Internet DRAFT - draft-trammell-plus-statefulness

draft-trammell-plus-statefulness







Network Working Group                                      M. Kuehlewind
Internet-Draft                                               B. Trammell
Intended status: Informational                                ETH Zurich
Expires: May 17, 2018                                      J. Hildebrand
                                                       November 13, 2017


           Transport-Independent Path Layer State Management
                  draft-trammell-plus-statefulness-04

Abstract

   This document describes a simple state machine for stateful network
   devices on a path between two endpoints to associate state with
   traffic traversing them on a per-flow basis, as well as abstract
   signaling mechanisms for driving the state machine.  This state
   machine is intended to replace the de-facto use of the TCP state
   machine or incomplete forms thereof by stateful network devices in a
   transport-independent way, while still allowing for fast state
   timeout of non-established or undesirable flows.

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 https://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 May 17, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 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
   (https://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



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 1]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   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.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  State Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Uniflow States  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.2.  Biflow States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.3.  Additional States and Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   4.  Abstract Signaling Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.1.  Flow Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.2.  Association and Confirmation Signaling  . . . . . . . . .   9
       4.2.1.  Start-of-flow versus continual signaling  . . . . . .  10
     4.3.  Bidirectional Stop Signaling  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       4.3.1.  Authenticated Stop Signaling  . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     4.4.  Separate Utility  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   5.  Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.1.  Middlebox Deployment  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.2.  Endpoint Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   6.  Signal mappings for transport protocols . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.1.  Signal mapping for TCP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.2.  Signal mapping for QUIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17

1.  Introduction

   The boundary between the network and transport layers was originally
   defined to be that between information used (and potentially
   modified) hop-by-hop, and that used end-to-end.  End-to-end
   information in the transport layer is associated with state at the
   endpoints, but processing of network-layer information was assumed to
   be stateless.

   The widespread deployment of stateful middleboxes in the Internet,
   such as network address and port translators (NAPT), firewalls that
   model the TCP state machine to distinguish packets belonging from
   desirable flows from backscatter and random attack traffic, and
   devices which keep per-flow state for reporting and monitoring



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 2]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   purposes (e.g.  IPFIX [RFC7011] Metering Processes), has broken this
   assumption, and made it more difficult to deploy non-TCP transport
   protocols in the Internet.

   The deployment of new transport protocols encapsulated in UDP with
   encrypted transport headers (such as QUIC [I-D.ietf-quic-transport])
   will present a challenge to the operation of these devices, and their
   ubquity likewise threatens to impair the deployability of these
   protocols.  There are two main causes for this problem: first,
   stateful devices often use an internal model of the TCP state machine
   to determine when TCP flows start and end, allowing them to manage
   state for these flows; for UDP flows, they must rely on timeouts.
   These timeouts are generally short relative to those for TCP
   [IMC-GATEWAYS], requiring UDP- encapsulated transports either to
   generate unproductive keepalive traffic for long-lived sessions, or
   to tolerate connectivity problems and the necessity of reconnection
   due to loss of on-path state.

   This document presents an abstract solution to this problem by
   defining a transport-independent state machine to be implemented at
   per-flow state- keeping middleboxes as a replacement for incomplete
   TCP state modeling.  A key concept behind this approach is that
   encryption of transport protocol headers allows a transport protocol
   to separate its wire image - what it looks like to devices on path -
   from its internal semantics.  We advocate the creation of a minimal
   wire image for these protocols that exposes enough information to
   drive the state machine presented.  Present and future evolution of
   encrypted transport protocols can then happen behind this wire image,
   and Middleboxes implementing this state machine can use signals from
   a UDP encapsulation common to a set of encrypted transport protocols
   can have equivalent state information to that provided by TCP,
   reducing the friction between deployed middleboxes and these new
   transport protocols.

