BRSKI-AE: Alternative Enrollment Protocols in BRSKI
draft-ietf-anima-brski-ae-03
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| Authors | David von Oheimb , Steffen Fries , Hendrik Brockhaus | ||
| Last updated | 2023-01-17 (Latest revision 2022-10-24) | ||
| Replaces | draft-ietf-anima-brski-async-enroll | ||
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draft-ietf-anima-brski-ae-03
ANIMA WG D. von Oheimb, Ed.
Internet-Draft S. Fries
Intended status: Standards Track H. Brockhaus
Expires: 27 April 2023 Siemens
24 October 2022
BRSKI-AE: Alternative Enrollment Protocols in BRSKI
draft-ietf-anima-brski-ae-03
Abstract
This document enhances Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key Infrastructure
(BRSKI, RFC 8995) to allow employing alternative enrollment
protocols, such as CMP.
Using self-contained signed objects, the origin of enrollment
requests and responses can be authenticated independently of message
transfer. This supports end-to-end security and asynchronous
operation of certificate enrollment and provides flexibility where to
authenticate and authorize certification requests.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Status information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-anima-brski-ae/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/anima-wg/anima-brski-ae.
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
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 27 April 2023.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 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/
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1. Voucher Exchange for Trust Anchor Establishment . . . 3
1.1.2. Enrollment of LDevID Certificate . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Supported Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3. List of Application Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Requirements and Mapping to Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1. Basic Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2. Solution Options for Proof of Possession . . . . . . . . 10
3.3. Solution Options for Proof of Identity . . . . . . . . . 11
4. Adaptations to BRSKI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1. Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2. Message Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.1. Pledge - Registrar Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.2. Pledge - Registrar - MASA Voucher Exchange . . . . . 17
4.2.3. Pledge - Registrar - RA/CA Certificate Enrollment . . 17
4.2.4. Pledge - Registrar Enrollment Status Telemetry . . . 20
4.3. Enhancements to the Endpoint Addressing Scheme of
BRSKI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5. Instantiation to Existing Enrollment Protocols . . . . . . . 22
5.1. BRSKI-CMP: Instantiation to CMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.2. Other Instantiations of BRSKI-AE . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Appendix A. Using EST for Certificate Enrollment . . . . . . . . 28
Appendix B. Application Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
B.1. Rolling Stock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
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B.2. Building Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
B.3. Substation Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
B.4. Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure . . . . . . . . 31
B.5. Infrastructure Isolation Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
B.6. Sites with Insufficient Level of Operational Security . . 31
Appendix C. History of Changes TBD RFC Editor: please delete . . 32
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1. Introduction
1.1. Motivation
BRSKI, as defined in [RFC8995], specifies a solution for secure
automated zero-touch bootstrapping of new devices, which are given
the name _pledges_, in the domain they should operate with. This
includes the discovery of the registrar representing the target
domain, time synchronization or validation, and the exchange of
security information necessary to establish mutual trust between
pledges and the target domain. As explained in Section 2, the
_target domain_, or _domain_ for short, is defined as the set of
entities that share a common local trust anchor.
1.1.1. Voucher Exchange for Trust Anchor Establishment
Initially, a pledge has a trust anchor only of its manufacturer, not
yet of any target domain. In order for the pledge to automatically
and securely obtain trust in a suitable target domain represented by
its registrar, BRSKI uses vouchers as defined in [RFC8366]. A
voucher is a cryptographic object issued by the Manufacturer
Authorized Signing Authority (MASA) of the pledge manufacturer to the
specific pledge identified by the included device serial number. It
is signed with the credentials of the MASA and can be validated by
the manufacturer trust anchor imprinted with the pledge. So the
pledge can accept the voucher contents, which indicate to the pledge
that it can trust the domain identified by the given certificate.
While RFC 8995 only specifies a single, online set of protocol option
to communicate the voucher between MASA, registrar, and pledge
(BRSKI-EST and BRSKI-MASA, see [RFC8995], Section 2), it also
describes the architecture for how the voucher may be provided in
online mode (synchronously) or offline mode (asynchronously). So for
the voucher exchange offline mode is basically supported because the
vouchers are self-contained signed objects, such that their security
does not rely on protection by the underlying transfer.
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SZTP [RFC8572] is an example of another protocol where vouchers may
be delivered asynchronously by tools such as portable USB "thumb"
drives. However, SZTP does not do signed voucher requests, so it
does not allow the domain to verify the identity of the device in the
same way, nor does it deploy LDevIDs to the device in the same way.
1.1.2. Enrollment of LDevID Certificate
Trust in a pledge by other devices in the target domain is enabled by
enrolling the pledge with a domain-specific Locally significant
Device IDentity (LDevID) certificate.
Recall that for certificate enrollment it is crucial to authenticate
the entity requesting the certificate. Checking both the identity
and the authorization of the requester is the job of a registration
authority (RA). With BRSKI-EST, there is only one RA instance, co-
located with the registrar.
The certification request of the pledge is signed using its IDevID
secret. It can be validated by the target domain (e.g., by the
domain registrar) using the trust anchor of the pledge manufacturer,
which needs to pre-installed in the domain.
For enrolling devices with LDevID certificates, BRSKI specifies how
Enrollment over Secure Transport (EST) [RFC7030] can be used. EST
has its specific characteristics, detailed in Appendix A. In
particular, it requires online on-site availability of the RA for
performing the data origin authentication and final authorization
decision on the certification request. This type of enrollment can
be called 'synchronous enrollment'. EST, BRSKI-EST, and BRSKI-MASA
as used in RFC 8995 are tied to a specific transport, TLS, which may
not be suitable for the target use case outlined by the examples in
Section 1.3. Therefore deployments may require different transport,
see Constrained Voucher Artifacts for Bootstrapping Protocols
[I-D.ietf-anima-constrained-voucher] and EST-coaps [RFC9148].
Since EST does not support offline enrollment, it may be preferable
for the reasons given in this section and depending on application
scenarios as outlined in Section 1.3 and Appendix B to use
alternative enrollment protocols such as the Certificate Management
Protocol (CMP) [RFC4210] profiled in
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile] or Certificate Management
over CMS (CMC) [RFC5272]. These protocols are more flexible, and by
representing the certification request messages as authenticated
self-contained objects, they are designed to be independent of the
transfer mechanism.
