Network Working Group D. Ovsienko Internet-Draft Yandex Updates: 6126 (if approved) August 20, 2012 Intended status: Experimental Expires: February 21, 2013 Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication draft-ovsienko-babel-hmac-authentication-00 Abstract This document describes a cryptographic authentication mechanism for Babel routing protocol, updating, but not superceding RFC 6126. The mechanism allocates two new TLV types for the authentication data, uses HMAC and is both optional and backward compatible. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 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." This Internet-Draft will expire on February 21, 2013. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Cryptographic Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1. Neutral Use of Hash Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2. Padding Constant Specifics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.3. Cryptographic Sequence Number Specifics . . . . . . . . . 6 2.4. Definition of HMAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. Updates to Protocol Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3.1. RxAuthRequired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3.2. LocalTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3.3. LocalPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.4. MaxDigestsIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.5. MaxDigestsOut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.6. ANM Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.7. ANM Timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 3.8. Configured Security Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 3.9. Effective Security Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4. Updates to Protocol Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4.1. Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4.2. TS/PC TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.3. HMAC TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5. Updates to Protocol Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5.1. Per-interface TS/PC Number Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5.2. Deriving ESAs from CSAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5.3. Updates to Packet Sending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5.4. Updates to Packet Receiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 5.5. Authentication-specific Statistics Maintenance . . . . . . 25 6. Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 6.1. IPv6 Source Address Selection for Sending . . . . . . . . 26 6.2. Output Buffer Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 6.3. Optimizations of ESAs Deriving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 6.4. Internal Representation of CSAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 7. Network Management Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 7.1. Backward Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 7.2. Multi-Domain Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 7.3. Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 7.4. Handling of Authentication Keys Exhaustion . . . . . . . . 31 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Appendix A. Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 1. Introduction Comments are solicited and should be addressed to the author. Authentication of routing protocol exchanges is a common mean of securing computer networks. Use of protocol authentication mechanisms helps in ascertaining, that only the intended routers participate in routing information exchange, and that the exchanged routing information is not modified by a third party. [BABEL] ("the original specification") defines data structures, encoding, and operation of a basic Babel routing protocol instance ("instance of the original protocol"). This document ("this specification") defines data structures, encoding, and operation of an extension to Babel protocol, an authentication mechanism ("this mechanism"). Both the instance of the original protocol and this mechanism are mostly self-contained and interact only at coupling points defined in this specification. A major design goal of this mechanism is such a transparency to an operator, that is not affected by implementation and configuration specifics. A complying implementation makes all meaningful details of authentication-specific processing clear to the operator, even when some of the key parameters cannot be changed. The currently established (see [RIP2-AUTH], [OSPF2-AUTH], [OSPF3-AUTH], and [RFC6039]) approach to authentication mechanism design for datagram-based routing protocols such as Babel relies on two principal data items embedded into protocol packets, typically as two integral parts of a single data structure: o A fixed-length unsigned integer number, typically called a cryptographic sequence number, used in replay attack protection. o A variable-length sequence of octets, a result of the HMAC construct (see [RFC2104]) computed on meaningful data items of the packet (including the cryptographic sequence number) on one hand and a secret key on another, used in proving that both the sender and the receiver share the same secret key and that the meaningful data was not changed in transmission. Depending on the design specifics either all protocol packets are authenticated or only those protecting the integrity of protocol exchange. This mechanism authenticates all protocol packets. This specification defines the use of the cryptographic sequence number in details sufficient to make replay attack protection strength predictable. That is, an operator can tell the strength Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 from the declared characteristics of an implementation and, whereas the implementation allows changing relevant parameters, the effect of a reconfiguration. The HMAC construct can be combined with any cryptographic hash algorithm, although the primary focus of [RIP2-AUTH], [OSPF2-AUTH], and [OSPF3-AUTH] is either SHA-1 hash algorithm or SHA-2 family of hash algorithms, or both. This specification does not mandate or suggest a use of any particular hash algorithms. This mechanism can be deployed using any appropriate hash algorithms, as long as Babel speakers participating in the authenticated exchange are implemented and configured consistently. This mechanism explicitly allows for multiple HMAC results per an authenticated packet. Since meaningful data items of a given packet remain the same, each such HMAC result stands for a different secret key and/or a different hash algorithm. This enables a simultaneous, independent authentication within multiple domains. An important concern addressed by this mechanism is limiting the amount of HMAC computations done per an authenticated packet, independently for sending and receiving. Without these limits the number of computations per a packet could be as high as number of configured authentication keys (in sending case) or as the number of keys multiplied by the number of supplied HMAC results (in receiving case). These limits establish a basic competition between the configured keys and (in receiving case) an additional competition between the supplied HMAC results. This specification defines related data structures and procedures in a way to make such competition transparent and predictable for an operator. 1.1. Requirements Language The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 2. Cryptographic Aspects 2.1. Neutral Use of Hash Algorithms The only hash algorithm characteristics meaningful within the scope of processing defined herein are digest length and internal block size, there is no pre- or post-processing specific to a particular hash algorithm. The following generic requirements affect only the Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 set of options available for an implementation. A set of hash algorithms available in an implementation MUST be clearly stated, MUST include at least one option and SHOULD include multiple options. Implementers SHOULD consider strong, well-known hash algorithms as implementation options and MUST NOT consider hash algorithms for that by the time of implementation meaningful attacks exist or that are commonly viewed as deprecated. For example, the following hash algorithms meet these requirements at the time of this writing: o GOST (256-bit hash) o RIPEMD-160 o SHA-224 o SHA-256 o SHA-384 o SHA-512 o Tiger (192-bit hash) o Whirlpool (512-bit hash) The final choice of particular hash algorithm(s) is left up to the implementer. Whether known weak authentication keys exist for a hash algorithm used in an implementation of this mechanism, the implementation MUST deny a use of such keys. 2.2. Padding Constant Specifics [RIP2-AUTH] established the reference method of HMAC construct application housing the computed authentication data inside the message being authenticated. This involves pre-allocating necessary amount of message data space and pre-filling it with some data a receiver can reproduce exactly, typically an arbitrary number known as a padding constant. The padding constant used in [RIP2-AUTH] is 0x878FE1F3 four-octet value. Subsequent works (including [OSPF2-AUTH] and [OSPF3-AUTH]) inherited both the basic approach and the padding constant. In particular, [OSPF3-AUTH] uses a source IPv6 address to set the first 16 octets of the padded area and the padding constant to set any subsequent octets. This mechanism makes the same use for the source IPv6 Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 address, but the padding constant size and value are different. Since any fixed arbitrary value of a padding constant does not affect cryptographic characteristics of a hash algorithm and the HMAC construct, and since single-octet padding is more straightforward to implement, the padding constant used by this mechanism is 0x00 single-octet value. This is respectively addressed in sending (Section 5.3 item 5) and receiving (Section 5.4 item 6) procedures. 