Security Implications of the Use of IPv6 Extension Headers with IPv6 Neighbor Discovery
draft-gont-6man-nd-extension-headers-02

IPv6 maintenance Working Group (6man)                            F. Gont
Internet-Draft                                                   UK CPNI
Updates: 3971, 4861 (if approved)                       January 12, 2012
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: July 15, 2012

  Security Implications of the Use of IPv6 Extension Headers with IPv6
                           Neighbor Discovery
                draft-gont-6man-nd-extension-headers-02

Abstract

   This document analyzes the security implications of using IPv6
   Extension Headers with Neighbor Discovery (ND) messages.  It updates
   RFC 4861 such that use of the IPv6 Fragmentation Header is forbidden
   in all Neighbor Discovery messages, thus allowing for simple and
   effective counter-measures for Neighbor Discovery attacks.  Finally,
   it discusses the security implications of using IPv6 fragmentation
   with SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND), and provides advice such that
   the aforementioned security implications are mitigated.

Status of this Memo

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   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Traditional Neighbor Discovery and IPv6 Fragmentation  . . . .  5
   3.  SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) and IPv6 Fragmentation  . . .  6
   4.  Specification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   6.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   7.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     7.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   Appendix A.  Changes from previous versions of the draft (to
                be removed by the RFC Editor before publication
                of this document as a RFC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     A.1.  Changes from draft-gont-6man-nd-extension-headers-01 . . . 12
     A.2.  Changes from draft-gont-6man-nd-extension-headers-00 . . . 12
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

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1.  Introduction

   The Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) is specified in RFC 4861
   [RFC4861] and RFC 4862 [RFC4862].  It is used by both hosts and
   routers.  Its functions include Neighbor Discovery (ND), Router
   Discovery (RD), Address Autoconfiguration, Address Resolution,
   Neighbor Unreachability Detection (NUD), Duplicate Address Detection
   (DAD), and Redirection.

   Many of the possible attacks against the Neighbor Discovery Protocol
   are discussed in detail in [RFC3756].  In order to mitigate the
   aforementioned possible attacks, the SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND)
   was standardized.  SEND employs a number of mechanisms to certify the
   origin of Neighbor Discovery packets and the authority of routers,
   and to protect Neighbor Discovery packets from being the subject of
   modification or replay attacks.

   However, a number of factors, such as the use of trust anchors and
   the unavailability of SEND implementations for many widely-deployed
   operating systems, make SEND hard to deploy [Gont-DEEPSEC2011].
   Thus, in many general scenarios it may be necessary and/or convenient
   to use other mitigation techniques for NDP-based attacks.  The
   following "lightweight" mitigations are currently available for NDP
   attacks:

   o  Layer-2 filtering of Neighbor Discovery packets (such as RA-Guard
      [RFC6105])

   o  Neighbor Discovery monitoring tools (e.g., such as NDPMon
      [NDPMon])

   IPv6 Router Advertisement Guard (RA-Guard) is a mitigation technique
   for attack vectors based on ICMPv6 Router Advertisement messages.  It
   is meant to block attack packets at a layer-2 device before the
   attack packets actually reach the target nodes.  [RFC6104] describes
   the problem statement of "Rogue IPv6 Router Advertisements", and
   [RFC6105] specifies the "IPv6 Router Advertisement Guard"
   functionality.

   Tools such as NDPMon [NDPMon] and ramond [ramond] aim at monitoring
   Neighbor Discovery traffic in the hopes of detecting possible attacks
   when there are discrepancies between the information advertised in
   Neighbor Discovery packets and the information stored on a local
   database.

   A key challenge that these mitigation or monitoring techniques face
   is that introduced by IPv6 fragmentation, since it is trivial for an
   attacker to conceal his attack by fragmenting his packets into

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   multiple fragments.  This may limit or even eliminate the
   effectiveness of the aforementioned mitigation or monitoring
   techniques.  Recent work [CPNI-IPv6] indicates that current
   implementations of the aforementioned "lightweight" mitigations for
   NDP attacks can be trivially evaded.  For example, as noted in
   [I-D.gont-v6ops-ra-guard-implementation], current RA-Guard
   implementations can be trivially evaded by fragmenting the attack
   packets into multiple fragments, such that the layer-2 device cannot
   find all the necessary information to perform packet filtering in the
   same packet.  While Neighbor Discovery monitoring tools could (in
   theory implement IPv6 fragment reassembly, this is usually an arms-
   race with the attacker (an attacker generate lots of forged fragments
   to "confuse" the monitoring tools), and therefore the aforementioned
   tools are unreliable for the detection of such attacks.