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Depending on the application scenario, the required components of an
RA may not be part of the BRSKI registrar. They even may not be
available on-site but rather be provided by remote backend systems.
The RA functionality may also be split into an on-site local RA (LRA)
and a central RA component in the backend, referred to as PKI RA.
For certification authorities (CAs) it is common to be located in the
backend. The registrar or its deployment site may not have an online
connection with these RA/CA components or the connectivity may be
intermittent. This may be due to security requirements for operating
the backend systems or due to deployments where on-site or always-
online operation may be not feasible or too costly. In such
scenarios, the authentication and authorization of certification
requests will not or can not be performed on-site.
In this document, enrollment that is not performed over an online
connection is called 'asynchronous enrollment'. Asynchronous
enrollment means that messages need to be forwarded through offline
methods (e.g., Sneakernet/USB sticks) and/or at some point in time
only part of the communication path is available. Messages need to
be stored, along with the information needed for authenticating their
origin, in front of an unavailable segment for potentially long time
(e.g., days) before they can be forwarded. This implies that end-to-
end security between the parties involved can not be provided by an
authenticated (and often confidential) communications channel such as
TLS used in EST/BRSKI-EST/BRSKI-MASA.
Application scenarios may also involve network segmentation, which is
utilized in industrial systems to separate domains with different
security needs -- see also Appendix B.5. Such scenarios lead to
similar requirements if the TLS channel that carries the requester
authentication is terminated before the actual requester
authorization is performed. Thus request messages need to be
forwarded on further channels before the registrar or RA can
authorize the certification request. In order to preserve the
requester authentication, authentication information needs to be
retained and ideally bound directly to the certification request.
There are basically two approaches for forwarding certification
requests along with requester authentication information:
* The component in the target domain that forwards the certification
request, such as a local RA being part of the registrar, combines
the certification request with the validated identity of the
requester (e,g., its IDevID certificate) and an indication of
successful verification of the proof of possession (of the
corresponding private key) in a way preventing changes to the
combined information. This implies that it must be trusted by the
PKI. When connectivity is available, the trusted component
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forwards the certification request together with the requester
information (authentication and proof of possession) for further
processing. This approach offers hop-by-hop security, but not
end-to-end security.
In BRSKI, the EST server, being co-located with the registrar in
the domain, is such a component that needs to be trusted by the
backend PKI components. They must rely on the local pledge
authentication result provided by that component when performing
the final authorization of the certification request.
* A trusted intermediate domain component is not needed when
involved components use authenticated self-contained objects for
the enrollment, directly binding the certification request and the
requester authentication in a cryptographic way. This approach
supports end-to-end security, without the need to trust in
intermediate domain components. Manipulation of the request and
the requester identity information can be detected during the
validation of the self-contained signed object.
Note that with this approach the way in which enrollment requests
are forwarded by the registrar to the backend PKI components does
not contribute to their security and therefore does not need to be
addressed here.
Focus of this document is the support of alternative enrollment
protocols that allow the second approach, i.e., using authenticated
self-contained objects for device certificate enrollment. This
enhancement of BRSKI is named BRSKI-AE, where AE stands for
*A*lternative *E*nrollment and for *A*synchronous *E*nrollment. This
specification carries over the main characteristics of BRSKI, namely
that the pledge obtains trust anchor information for authenticating
the domain registrar and other target domain components as well as a
domain-specific X.509 device certificate (the LDevID certificate)
along with the corresponding private key (the LDevID secret) and
certificate chain.
The goals are to provide an enhancement of BRSKI using enrollment
protocols alternatively to EST that
* support end-to-end security for LDevID certificate enrollment and
* make it applicable to scenarios involving asynchronous enrollment.
This is achieved by
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* extending the well-known URI approach of BRSKI and EST message
with an additional path element indicating the enrollment protocol
being used, and
* defining a certificate waiting indication and handling, for the
case that the certifying component is (temporarily) not available.
This specification can be applied to both synchronous and
asynchronous enrollment.
As an improvement over BRSKI, this specification supports offering
multiple enrollment protocols which enables pledges and their
developers to pick the preferred one.
1.2. Supported Environments
BRSKI-AE is intended to be used in domains that may have limited
support of on-site PKI services and comprises application scenarios
like the following.
* Scenarios indirectly excluding the use of EST for certificate
enrollment, such as the requirement for end-to-end authentication
of the requester while the RA is not co-located with the
registrar.
* Scenarios having implementation restrictions that speak against
using EST for certificate enrollment, such as the use of a library
that does not support EST but CMP.
* Pledges and/or the target domain already having an established
certificate management approach different from EST that shall be
reused (e.g., in brownfield installations where CMP is used).
* No RA being available on site in the target domain. Connectivity
to an off-site PKI RA is intermittent or entirely offline. A
store-and-forward mechanism is used for communicating with the
off-site services.
* Authoritative actions of a local RA being not sufficient for fully
authorizing certification requests by pledges. Final
authorization then is done by a PKI RA residing in the backend.
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1.3. List of Application Examples
Bootstrapping can be handled in various ways, depending on the
application domains. The informative Appendix B provides
illustrative examples from various industrial control system
environments and operational setups. They motivate the support of
alternative enrollment protocols, based on the following examples of
operational environments:
* Rolling stock
* Building automation
* Electrical substation automation
* Electric vehicle charging infrastructures
* Infrastructure isolation policy
* Sites with insufficient level of operational security
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
This document relies on the terminology defined in [RFC8995] and
[IEEE.802.1AR-2018]. The following terms are defined partly in
addition.
asynchronous communication: time-wise interrupted communication
between a pledge and a registrar or PKI component.
authenticated self-contained object: data structure that is
cryptographically bound to the IDevID certificate of a pledge.
The binding is assumed to be provided through a digital signature
of the actual object using the IDevID secret.
backend: same as off-site
BRSKI-AE: Variation of BRSKI [RFC8995] in which BRSKI-EST, the
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enrollment protocol between pledge and the registrar including the
RA, is replaced by alternative enrollment protocols such as
Lightweight CMP. To this end a new URI scheme used for performing
the certificate enrollment. BRSKI-AE enables the use of other
enrollment protocols between pledge and registrar and to any
backend RA components with end-to-end security.