2.  Terminology

   In this document, the term "flow" is defined to be compatible with
   the definition given in [RFC7011]: A flow is defined as a set of
   packets passing a device on the network during a certain time
   interval.  All packets belonging to a particular Flow have a set of
   common properties.  Each property is defined as the result of
   applying a function to the values of:

   1.  one or more network layer header fields (e.g., destination IP
       address) or transport layer header fields (e.g., destination port
       number) that the device has access to;





Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 3]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   2.  one or more characteristics of the packet itself (e.g., number of
       MPLS labels, etc.);

   3.  one or more of the fields derived from packet treatment at the
       device (e.g., next-hop IP address, the output interface, etc.).

   A packet is defined as belonging to a flow if it completely satisfies
   all the defined properties of the flow.

   A bidirectional flow or biflow is defined as compatible with
   [RFC5103], by joining the "forward direction" flow with the "reverse
   direction" flow, derived by reversing the direction of directional
   fields (ports and IP addresses).  Biflows are only relevant at
   devices positioned so as to see all the packets in both directions of
   the biflow, generally on the endpoint side of the service demarcation
   point for either endpoint as defined in the reference path given in
   [RFC7398].

3.  State Machine

   A transport-independent state machine for on-path devices is shown in
   Figure 1.  It was designed to have the following properties:

   o  A device on path that can see traffic in both directions between
      two endpoints knows that each side of an association wishes that
      association to continue.  This allows firewalls to delegate policy
      decisions about accepting or continuing an association to the
      servers they protect.

   o  A device on path that can see traffic in both directions between
      two endpoints knows that each device can receive traffic at the
      source address it provides.  This allows firewalls to provide
      protection against trivially spoofed packets.

   Both of these properties hold with current firewalls and network
   address translation devices observing the flags and sequence/
   acknowledgment numbers exposed by TCP.

   It relies on six states, three configurable timeouts, and a set of
   signals defined in Section 4.  The states are defined as follows:

   o  zero: there is no state for a given flow at the device

   o  uniflow: at least one packet has been seen in one direction

   o  associating: at least one packet has been seen in one direction,
      and an indication that the receiving endpoint wishes to continue
      the association has been seen in the other direction.



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 4]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   o  associated: a flow in associating state has further demonstrated
      that the initial sender can receive packets at its given source
      address.

   o  stop-wait: one side of a connection has sent an explicit stop
      signal, waiting for confirmation

   o  stopping: stop signal confirmed, association is stopping.

   We refer to the zero and uniflow states as "uniflow states", as they
   are relevant both for truly unidirectional flows, as well as in
   situations where an on-path device can see only one side of a
   communication.  We refer to the remaining four states as "biflow
   states", as they are only applicable to true bidirectional flows,
   where the on-path device can see both sides of the communication.




































Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 5]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


       `- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -'
       `    +============+    a->b    +============+           '
       `   /              \--------->/              \<-+       '
     +--->(      zero      )        (    uniflow     ) | a->b  '
     ^ `   \              /<---------\              /--+       '
     | `    +============+  TO_IDLE   +============+           '
     | `- - - - - - - - - -   or    -  | association  - - - - -'
     |                   stop signal   V signal
     |                          +============+
     | TO_IDLE                 /              \
     +<-----------------------(  associating   )
     |                         \              /
     |                          +============+
     |                                 | confirmation
     |                                 V signal
     |                          +============+
     | TO_ASSOCIATED           /              \<-+
     +<-----------------------(   associated   ) | any packet
     |                         \              /--+
     |                          +============+
     |                           | stop
     |                           V signal
     |                    +============+
     | TO_ASSOCIATED     /              \<-+
     +<-----------------(   stop-wait    ) | any packet
     |                   \              /--+
     |                   +============+
     |                    | stop confirmation
     |                    V signal
     |              +============+
     | TO_STOP     /              \<-+
     +------------(    stopping    ) | any packet
                   \              /--+
                    +============+

    Figure 1: Transport-Independent State Machine for Stateful On-Path
                                  Devices

   The three timeouts are defined as follows:

   o  TO_IDLE, the unidirectional idle timeout, can be considered
      equivalent to the idle timeout for transport protocols where the
      device has no information about session start and end (e.g. most
      UDP protocols).

   o  TO_ASSOCIATED, the bidirectional idle timeout, can be considered
      equivalent to the timeout for transport protocols where the device
      has information about session start and end (e.g.  TCP).