   Section 2 analyzes the use of IPv6 fragmentation in traditional
   Neighbor discovery.  Section 3 analyzes the use of IPv6 fragmentation
   in SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND).  Section 4 formally updates RFC
   4861 such that use of the IPv6 Fragment Header with traditional
   Neighbor Discovery is forbidden, and provides advice on the use of
   IPv6 fragmentation with SEND.

   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].

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2.  Traditional Neighbor Discovery and IPv6 Fragmentation

   The only potential use case for IPv6 fragmentation with traditional
   (i.e., non-SEND) IPv6 Neighbor Discovery would be that in which a
   Router Advertisement must include a large number of options (Prefix
   Information Options, Route Information Options, etc.).  However, this
   could still be achieved without employing fragmentation, by splitting
   the aforementioned information into multiple Router Advertisement
   messages.

      Some Neighbor Discovery implementations are known to silently
      ignore Router Advertisement messages that employ fragmentation.
      Therefore, splitting the necessary information into multiple RA
      messages (rather than sending a large RA message that is
      fragmented into multiple IPv6 fragments) is probably desirable
      even from an interoperability point of view.

   As a result of the aforementioned considerations, and since avoiding
   the use of IPv6 fragmentation in traditional Neighbor Discovery would
   greatly simplify and improve the effectiveness of monitoring and
   filtering ND, Section 4 specifies that hosts silently ignore
   traditional Neighbor Discovery messages (i.e., those specified in
   [RFC4861]) that employ IPv6 fragmentation.

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3.  SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) and IPv6 Fragmentation

   SEND packets typically carry more information than traditional
   Neighbor Discovery packets: for example, they include additional
   options such as the CGA option and the RSA signature option.

   In the case of Neighbor Discovery messages specified in [RFC4861],
   the situation is roughly the same: if more information than would fit
   in a non-fragmented Neighbor Discovery packet needs to be sent, it
   should be split into multiple Neighbor Discovery messages (such that
   IPv6 fragmentation is avoided).

   However, Certification Path Advertisement messages (specified in
   [RFC3971]) pose a different situation, since the Certificate Option
   they include contain much more information than any other Neighbor
   Discovery option.  For example, Appendix C of [RFC3971] reports
   Certification Path Advertisement messages from 1050 to 1066 bytes on
   an Ethernet link layer.  Since the aforementioned packet sizes are
   close to the minimum IPv6 MTU (1280 bytes), we note that IPv6
   fragmentation must still be allowed for Certificate Path
   Advertisement messages.

   It should be noted that relying on fragmentation opens the door to a
   variety of IPv6 fragmentation-based attacks.  In particular, if an
   attacker is located on the same broadcast domain as the victim host,
   and Certification Path Advertisement messages employ IPv6
   fragmentation, it would be trivial for the attacker to forge IPv6
   fragment such that they result in "Fragment ID collisions", causing
   both the attack fragments and the legitimate fragments to be
   discarded by the victim node.  This would eventually cause the
   Authorization Delegation Discovery to fail, thus leading the host to
   fall back (depending to local configuration) either to unsecured
   mode, or to reject the corresponding Router Advertisement messages
   (possibly resulting in a Denial of Service).

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4.  Specification

   Nodes SHOULD NOT employ IPv6 fragmentation for sending any of the
   following Neighbor Discovery and SEcure Neighbor Discovery messages:
   Neighbor Solicitation, Neighbor Advertisement, Router Solicitation,
   Router Advertisement, Redirect, Certification Path Solicitation, and
   Certification Path Advertisement.

   Nodes SHOULD silently ignore the following Neighbor Discovery and
   SEcure Neighbor Discovery messages if the packets carrying them
   include an IPv6 Fragmentation Header: Neighbor Solicitation, Neighbor
   Advertisement, Router Solicitation, Router Advertisement, Redirect,
   and Certification Path Solicitation.

   Nodes SHOULD normally process Certification Path Advertisement
   messages that employ IPv6 fragmentation.

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5.  Security Considerations

   The IPv6 Fragmentation Header can be leveraged to circumvent network
   monitoring tools and current implementations of mechanisms such as
   RA-Guard [I-D.gont-v6ops-ra-guard-implementation].  By updating the
   relevant specifications such that the IPv6 Fragment Header is not
   allowed in any Neighbor Discovery messages except "Certification Path
   Advertisement", protection of local nodes against Neighbor Discovery
   attacks, and monitoring of Neighbor Discovery traffic is greatly
   simplified.