2.3. Cryptographic Sequence Number Specifics Operation of this mechanism may involve multiple local and multiple remote cryptographic sequence numbers, each essentially being a 48-bit unsigned integer. This specification uses a term "TS/PC number" to avoid confusion with the route's sequence number of the original Babel specification (Section 2.5 of [BABEL]) and to stress the fact, that there are two distinguished parts of this 48-bit number, each handled in its specific way (see Section 5.1): 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 // 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-//+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TS // | PC | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-//+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ // High-order 32 bits are called "timestamp" (TS) and low-order 16 bits are called "packet counter" (PC). This mechanism stores, updates, compares and encodes each TS/PC number as two independent unsigned integers, TS and PC respectively. Such comparison of TS/PC numbers performed in item 3 of Section 5.4 is algebraically equivalent to comparison of respective 48-bit unsigned integers. Any byte order conversion, when required, is performed on TS and PC parts independently. 2.4. Definition of HMAC The algorithm description below uses the following nomenclature, which is consistent with [FIPS-198]: Text Is the data on which the HMAC is calculated (note item (b) of Section 8). In this specification it is the contents of a Babel packet ranging from the beginning of the Magic field of the Babel packet header to the end of the last octet of the Packet Body field, as defined in Section 4.2 of [BABEL]. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 H Is the specific hash algorithm (see Section 2.1). K Is a sequence of octets of an arbitrary, known length. Ko Is the cryptographic key used with the hash algorithm. B Is the block size of H, measured in octets rather than bits. Note that B is the internal block size, not the digest length. L Is the digest length of H, measured in octets rather than bits. XOR Is the exclusive-or operation. Opad Is the hexadecimal value 0x5c repeated B times. Ipad Is the hexadecimal value 0x36 repeated B times. The algorithm below is the original, unmodified HMAC construct as defined in both [RFC2104] and [FIPS-198], hence it is different from the algorithms defined in [RIP2-AUTH], [OSPF2-AUTH], and [OSPF3-AUTH] in exactly two regards: o Algorithm below sets the size of Ko to B, not to L (L is not greater than B). This resolves both ambiguity in XOR expressions and incompatibility in handling of keys having length greater than L but not greater than B. o Algorithm below does not change value of Text before or after the computation. Both padding of a Babel packet before the computation and placing of the result inside the packet are performed elsewhere. The intent of this is to enable the most straightforward use of cryptographic libraries by implementations of this specification. At the time of this writing implementations of the original HMAC construct coupled with hash algorithms of choice are generally available. Description of the algorithm: 1. Preparation of the Key In this application, Ko is always B octets long. If K is B octets long, then Ko is set to K. If K is more than B octets long, then Ko is set to H(K) with zeroes appended to the end of H(K), such that Ko is B octets long. If K is less than B octets long, then Ko is set to K with zeroes appended to the end of K, Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 such that Ko is B octets long. 2. First-Hash A First-Hash, also known as the inner hash, is computed as follows: First-Hash = H(Ko XOR Ipad || Text) 3. Second-Hash A second hash, also known as the outer hash, is computed as follows: Second-Hash = H(Ko XOR Opad || First-Hash) 4. Result The resulting Second-Hash becomes the authentication data that is returned as the result of HMAC calculation. 3. Updates to Protocol Data Structures 3.1. RxAuthRequired RxAuthRequired is a boolean parameter, its default value MUST be TRUE. An implementation SHOULD make RxAuthRequired a per-interface parameter, but MAY make it specific to the whole protocol instance. The conceptual purpose of RxAuthRequired is to enable a smooth migration from an unauthenticated to an authenticated Babel packet exchange and back (see Section 7.3). Current value of RxAuthRequired directly affects the receiving procedure defined in Section 5.4. An implementation SHOULD allow the operator changing RxAuthRequired value in runtime or by means of Babel speaker restart. An implementation MUST allow the operator discovering the effective value of RxAuthRequired in runtime or from the system documentation. 3.2. LocalTS LocalTS is a 32-bit unsigned integer variable, it is the TS part of a per-interface TS/PC number. LocalTS is a strictly per-interface variable not intended to be changed by operator. Its initialization is explained in Section 5.1. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 3.3. LocalPC LocalPC is a 16-bit unsigned integer variable, it is the PC part of a per-interface TS/PC number. LocalPC is a strictly per-interface variable not intended to be changed by operator. Its initialization is explained in Section 5.1. 3.4. MaxDigestsIn MaxDigestsIn is an unsigned integer parameter conceptually purposed for limiting the amount of CPU time spent processing a received authenticated packet. The receiving procedure performs the most CPU- intensive operation, the HMAC computation, only at most MaxDigestsIn (Section 5.4 item 7) times for a given packet. MaxDigestsIn value MUST be at least 2. An implementation SHOULD make MaxDigestsIn a per-interface parameter, but MAY make it specific to the whole protocol instance. An implementation SHOULD allow the operator changing the value of MaxDigestsIn in runtime or by means of Babel speaker restart. An implementation MUST allow the operator discovering the effective value of MaxDigestsIn in runtime or from the system documentation. 3.5. MaxDigestsOut MaxDigestsOut is an unsigned integer parameter conceptually purposed for limiting the amount of a sent authenticated packet's space spent on authentication data. The sending procedure adds at most MaxDigestsOut (Section 5.3 item 5) HMAC results to a given packet, concurring with the output buffer management explained in Section 6.2. MaxDigestsOut value MUST be at least 2. An implementation SHOULD make MaxDigestsOut a per-interface parameter, but MAY make it specific to the whole protocol instance. An implementation SHOULD allow the operator changing the value of MaxDigestsOut in runtime or by means of Babel speaker restart, in a safe range. The maximum safe value of MaxDigestsOut is implementation-specific (see Section 6.2). An implementation MUST allow the operator discovering the effective value of MaxDigestsOut in runtime or from the system documentation. 3.6. ANM Table The ANM (Authentic Neighbours Memory) table resembles the neighbour table defined in Section 3.2.3 of [BABEL]. Note that the term "neighbour table" means the neighbour table of the original Babel specification, and term "ANM table" means the table defined herein. Indexing of the ANM table is done in exactly the same way as indexing Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 of the neighbour table, but purpose, field set and associated procedures are different. Conceptual purpose of the ANM table is to provide a longer term replay attack protection, than it would be possible using the neighbour table. Expiry of an inactive entry in the neighbour table depends on the last received Hello Interval of the neighbour and typically stands for tens to hundreds of seconds (see Appendix A and Appendix B of [BABEL]). Expiry of an inactive entry in the ANM table depends only on the local speaker's configuration. The ANM table retains (for at least the amount of seconds set by ANM timeout parameter defined in Section 3.7) a copy of TS/PC number advertised in authentic packets by each remote Babel speaker. The ANM table is indexed by pairs of the form (Interface, Source). Every table entry consists of the following fields: o Interface An implementation specific reference to the local node's interface that the authentic packet was received through. o Source IPv6 source address of the Babel speaker that the authentic packet was received from. o LastTS A 32-bit unsigned integer, the TS part of a remote TS/PC number. o LastPC A 16-bit unsigned integer, the PC part of a remote TS/PC number. Each ANM table entry has an associated aging timer, which is reset by the receiving procedure (Section 5.4 item 8). If the timer expires, the entry is deleted from the ANM table. An implementation SHOULD use a persistent memory (NVRAM) to retain the contents of ANM table across restarts of the Babel speaker, but only as long as both the Interface field reference and expiry of the aging timer remain correct. An implementation MUST make it clear, if and how persistent memory is used for ANM table. An implementation SHOULD allow retrieving the current contents of ANM table in runtime through common management interfaces such as CLI and SNMP. An implementation SHOULD provide a mean to remove some or all ANM table entries in runtime or by means of Babel speaker restart. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 3.7. ANM Timeout ANM timeout is an unsigned integer parameter. An implementation SHOULD make ANM timeout a per-interface parameter, but MAY make it specific to the whole protocol instance. ANM timeout is conceptually purposed for limiting the maximum age (in seconds) of entries in the ANM table standing for inactive Babel speakers. The maximum age is immediately related to replay attack protection strength. The strongest protection is achieved with the maximum possible value of ANM timeout set, but it may provide not the best overall result for specific network segments and implementations of this mechanism. In the first turn, implementations unable to maintain local TS/PC number strictly increasing across Babel speaker restarts will reuse advertised TS/PC numbers after each restart (see Section 5.1). The neighbouring speakers will treat the new packets as replayed and discard them until the aging timer of respective ANM table entry expires or the new TS/PC number exceeds the one stored in the entry. Another possible, but less probable case could be an environment involving physical moves of network interfaces hardware between routers. Even performed without restarting Babel speakers, these would cause random drops of the TS/PC number advertised for a given (Interface, Source) index, as viewed by neighbouring speakers, since IPv6 link-local addresses are typically derived from interface hardware addresses. Assuming, that in such cases the operators would prefer using a lower ANM timeout value to let the entries expire on their own rather than having to manually remove them from ANM table each time, an implementation SHOULD set the default value of ANM timeout to a value between 30 and 300 seconds. At the same time, network segments may exist with every Babel speaker having its advertised TS/PC number strictly increasing over the deployed lifetime. Assuming, that in such cases the operators would prefer using a much higher ANM timeout value, an implementation SHOULD allow the operator changing the value of ANM timeout in runtime or by means of Babel speaker restart. An implementation MUST allow the operator discovering the effective value of ANM timeout in runtime or from the system documentation. 3.8. Configured Security Associations A Configured Security Association (CSA) is a data structure conceptually purposed for associating authentication keys and hash algorithms with Babel interfaces. All CSAs are managed in ordered lists, one list per each interface. Each interface's list of CSAs is Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 an integral part of the Babel speaker configuration. The default state of an interface's list of CSAs is empty, which has a special meaning of no authentication configured for the interface. The sending (Section 5.3 item 1) and the receiving (Section 5.4 item 1) procedures address this convention accordingly. A single CSA structure consists of the following fields: o HashAlgo An implementation specific reference to one of the hash algorithms supported by this implementation (see Section 2.1). o KeyChain An ordered list of items representing authentication keys, each item being a structure consisting of the following fields: * LocalKeyID An unsigned integer. * AuthKeyOctets A sequence of octets of an arbitrary, known length to be used as the authentication key. * KeyStartAccept The time that this Babel speaker will begin considering this authentication key for accepting packets with authentication data. * KeyStartGenerate The time that this Babel speaker will begin considering this authentication key for generating packet authentication data. * KeyStopGenerate The time that this Babel speaker will stop considering this authentication key for generating packet authentication data. * KeyStopAccept The time that this Babel speaker will stop considering this authentication key for accepting packets with authentication data. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 It is possible for the KeyChain list to be empty, although this is not the intended way of CSAs use. Since there is no limit imposed on number of CSAs per an interface, but number of HMAC computations per a sent/received packet is limited (through MaxDigestsOut and MaxDigestsIn respectively), only a fraction of the associated keys and hash algorithms may appear used in the process. Ordering of items within a list of CSAs and within a KeyChain list is important to make association selection process deterministic and transparent. Once this ordering is deterministic at Babel interface level, the intermediate data derived by the procedure defined in Section 5.2 will be deterministically ordered as well. An implementation SHOULD allow an operator to set any arbitrary order of items within a given interface's list of CSAs and within the KeyChain list of a given CSA. Whenever this requirement cannot be met, the implementation MUST provide a mean to discover the actual item order used. Whichever order is used by an implementation, it MUST be preserved across Babel speaker restarts. 3.9. Effective Security Associations An Effective Security Association (ESA) is a data structure immediately used in sending (Section 5.3) and receiving (Section 5.4) procedures. Its conceptual purpose is to establish a runtime interface between those procedures and the deriving procedure defined in Section 5.2. All ESAs are managed in ordered, temporary lists, which are not intended for any persistent storage. Item ordering within a temporary list of ESAs MUST be preserved as long as the list exists. A single ESA structure consists of the following fields: o HashAlgo An implementation specific reference to one of the hash algorithms supported by this implementation (see Section 2.1). o KeyID A 16-bit unsigned integer. o AuthKeyOctets A sequence of octets of an arbitrary, known length to be used as the authentication key. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 13] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 4. Updates to Protocol Encoding 4.1. Justification Choice of encoding is very important in the long term. Protocol encoding defines possible options of authentication mechanism design and encoding, which in turn define options of future developments of the protocol. Considering existing implementations of Babel protocol instance itself and related modules of packet analysers, current encoding of Babel allows for compact and robust decoders. At the same time, this encoding allows for future extensions of Babel by three (not excluding each other) principal means defined by Section 4.2 and Section 4.3 of [BABEL]: a. A Babel packet consists of a four-octet header followed by a packet body, that is, a sequence of TLVs (see Figure 2). Besides the header and the sequence, an actual Babel datagram may have an arbitrary amount of trailing data between the end of the packet body and the end of the datagram. An instance of the original protocol silently ignores such trailing data. b. The sequence of TLVs uses a binary format allowing for 256 TLV types and imposing no requirements on TLV ordering or number of TLVs of a given type in a packet. Only TLV length matters within the sequence, TLV body contents is to be interpreted elsewhere. This makes an iteration over the sequence possible without a knowledge of body structure of each TLV (with the only distinction between a Pad1 TLV and any other TLVs). The original specification allocates TLV types 0 through 10 and defines TLV body structure for each. An instance of the original protocol silently ignores any unknown TLV types. c. Within each TLV of the sequence there may be some "extra data" after the "expected length" of the TLV body. An instance of the original protocol silently ignores any such extra data. Note that any TLV types without the expected length defined (such as PadN TLV) cannot be extended with the extra data. Considering each principal extension mean for the specific purpose of adding authentication data items to each protocol packet, the following arguments can be made: o Use of the TLV extra data of some existing TLV type would not be a solution, since no particular TLV type is guaranteed to be present in a Babel packet. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 14] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 o Use of the TLV extra data could also conflict with future developments of the protocol encoding. o Since the packet trailing data is currently unstructured, using it would involve defining an encoding structure and associated procedures, adding to the complexity of both specification and implementation and increasing the exposure to protocol attacks such as fuzzing. o A naive use of the packet trailing data would make it unavailable to any future extension of Babel. Since this mechanism is possibly not the last extension and since some other extensions may allow no other embedding means except the packet trailing data, the defined encoding structure would have to enable multiplexing of data items belonging to different extensions. Such a definition is out of scope of this work. o Deprecating an extension (or only its protocol encoding) that uses purely purpose-allocated TLVs is as simple as deprecating the TLVs. o Use of purpose-allocated TLVs is transparent to both the original protocol and any its future extensions, regardless of the embedding mean(s) used by the latter. Considering all of the above, this mechanism neither uses the packet trailing data nor uses the TLV extra data, but uses two new TLV types: type 11 for a TS/PC number and type 12 for a HMAC result. With these additional two types the Babel TLV types namespace appears as follows: +-------+-------------------------+---------------+ | Value | Code | Reference | +-------+-------------------------+---------------+ | 0 | Pad1 | [BABEL] | | 1 | PadN | [BABEL] | | 2 | Acknowledgement Request | [BABEL] | | 3 | Acknowledgement | [BABEL] | | 4 | Hello | [BABEL] | | 5 | IHU | [BABEL] | | 6 | Router-Id | [BABEL] | | 7 | Next Hop | [BABEL] | | 8 | Update | [BABEL] | | 9 | Route Request | [BABEL] | | 10 | Seqno Request | [BABEL] | | 11 | TS/PC | this document | Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 15] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 | 12 | HMAC | this document | +-------+-------------------------+---------------+ 4.2. TS/PC TLV The purpose of a TS/PC TLV is to store a single TS/PC number. There is normally exactly one TS/PC TLV in an authenticated Babel packet. Any occurences of this TLV except the first are ignored. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Type = 11 | Length | PacketCounter | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Timestamp | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Fields: Type Set to 11 to indicate a TS/PC TLV. Length The length of the body, exclusive of the Type and Length fields. PacketCounter A 16-bit unsigned integer in network byte order, the PC part of a TS/PC number stored in this TLV. Timestamp A 32-bit unsigned integer in network byte order, the TS part of a TS/PC number stored in this TLV. Note that ordering of PacketCounter and Timestamp in TLV structure is opposite to the ordering of TS and PC in "TS/PC" term and the 48-bit equivalent. Considering the "expected length" and the "extra data" in the definition of Section 4.2 of [BABEL], the expected length of a TS/PC TLV body is unambiguously defined as 6 octets. The receiving procedure correctly processes any TS/PC TLV with body length not less than the expected, ignoring any extra data (Section 5.4 items 3 and 9). The sending procedure produces a TS/PC TLV with body length equal to the expected and Length field set respectively (Section 5.3 item 3). Future Babel extensions (such as sub-TLVs) MAY modify the sending procedure to include the extra data after the fixed-size TS/PC TLV body defined herein, making necessary adjustments to Length TLV field, "Body length" packet header field and output buffer management explained in Section 6.2. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 16] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 4.3. HMAC TLV The purpose of a HMAC TLV is to store a single HMAC result. To assist a receiver in reproducing the HMAC computation, LocalKeyID modulo 2^16 of the authentication key is also provided in the TLV. There is normally at least one HMAC TLV in an authenticated Babel packet. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Type = 12 | Length | KeyID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Digest... +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Fields: Type Set to 12 to indicate a HMAC TLV. Length The length of the body, exclusive of the Type and Length fields. KeyID A 16-bit unsigned integer in network byte order. Digest A variable-length sequence of octets, that MUST be at least 16 octets long. Considering the "expected length" and the "extra data" in the definition of Section 4.2 of [BABEL], the expected length of a HMAC TLV body is not defined. The receiving procedure processes every octet of the Digest field, deriving the field boundary from the Length field value (Section 5.4 item 6). The sending procedure produces HMAC TLVs with Length field precisely sizing the Digest field to match digest length of the hash algorithm used (Section 5.3 items 5 and 8). HMAC TLV structure defined herein is final, future Babel extensions MUST NOT extend it with any extra data. 5. Updates to Protocol Operation 5.1. Per-interface TS/PC Number Updates LocalTS and LocalPC interface-specific variables constitute the TS/PC number of a Babel interface. This number is advertised in the TS/PC TLV of authenticated Babel packets sent from that interface. There Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 17] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 is only one property mandatory for the advertised TS/PC number: its 48-bit equivalent MUST be strictly increasing within the scope of a given interface of a Babel speaker as long as the speaker is continuously operating. This property combined with ANM tables of neighbouring Babel speakers provides them with the most basic replay attack protection. Initialization and increment are two principal updates performed on an interface TS/PC number. The initialization is performed when a new interface becomes a part of a Babel protocol instance. The increment is performed by the sending procedure (Section 5.3 item 2) before advertising the TS/PC number in a TS/PC TLV. Depending on particular implementation method of these two updates the advertised TS/PC number may possess additional properties improving the replay attack protection strength. This includes, but is not limited to the methods below. a. The most straightforward implementation would use LocalTS as a plain wrap counter, defining the updates as follows: initialization Set LocalPC to 0, set LocalTS to 0. increment Increment LocalPC by 1. If LocalPC wraps (0xFFFF + 1 = 0x0000), increment LocalTS by 1. In this case advertised TS/PC numbers would be reused after each Babel speaker restart, making neighbouring speakers reject authenticated packets until respective ANM table entries expire or the new TS/PC number exceeds the old (see Section 3.6 and Section 3.7). b. A more advanced implementation could make a use of any 32-bit unsigned integer timestamp (number of time units since an arbitrary epoch) such as the UNIX timestamp, whereas the timestamp itself spans a reasonable time range and is guaranteed against a decrease (such as one resulting from network time use). The updates would be defined as follows: initialization Set LocalPC to 0, set LocalTS to 0. increment If the current timestamp is greater than LocalTS, set LocalTS to the current timestamp and LocalPC to 0, then consider the update complete. Otherwise increment LocalPC by 1 and, if LocalPC wraps, increment LocalTS by 1. In this case the advertised TS/PC number would remain unique Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 18] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 across speaker's deployed lifetime without the need for any persistent storage. However, a suitable timestamp source is not available in every implementation case. c. Another advanced implementation could use LocalTS in a way similar to the "wrap/boot counter" suggested in Section 4.1.1 of [OSPF3-AUTH], defining the updates as follows: initialization Set LocalPC to 0. Whether there is a TS value stored in NVRAM for the current interface, set LocalTS to that TS value, then increment the stored TS value by 1. Otherwise set LocalTS to 0 and set the stored TS value to 1. increment Increment LocalPC by 1. If LocalPC wraps, set LocalTS to the TS value stored in NVRAM for the current interface, then increment the stored TS value by 1. In this case the advertised TS/PC number would also remain unique across speaker's deployed lifetime, relying on NVRAM for storing multiple TS numbers, one per each interface. As long as the TS/PC number retains its mandatory property stated above, an implementer is free to decide, which TS/PC updates implementation methods are available to an operator and whether the method can be configured per-interface and/or in runtime. To enable the optimal (see Section 3.7) management of ANM timeout in a network segment, an implementation MUST allow the operator discovering exact matter of the TS/PC update method effective for any interface, either in runtime or from the system documentation. Note that wrapping (0xFFFFFFFF + 1 = 0x00000000) of LastTS is unlikely, but possible, causing the advertised TS/PC number to be reused. Resolving this situation requires replacing of all authentication keys of the involved interface. In addition to that, if the wrap was caused by a timestamp reaching its end of epoch, using this mechanism will be impossible for the involved interface until some different timestamp or update implementation method is used. 5.2. Deriving ESAs from CSAs Neither receiving nor sending procedures work with the contents of interface's list of CSAs directly, both (Section 5.4 item 4 and Section 5.3 item 4 respectively) derive a list of ESAs from the list of CSAs and use the derived list (see Figure 1). There are two main goals achieved through this indirection: Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 19] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 o Filtering of expired and duplicate security associations. This is done earliest possible to keep subsequent procedures focused on their respective tasks. o Maintenance of particular sort order in the derived list of ESAs. The sort order deterministically depends on the sort order of interface's list of CSAs and sort order of KeyChain items of each CSA. Particular correlation maintained by this procedure implements a concept of fair (independent of number of keys used by each) competition between CSAs. The deriving procedure uses the following input arguments: o input list of CSAs o direction (sending or receiving) o current time (CT) Processing of input arguments begins with an empty ordered output list of ESAs and consists of the following steps: 1. Make a temporary copy of the input list of CSAs. 2. Remove all expired keys from the copy, that is, any keys such that: * for receiving: KeyStartAccept is greater than CT or KeyStopAccept is less than CT * for sending: KeyStartGenerate is greater than CT or KeyStopGenerate is less than CT Note well, that there are no special exceptions. Remove all expired keys, even if there are no keys left after that (see Section 7.4). 3. Remove all duplicate keys from the copy. A duplicate key (Kd) within a list of CSAs is a key, for that another key (Ka) exists within the same list of CSAs such that every statement below is true: * HashAlgo of the CSA containing Kd is equal to HashAlgo of the CSA containing Ka. * LocalKeyID modulo 2^16 of Kd is equal to LocalKeyID modulo 2^16 of Ka Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 20] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 * AuthKeyOctets of Kd is equal to AuthKeyOctets of Ka 4. Use the copy to populate the output list of ESAs as follows: 1. Whether the KeyChain list of the first CSA contains at least one key, use its first key to produce an ESA with fields set as follows: HashAlgo Set to HashAlgo of the current CSA. KeyID Set to LocalKeyID modulo 2^16 of the current key of the current CSA. AuthKeyOctets Set to AuthKeyOctets of the current key of the current CSA. Append this ESA to the end of the output list. 2. Whether the KeyChain list of the second CSA contains at least one key, use its first key the same way and so forth until all first keys of the copy are processed. 