CA: Certification Authority, which is the PKI component that issues
certificates and provides certificate status information.
domain: shorthand for target domain
IDevID: Initial Device IDentifier, provided by the manufacturer and
comprising of a private key, an X.509 certificate with chain, and
a related trust anchor.
LDevID: Locally significant Device IDentifier, provided by the
target domain and comprising of a private key, an X.509
certificate with chain, and a related trust anchor.
local RA (LRA): RA that is on site with the registrar and that may
be needed in addition to an off-site RA.
on-site: locality of a component or service or functionality in the
local target deployment site of the registrar.
off-site: locality of component or service or functionality in an
operator site different from the target deployment site. This may
be a central site or a cloud service, to which only a temporary
connection is available.
PKI RA: off-site RA in the backend of the target domain
pledge: device that is to be bootstrapped to the target domain. It
requests an LDevID using an IDevID installed by its manufacturer.
RA: Registration Authority, which is the PKI component to which a CA
typically delegates certificate management functions such as
authenticating requesters and performing authorization checks on
certification requests.
site: the locality where an entity, e.g., pledge, registrar, RA, CA,
is deployed. Different sites can belong to the same target
domain.
synchronous communication: time-wise uninterrupted communication
between a pledge and a registrar or PKI component.
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target domain: the set of entities that the pledge should be able to
operate with and that share a common local trust anchor,
independent of where the entities are deployed.
3. Requirements and Mapping to Solutions
3.1. Basic Requirements
There are two main drivers for the definition of BRSKI-AE:
* The solution architecture may already use or require a certificate
management protocol other than EST. Therefore, this other
protocol should be usable for requesting LDevID certificates.
* The domain registrar may not be the (final) point that
authenticates and authorizes certification requests, and the
pledge may not have a direct connection to it. Therefore,
certification requests should be self-contained signed objects.
Based on the intended target environment described in Section 1.2 and
the application examples described in Appendix B, the following
requirements are derived to support authenticated self-contained
objects as containers carrying certification requests.
At least the following properties are required for a certification
request:
* _Proof of possession_: demonstrates access to the private key
corresponding to the public key contained in a certification
request. This is typically achieved by a self-signature using the
corresponding private key.
* _Proof of identity_, also called _proof of origin_: provides data
origin authentication of the certification request. Typically
this is achieved by a signature using the pledge IDevID secret
over some data, which needs to include a sufficiently strong
identifier of the pledge, such as the device serial number
typically included in the subject of the IDevID certificate.
The rest of this section gives an non-exhaustive list of solution
examples, based on existing technology described in IETF documents:
3.2. Solution Options for Proof of Possession
Certification request objects: Certification requests are data
structures protecting only the integrity of the contained data and
providing proof of possession for a (locally generated) private key.
Examples for certification request data structures are:
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* PKCS#10 [RFC2986]. This certification request structure is self-
signed to protect its integrity and to prove possession of the
private key that corresponds to the public key included in the
request.
* CRMF [RFC4211]. This certificate request message format also
supports integrity protection and proof of possession, typically
by a self-signature generated over (part of) the structure with
the private key corresponding to the included public key. CRMF
also supports further proof-of-possession methods for types of
keys that do not support any signature algorithm.
The integrity protection of certification request fields includes the
public key because it is part of the data signed by the corresponding
private key. Yet note that for the above examples this is not
sufficient to provide data origin authentication, i.e., proof of
identity. This extra property can be achieved by an additional
binding to the IDevID of the pledge. This binding to the source
authentication supports the authorization decision of the
certification request. The binding of data origin authentication to
the certification request may be delegated to the protocol used for
certificate management.
3.3. Solution Options for Proof of Identity
The certification request should be bound to an existing
authenticated credential (here, the IDevID certificate) to enable a
proof of identity and, based on it, an authorization of the
certification request. The binding may be achieved through security
options in an underlying transport protocol such as TLS if the
authorization of the certification request is (completely) done at
the next communication hop. This binding can also be done in a
transport-independent way by wrapping the certification request with
a signature employing an existing IDevID. In the BRSKI context, this
will be the IDevID. This requirement is addressed by existing
enrollment protocols in various ways, such as:
* EST [RFC7030] utilizes PKCS#10 to encode the certification
request. The Certificate Signing Request (CSR) optionally
provides a binding to the underlying TLS session by including the
tls-unique value in the self-signed PKCS#10 structure. The tls-
unique value results from the TLS handshake. Since the TLS
handshake includes certificate-based client authentication and the
pledge utilizes its IDevID for it, the proof of identity is
provided by such a binding to the TLS session. This can be
supported using the EST /simpleenroll endpoint. Note that the
binding of the TLS handshake to the CSR is optional in EST.
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[RFC7030], Section 2.5 sketches wrapping the CSR with a Full PKI
Request message sent to the /fullcmc endpoint. This would allow
for source authentication at message level as an alternative to
indirectly binding to the underlying TLS authentication in the
transport layer.
* SCEP [RFC8894] supports using a shared secret (passphrase) or an
existing certificate to protect CSRs based on SCEP Secure Message
Objects using CMS wrapping ([RFC5652]). Note that the wrapping
using an existing IDevID in SCEP is referred to as _renewal_. This
way SCEP does not rely on the security of the underlying message
transfer.
* CMP [RFC4210] supports using a shared secret (passphrase) or an
existing certificate, which may be an IDevID credential, to
authenticate certification requests via the PKIProtection
structure in a PKIMessage. The certification request is typically
encoded utilizing CRMF, while PKCS#10 is supported as an
alternative. Thus, CMP does not rely on the security of the
underlying message transfer.
* CMC [RFC5272] also supports utilizing a shared secret (passphrase)
or an existing certificate to protect certification requests,
which can be either in CRMF or PKCS#10 structure. The proof of
identity can be provided as part of a FullCMCRequest, based on CMS
[RFC5652] and signed with an existing IDevID secret. Thus also
CMC does not rely on the security of the underlying message
transfer.
4. Adaptations to BRSKI
In order to support alternative certificate enrollment protocols,
asynchronous enrollment, and more general system architectures,
BRSKI-AE provides some generalizations on BRSKI [RFC8995]. This way,
authenticated self-contained objects such as those described in
Section 3 above can be used for certificate enrollment, and RA
functionality can be distributed freely in the target domain.
