Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 be used for the original purpose (for instance we can still create a global registry for unique interface identifiers). Finally another option is to encode the hash value used in the Sec bits. The Sec bits are used to artificially introduce additional difficulty in the CGA generation process in order to provide additional protection against brute force attacks. The Sec bits have been designed in a way that the lifetime of CGAs are extended when it is feasible to attack 59 bits long hash values. However, this is not the case today, so in general CGA will have a Sec value of 000. The proposal is to encode in the Sec bits, not only information about brute force attack protection but also to encode the hash function used to generate the hash. So for instance the Sec value 000 would mean that the hash function used is SHA-1 and that 0 bits of hash2 (as defined in RFC3972) must be 0. Sec value of 001 could be that the hash function used is SHA-1 and that 16 bits of hash2 (as defined in RFC3972) must be zero. However, the other values of Sec could mean that an alternative hash function needs to be used and that a certain amount of bits of hash2 must be zero. The proposal is not to define any concrete hash function to be used for other Sec values since it is not clear yet that we need to do so nor is it clear which hash function should be selected. 4. CGA generation procedure CGAs MUST be generated according to the generation procedure defined in the SEC registry defined in the IANA considerations section of this document. 5. IANA considerations This document defines a new registry entitled "CGA SEC" for the Sec field defined in RFC 3972 [1] that is to be created and maintained by IANA. The values in this name space are 3-bit unsigned integers. Initial values for the CGA Extension Type field are given below; future assignments are to be made through Standards Action [2]. Assignments consist of a name, the value and the RFC number where the CGA generation procedure is defined. The following initial assignments are done in this document: Name | Value | RFC -------------------+-------+------ SHA-1_0hash2bits | 000 | 3972 SHA-1_16hash2bits | 001 | 3972 SHA-1_32hash2bits | 010 | 3972 Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 6. Security considerations All this note considers security issues and in particular protection against potential attacks against hash functions. 7. Acknowledgements Pekka Nikander and Henrik Levkowetz reviewed and provided comments about this document. Marcelo Bagnulo worked on this document while visiting Ericsson Research Laboratory Nomadiclab. 8. Normative References [1] Aura, T., "Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGA)", RFC 3972, March 2005. [2] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434, October 1998. [3] Hoffman, P. and B. Schneier, "Attacks on Cryptographic Hashes in Internet Protocols", RFC 4270, November 2005. [4] Nordmark, E. and M. Bagnulo, "Multihoming L3 Shim Approach", draft-ietf-shim6-l3shim-00 (work in progress), July 2005. [5] Johnson, D., Perkins, C., and J. Arkko, "Mobility Support in IPv6", RFC 3775, June 2004. [6] Arkko, J., "Applying Cryptographically Generated Addresses and Credit-Based Authorization to Mobile IPv6", draft-arkko-mipshop-cga-cba-03 (work in progress), March 2006. [7] Arkko, J., Kempf, J., Zill, B., and P. Nikander, "SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND)", RFC 3971, March 2005. [8] Bagnulo, M. and J. Arkko, "Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGA) Extension Field Format", draft-bagnulo-cga-ext-02 (work in progress), March 2006. [9] Bellovin, S. and E. Rescorla, "Deploying a new hash algorithm", 2005 September. Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 Authors' Addresses Marcelo Bagnulo Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Av. Universidad 30 Leganes, Madrid 28911 SPAIN Phone: 34 91 6249500 Email: marcelo@it.uc3m.es URI: http://www.it.uc3m.es Jari Arkko Ericsson Jorvas 02420 Finland Email: jari.arkko@ericsson.com Bagnulo & Arkko Expires December 10, 2006 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Multiple Hash Support in CGAs June 2006 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. 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