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 6]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   o  TO_STOP is the teardown timeout: how long the device will account
      additional packets to a flow after confirming a close signal,
      ensuring retransmitted and/or reordered close signal don't lead to
      the spurious creation of new flow state.

   Selection of timeouts is a configuration and implementation detail,
   but generally TO_STOP <= TO_IDLE << TO_ASSOCIATED; see [IMC-GATEWAYS]
   for an analysis of the magnitudes of these timeouts in presently
   deployed gateway devices.

3.1.  Uniflow States

   Every packet received by a device keeping per-flow state must
   associate that packet with a flow (see Section 4.1).  When a device
   receives a packet associated with a flow it has no state for, and it
   is configured to forward the packet instead of dropping it, it moves
   that flow from the zero state into the uniflow state and starts a
   timer TO_IDLE.  It resets this timer for any additional packet it
   forwards in the same direction as long as the flow remains in the
   uniflow state.  When timer TO_IDLE expires on a flow in the uniflow
   state, the device drops state for the flow and performs any
   processing associated with doing so: tearing down NAT bindings,
   stopping associated firewall pinholes, exporting flow information,
   and so on.  The device may also drop state on a stop signal, if
   observed.

   Some devices will only see one side of a communication, e.g. if they
   are placed in a portion of a network with asymmetric routing.  These
   devices use only the zero and uniflow states (as marked in Figure 1.)
   In addition, true uniflows - protocols which are solely
   unidirectional (e.g. some applications over UDP) - will also use only
   the uniflow-only states.  In either case, current devices generally
   don't associate much state with observed uniflows, and an idle
   timeout is generally sufficient to expire this state.

3.2.  Biflow States

   A uniflow transitions to the associating state when the device
   observes an association signal, and further to the associated state
   when the device observes a subsequent confirmation signal; see
   Section 4.2 for details.  If the flow has not transitioned to from
   the associating to the associated state after TO_IDLE, the device
   drops state for the flow.

   After transitioning to the associated state, the device starts a
   timer TO_ASSOCIATED.  It resets this timer for any packet it forwards
   in either direction.  The associated state represents a fully
   established bidirectional communication.  When timer TO_ASSOCIATED



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 7]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   expires, the device assumes that the flow has shut down without
   signaling as such, and drops state for the flow, performing any
   associated processing.  When a bidirectional stop signal (see
   Section 4.3) is confirmed, the flow transitions to the stopping
   state.

   When a flow enters the stopping state, it starts a timer TO_STOP.
   While the stop signal should be the last packet on a flow, the
   TO_STOP timer ensures that reordered packets after the stop signal
   will be accounted to the flow.  When this timer expires, the device
   drops state for the flow, performing any associated processing.

3.3.  Additional States and Actions

   This document is concerned only with states and transitions common to
   transport- and function- independent state maintenance.  Devices may
   augment the transitions in this state diagram depending on their
   function.  For example, a firewall that decides based on some
   information beyond the signals used by this state machine to shut
   down a flow may transition it directly to a blacklist state on
   shutdown.  Or, a firewall may fail to forward additional packets in
   the uniflow state until an association signal is observed.

4.  Abstract Signaling Mechanisms

   The state machine in Section 3 requires four signals: a new flow
   signal, the first packet observed in a flow in the zero state; an
   association signal, allowing a device to verify that an endpoint
   wishes a bidirectional communication to be established or to
   continue; a confirmation signal, allowing a device to confirm that
   the initiator of a flow is reachable at its purported source address;
   and a stop signal, noting that an endpoint wishes to stop a
   bidirectional communication.  Additional related signals may also be
   useful, depending on the function a device provides.  There are a few
   different ways to implement these signals; here, we explore the
   properties of some potential implementations.

   We assume the following general requirements for these signals;
   parallel to those given in [draft-trammell-plus-abstract-mech]:

   o  At least the endpoints can verify the integrity of the signals
      exposed, and shut down a transport association when that
      verification fails, in order to reduce the incentive for on-path
      devices to attempt to spoof these signals.

   o  Endpoints and devices on path can probabilistically verify that a
      originator of a signal is on-path.




Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 8]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


4.1.  Flow Identification

   In order to keep per-flow state, each device using this state machine
   must have a function it can apply to each packet to be able to
   extract common properties to identify the flow it is associated with.
   In general, the set of properties used for flow identification on
   presently deployed devices includes the source and destination IP
   address, the source and destination transport layer port number, the
   transport protocol number.  The differentiated services field
   [RFC2474] may also be included in the set of properties defining a
   flow, since it may indicate different forwarding treatment.

   However, other protocols may use additional bits in their own headers
   for flow identification.  In any case, a protocol implementing
   signaling for this state machine must specify the function used for
   flow identification.

4.2.  Association and Confirmation Signaling

   An association signal indicates that the endpoint that received the
   first packet seen by the device has indeed seen that packet, and is
   interested in continuing conversation with the sending endpoint.
   This signal is roughly an in-band analogue to consent signaling in
   ICE [RFC7675] that is carried to every device along the path.

   A confirmation signal indicates that the endpoint that sent the first
   packet seen by the device is reachable at its purported source
   address, and is necessary to prevent spoofed or reflected packets
   from driving the state machine into the associated state.  It is
   roughly equivalent to the final ACK in the TCP three-way handshake.

   These two signals are related to each other, in that association
   requires the receiving endpoint of the first packet to prove it has
   seen that packet (or a subsequent packet), and to acknowledge it
   wants to continue the association; while confirmation requires the
   sending endpoint to prove it has seen the association token.

   Transport-independent, path-verifiable association and confirmation
   signaling can be implemented using three values carried in the packet
   headers: an association token, a confirmation nonce, and an echo
   token.

   The association token is a cryptographically random value generated
   by the endpoint initiating a connection, and is carried on packets in
   the uniflow state.  When a receiving endpoint wishes to send an
   association signal, it generates an echo token from the association
   token using a well-known, defined function (e.g. a truncated SHA-256
   hash), and generates a cryptographically random confirmation nonce.



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                  [Page 9]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   The initiating endpoint sends a confirmation signal on the next
   packet it sends after receiving the confirmation nonce, by applying a
   function to the echo token and the confirmation nonce, and sending
   the result as a new association token.

   Devices on path verify that the echo token corresponds to a
   previously seen association token to recognize an association signal,
   and recognize that an association token corresponds to a previously
   seen echo token and confirmation nonce to recognize an association
   signal.

   If the association token and confirmation nonce are predictable, off-
   path devices can spoof association and confirmation signals.  In
   choosing the number of bits for an association token, there is a
   tradeoff between per-packet overhead and state overhead at on-path
   devices, and assurance that an association token is hard to guess.
   This tradeoff must be evaluated at protocol design time.

   There are a few considerations in choosing a function (or functions)
   to generate the echo token from the association token, to verify an
   echo token given an association token, and to derive a next
   association token from the echo token and confirmation nonce.  The
   functions could be extremely simple (e.g., identity for the echo
   token and addition for the nonce) for ease of implementation even in
   extremely constrained environments.  Using one-way functions (e.g.,
   truncated SHA-256 hash to derive echo token from association token;
   XOR followed by truncated SHA-256 hash to derive association token
   from echo token and confirmation nonce) requires slightly more work
   from on-path devices, but the primitives will be available at any
   endpoint using an encrypted transport protocol.  In any case, a
   concrete implementation of association and confirmation signaling
   must choose a set of functions, or mechanism for unambiguously
   choosing one, at both endpoints as well as along the path.

4.2.1.  Start-of-flow versus continual signaling

   There are two possible points in the design space here: these signals
   could be continually exposed throughout the flow, or could be exposed
   only on the first few packets of a connection (those corresponding to
   the cryptographic and/or transport state handshakes in the overlying
   protocols).

   In the former case, an on-path device could re-establish state in the
   middle of a flow; e.g. due to a reboot of the device, due to a NAT
   association change without the endpoints' knowledge, or due to idle
   periods longer than the TO_ESTABLISHED timeout value.  The on-path
   device would receive no special information about which packets were
   associated with the start of association.  In this case, the series



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 10]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   of exposed association tokens, echo tokens, and confirmation nonces
   can also be observed to derive a running round-trip time estimate for
   the flow.