The enhancements needed are kept to a minimum in order to ensure
reuse of already defined architecture elements and interactions. In
general, the communication follows the BRSKI model and utilizes the
existing BRSKI architecture elements. In particular, the pledge
initiates communication with the domain registrar and interacts with
the MASA as usual for voucher request and response processing.
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4.1. Architecture
The key element of BRSKI-AE is that the authorization of a
certification request MUST be performed based on an authenticated
self-contained object. The certification request is bound in a self-
contained way to a proof of origin based on the IDevID.
Consequently, the authentication and authorization of the
certification request MAY be done by the domain registrar and/or by
other domain components. These components may be offline or reside
in some central backend of the domain operator (off-site) as
described in Section 1.2. The registrar and other on-site domain
components may have no or only temporary (intermittent) connectivity
to them. The certification request MAY also be piggybacked on
another protocol.
This leads to generalizations in the placement and enhancements of
the logical elements as shown in Figure 1.
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+------------------------+
+--------------Drop-Ship------------->| Vendor Service |
| +------------------------+
| | M anufacturer| |
| | A uthorized |Ownership|
| | S igning |Tracker |
| | A uthority | |
| +--------------+---------+
| ^
| |
V |
+--------+ ......................................... |
| | . . | BRSKI-
| | . +-------+ +--------------+ . | MASA
| Pledge | . | Join | | Domain |<----+
| | . | Proxy | | Registrar w/ | .
| |<------>|.......|<-------->| Enrollment | .
| | . | | | Proxy/LRA/RA | .
| IDevID | . +-------+ +--------------+ .
| | BRSKI-AE (over TLS) ^ .
| | . | .
+--------+ ...............................|.........
on-site (local) domain components |
| e.g., RFC 4210,
| RFC 7030, ...
.............................................|..................
. Public-Key Infrastructure v .
. +---------+ +------------------------------------------+ .
. | |<----+ Registration Authority | .
. | PKI CA +---->| PKI RA (unless part of Domain Registrar) | .
. +---------+ +------------------------------------------+ .
................................................................
off-site (central, backend) domain components
Figure 1: Architecture Overview Using Off-site PKI Components
The architecture overview in Figure 1 has the same logical elements
as BRSKI, but with more flexible placement of the authentication and
authorization checks on certification requests. Depending on the
application scenario, the registrar MAY still do all of these checks
(as is the case in BRSKI), or part of them, or none of them.
The following list describes the on-site components in the target
domain of the pledge shown in Figure 1.
* Join Proxy: same functionality as described in BRSKI [RFC8995],
Section 4
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* Domain Registrar including RA, LRA, or Enrollment Proxy: in BRSKI-
AE, the domain registrar has mostly the same functionality as in
BRSKI, namely to facilitate the communication of the pledge with
the MASA and the PKI. Yet there are two generalizations:
1. The registrar MUST support at least one certificate enrollment
protocol that uses for certificate requests authenticated
self-contained objects. To this end, the URI scheme for
addressing the endpoint at the registrar is generalized (see
Section 4.3).
To support the end-to-end proof of identity of the pledge, the
enrollment protocol used by the pledge MUST also be used by
the registrar for its upstream certificate enrollment message
exchange with backend PKI components. Between the pledge and
the registrar the enrollment request messages are tunneled
over the TLS channel already established between these
entities. The registrar optionally checks the requests and
then passes them on to the PKI. On the way back, it forwards
responses by the PKI to the pledge on the existing TLS
channel.
2. The registrar MAY also delegate all or part of its certificate
enrollment support to a separate system. That is,
alternatively to having full RA functionality, the registrar
may act as a local registration authority (LRA) or just as an
enrollment proxy. In such cases, the domain registrar may
forward the certification request to some off-site RA
component, also called PKI RA here, that performs the
remaining parts of the enrollment request validation and
authorization. This also covers the case that the registrar
has only intermittent connection and forwards certification
requests to off-site PKI components upon re-established
connectivity.
Still all certificate enrollment traffic goes via the
registrar, such that from the pledge perspective there is no
difference in connectivity and the registrar is involved in
all steps. The final step of BRSKI, namely the enrollment
status telemetry, is also kept.
The following list describes the components provided by the vendor or
manufacturer outside the target domain.
* MASA: functionality as described in BRSKI [RFC8995]. The voucher
exchange with the MASA via the domain registrar is performed as
described in BRSKI.
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Note: From the definition of the interaction with the MASA in
[RFC8995], Section 5 follows that it may be synchronous (voucher
request with nonce) or asynchronous (voucher request without
nonce).
* Ownership tracker: as defined in BRSKI.
The following list describes the target domain components that can
optionally be operated in the off-site backend of the target domain.
* PKI RA: Performs certificate management functions for the domain
as a centralized public-key infrastructure for the domain
operator. As far as not already done by the domain registrar, it
performs the final validation and authorization of certification
requests. Otherwise, the RA co-located with the domain registrar
directly connects to the PKI CA.
* PKI CA: Performs certificate generation by signing the certificate
structure requested in already authenticated and authorized
certification requests.
Based on the diagram in BRSKI [RFC8995], Section 2.1 and the
architectural changes, the original protocol flow is divided into
four phases showing commonalities and differences to the original
approach as follows.
* Discovery phase: same as in BRSKI steps (1) and (2).
* Voucher exchange phase: same as in BRSKI steps (3) and (4).
* Certificate enrollment phase: the use of EST in step (5) is
changed to employing a certificate enrollment protocol that uses
an authenticated self-contained object for requesting the LDevID
certificate.
Still for transporting certificate enrollment request and response
messages between the pledge and the registrar, the TLS channel
established between them via the join proxy is used. So the
enrollment protocol MUST support this. Due to this architecture,
the pledge does not need to establish an additional connection for
certificate enrollment and the registrar retains control over the
certificate enrollment traffic.
* Enrollment status telemetry phase: the final exchange of BRSKI
step (5).
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4.2. Message Exchange
The behavior of a pledge described in BRSKI [RFC8995], Section 2.1 is
kept with one exception. After finishing the Imprint step (4), the
Enroll step (5) MUST be performed with an enrollment protocol
utilizing authenticated self-contained objects. Section 5 discusses
selected suitable enrollment protocols and options applicable.
