Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance
draft-iab-privsec-confidentiality-mitigations-01
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (iab) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Ted Hardie | ||
| Last updated | 2015-06-02 | ||
| Stream | Internet Architecture Board (IAB) | ||
| Formats | plain text htmlized pdfized bibtex | ||
| Stream | IAB state | (None) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) |
draft-iab-privsec-confidentiality-mitigations-01
IAB T. Hardie, Ed.
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Informational June 02, 2015
Expires: December 4, 2015
Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance
draft-iab-privsec-confidentiality-mitigations-01
Abstract
The IAB has published [I-D.iab-privsec-confidentiality-threat] in
response to several revelations of pervasive attack on Internet
communications. In this document we survey the mitigations to those
threats which are currently available or which might plausibly be
deployed. We discuss these primarily in the context of Internet
protocol design, focusing on robustness to pervasive monitoring and
avoidance of unwanted cross-mitigation impacts.
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 December 4, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 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
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Available Mitigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Interplay among Mitigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7. Contributors {Contributors} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
To ensure that the Internet can be trusted by users, it is necessary
for the Internet technical community to address the vulnerabilities
exploited in the attacks document in [RFC7258] and the threats
described in [I-D.iab-privsec-confidentiality-threat]. The goal of
this document is to describe more precisely the mitigations available
for those threats and to lay out the interactions among them should
they be deployed in combination.
2. Terminology
This document makes extensive use of standard security and privacy
terminology; see [RFC4949] and [RFC6973]. Terms used from [RFC6973]
include Eavesdropper, Observer, Initiator, Intermediary, Recipient,
Attack (in a privacy context), Correlation, Fingerprint, Traffic
Analysis, and Identifiability (and related terms). In addition, we
use a few terms that are specific to the attacks discussed in this
document. Note especially that "passive" and "active" below do not
refer to the effort used to mount the attack; a "passive attack" is
any attack that accesses a flow but does not modify it, while an
"active attack" is any attack that modifies a flow. Some passive
attacks involve active interception and modifications of devices,
rather than simple access to the medium. The introduced terms are:
Pervasive Attack: An attack on Internet communications that makes
use of access at a large number of points in the network, or
otherwise provides the attacker with access to a large amount of
Internet traffic; see [RFC7258].
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
Passive Pervasive Attack: An eavesdropping attack undertaken by a
pervasive attacker, in which the packets in a traffic stream
between two endpoints are intercepted, but in which the attacker
does not modify the packets in the traffic stream between two
endpoints, modify the treatment of packets in the traffic stream
(e.g. delay, routing), or add or remove packets in the traffic
stream. Passive pervasive attacks are undetectable from the
endpoints. Equivalent to passive wiretapping as defined in
[RFC4949]; we use an alternate term here since the methods
employed are wider than those implied by the word "wiretapping",
including the active compromise of intermediate systems.
Active Pervasive Attack: An attack undertaken by a pervasive
attacker, which in addition to the elements of a passive pervasive
attack, also includes modification, addition, or removal of
packets in a traffic stream, or modification of treatment of
packets in the traffic stream. Active pervasive attacks provide
more capabilities to the attacker at the risk of possible
detection at the endpoints. Equivalent to active wiretapping as
defined in [RFC4949].
Observation: Information collected directly from communications by
an eavesdropper or observer. For example, the knowledge that
<alice@example.com> sent a message to <bob@example.com> via SMTP
taken from the headers of an observed SMTP message would be an
observation.
Inference: Information derived from analysis of information
collected directly from communications by an eavesdropper or
observer. For example, the knowledge that a given web page was
accessed by a given IP address, by comparing the size in octets of
measured network flow records to fingerprints derived from known
sizes of linked resources on the web servers involved, would be an
inference.
Collaborator: An entity that is a legitimate participant in a
communication, and provides information about that communication
to an attacker. Collaborators may either deliberately or
unwittingly cooperate with the attacker, in the latter case
because the attacker has subverted the collaborator through
technical, social, or other means.
Key Exfiltration: The transmission of cryptographic keying material
for an encrypted communication from a collaborator, deliberately
or unwittingly, to an attacker.
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
Content Exfiltration: The transmission of the content of a
communication from a collaborator, deliberately or unwittingly, to
an attacker.
Data Minimization: With respect to protocol design, refers to the
practice of only exposing the minimum amount of data or metadata
necessary for the task supported by that protocol to the other
endpoint(s) and/or devices along the path.