   In the latter case, an on-path device would need to observe the start
   of the flow to establish state, and would be able to distinguish
   connection-start packets from other packets.

4.3.  Bidirectional Stop Signaling

   The transport-independent state machine uses bidirectional stop
   signaling to tear down state.  This requires a stop signal to be
   observed in one direction, and a stop confirmation signal to be
   observed in the other, to complete tearing down an association.

   A stop signal is directly carried or otherwise encoded in the
   protocol header to indicate that a flow is ending, whether normally
   or abnormally, and that state associated with the flow should be torn
   down.  Upon decoding a stop signal, a device on path should move the
   flow from uniflow state to zero, or from associated state to stop-
   wait state, to wait for a confirmation signal in the other direction.
   While in stop-wait state, state will be maintained until a timer set
   to TO_ASSOCIATED expires, with any packet forwarded in either
   direction reseting the timer.

   A stop confirmation signal is directly carried or otherwise encoded
   in the protocol header to indicate that the endpoint receiving the
   stop signal confirms that the stop signal is valid.  The stop
   confirmation signal contains some assurance that the far endpoint has
   seen the stop signal.  When a stop confirmation signal is observed in
   the opposite direction from the stop signal, a device on path should
   move the flow from stop-wait state to stopping state.  The flow will
   then remain in stopping state until a timer set to TO_STOP has
   expired, after which state for the flow will be dropped.  The
   stopping timeout TO_STOP is intended to ensure that any packets
   reordered in delivery are accounted to the flow before state for it
   is dropped.

   We assume the encoding of stop and stop confirmation signals into a
   packet header, as with all other signals, is integrity protected end-
   to-end.  Stop signals, as association signals, could be forged by a
   single on-path device.  However, unless a stop confirmation signal
   that can be associated with the stop signal is observed in the other
   direction, the flow remains in stop-wait state, during which state is
   maintained and packets continue to be forwarded in both directions.
   So this attack is of limited utility; an attacker wishing to inject
   state teardown would need to control at least one on-path device on




Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 11]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   each side of a target device to spoof both stop and corresponding
   stop confirmation signals.

4.3.1.  Authenticated Stop Signaling

   Additionally, the stop and stop confirmation signals could be
   designed to authenticate themselves.  Each endpoint could reveal a
   stop hash during the initial association, which is the result of a
   chosen cryptographic hash function applied to a stop token which that
   endpoint keeps secret.  An endpoint wishing to end the association
   then reveals the stop token, which can be verified both by the far
   endpoint and devices on path which have cached the stop hash to be
   authentic.  A stop confirmation signal additionally contains
   information derived from the initiating stop signal's stop token, as
   further assurance that the stop token was observed by the far
   endpoint.

4.4.  Separate Utility

   Although all of these signals are required to drive the state machine
   described by this document, note that association/confirmation and
   bidirectional stop signaling have separate utility.  A transport
   protocol may expose the end of a flow without any proof of
   association or confirmation of return routability of the initiator.
   Alternately, the transport protocol could rely on short timeouts to
   clean up stale state on path, while exposing continuous association
   and confirmation signals to quickly reestablish state.

5.  Deployment Considerations

   The state machine defined in this document is most useful when
   implemented in a single instantiation (wire format for signals, and
   selection of functions for deriving values to be exposed and
   verified) by multiple transport protocols.  It is intended for use
   with protocols that encrypt their transport- layer headers, and that
   are encapsulated within UDP, as is the case with QUIC
   [I-D.ietf-quic-transport].  Definition of that instantiation is out
   of scope for the present revision of this document.

   The following subsections discuss incentives for deployment of this
   state machine both at middleboxes and at endpoints.