An abstract overview of the BRSKI-AE protocol can be found in
[BRSKI-AE-overview].
4.2.1. Pledge - Registrar Discovery
The discovery is done as specified in [RFC8995].
4.2.2. Pledge - Registrar - MASA Voucher Exchange
The voucher exchange is performed as specified in [RFC8995].
4.2.3. Pledge - Registrar - RA/CA Certificate Enrollment
The certificate enrollment phase may involve several exchanges of
requests and responses. Which of the message exchanges marked
OPTIONAL in the below Figure 2 are potentially used, or are actually
required or prohibited to be used, depends on the application
scenario and on the employed enrollment protocol.
These OPTIONAL exchanges cover all those supported by the use of EST
in BRSKI. The last OPTIONAL one, namely certificate confirmation, is
not supported by EST, but by CMP and other enrollment protocols.
The only generally MANDATORY message exchange is for the actual
certificate request and response. As stated in Section 3, the
certificate request MUST be performed using an authenticated self-
contained object providing not only proof of possession but also
proof of identity (source authentication).
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+--------+ +------------+ +------------+
| Pledge | | Domain | | Operator |
| | | Registrar | | RA/CA |
| | | (JRC) | | (PKI) |
+--------+ +------------+ +------------+
/--> | |
| [OPTIONAL request of CA certificates] | |
|---------- CA Certs Request (1)--------->| |
| | [OPTIONAL forwarding] |
| |---CA Certs Request -->|
| |<--CA Certs Response---|
|<--------- CA Certs Response (2)---------| |
|--> | |
| [OPTIONAL request of attributes | |
| to include in Certificate Request] | |
|---------- Attribute Request (3)-------->| |
| | [OPTIONAL forwarding] |
| |--- Attribute Req. --->|
| |<-- Attribute Resp. ---|
|<--------- Attribute Response (4)--------| |
|--> | |
| [MANDATORY certificate request] | |
|---------- Certificate Request (5)------>| |
| | [OPTIONAL forwarding] |
| |--- Certificate Req.-->|
| |<--Certificate Resp.---|
|<--------- Certificate Response (6)------| |
|--> | |
| [OPTIONAL certificate confirmation] | |
|---------- Certificate Confirm (7)------>| |
| | [OPTIONAL forwarding] |
| |---Certificate Conf.-->|
| |<---- PKI Confirm -----|
|<--------- PKI/Registrar Confirm (8)-----| |
Figure 2: Certificate Enrollment
The various connections between the registrar and the PKI components
of the operator (RA/CA) may be intermittent or off-line. Messages
are to be sent as soon as sufficient transfer capacity is available.
The label [OPTIONAL forwarding] means that on receiving from a pledge
a request of the given type, the registrar MAY answer the request
directly itself. Otherwise the registrar MUST forward the request to
a backend PKI component and forward any resulting response back to
the pledge.
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Notes: The decision whether to forward a request or to answer it
directly can depend on various static and dynamic factors. They
include the application scenario, the capabilities of the registrar
and of the local RA possibly co-located with the registrar, the
enrollment protocol being used, and the specific contents of the
request.
There are several options how the registrar could be able to directly
answer requests for CA certificates or for certificate request
attributes. It could cache responses obtained from the backend PKI
and later use their contents for responding to requests asking for
the same data. The contents could also be explicit provisioned at
the registrar.
Certificate requests typically need to be handled by the backend PKI,
but the registrar can answer them directly with an error response in
case it determines that such a request should be rejected, for
instance because is not properly authenticated or not authorized.
Also certificate confirmation messages will usually be forwarded to
the backend PKI, but if the registrar knows that they are not needed
or wanted there it can acknowledge such messages directly.
The following list provides an abstract description of the flow
depicted in Figure 2.
* CA Certs Request (1): The pledge optionally requests the latest
relevant CA certificates. This ensures that the pledge has the
complete set of current CA certificates beyond the pinned-domain-
cert (which is contained in the voucher and may be just the domain
registrar certificate).
* CA Certs Response (2): This MUST contain the current root CA
certificate, which typically is the LDevID trust anchor, and any
additional certificates that the pledge may need to validate
certificates.
* Attribute Request (3): Typically, the automated bootstrapping
occurs without local administrative configuration of the pledge.
Nevertheless, there are cases in which the pledge may also include
additional attributes specific to the target domain into the
certification request. To get these attributes in advance, the
attribute request can be used.
For example, [RFC8994], Section 6.11.7.2 specifies how the
attribute request is used to signal to the pledge the acp-node-
name field required for enrollment into an ACP domain.
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* Attribute Response (4): This MUST contain the attributes to be
included in the subsequent certification request.
* Certificate Request (5): This MUST contain the authenticated self-
contained object ensuring both proof of possession of the
corresponding private key and proof of identity of the requester.
* Certificate Response (6): This MUST contain on success the
requested certificate and MAY include further information, like
certificates of intermediate CAs.
* Certificate Confirm (7): An optional confirmation sent after the
requested certificate has been received and validated. It
contains a positive or negative confirmation by the pledge to the
PKI whether the certificate was successfully enrolled and fits its
needs.
* PKI/Registrar Confirm (8): An acknowledgment by the PKI that MUST
be sent on reception of the Cert Confirm.
The generic messages described above may be implemented using any
certificate enrollment protocol that supports authenticated self-
contained objects for the certificate request as described in
Section 3 and tunneling over TLS. Examples are available in
Section 5.
Note that the optional certificate confirmation by the pledge to the
PKI described above is independent of the mandatory enrollment status
telemetry done between the pledge and the registrar in the final
phase of BRSKI-AE, described next.
4.2.4. Pledge - Registrar Enrollment Status Telemetry
The enrollment status telemetry is performed as specified in
[RFC8995].
In BRSKI this is described as part of the enrollment step, but due to
the generalization on the enrollment protocol described in this
document its regarded as a separate phase here.