3. Available Mitigations
Given the threat model laid out in
[I-D.iab-privsec-confidentiality-threat]., how should the Internet
technical community respond to pervasive attack? The cost and risk
considerations discussed in it provide a guide to responses. Namely,
responses to passive attack should close off avenues for those
attacks that are safe, scalable, and cheap, forcing the attacker to
mount attacks that expose it to higher cost and risk. Protocols and
security measures protecting against active attacks must also limit
the impact of compromise and malfeasance by avoiding systems which
grant universal credentials.
In this section, we discuss a collection of high-level approaches to
mitigating pervasive attacks. These approaches are not meant to be
exhaustive, but rather to provide general guidance to protocol
designers in creating protocols that are resistant to pervasive
attack.
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
+--------------------------+----------------------------------------+
| Attack Class | High-level mitigations |
+--------------------------+----------------------------------------+
| Passive observation | Encryption for confidentiality |
| | |
| Passive inference | Path differentiation |
| | |
| Active | Authentication, monitoring |
| | |
| Metadata Analysis | Data Minimization |
| | |
| Static key exfiltration | Encryption with per-session state |
| | (PFS) |
| | |
| Dynamic key exfiltration | Transparency, validation of end |
| | systems |
| | |
| Content exfiltration | Object encryption, distributed systems |
+--------------------------+----------------------------------------+
Figure 1: Table of Mitigations
The traditional mitigation to passive attack is to render content
unintelligible to the attacker by applying encryption, for example,
by using TLS or IPsec [RFC5246][RFC4301]. Even without
authentication, encryption will prevent a passive attacker from being
able to read the encrypted content. Exploiting unauthenticated
encryption requires an active attack (man in the middle); with
authentication, a key exfiltration attack is required.
The additional capabilities of a pervasive passive attacker, however,
require some changes in how protocol designers evaluate what
information is encrypted. In addition to directly collecting
unencrypted data, a pervasive passive attacker can also make
inferences about the content of encrypted messages based on what is
observable. For example, if a user typically visits a particular set
of web sites, then a pervasive passive attacker observing all of the
user's behavior can track the user based on the hosts the user
communicates with, even if the user changes IP addresses, and even if
all of the connections are encrypted.
Thus, in designing protocols to be resistant to pervasive passive
attacks, protocol designers should consider what information is left
unencrypted in the protocol, and how that information might be
correlated with other traffic. Some of the data left unencrypted may
be considered "metadata" within the context of a single protocol, as
it provides adjunct information used for delivery or display, rather
than the data directly created or consumed by protocol users. This
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
does not mean it is not useful to attackers, however, and when this
metadata is not protected by encryption it may leak substantial
amounts of information. Data minimization strategies should thus be
applied to any data left unencrypted, whether it be payload or
metadata. Information that cannot be encrypted or omited should be
be dissociated from other information. For example, the Tor overlay
routing network anonymizes IP addresses of by using multi-hop onion
routing.
As with traditional, limited active attacks, the basic mitigation to
pervasive active attack is to enable the endpoints of a communication
to authenticate each other. However, attackers that can mount
pervasive active attacks can often subvert the authorities on which
authentication systems rely. Thus, in order to make authentication
systems more resilient to pervasive attack, it is beneficial to
monitor these authorities to detect misbehavior that could enable
active attack. For example, DANE and Certificate Transparency both
provide mechanisms for detecting when a CA has issued a certificate
for a domain name without the authorization of the holder of that
domain name [RFC6962][RFC6698].
While encryption and authentication protect the security of
individual sessions, these sessions may still leak information, such
as IP addresses or server names, that a pervasive attacker can use to
correlate sessions and derive additional information about the
target. Thus, pervasive attack highlights the need for anonymization
technologies, which make correlation more difficult. Typical
approaches to anonymization against traffic analysis include:
o Aggregation: Routing sessions for many endpoints through a common
mid-point (e.g, an HTTP proxy). The midpoint appears as the origin
of the communication when traffic analysis is conducted from points
after it, so individual sources cannot be distinguished. If traffic
analysis is being conducted prior to the mid-point, all flows appear
to be destined to the same point, which leaks very little
information. Even when traffic analysis is being performed both
before and after the mid-point, simultaneous connections may make it
difficult to corelate the traffic going into and out of the mid-
point. For this to be effective as a mitigation, traffic to the mid-
point must be encrypted and traffic from the mid-point should be.
o Onion routing: Routing a session through several mid-points, rather
than directly end-to-end, with encryption that guarantees that each
node can only see the previous and next hops. This ensures that the
source and destination of a communication are never revealed
simultaneously.
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
o Multi-path: Routing different sessions via different paths (even if
they originate from the same endpoint). This reduces the probability
that the same attacker will be able to collect many sessions or
associate them with the same individual. If, for example, a device
has both a cellular and 802.11 interface, routing some traffic across
the cellular network and other traffic over the 802.11 interface
means that traffic analysis conducted only with one network will be
incomplete. Even if conducted in both, it may be more difficult for
the attacker to associate the traffic in each network with the other.
