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Quick and Dirty Security for GRASP
draft-carpenter-anima-quads-grasp-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Author Brian E. Carpenter
Last updated 2019-10-15
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draft-carpenter-anima-quads-grasp-00
Network Working Group                                       B. Carpenter
Internet-Draft                                         Univ. of Auckland
Intended status: Informational                          October 16, 2019
Expires: April 18, 2020

                   Quick and Dirty Security for GRASP
                  draft-carpenter-anima-quads-grasp-00

Abstract

   A secure substrate is required by the Generic Autonomic Signaling
   Protocol (GRASP) used by Autonomic Service Agents.  This document
   describes QUADS, a QUick And Dirty Security method using symmetric
   cryptography and preconfigured keys or passwords.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 18, 2020.

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   Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Method  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Implementation Status [RFC Editor: please remove] . . . . . .   3
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   Appendix A.  Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove] . . . . . . .   5
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5

1.  Introduction

   As defined in [I-D.ietf-anima-reference-model], the Autonomic Service
   Agent (ASA) is the atomic entity of an autonomic function, and it is
   instantiated on autonomic nodes.  When ASAs communicate with each
   other, they should use the Generic Autonomic Signaling Protocol
   (GRASP) [I-D.ietf-anima-grasp].  It is essential that such
   communication is strongly secured to avoid malicious interference
   with the Autonomic Network Infrastructure (ANI).

   For this reason, GRASP must run over a secure substrate that is
   isolated from regular data plane traffic.  This substrate is known as
   the Autonomic Control Plane (ACP).  A method for constructing an ACP
   at the network layer is described in
   [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane].  Scenarios for link layer
   ACPs are discussed in [I-D.carpenter-anima-l2acp-scenarios].  The
   present document describes a simple method of emulating an ACP
   immediately above the transport layer, known as QUADS (QUick And
   Dirty Security) for GRASP.

2.  Method

   Every GRASP message, whether unicast or multicast, is encrypted
   immediately before transmission, and decrypted immediately after
   reception, using the same symmetric encryption algorithm and domain-
   wide shared keys.  This applies to all unicast and multicast messages
   sent over either UDP or TCP.  Typically encryption will take place
   immediately after a message is encoded as CBOR [RFC7049], and
   decryption will take place immediately before a message is decoded
   from CBOR.

   There is no attempt to specify an automatic algorithm choice or key
   distribution mechanism.  Every instance of GRASP in a given Autonomic

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   Network (AN) must be pre-configured with the choice of encryption
   algorithm and any necessary parameters, and with the same key(s).

   An alternative to configuring the keys is that every instance of
   GRASP is pre-configured with a fixed salt value and the keys are
   created from a locally chosen domain password, using a pre-defined
   hash algorithm and that salt value.  Note that the salt value cannot
   be secret as it must be the same in all QUADS for all GRASP
   implementations.  In this model the secrecy depends on the password.

   The choice of algorithms should follow best current practice, e.g.
   [RFC8221].

3.  Implementation Status [RFC Editor: please remove]

   QUADS for GRASP has been implemented as a small extension to the
   Python GRASP prototype, using the Python 'cryptography' module.  The
   algorithm choices were:

   Encryption: AES/CBC, key lengths 32/16, padding PKCS7(128).

   Password hash: PBKDF2HMAC SHA256, length 32, 100000 iterations.

   Salt used for password hash: 0xf474526a2e74accee189f1fbc1c34ceb.

   The code will be posted to https://github.com/becarpenter/graspy when
   stable.

4.  Security Considerations

   QUADS provides effective secrecy for all GRASP messages, against any
   party not in possession of the relevant shared keys.  However, before
   a GRASP message is encrypted or after it is decrypted, it is not
   protected within the host.  Therefore, secrecy is only effective
   against nodes that do not contain a GRASP instance in possession of
   the keys.  Those nodes cannot send valid GRASP messages, and they
   cannot interpret intercepted GRASP messages, including multicasts.
   However, they might attempt traffic analysis.

   QUADS provides authentication of GRASP instances to the extent that
   they must be in possession of the relevant shared keys.

   QUADS depends on manual configuration of keys, or on password entry,
   for each autonomic node.

   QUADS offers no defence against denial of service attacks.

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5.  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no request of the IANA.

6.  Acknowledgements

   Excellent suggestions were made by TBD

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [RFC8221]  Wouters, P., Migault, D., Mattsson, J., Nir, Y., and T.
              Kivinen, "Cryptographic Algorithm Implementation
              Requirements and Usage Guidance for Encapsulating Security
              Payload (ESP) and Authentication Header (AH)", RFC 8221,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8221, October 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8221>.

7.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.carpenter-anima-l2acp-scenarios]
              Carpenter, B. and B. Liu, "Scenarios and Requirements for
              Layer 2 Autonomic Control Planes", draft-carpenter-anima-
              l2acp-scenarios-01 (work in progress), October 2019.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane]
              Eckert, T., Behringer, M., and S. Bjarnason, "An Autonomic
              Control Plane (ACP)", draft-ietf-anima-autonomic-control-
              plane-20 (work in progress), July 2019.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-grasp]
              Bormann, C., Carpenter, B., and B. Liu, "A Generic
              Autonomic Signaling Protocol (GRASP)", draft-ietf-anima-
              grasp-15 (work in progress), July 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-reference-model]
              Behringer, M., Carpenter, B., Eckert, T., Ciavaglia, L.,
              and J. Nobre, "A Reference Model for Autonomic
              Networking", draft-ietf-anima-reference-model-10 (work in
              progress), November 2018.

   [RFC7049]  Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object
              Representation (CBOR)", RFC 7049, DOI 10.17487/RFC7049,
              October 2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7049>.

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Appendix A.  Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove]

   draft-carpenter-anima-quads-grasp-00, 2019-10-16:

   Initial version

Author's Address

   Brian Carpenter
   The University of Auckland
   School of Computer Science
   University of Auckland
   PB 92019
   Auckland  1142
   New Zealand

   Email: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com

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