4.3. Enhancements to the Endpoint Addressing Scheme of BRSKI
BRSKI-AE provides generalizations to the addressing scheme defined in
BRSKI [RFC8995], Section 5 to accommodate alternative enrollment
protocols that use authenticated self-contained objects for
certification requests. As this is supported by various existing
enrollment protocols, they can be employed without modifications to
existing PKI RAs/CAs supporting the respective enrollment protocol
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(see also Section 5).
The addressing scheme in BRSKI for certification requests and the
related CA certificates and CSR attributes retrieval functions uses
the definition from EST [RFC7030], here on the example of simple
enrollment: "/.well-known/est/simpleenroll". This approach is
generalized to the following notation: "/.well-known/<enrollment-
protocol>/<request>" in which <enrollment-protocol> refers to a
certificate enrollment protocol. Note that enrollment is considered
here a message sequence that contains at least a certification
request and a certification response. The following conventions are
used to provide maximal compatibility with BRSKI:
* <enrollment-protocol>: MUST reference the protocol being used.
Existing values include EST [RFC7030] as in BRSKI and CMP as in
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile] and Section 5.1 below.
Values for other existing protocols such as CMC and SCEP, or for
newly defined protocols, require their own specifications for
their use of the <enrollment-protocol> and <request> URI
components and are outside the scope of this document.
* <request>: if present, this path component MUST describe,
depending on the enrollment protocol being used, the operation
requested. Enrollment protocols are expected to define their
request endpoints, as done by existing protocols (see also
Section 5).
Well-known URIs for various endpoints on the domain registrar are
already defined as part of the base BRSKI specification or indirectly
by EST. In addition, alternative enrollment endpoints MAY be
supported at the registrar.
A pledge SHOULD use the endpoints defined for the enrollment
protocol(s) that it is capable of. It will recognize whether its
preferred protocol or the request that it tries to perform is
supported by the domain registrar by sending a request to its
preferred enrollment endpoint according to the above addressing
scheme and evaluating the HTTP status code in the response.
The following list of endpoints provides an illustrative example for
a domain registrar supporting several options for EST as well as for
CMP to be used in BRSKI-AE. The listing contains the supported
endpoints to which the pledge may connect for bootstrapping. This
includes the voucher handling as well as the enrollment endpoints.
The CMP-related enrollment endpoints are defined as well-known URIs
in CMP Updates [I-D.ietf-lamps-cmp-updates] and the Lightweight CMP
Profile [I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile].
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</brski/voucherrequest>,ct=voucher-cms+json
</brski/voucher_status>,ct=json
</brski/enrollstatus>,ct=json
</est/cacerts>;ct=pkcs7-mime
</est/csrattrs>;ct=pkcs7-mime
</est/fullcmc>;ct=pkcs7-mime
</cmp/getcacerts>;ct=pkixcmp
</cmp/getcertreqtemplate>;ct=pkixcmp
</cmp/initialization>;ct=pkixcmp
</cmp/p10>;ct=pkixcmp
5. Instantiation to Existing Enrollment Protocols
This section maps the requirements to support proof of possession and
proof of identity to selected existing enrollment protocols and
provides further aspects of instantiating them in BRSKI-AE.
5.1. BRSKI-CMP: Instantiation to CMP
Instead of referring to CMP as specified in [RFC4210] and
[I-D.ietf-lamps-cmp-updates], this document refers to the Lightweight
CMP Profile [I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile] because the
subset of CMP defined there is sufficient for the functionality
needed here.
When using CMP, the following specific implementation requirements
apply (cf. Figure 2).
* CA Certs Request
- Requesting CA certificates over CMP is OPTIONAL.
If supported, it SHALL be implemented as specified in
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 4.3.1.
* Attribute Request
- Requesting certificate request attributes over CMP is OPTIONAL.
If supported, it SHALL be implemented as specified in
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 4.3.3.
Note that alternatively the registrar MAY modify the contents
of requested certificate contents as specified in
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 5.2.3.2.
* Certificate Request
- Proof of possession SHALL be provided as defined in the
Lightweight CMP Profile
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 4.1.1 (based
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on CRMF) or [I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile],
Section 4.1.4 (based on PKCS#10).
In certificate response messages the caPubs field, which
generally in CMP may convey CA certificates to the requester,
SHOULD NOT be used.
- Proof of identity SHALL be provided by using signature-based
protection of the certification request message as outlined in
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 3.2 using the
IDevID secret.
* Certificate Confirm
- Explicit confirmation of new certificates to the RA/CA MAY be
used as specified in the Lightweight CMP Profile
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 4.1.1.
Note that independently of certificate confirmation within CMP,
enrollment status telemetry with the registrar will be
performed as described in BRSKI [RFC8995], Section 5.9.4.
* If delayed delivery of responses (for instance, to support
asynchronous enrollment) within CMP is needed, it SHALL be
performed as specified in the Lightweight CMP Profile
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 4.4 and
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile], Section 5.1.2.
* Due to the use of self-contained signed request messages providing
end-to-end security and the general independence of CMP of message
transfer, the way in which messages are exchanged by the registrar
with backend PKI (RA/CA) components is out of scope of this
document. It can be freely chosen according to the needs of the
application scenario (e.g., using HTTP). CMP Updates
[I-D.ietf-lamps-cmp-updates] and the Lightweight CMP Profile
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile] provide requirements for
interoperability.
BRSKI-AE with CMP can also be combined with Constrained BRSKI
[I-D.ietf-anima-constrained-voucher], using CoAP for enrollment
message transport as described by CoAP Transport for CMPV2
[I-D.ietf-ace-cmpv2-coap-transport]. In this scenario, of course the
EST-specific parts of [I-D.ietf-anima-constrained-voucher] do not
apply.
5.2. Other Instantiations of BRSKI-AE
Further instantiations of BRSKI-AE can be done. They are left for
future work.
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In particular, CMC [RFC5272] (using its in-band source authentication
options) and SCEP [RFC8894] (using its 'renewal' option) could be
used.
The fullCMC variant of EST sketched in [RFC7030], Section 2.5 might
also be used here. For EST-fullCMC further specification is
necessary.
6. IANA Considerations
This document does not require IANA actions.
7. Security Considerations
The security considerations as laid out in BRSKI [RFC8995] apply for
the discovery and voucher exchange as well as for the status exchange
information.
The security considerations as laid out in the Lightweight CMP
Profile [I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile] apply as far as CMP
is used.