For this to be effective as a mitigation, signalling protocols which
gather and transmit data about multiple interfaces (such as SIP) must
be encrypted to avoid the information being used in cross-corelation.
An encrypted, authenticated session is safe from content-monitoring
attacks in which neither end collaborates with the attacker, but can
still be subverted by the endpoints. The most common ciphersuites
used for HTTPS today, for example, are based on using RSA encryption
in such a way that if an attacker has the private key, the attacker
can derive the session keys from passive observation of a session.
These ciphersuites are thus vulnerable to a static key exfiltration
attack - if the attacker obtains the server's private key once, then
they can decrypt all past and future sessions for that server.
Static key exfiltration attacks are prevented by including ephemeral,
per-session secret information in the keys used for a session. Most
IETF security protocols include modes of operation that have this
property. These modes are known in the literature under the heading
"perfect forward secrecy" (PFS) because even if an adversary has all
of the secrets for one session, the next session will use new,
different secrets and the attacker will not be able to decrypt it.
The Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol used by IPsec supports PFS
by default [RFC4306], and TLS supports PFS via the use of specific
ciphersuites [RFC5246].
Dynamic key exfiltration cannot be prevent by protocol means. By
definition, any secrets that are used in the protocol will be
transmitted to the attacker and used to decrypt what the protocol
encrypts. Likewise, no technical means will stop a willing
collaborator from sharing keys with an attacker. However, this
attack model also covers "unwitting collaborators", whose technical
resources are collaborating with the attacker without their owners'
knowledge. This could happen, for example, if flaws are built into
products or if malware is injected later on.
Standards can also define protocols that provide greater or lesser
opportunity for dynamic key exfiltration. Collaborators engaging in
key exfiltration through a standard protocol will need to use covert
channels in the protocol to leak information that can be used by the
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
attacker to recover the key. Such use of covert channels has been
demonstrated for SSL, TLS, and SSH. Any protocol bits that can be
freely set by the collaborator can be used as a covert channel,
including, for example, TCP options or unencrypted traffic sent
before a STARTTLS message in SMTP or XMPP. Protocol designers should
consider what covert channels their protocols expose, and how those
channels can be exploited to exfiltrate key information.
Content exfiltration has some similarity to the dynamic exfiltration
case, in that nothing can prevent a collaborator from revealing what
they know, and the mitigations against becoming an unwitting
collaborator apply. In this case, however, applications can limit
what the collaborator is able to reveal. For example, the S/MIME and
PGP systems for secure email both deny intermediate servers access to
certain parts of the message [RFC5750][RFC2015]. Even if a server
were to provide an attacker with full access, the attacker would
still not be able to read the protected parts of the message.
Mechanisms like S/MIME and PGP are often referred to as "end-to-
end"security mechanisms, as opposed to "hop-by-hop" or "end-to-
middle" mechanisms like the use of SMTP over TLS. These two
different mechanisms address different types of attackers: Hop-by-hop
mechanisms protect from attackers on the wire (passive or active),
while end-to-end mechansims protect against attackers within
intermediate nodes. Thus, neither of these mechanisms provides
complete protection by itself. For example:
o Two users messaging via Facebook over HTTPS are protected against
passive and active attackers in the network between the users and
Facebook. However, if Facebook is a collaborator in an exfiltration
attack, their communications can still be monitored. They would need
to encrypt their messages end-to-end in order to protect themselves
against this risk.
o Two users exchanging PGP-protected email have protected the content
of their exchange from network attackers and intermediate servers,
but the header information (e. g., To and From addresses) is
unnecessarily exposed to passive and active attackers that can see
communications among the mail agents handling the email messages.
These mail agents need to use hop-by-hop encryption and traffic
analysis mitigation to address this risk.
Mechanisms such as S/MIME and PGP are also known as "object-based"
security mechanisms (as opposed to "communications security"
mechanisms), since they operate at the level of objects, rather than
communications sessions. Such secure object can be safely handled by
intermediaries in order to realize, for example, store and forward
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
messaging. In the examples above, the encrypted instant messages or
email messages would be the secure objects.
The mitigations to the content exfiltration case regard participants
in the protocol as potential passive attackers themselves, and apply
the mitigations discussed above with regard to passive attack.
Information that is not necessary for these participants to fulfill
their role in the protocol can be encrypted, and other information
can be anonymized.
In summary, many of the basic tools for mitigating pervasive attack
already exist. As Edward Snowden put it, "properly implemented
strong crypto systems are one of the few things you can rely on".