3. Whether the KeyChain list of the first CSA contains at least two keys, use its second key the same way. 4. Whether the KeyChain list of the second CSA contains at least two keys, use its second key the same way and so forth until all second keys of the copy are processed. 5. And so forth until all keys of all CSAs of the copy are processed, exactly one time each. The resulting list will contain zero or more unique ESAs, ordered in a way deterministically correlated with sort order of CSAs within the original input list of CSAs and sort orders of keys within each KeyChain list. This ordering maximizes the probability of having equal amount of keys per original CSA in any N first items of the resulting list. Possible optimizations of this deriving procedure are outlined in Section 6.3. 5.3. Updates to Packet Sending Perform the following authentication-specific processing after the instance of the original protocol considers an outgoing Babel packet ready for sending, but before the packet is actually sent (see Figure 1). After that send the packet regardless if the authentication-specific processing modified the outgoing packet or left it intact. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 21] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 1. If the current outgoing interface's list of CSAs is empty, finish authentication-specific processing and consider the packet ready for sending. 2. Increment TS/PC number of the current outgoing interface as explained in Section 5.1. 3. Append a TS/PC TLV to the packet's sequence of TLVs with fields set as follows: Type Set to 11. Length Set to 6. PacketCounter Set to the current value of LocalPC variable of the current outgoing interface. Timestamp Set to the current value of LocalTS variable of the current outgoing interface. Note that the current step may involve byte order conversion. 4. Derive a list of ESAs using procedure defined in Section 5.2 with the current interface's list of CSAs as the input list of CSAs, current time as CT and "sending" as the direction. Note that both the input list of CSAs and the derived list of ESAs are sorted. Proceed to the next step even if the derived list is empty. 5. Iterate over the derived list using its sort order. For each ESA append a HMAC TLV to the end of the packet's sequence of TLVs with fields set as follows: Type Set to 12. Length Set to 2 plus digest length of HashAlgo of the current ESA. KeyID Set to KeyID of the current ESA. Digest Size exactly to the digest length of HashAlgo of the current ESA. Set the first 16 octets to the source IPv6 address of the current packet (see Section 6.1) and any subsequent octets to 0x00 (see Figure 3). As soon as there are MaxDigestsOut HMAC TLVs appended to the current packet, immediately proceed to the next step. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 22] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 Note that the current step may involve byte order conversion. 6. Update "Body length" field of the current packet header to include the total length of TS/PC and HMAC TLVs added to the current packet so far. Note that the current step may involve byte order conversion. 7. Make a temporary copy of the current packet. 8. Iterate over the derived list again, using the same very order and amount of items. For each ESA (and respectively for each HMAC TLV recently added to the current packet) compute a HMAC result (see Section 2.4) using the temporary copy (not the original packet) as Text, HashAlgo of the current ESA as H, and AuthKeyOctets of the current ESA as K. Write the HMAC result to the Digest field of the current HMAC TLV (see Figure 4) of the current packet (not the copy). 9. Since this point, allow no more changes to the current packet and consider it ready for sending. Note that even if the derived list of ESAs is empty, the packet is sent anyway with only a TS/PC TLV appended to its sequence of TLVs. Although such a packet is not authenticated, presence of a sole TS/PC TLV indicates authentication keys exhaustion to operators of neighbouring Babel speakers. See also Section 7.4. 5.4. Updates to Packet Receiving Perform the following authentication-specific processing after an incoming Babel packet is received from local IPv6 stack, but before it is processed by the Babel protocol instance (see Figure 1). The final action conceptually depends not only upon the result of the authentication-specific processing, but also on the current value of RxAuthRequired parameter. Immediately after any processing step below accepts or refuses the packet, either deliver the packet to the instance of the original protocol (when the packet is accepted or RxAuthRequired is FALSE) or discard it (when the packet is refused and RxAuthRequired is TRUE). 1. If the current incoming interface's list of CSAs is empty, accept the packet. 2. If the current packet does not contain a TS/PC TLV, refuse it. 3. Perform a lookup in the ANM table for an entry having Interface equal to the current incoming interface and Source equal to the Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 23] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 source address of the current packet. If such an entry exists, compare its LastTS and LastPC field values with Timestamp and PacketCounter values respectively of the first TS/PC TLV of the packet. That is, refuse the packet, if at least one of the following two conditions is true: * Timestamp is less than LastTS * Timestamp is equal to LastTS and PacketCounter is not greater than LastPC Note that the current step may involve byte order conversion. 4. Derive a list of ESAs using procedure defined in Section 5.2 with the current interface's list of CSAs as the input list of CSAs, current time as CT and "receiving" as the direction. If the derived list is empty, refuse the packet. 5. Make a temporary copy of the current packet. 6. For every HMAC TLV present in the temporary copy (not the original packet) pad all octets of its Digest field using the source IPv6 address of the current packet to set the first 16 octets and 0x00 to set any subsequent octets (see Figure 3). 7. Iterate over all HMAC TLVs of the original input packet (not the copy) using their order of appearance in the packet. For each HMAC TLV look up all ESAs in the derived list such that 2 plus digest length of HashAlgo of the ESA is equal to Length of the TLV and KeyID of the ESA is equal to value of KeyID of the TLV. Iterate over these ESAs in the order of their appearance on the full list of ESAs. Note that nesting the iterations the opposite way (over ESAs, then over HMAC TLVs) is wrong. For each of these ESAs compute a HMAC result (see Section 2.4) using the temporary copy (not the original packet) as Text, HashAlgo of the current ESA as H, and AuthKeyOctets of the current ESA as K. If the current HMAC result exactly matches the contents of Digest field of the current HMAC TLV, immediately proceed to the next step. Otherwise, if number of HMAC computations done for the current packet is equal to MaxDigestsIn, immediately proceed to the next step. Otherwise follow the normal order of iterations. Note that the current step may involve byte order conversion. 8. If none of the HMAC results computed during the previous step matched, refuse the input packet. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 24] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 9. Modify the ANM table, using the same index as for the entry lookup above, to contain an entry with LastTS set to the value of Timestamp and LastPC set to the value of PacketCounter fields of the first TS/PC TLV of the current packet. That is, either add a new ANM table entry or update the existing one, according to the result of the entry lookup above. Reset the entry's aging timer to the current value of ANM timeout. Note that the current step may involve byte order conversion. 10. Accept the input packet. Note that RxAuthRequired affects only the final action, but not the defined flow of authentication-specific processing. The purpose of this is to preserve authentication-specific processing feedback (such as log messages and event counters updates) even with RxAuthRequired set to FALSE. This allows an operator to predict the effect of changing RxAuthRequired from FALSE to TRUE during a migration scenario (Section 7.3) implementation. 5.5. Authentication-specific Statistics Maintenance A Babel speaker implementing this mechanism SHOULD maintain a set of counters for the following events, per protocol instance and per each interface: o Sending of an unauthenticated Babel packet through an interface having an empty list of CSAs. o Sending of an unauthenticated Babel packet with a TS/PC TLV but without any HMAC TLVs due to an empty list of ESAs. o Sending of an authenticated Babel packet containing both TS/PC and HMAC TLVs. o Accepting of a Babel packet received through an interface having an empty list of CSAs. o Refusing of a received Babel packet due to an empty list of ESAs. o Refusing of a received Babel packet missing any TS/PC TLVs. o Refusing of a received Babel packet due to the first TS/PC TLV failing the ANM table check. o Refusing of a received Babel packet missing any HMAC TLVs. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 25] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 o Refusing of a received Babel packet due to none of the processed HMAC TLVs passing the ESA check. o Accepting of a received Babel packet having both TS/PC and HMAC TLVs. o Delivery of a refused packet to the instance of the original protocol due to RxAuthRequired parameter set to FALSE. Note that terms "accepting" and "refusing" are used in the sense of the receiving procedure, that is, "accepting" does not mean a packet delivered to the instance of the original protocol purely because of RxAuthRequired parameter set to FALSE. Event counters readings SHOULD be available in runtime through common management interfaces such as CLI and SNMP. 6. Implementation Notes 6.1. IPv6 Source Address Selection for Sending Section 3.1 of [BABEL] defines, that Babel datagrams are exchanged using IPv6 link-local address as source address. This implies having at least one such address assigned to an interface participating in the exchange. When the interface has more than one link-local addresses assigned, selection of one particular link-local address as packet source address is left up to the local IPv6 stack, since this choice is not meaningful in the scope of the original protocol. However, the sending procedure defined in Section 5.3 requires exact knowledge of packet source address for proper padding of HMAC TLVs. As long as a Babel interface has more than one IPv6 link-local addresses assigned, the Babel speaker SHOULD internally choose one particular link-local address for Babel packet sending purposes and make this choice to both the sending procedure and local IPv6 stack (see Figure 1). Wherever this requirement cannot be met, this limitation MUST be clearly stated in the system documentation to allow an operator to plan IPv6 address management accordingly. 6.2. Output Buffer Management An instance of the original protocol buffers produced TLVs until the buffer becomes full or a delay timer has expired or an urgent TLV is produced. This is performed independently for each Babel interface with each buffer sized according to the interface MTU (see Sections 3.1 and 4 of [BABEL]). Since TS/PC and HMAC TLVs and any other TLVs, in the first place Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 26] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 those of the original protocol, share the same packet space (see Figure 2) and respectively the same buffer space, a particular portion of each interface buffer needs to be reserved for 1 TS/PC TLV and up to MaxDigestsOut HMAC TLVs. Amount (R) of this reserved buffer space is calculated as follows: R = St + MaxDigestsOut * Sh = = 8 + MaxDigestsOut * (4 + Lmax) St Is the size of a TS/PC TLV. Sh Is the size of a HMAC TLV. Lmax Is the maximum digest length in octets possible for a particular interface. It SHOULD be calculated based on particular interface's list of CSAs, but MAY be taken as the maximum digest length supported by particular implementation. An implementation allowing for per-interface value of MaxDigestsOut parameter has to account for different value of R across different interfaces, even having the same MTU. An implementation allowing for runtime change of MaxDigestsOut parameter value has to take care of the TLVs already buffered by the time of the change, especially when the change increases the value of R. The maximum safe value of MaxDigestsOut parameter depends on interface MTU and maximum digest length used. In general, at least 200-300 octets of a Babel packet should be always available to data other than TS/PC and HMAC TLVs. An implementation following the requirements of Section 4 of [BABEL] would send packets sized 512 octets or larger. If, for example, the maximum digest length is 64 octets and MaxDigestsOut value is 4, the value of R would be 280, leaving less than a half of a 512-octet packet for any other TLVs. As long as interface MTU is larger or digest length is smaller, higher values of MaxDigestsOut can be used safely. 6.3. Optimizations of ESAs Deriving The following optimizations of the ESAs deriving procedure can reduce amount of CPU time consumed by authentication-specific processing, preserving implementation's effective behaviour. a. The most straightforward implementation would treat the deriving procedure as a per-packet action. But since the procedure is deterministic (its output depends on its input only), it is possible to significantly reduce the number of times the procedure is performed. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 27] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 The procedure would obviously return the same result for the same input arguments (list of CSAs, direction, CT) values. However, it is possible to predict, when the result will remain the same even for a different input. That is, when the input list of CSAs and the direction both remain the same but CT changes, the result will remain the same as long as CT's order on the time axis (relative to all critical points of the list of CSAs) remains unchanged. Here, the critical points are KeyStartAccept and KeyStopAccept (for the "receiving" direction) and KeyStartGenerate and KeyStopGenerate (for the "sending" direction) of all keys of all CSAs of the input list. In other words, in this case the result will remain the same as long as both none of the active keys expire and none of the inactive keys enter into operation. An implementation optimized this way would perform the full deriving procedure for a given (interface, direction) pair only after an operator's change to the interface's list of CSAs or after reaching one of the critical points mentioned above. b. Considering, that the sending procedure iterates over at most MaxDigestsOut items of the ordered list of derived ESAs (Section 5.3 item 5), there is little sense in the case of "sending" direction in appending ESA items to the end of the output list once the list already contains MaxDigestsOut number of items. Note that a similar optimization is impossible in the case of "receiving" direction, since number of ESAs actually used in examining a particular packet cannot be determined in advance. 6.4. Internal Representation of CSAs Note that the KeyChain list of the CSA structure is a direct equivalent of the "key chain" syntax item of some existing router configuration languages. Whereas an implementation already implements this syntax item, it is suggested to reuse it, that is, to implement a CSA syntax item referring to a key chain item instead of reimplementing the latter in full. 7. Network Management Aspects 7.1. Backward Compatibility Support of this mechanism is optional, it does not change the default behaviour of a Babel speaker and causes no compatibility issues with speakers properly implementing the original Babel specification. Given two Babel speakers, one implementing this mechanism and configured for authenticated exchange (A) and another not not Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 28] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 implementing it (B), these would not distribute routing information uni-directionally or form a routing loop or experience other protocol logic issues specific purely to the use of this mechanism. Babel design requires a bi-directional neighbour reachability condition between two given speakers for a successful exchange of routing information. Apparently, in the case above neighbour reachability would be uni-directional. Presence of TS/PC and HMAC TLVs in Babel packets sent by A would be transparent to B. But lack of authentication data in Babel packets send by B would make them effectively invisible to the instance of the original protocol of A. Uni-directional links are not specific to use of this mechanism, they naturally exist on their own and are properly detected and avoided by the original protocol (see Section 3.4.2 of [BABEL]). 7.2. Multi-Domain Authentication The receiving procedure treats a packet as authentic as soon as one of its HMAC TLVs passes the check against the list of ESAs. This allows for packet exchange authenticated with multiple (hash algorithm, authentication key) pairs simultaneously, in combinations as arbitrary as permitted by MaxDigestsIn and MaxDigestsOut. For example, consider three Babel speakers with one interface each, configured with the following CSAs: o speaker A: (hash algorithm H1; key SK1), (hash algorithm H1; key SK2) o speaker B: (hash algorithm H1; key SK1) o speaker C: (hash algorithm H1; key SK2) Packets sent by A would contain 2 HMAC TLVs each, packets sent by B and C would contain 1 HMAC TLV each. A and B would authenticate the exchange between themselves using H1 and SK1; A and C would use H1 and SK2; B and C would discard each other's packets. Consider a similar set of speakers configured with different CSAs: o speaker D: (hash algorithm H2; key SK3), (hash algorithm H3; key SK4) o speaker E: (hash algorithm H2; key SK3), (hash algorithm H4, keys SK5 and SK6) o speaker F: (hash algorithm H3; keys SK4 and SK7), (hash algorithm H5, key SK8) Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 29] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 Packets sent by D would contain 2 HMAC TLVs each, packets sent by E and F would contain 3 HMAC TLVs each. D and E would authenticate the exchange between themselves using H2 and SK3; D and F would use H3 and SK4; E and F would discard each other's packets. The simultaneous use of H4, SK5, and SK6 by E, as well as use of SK7, H5, and SK8 by F (for their own purposes) would remain insignificant to A. An operator implementing a multi-domain authentication should keep in mind, that values of MaxDigestsIn and MaxDigestsOut may be different both within the same Babel speaker and across different speakers. Since the minimum value of both parameters is 2 (see Section 3.4 and Section 3.5), when more than 2 authentication domains are configured simultaneously, it is advised to confirm that every involved speaker can handle sufficient number of HMAC results for both sending and receiving. The recommended method of Babel speaker configuration for multi- domain authentication is not only using a different authentication key for each domain, but also using a separate CSA for each domain, even when hash algorithms are the same. This allows for fair competition between CSAs and sometimes limits consequences of a possible misconfiguration to the scope of one CSA. See also item (e) of Section 8. 