8. Acknowledgments
We thank Eliot Lear for his contributions as a co-author at an
earlier draft stage.
We thank Brian E. Carpenter, Michael Richardson, and Giorgio
Romanenghi for their input and discussion on use cases and call
flows.
Moreover, we thank Michael Richardson and Rajeev Ranjan for their
reviews.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-ace-cmpv2-coap-transport]
Sahni, M. and S. Tripathi, "CoAP Transfer for the
Certificate Management Protocol", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-ace-cmpv2-coap-transport-05, 19
September 2022, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-
ietf-ace-cmpv2-coap-transport-05.txt>.
[I-D.ietf-anima-constrained-voucher]
Richardson, M., Van der Stok, P., Kampanakis, P., and E.
Dijk, "Constrained Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key
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Infrastructure (BRSKI)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-anima-constrained-voucher-18, 11 July 2022,
<https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-anima-
constrained-voucher-18.txt>.
[I-D.ietf-lamps-cmp-updates]
Brockhaus, H., von Oheimb, D., and J. Gray, "Certificate
Management Protocol (CMP) Updates", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-lamps-cmp-updates-23, 29 June
2022, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-lamps-
cmp-updates-23.txt>.
[I-D.ietf-lamps-lightweight-cmp-profile]
Brockhaus, H., von Oheimb, D., and S. Fries, "Lightweight
Certificate Management Protocol (CMP) Profile", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-lamps-lightweight-
cmp-profile-14, 5 October 2022,
<https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-lamps-
lightweight-cmp-profile-14.txt>.
[IEEE.802.1AR-2018]
IEEE, "IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area
networks - Secure Device Identity", IEEE 802.1AR-2018,
DOI 10.1109/IEEESTD.2018.8423794, August 2018,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEESTD.2018.8423794>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC4210] Adams, C., Farrell, S., Kause, T., and T. Mononen,
"Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate
Management Protocol (CMP)", RFC 4210,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4210, September 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4210>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8366] Watsen, K., Richardson, M., Pritikin, M., and T. Eckert,
"A Voucher Artifact for Bootstrapping Protocols",
RFC 8366, DOI 10.17487/RFC8366, May 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8366>.
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[RFC8995] Pritikin, M., Richardson, M., Eckert, T., Behringer, M.,
and K. Watsen, "Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key
Infrastructure (BRSKI)", RFC 8995, DOI 10.17487/RFC8995,
May 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8995>.
9.2. Informative References
[BRSKI-AE-overview]
"BRSKI-AE Protocol Overview", April 2022,
<https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anima-wg/anima-brski-
ae/main/BRSKI-AE_overview.png>.
[IEC-62351-9]
International Electrotechnical Commission, "IEC 62351 -
Power systems management and associated information
exchange - Data and communications security - Part 9:
Cyber security key management for power system equipment",
IEC 62351-9, May 2017.
[ISO-IEC-15118-2]
International Standardization Organization / International
Electrotechnical Commission, "ISO/IEC 15118-2 Road
vehicles - Vehicle-to-Grid Communication Interface - Part
2: Network and application protocol requirements", ISO/
IEC 15118-2, April 2014.
[NERC-CIP-005-5]
North American Reliability Council, "Cyber Security -
Electronic Security Perimeter", CIP 005-5, December 2013.
[OCPP] Open Charge Alliance, "Open Charge Point Protocol 2.0.1
(Draft)", December 2019.
[RFC2986] Nystrom, M. and B. Kaliski, "PKCS #10: Certification
Request Syntax Specification Version 1.7", RFC 2986,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2986, November 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2986>.
[RFC4211] Schaad, J., "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure
Certificate Request Message Format (CRMF)", RFC 4211,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4211, September 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4211>.
[RFC5272] Schaad, J. and M. Myers, "Certificate Management over CMS
(CMC)", RFC 5272, DOI 10.17487/RFC5272, June 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5272>.
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[RFC5652] Housley, R., "Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)", STD 70,
RFC 5652, DOI 10.17487/RFC5652, September 2009,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5652>.
[RFC5929] Altman, J., Williams, N., and L. Zhu, "Channel Bindings
for TLS", RFC 5929, DOI 10.17487/RFC5929, July 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5929>.
[RFC6402] Schaad, J., "Certificate Management over CMS (CMC)
Updates", RFC 6402, DOI 10.17487/RFC6402, November 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6402>.
[RFC7030] Pritikin, M., Ed., Yee, P., Ed., and D. Harkins, Ed.,
"Enrollment over Secure Transport", RFC 7030,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7030, October 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7030>.
[RFC8572] Watsen, K., Farrer, I., and M. Abrahamsson, "Secure Zero
Touch Provisioning (SZTP)", RFC 8572,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8572, April 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8572>.
[RFC8894] Gutmann, P., "Simple Certificate Enrolment Protocol",
RFC 8894, DOI 10.17487/RFC8894, September 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8894>.
[RFC8994] Eckert, T., Ed., Behringer, M., Ed., and S. Bjarnason, "An
Autonomic Control Plane (ACP)", RFC 8994,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8994, May 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8994>.
[RFC9148] van der Stok, P., Kampanakis, P., Richardson, M., and S.
Raza, "EST-coaps: Enrollment over Secure Transport with
the Secure Constrained Application Protocol", RFC 9148,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9148, April 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9148>.
[UNISIG-Subset-137]
UNISIG, "Subset-137; ERTMS/ETCS On-line Key Management
FFFIS; V1.0.0", December 2015,
<https://www.era.europa.eu/sites/default/files/filesystem/
ertms/ccs_tsi_annex_a_-_mandatory_specifications/
set_of_specifications_3_etcs_b3_r2_gsm-r_b1/index083_-
_subset-137_v100.pdf>.
http://www.kmc-subset137.eu/index.php/download/
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Appendix A. Using EST for Certificate Enrollment
When using EST with BRSKI, pledges interact via TLS with the domain
registrar, which acts both as EST server and as the PKI RA. The TLS
channel is mutually authenticated, where the pledge uses its IDevID
certificate issued by its manufacturer.
Using BRSKI-EST has the advantage that the mutually authenticated TLS
channel established between the pledge and the registrar can be
reused for protecting the message exchange needed for enrolling the
LDevID certificate. This strongly simplifies the implementation of
the enrollment message exchange.