The task for the Internet community is to ensure that applications
are able to use the strong crypto systems we have defined - for
example, TLS with PFS ciphersuites - and that these properly
implemented. (And, one might add, turned on!) Some of this work
will require architectural changes to applications, e. g., in order
to limit the information that is exposed to servers. In many other
cases, however, the need is simply to make the best use we can of the
cryptographic tools we have.
Some tools that we currently have can also be used for mitigating
pervasive attacks, but since they have not generally been designed
with this in mind, they may need elaboration or adjustment to be
completely suitable. The next section examines one common reason for
such adjustment: managing the integration of one mitigation with the
environment in which it is deployed.
4. Interplay among Mitigations
One of the key considerations in selecting mitigations is how to
manage the interplay among different mechanisms. Care must be taken
to avoid situations where a mitigation is rendered fruitless because
of a different mitigation which is working at a different time scale
or with a different aim.
As an example, there is work in progress in IEEE 802 to standardize a
method for the randomization of MAC Addresses. This work aims to
enable a mitigation in which the MAC address varies as the device
connects to different networks, or connects at different times. In
theory, the randomization will mitigate tracking by MAC address.
However, the randomization will be defeated if the adversary can link
the randomized MAC address to other identifiers such as the interface
identifier used in IPv6 addresses, the unique identifiers used in
DHCP or DHCPv6, or unique identifiers used in various link-local
discovery protocols.
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
For mitigations which rely on aggregation to separate the origin of
traffic from its destination, care must be taken that the protocol
mechanics do not expose origin IP through secondary means.
[I-D.ietf-dnsop-edns-client-subnet] for example, proposes a method to
carry the IP address or subnet of a querying party through a
recursive resolver to an authoritative resolver. Even with a
truncated IP address, this mechanism increases the likelihood that a
pervasive monitor would be able to associate query traffic and
responses. If a client wished to ensure that its traffic did not
expose this data, it would need to require that its stub resolver
emit any privacy-sensitive queries with a source NETMASK set to 0, as
detailed in Section 5.1 of [I-D.ietf-dnsop-edns-client-subnet].
Given that setting this only occasionally might also be used a signal
to observors, any client wishing to have any privacy sensitive
traffic would, in essence have to emit this for every query. While
this would succeed at providing the required privacy, given the
mechanism proposed, it would also mean no split-DNS adjustments in
response would be possible for the privacy sensitive client.
5. IANA Considerations
This memo makes no request of IANA.
6. Security Considerations
This memorandum describes a series of mitigations to the attacks
described in [RFC7258]. No such list could possibly be
comprehensive, nor is the attack therein described the only possible
attack.
7. Contributors {Contributors}
This document is derived in part from the work initially done on the
Perpass mailing list and at the STRINT workshop. Work from Brian
Trammell, Bruce Schneier, Christian Huitema, Cullen Jennings, Daniel
Borkmann, and Richard Barnes is incorporated here, as are ideas and
commentary from Jeff Hodges, Phillip Hallam-Baker, and Stephen
Farrell.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
[I-D.iab-privsec-confidentiality-threat]
Barnes, R., Schneier, B., Jennings, C., Hardie, T.,
Trammell, B., Huitema, C., and D. Borkmann,
"Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance: A
Threat Model and Problem Statement", draft-iab-privsec-
confidentiality-threat-07 (work in progress), May 2015.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2", RFC
4949, August 2007.
[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973, July
2013.
[RFC7258] Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, May 2014.
8.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-dnsop-edns-client-subnet]
Contavalli, C., Gaast, W., Lawrence, D., and W. Kumari,
"Client Subnet in DNS Querys", draft-ietf-dnsop-edns-
client-subnet-01 (work in progress), May 2015.
[RFC2015] Elkins, M., "MIME Security with Pretty Good Privacy
(PGP)", RFC 2015, October 1996.
[RFC4301] Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the
Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005.
[RFC4306] Kaufman, C., "Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) Protocol", RFC
4306, December 2005.
[RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.
[RFC5750] Ramsdell, B. and S. Turner, "Secure/Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 3.2 Certificate
Handling", RFC 5750, January 2010.
[RFC6698] Hoffman, P. and J. Schlyter, "The DNS-Based Authentication
of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Protocol: TLSA", RFC 6698, August 2012.
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft privsec-mitigations June 2015
[RFC6962] Laurie, B., Langley, A., and E. Kasper, "Certificate
Transparency", RFC 6962, June 2013.
[STRINT] S Farrell, ., "Strint Workshop Report", April 2014,
<https://www.w3.org/2014/strint/draft-iab-strint-
report.html>.
Author's Address
Ted Hardie (editor)
Email: ted.ietf@gmail.com
Hardie Expires December 4, 2015 [Page 12]