5.1.  Middlebox Deployment

   The state machine defined herein is designed to replace TCP state-
   tracking for firewalls and NAT devices.  When encrypted transport
   protocols encapsulated in UDP adopt a set of signals and a wire
   format for those signals to drive this state machine, these



Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 12]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   middleboxes could continue using TCP-like logic to handle those UDP
   flows.  Recognizing the wire format used by those signals would allow
   these middleboxes to distinguish "UDP with an encrypted transport"
   from undifferentiated UDP, and to treat the former case more like
   TCP, providing longer timeouts for established flows, as well as
   stateful defense against spoofed or reflected garbage traffic.

5.2.  Endpoint Deployment

   An encrypted, UDP-encapsulated transport protocol has two primary
   incentives to expose these signals.  First, allowing firewalls on
   networks that generally block UDP (about 3-5% of Internet-connected
   networks, depending on the study) to distinguish "UDP with an
   encrypted transport" traffic from other UDP traffic may result in
   less blocking of that traffic.  Second, the difference between the
   timeouts TO_IDLE and TO_ASSOCIATED, as well as the continuous state
   establishment possible with some instantiations of the association
   and confirmation signals, would allow these transport protocols to
   send less unproductive keepalive traffic for long-lived, sparse
   flows.

   While both of these advantages require middleboxes on path to
   recognize and use the signals driving this state machine, we note
   that content providers driving the deployment of this protocols are
   also operators of their own content provision networks, and that many
   of the benefits of encrypted- encapsulated transport firewalls will
   accrue to them, giving these content providers incentives to deploy
   both endpoints and middleboxes.

6.  Signal mappings for transport protocols

   We now show how this state machine can be driven by signals available
   in TCP and QUIC.

6.1.  Signal mapping for TCP

   A mapping of TCP flags to transitions in to the state machine in
   Section 3 shows how devices currently using a model of the TCP state
   machine can be converted to use this state machine.

   TCP [RFC0793] provides start-of-flow association only.  A packet with
   the SYN and ACK flags set in the absence of the FIN or RST flags, and
   an in-window acknowledgment number, is synonymous with the
   association signal.  A packet with the ACK flag set in the absence of
   the FIN or RST flags after an initial SYN, and an in-window
   acknowledgment number, is synonymous with the confirmation signal.
   For a typical TCP flow:




Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 13]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   1.  The initial SYN places the flow into uniflow state,

   2.  The SYN-ACK sent in reply acts as a association signal and places
       the flow into associating state,

   3.  The ACK sent in reply acts as a confirmation signal and places
       the flow into associated state,

   4.  The final FIN is a stop signal, and

   5.  the ACK of the final FIN is a stop confirmation signal, moving
       the flow into stopping state.

   Note that abormally closed flows (with RST) do not provide stop
   confirmation, and are therefore not provided for by this state
   machine.  Due to TCP's support for half-closed flows, additional
   state modeling is necessary to extract a stop signal from the final
   FIN.

   Note also that the association and stop signals derived from the TCP
   header are not integrity protected, and association and confirmation
   signals based on in-window ACK are not particularly resistant to off-
   path attacks [IMC-TCP].  The state machine is therefore more
   susceptible to manipulation when used with vanilla TCP as when with a
   transport protocol providing full integrity protection for its
   headers end-to-end.

6.2.  Signal mapping for QUIC

   QUIC [I-D.ietf-quic-transport] is a moving target; however, signals
   for driving this state machine are fundamentally compatible with the
   protocol's design and could easily be added to the protocol
   specification.

   Specifically, QUIC's handshake is visible to on-path devices, as it
   begins with an unencrypted version negotiation which exposes a 64-bit
   connection ID, which can serve as an association and echo token as in
   Section 4.2.  The function of the confirmation nonce is not fully
   exposed to the path at this point, but could be implemented by
   exposing information from the proof of source address ownership
   (section 7.4 of [I-D.ietf-quic-transport]) or via echoing the random
   initial packet number (as suggested by https://github.com/quicwg/
   base-drafts/pull/391).

   The addition of a public reset signal that would act as a stop signal
   as in Section 4.3 is presently under discussion within the QUIC
   working group; the proposal for self-authenticating public reset at




Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 14]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   https://github.com/quicwg/base-drafts/pull/20 inspired the addition
   of Section 4.3.1 to this document.