7.3. Migration It is common in practice to consider a migration to authenticated exchange of routing information only after the network has already been deployed and put to an active use. Performing the migration in a way without regular traffic interruption is typically demanded, and this specification allows for such a smooth migration using the RxAuthRequired interface parameter defined in Section 3.1. This measure is similar to the "transition mode" suggested in Section 5 of [OSPF3-AUTH]. An operator performing the migration needs to arrange configuration changes as follows: 1. Decide on particular hash algorithm(s) and key(s) to be used. 2. Identify all speakers and their involved interfaces that need to be migrated to authenticated exchange. 3. For each of the speakers and the interfaces to be reconfigured first set RxAuthRequired parameter to FALSE, then configure necessary CSA(s). Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 30] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 4. Examine the speakers to confirm, that Babel packets are successfully authenticated according to the configuration (supposedly, through examining ANM table entries and authentication-specific statistics, see Figure 1)), and address any discrepancies before proceeding further. 5. For each of the speakers and the reconfigured interfaces set RxAuthRequired parameter to TRUE. Likewise, temporarily setting RxAuthRequired to FALSE can be used to migrate smoothly from authenticated packet exchange back to unauthenticated one. 7.4. Handling of Authentication Keys Exhaustion This specification employs a common concept of multiple authenticaion keys co-existing for a given interface, with two independent lifetime ranges associated with each key (one for sending and another for receiving). It is typically recommended to configure the keys using finite lifetimes, adding new keys before the old keys expire. However, it is obviously possible for all keys to expire for a given interface (for sending or receiving or both). Possible ways of addressing this situation raise their own concerns: o Automatic switching to unauthenticated protocol exchange. This behaviour invalidates the initial purposes of authentication and is commonly viewed as "unacceptable" ([RIP2-AUTH] Section 5.1, [OSPF2-AUTH] Section 3.2, [OSPF3-AUTH] Section 3). o Stopping routing information exchange over the interface. This behaviour is likely to impact regular traffic routing and is commonly viewed as "not advisable" (ibid.). o Use of the "most recently expired" key over its intended lifetime range. This behaviour is commonly recommended for implementation (ibid.), although it may become a problem due to an offline cryptographic attack (see item (e) of Section 8) or a compromise of the key. In addition, telling a recently expired key from a key never ever been in a use may be impossible after a router restart. Design of this mechanism prevents the automatic switching to unauthenticated exchange and is consistent with similar authentication mechanisms in this regard. But since the best choice between two other options depends on local site policy, this decision is left up to the operator rather than the implementer (in a way resembling the "fail secure" configuration knob described in Section 5.1 of [RIP2-AUTH]). Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 31] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 Although the deriving procedure does not allow for any exceptions in expired keys filtering (Section 5.2 item 2), the operator can trivially enforce one of the two remaining behaviour options through local key management procedures. In particular, when using the key over its intended lifetime is more preferred than regular traffic disruption, the operator would explicitly leave the old key expiry time open until the new key is added to the router configuration. In the opposite case the operator would always configure the old key with a finite lifetime and bear associated risks. 8. Security Considerations Use of this mechanism implies requirements common to a use of shared authentication keys, including, but not limited to: o holding the keys secret, o including sufficient amount of random bits into each key, o rekeying on a regular basis, and o never reusing a used key for a different purpose That said, proper design and implementation of a key management policy is out of scope of this work. Many publications on this subject exist and should be used for this purpose. Considering particular attacks being in-scope or out of scope on one hand and measures taken to protect against particular in-scope attacks on the other, the original Babel protocol and this authentication mechanism are in line with similar datagram-based routing protocols and their respective mechanisms. In particular, the primary concerns addressed are: a. Peer Entity Authentication Babel speaker authentication mechanism defined herein is believed to be as strong as is the class itself that it belongs to. This specification is built on the fundamental concepts implemented for authentication of similar routing protocols: per-packet authentication, use of HMAC construct, use of shared keys. Although this design approach does not address all possible concerns, it is so far known to be sufficient for most practical cases. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 32] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 b. Data Integrity Meaningful parts of a Babel datagram are the contents of the Babel packet (in the definition of Section 4.2 of [BABEL]) and IPv6 source address of the datagram (ibid. Section 3.5.3). This mechanism authenticates both parts using a HMAC construct, so that making any meaningful change to an authenticated packet after it has been emitted by the sender should be as hard as attacking the hash algorithm itself or successfully recovering the authentication key. Note well, that any trailing data of the Babel datagram is not meaningful in the scope of the original specification and does not belong to the Babel packet. Integrity of the trailing data is respectively not protected by this mechanism. At the same time, although any TLV extra data is also not meaningful in the same scope, its integrity is protected, since this extra data is a part of the Babel packet (see Figure 2). c. Replay Attacks This specification establishes a basic replay protection measure (see Section 3.6), defines a timeout parameter affecting its strength (see Section 3.7), and outlines implementation methods also affecting protection strength in several ways (see Section 5.1). Implementer's choice of the timeout value and particular implementation methods may be suboptimal due to, for example, insufficient hardware resources of the Babel speaker. Furthermore, it may be possible, that an operator configures the timeout and the methods to address particular local specifics and this further weakens the protection. An operator concerned about replay attack protection strength should understand these factors and their meaning in a given network segment. d. Denial of Service Proper deploy of this mechanism in a Babel network significantly increases the efforts required for an attacker to feed arbitrary Babel PDUs into protocol exchange (with an intent of attacking a particular Babel speaker or disrupting exchange of regular traffic in a routing domain). It also protects the neighbour table from being flooded with forged speaker entries. At the same time, this protection comes for a price of CPU time being spent on HMAC computations. This may be a concern for low- performance CPUs combined with high-speed interfaces, as sometimes is seen in embedded systems and hardware routers. The MaxDigestsIn parameter, which is purposed to limit the maximum Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 33] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 amount of CPU time spent on a single received Babel packet, addresses this concern to some extent. The following in-scope concerns are not addressed: e. Offline Cryptographic Attacks This mechanism is an obvious subject to offline cryptographic attacks. As soon as an attacker has obtained a copy of an authenticated Babel packet of interest (which gets easier to do in wireless networks), he has got all the parameters of the authentication-specific processing performed by the sender, except authentication key(s) and choice of particular hash algorithm(s). Since digest lengths of common hash algorithms are well-known and can be matched with those seen in the packet, complexity of this attack is essentially that of the authentication key attack. Viewing cryptographic strength of particular hash algorithms as a concern of its own, the main practical means of resisting offline cryptographic attacks on this mechanism are periodic rekeying and use of strong keys with sufficient amount of random bits. It is important to understand, that in the case of multiple keys being used within single interface (for a multi-domain authentication or during a key rollover) strength of the combined configuration would be that of the weakest key, since only one successful HMAC test is required for an authentic packet. Operators concerned about offline cryptographic attacks should enforce the same strength policy for all keys used for a given interface. Note that a special pathological case is possible with this mechanism. Whenever two or more authentication keys are configured for a given interface such that all keys share the same AuthKeyOctets and the same HashAlgo, but LocalKeyID modulo 2^16 is different for each key, these keys will not be treated as duplicate (Section 5.2 item 3), but a HMAC result computed for a given packet will be the same for each of these keys. In the case of sending procedure this can produce multiple HMAC TLVs with exactly the same value of the Digest field, but different value of KeyID field. In this case the attacker will see that the keys are the same, even without the knowledge of the key itself. Reuse of authentication keys is not the intended use case of this mechanism and should be strongly avoided. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 34] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 f. Non-repudiation This specification relies on a use of shared keys. There is no timestamp infrastructure and no key revocation mechanism defined to address a shared key compromise. Establishing the time that a particular authentic Babel packet was generated is thus not possible. Proving, that a particular Babel speaker had actually sent a given authentic packet is also impossible as soon as the shared key is claimed compromised. Even with the shared key not being compromised, reliably identifying the speaker that had actually sent a given authentic Babel packet is not possible any better than proving the speaker to belong to the group sharing the key (any of the speakers sharing a key can impose any other speaker sharing the same key). g. Confidentiality Violations The original Babel protocol does not encrypt any of the information contained in its packets. Contents of a Babel packet is trivial to decode, revealing network topology details. This mechanism does not improve this situation in any way. Since routing protocol messages are not the only kind of information subject to confidentiality concerns, a complete solution to this problem is likely to include measures based on the channel security model, such as IPSec and WPA2 at the time of this writing. h. Key Management Any authentication key exchange/distribution concerns are left out of scope. However, the internal representation of authentication keys (see Section 3.8) allows for diverse key management means, manual configuration in the first place. i. Message Deletion Any message deletion attacks are left out of scope. Since a datagram deleted by an attacker cannot be distinguished from a datagram naturally lost in transmission and since datagram-based routing protocols are designed to withstand a certain loss of packets, the currently established practice is treating authentication purely as a per-packet function without any added detection of lost packets. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 35] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 9. IANA Considerations [RFC Editor: please do not remove this section.] At the time of this publication Babel TLV Types namespace did not have an IANA registry. TLV types 11 and 12 were assigned to the TS/PC and HMAC TLV types by Juliusz Chroboczek, designer of the original Babel protocol. Therefore, this document has no IANA actions. 10. Acknowledgements Thanks to Ran Atkinson and Matthew Fanto for their comprehensive work on [RIP2-AUTH] that initiated a series of publications on routing protocols authentication, including this one. This specification adopts many concepts belonging to the whole series. Thanks to Juliusz Chroboczek for his works on mesh networking in general and Babel routing protocol in particular, and also for feedback on early revisions of this document. This work would not be possible without prior works on Babel. Thank to Jim Gettys and Dave Taht for developing CeroWrt wireless router project and collaborating on many integration issues. A practical need for Babel authentication emerged during a research based on CeroWrt that eventually became the very first use case of this mechanism. Thanks to Kunihiro Ishiguro and Paul Jakma for establishing GNU Zebra and Quagga routing software projects respectively. Thanks to Werner Koch, the author of Libgcrypt. The very first implementation of this mechanism was made on base of Quagga and Libgcrypt. This document was produced using the xml2rfc ([RFC2629]) authoring tool. 11. References 11.1. Normative References [RFC2104] Krawczyk, H., Bellare, M., and R. Canetti, "HMAC: Keyed- Hashing for Message Authentication", RFC 2104, February 1997. [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 36] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 [FIPS-198] US National Institute of Standards & Technology, "The Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC)", FIPS PUB 198 , March 2002. [BABEL] Chroboczek, J., "The Babel Routing Protocol", RFC 6126, April 2011. 11.2. Informative References [RFC2629] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629, June 1999. [RIP2-AUTH] Atkinson, R. and M. Fanto, "RIPv2 Cryptographic Authentication", RFC 4822, February 2007. [OSPF2-AUTH] Bhatia, M., Manral, V., Fanto, M., White, R., Barnes, M., Li, T., and R. Atkinson, "OSPFv2 HMAC-SHA Cryptographic Authentication", RFC 5709, October 2009. [RFC6039] Manral, V., Bhatia, M., Jaeggli, J., and R. White, "Issues with Existing Cryptographic Protection Methods for Routing Protocols", RFC 6039, October 2010. [OSPF3-AUTH] Bhatia, M., Manral, V., and A. Lindem, "Supporting Authentication Trailer for OSPFv3", RFC 6506, February 2012. Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 37] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 Appendix A. Figures +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | authentication-specific statistics | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ ^ | ^ | v | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | system operator | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | ^ | ^ | ^ | | | | v | v | v | +---+ +----------------+ +---------+ +----------------+ +---+ | | | MaxDigestsIn | | | | MaxDigestsOut | | | | |<-| ANM timeout | | CSAs | | |->| | | R | | RxAuthRequired | | | | | | T | | x | +----------------+ +---------+ +----------------+ | x | | | | | | | | p | v v | p | | r | +---------------------+ +---------------------+ | r | | o |<-| Rx ESAs (temporary) | | Tx ESAs (temporary) |->| o | | c | +---------------------+ +---------------------+ | c | | e | +---------------------+ +---------------------+ | e | | s |->| ANM | | LocalTS |->| s | | s |<-| table | | LocalPC |<-| s | | i | +---------------------+ +---------------------+ | i | | n | +------------------------------+----------------+ | n | | g | | instance of | output buffers |=>| g | | |=>| the original +----------------+ | | | | | protocol | source address |->| | +---+ +------------------------------+----------------+ +---+ /\ | || || v \/ +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | IPv6 stack | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ /\ || /\ || /\ || /\ || || \/ || \/ || \/ || \/ +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ | speaker | | speaker | ... | speaker | | speaker | +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ Flow of Babel datagrams: ===> Flow of contol data: ---> Figure 1: Interaction Diagram Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 38] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 The diagram below depicts structure of two Babel datagrams. The left datagram contains an unauthenticated Babel packet and an optional trailing data block. The right datagram, besides these, contains authentication-specific TLVs in the Babel packet body. +-------------------+ ------- ------- +-------------------+ | Babel packet | ^ ^ | Babel packet | | header | | | | header | +-------------------+ -- | | -- +-------------------+ | other TLV | ^ | | ^ | other TLV | +-------------------+ | | | | +-------------------+ | other TLV | | | P | | | other TLV | +-------------------+ | | | | +-------------------+ | (...) | | B | | | | (...) | +-------------------+ | | | | +-------------------+ | other TLV | | | P | | | other TLV | +-------------------+ | | | | +-------------------+ | other TLV | v v | B | | other TLV | +-------------------+ ------- | | +-------------------+ | optional trailing | | | | TS/PC TLV | | data block | | | +-------------------+ +-------------------+ | | | HMAC TLV | | | +-------------------+ | | | (...) | | | +-------------------+ P: Babel packet v v | HMAC TLV | B: Babel packet body ------- +-------------------+ | optional trailing | | data block | +-------------------+ Figure 2: Babel Datagram Structure Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 39] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 The diagram below depicts a sample HMAC TLV corresponding to a hash algorithm with digest length of 20 octets (such as RIPEMD-160). Its Digest field is fully padded using IPv6 address fe80::0a11:96ff:fe1c:10c8 for the first 16 octets and 0x00 for the subsequent octets. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Type = 12 | Length = 22 | KeyID = 12345 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Digest = 0xFE 80 00 00 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 00 00 00 00 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 0A 11 96 FF | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | FE 1C 10 C8 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 00 00 00 00 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 3: A Padded HMAC TLV The diagram below depicts the same HMAC TLV with all 20 octets of a sample HMAC result written to the Digest field. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Type = 12 | Length = 22 | KeyID = 12345 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Digest = 0x4F C8 C8 9D | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 57 83 91 9B | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 81 B0 90 47 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | B4 2F E3 37 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | A7 BE 93 83 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 4: A HMAC TLV with a HMAC Result Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 40] Internet-Draft Babel HMAC Cryptographic Authentication August 2012 Author's Address Denis Ovsienko Yandex 16, Leo Tolstoy St. Moscow, 119021 Russia Email: infrastation@yandex.ru Ovsienko Expires February 21, 2013 [Page 41]