   [I-D.gont-v6ops-ra-guard-implementation] discusses an improvement to
   the RA-Guard mechanism that can mitigate Neighbor Discovery attacks
   that employ IPv6 Fragmentation.  However, it should be noted that
   unless [RFC4861] is updated (as proposed in this document), Neighbor
   Discovery monitoring tools (such as NDPMon [NDPMon]) would remain
   unreliable and trivial to circumvent by a skilled attacker.

   As noted in Section 3, use of SEND could potentially result in
   fragmented "Certification Path Advertisement" messages, thus allowing
   an attacker to employ IPv6 fragmentation-based attacks against such
   messages.  Therefore, to the extent that is possible, such use of
   fragmentation should be avoided.

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6.  Acknowledgements

   The author would like to thank (in alphabetical order) Mikael
   Abrahamsson, Ran Atkinson, Jean-Michel Combes, David Farmer, Bob
   Hinden, Philip Homburg, Ray Hunter, Arturo Servin, and Mark Smith,
   for providing valuable comments on earlier versions of this document.

   This document resulted from the project "Security Assessment of the
   Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)" [CPNI-IPv6], carried out by
   Fernando Gont on behalf of the UK Centre for the Protection of
   National Infrastructure (CPNI).  The author would like to thank the
   UK CPNI, for their continued support.

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7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC3971]  Arkko, J., Kempf, J., Zill, B., and P. Nikander, "SEcure
              Neighbor Discovery (SEND)", RFC 3971, March 2005.

   [RFC4861]  Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman,
              "Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 4861,
              September 2007.

   [RFC4862]  Thomson, S., Narten, T., and T. Jinmei, "IPv6 Stateless
              Address Autoconfiguration", RFC 4862, September 2007.

7.2.  Informative References

   [RFC3756]  Nikander, P., Kempf, J., and E. Nordmark, "IPv6 Neighbor
              Discovery (ND) Trust Models and Threats", RFC 3756,
              May 2004.

   [RFC6104]  Chown, T. and S. Venaas, "Rogue IPv6 Router Advertisement
              Problem Statement", RFC 6104, February 2011.

   [RFC6105]  Levy-Abegnoli, E., Van de Velde, G., Popoviciu, C., and J.
              Mohacsi, "IPv6 Router Advertisement Guard", RFC 6105,
              February 2011.

   [NDPMon]   "NDPMon - IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol Monitor",
              <http://ndpmon.sourceforge.net/>.

   [ramond]   "ramond", <http://ramond.sourceforge.net/>.

   [I-D.gont-v6ops-ra-guard-implementation]
              Gont, F., "Implementation Advice for IPv6 Router
              Advertisement Guard (RA-Guard)",
              draft-gont-v6ops-ra-guard-implementation-00 (work in
              progress), January 2012.

   [CPNI-IPv6]
              Gont, F., "Security Assessment of the Internet Protocol
              version 6 (IPv6)",  UK Centre for the Protection of
              National Infrastructure, (available on request).

   [Gont-DEEPSEC2011]
              Gont, "Results of a Security Assessment of the Internet

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              Protocol version 6 (IPv6)",  DEEPSEC 2011 Conference,
              Vienna, Austria, November 2011, <http://
              www.si6networks.com/presentations/deepsec2011/
              fgont-deepsec2011-ipv6-security.pdf>.

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Appendix A.  Changes from previous versions of the draft (to be removed
             by the RFC Editor before publication of this document as a
             RFC

A.1.  Changes from draft-gont-6man-nd-extension-headers-01

   o  The I-D now forbids only the Fragment Header (rather than all
      Extension Headers) with most ND packets.

   o  A discussion of the use of IPv6 fragmentation with ND and SEND was
      added.

   o  Text was added noting that if SEND traffic is fragmented, this
      would open the door to fragmentation-based attacks, which would
      lead to trivial DoS attacks.

   o  Minor editorial changes

A.2.  Changes from draft-gont-6man-nd-extension-headers-00

   o  The Security Considerations section now notes that unless IPv6
      extension headers are not allowed with Neighbor Discovery
      messages, monitoring ND traffic and/or mitigating ND
      vulnerabilities might result in increased complexity and/or
      reduced performance.

   o  Minor editorial changes

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Author's Address

   Fernando Gont
   Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure

   Email: fernando@gont.com.ar
   URI:   http://www.cpni.gov.uk

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