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no actions for IANA.

8.  Security Considerations

   This document defines a state machine for transport-independent state
   management on middleboxes, using in-band signaling, to replace the
   commonly- implemented current practice of incomplete TCP state
   modeling on these devices.  It defines new signals for state
   management.  While these signals can be spoofed by any device on path
   that observes traffic in both directions, we presume the presence of
   end-to-end integrity protection of these signals provided by the
   upper-layer transport driving them.  This allows such spoofing to be
   detected and countered by endpoints, reducing the threat from on-path
   devices to connection disruption, which such devices are trivially
   placed to perform in any case.

9.  Acknowledgments

   Thanks to Christian Huitema for discussions leading to this document,
   and to Andrew Yourtchenko for the feedback.  The mechanism for using
   a revealed value to prove ownership of a stop token was inspired by
   Eric Rescorla's suggestion to use a fundamentally identical mechanism
   for the QUIC public reset.

   This work is partially supported by the European Commission under
   Horizon 2020 grant agreement no. 688421 Measurement and Architecture
   for a Middleboxed Internet (MAMI), and by the Swiss State Secretariat
   for Education, Research, and Innovation under contract no. 15.0268.
   This support does not imply endorsement.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [RFC5103]  Trammell, B. and E. Boschi, "Bidirectional Flow Export
              Using IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)", RFC 5103,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5103, January 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5103>.








Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 15]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   [RFC7011]  Claise, B., Ed., Trammell, B., Ed., and P. Aitken,
              "Specification of the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)
              Protocol for the Exchange of Flow Information", STD 77,
              RFC 7011, DOI 10.17487/RFC7011, September 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7011>.

   [RFC7398]  Bagnulo, M., Burbridge, T., Crawford, S., Eardley, P., and
              A. Morton, "A Reference Path and Measurement Points for
              Large-Scale Measurement of Broadband Performance",
              RFC 7398, DOI 10.17487/RFC7398, February 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7398>.

10.2.  Informative References

   [draft-trammell-plus-abstract-mech]
              Trammell, B., "Abstract Mechanisms for a Cooperative Path
              Layer under Endpoint Control", September 2016.

   [I-D.hardie-path-signals]
              Hardie, T., "Path signals", draft-hardie-path-signals-01
              (work in progress), May 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-quic-tls]
              Thomson, M. and S. Turner, "Using Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) to Secure QUIC", draft-ietf-quic-tls-07 (work in
              progress), October 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-quic-transport]
              Iyengar, J. and M. Thomson, "QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed
              and Secure Transport", draft-ietf-quic-transport-07 (work
              in progress), October 2017.

   [IMC-GATEWAYS]
              Hatonen, S., Nyrhinen, A., Eggert, L., Strowes, S.,
              Sarolahti, P., and M. Kojo, "An experimental study of home
              gateway characteristics (Proc. ACM IMC 2010)", October
              2010.

   [IMC-TCP]  Luckie, M., Beverly, R., Wu, T., Allman, M., and k.
              claffy, "Resilience of Deployed TCP to Blind Attacks.
              (Proc. ACM IMC 2015)", October 2015.

   [RFC0793]  Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
              RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc793>.






Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 16]

Internet-Draft              PLUS Statefulness              November 2017


   [RFC2474]  Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black,
              "Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
              Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2474, December 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2474>.

   [RFC7675]  Perumal, M., Wing, D., Ravindranath, R., Reddy, T., and M.
              Thomson, "Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN) Usage
              for Consent Freshness", RFC 7675, DOI 10.17487/RFC7675,
              October 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7675>.

Authors' Addresses

   Mirja Kuehlewind
   ETH Zurich
   Gloriastrasse 35
   8092 Zurich
   Switzerland

   Email: mirja.kuehlewind@tik.ee.ethz.ch


   Brian Trammell
   ETH Zurich
   Gloriastrasse 35
   8092 Zurich
   Switzerland

   Email: ietf@trammell.ch


   Joe Hildebrand

   Email: hildjj@cursive.net

















Kuehlewind, et al.        Expires May 17, 2018                 [Page 17]