Yet the use of TLS has the limitation that this cannot provide
auditability nor end-to-end authentication of the CSR by the pledge
at a remote PKI RA/CA because the TLS session is transient and
terminates at the registrar. This is a problem in particular if the
enrollment is done via multiple hops, part of which may not even be
network-based.
With enrollment protocols that use for CSRs self-contained signed
objects, logs of CSRs can be audited because CSRs can be third-party
authenticated in retrospect, whereas TLS connections can not.
Furthermore, the BRSKI registrars in each site have to be hardened so
that they can be trusted to be the TLS initiator of the EST
connection to the PKI RA/CA, and in result, their keying material
needs to be managed with more security care than that of pledges
because of trust requirements, for example they need to have the id-
kp-cmcRA extended key usage attribute according to [RFC7030], see
[RFC6402]. Impairment to a BRSKI registrar can result in arbitrarily
many fake certificate registrations because real authentication and
authorization checks can then be circumvented.
Relying on TLS authentication of the TLS client, which is supposed to
be the certificate requester, for a strong proof of origin for the
CSR is conceptually non-trivial and can have implementation
challenges. EST has the option to include in the certification
request, which is a PKCS#10 CSR, the so-called tls-unique value
[RFC5929] of the underlying TLS channel. This binding of the proof
of identity of the TLS client to the proof of possession for the
private key requires specific support by TLS implementations.
The registrar terminates the security association with the pledge at
TLS level and thus the binding between the certification request and
the authentication of the pledge. In BRSKI [RFC8995], the registrar
typically doubles as the PKI RA and thus also authenticates the CSR
and filters/denies requests from non-authorized pledges. If the
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registrar cannot do the final authorization checks on the CSR and
needs to forward it to the PKI RA, there is no end-to-end proof of
identity and thus the decision of the PKI RA must trust on the pledge
authentication performed by the registrar. If successfully
authorized, the CSR is passed to the PKI CA, which will issue the
domain-specific certificate (LDevID). If in this setup the protocol
between the on-site registrar and the remote PKI RA is also EST, this
approach requires online or at least intermittent connectivity
between registrar and PKI RA, as well as availability of the PKI RA
for performing the final authorization decision on the certification
request.
A further limitation of using EST as the certificate enrollment
protocol is that due to using PKCS#10 structures in enrollment
requests, the only possible proof-of-possession method is a self-
signature, which excludes requesting certificates for key types that
do not support signing. CMP, for instance, has special proof-of-
possession options for key agreement and KEM keys, see [RFC4210],
Section 5.2.8.
Appendix B. Application Examples
This informative annex provides some detail to the application
examples listed in Section 1.3.
B.1. Rolling Stock
Rolling stock or railroad cars contain a variety of sensors,
actuators, and controllers, which communicate within the railroad car
but also exchange information between railroad cars building a train,
with track-side equipment, and/or possibly with backend systems.
These devices are typically unaware of backend system connectivity.
Managing certificates may be done during maintenance cycles of the
railroad car, but can already be prepared during operation.
Preparation will include generating certification requests, which are
collected and later forwarded for processing, once the railroad car
is connected to the operator backend. The authorization of the
certification request is then done based on the operator's asset/
inventory information in the backend.
UNISIG has included a CMP profile for enrollment of TLS client and
server X.509 certificates of on-board and track-side components in
the Subset-137 specifying the ETRAM/ETCS on-line key management for
train control systems [UNISIG-Subset-137].
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B.2. Building Automation
In building automation scenarios, a detached building or the basement
of a building may be equipped with sensors, actuators, and
controllers that are connected with each other in a local network but
with only limited or no connectivity to a central building management
system. This problem may occur during installation time but also
during operation. In such a situation a service technician collects
the necessary data and transfers it between the local network and the
central building management system, e.g., using a laptop or a mobile
phone. This data may comprise parameters and settings required in
the operational phase of the sensors/actuators, like a component
certificate issued by the operator to authenticate against other
components and services.
The collected data may be provided by a domain registrar already
existing in the local network. In this case connectivity to the
backend PKI may be facilitated by the service technician's laptop.
Alternatively, the data can also be collected from the pledges
directly and provided to a domain registrar deployed in a different
network as preparation for the operational phase. In this case,
connectivity to the domain registrar may also be facilitated by the
service technician's laptop.
B.3. Substation Automation
In electrical substation automation scenarios, a control center
typically hosts PKI services to issue certificates for Intelligent
Electronic Devices operated in a substation. Communication between
the substation and control center is performed through a
proxy/gateway/DMZ, which terminates protocol flows. Note that
[NERC-CIP-005-5] requires inspection of protocols at the boundary of
a security perimeter (the substation in this case). In addition,
security management in substation automation assumes central support
of several enrollment protocols in order to support the various
capabilities of IEDs from different vendors. The IEC standard
IEC62351-9 [IEC-62351-9] specifies for the infrastructure side
mandatory support of two enrollment protocols: SCEP [RFC8894] and EST
[RFC7030], while an Intelligent Electronic Device may support only
one of them.
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B.4. Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure
For electric vehicle charging infrastructure, protocols have been
defined for the interaction between the electric vehicle and the
charging point (e.g., ISO 15118-2 [ISO-IEC-15118-2]) as well as
between the charging point and the charging point operator (e.g.
OCPP [OCPP]). Depending on the authentication model, unilateral or
mutual authentication is required. In both cases the charging point
uses an X.509 certificate to authenticate itself in TLS channels
between the electric vehicle and the charging point. The management
of this certificate depends, among others, on the selected backend
connectivity protocol. In the case of OCPP, this protocol is meant
to be the only communication protocol between the charging point and
the backend, carrying all information to control the charging
operations and maintain the charging point itself. This means that
the certificate management needs to be handled in-band of OCPP. This
requires the ability to encapsulate the certificate management
messages in a transport-independent way. Authenticated self-
containment will support this by allowing the transport without a
separate enrollment protocol, binding the messages to the identity of
the communicating endpoints.
B.5. Infrastructure Isolation Policy
This refers to any case in which network infrastructure is normally
isolated from the Internet as a matter of policy, most likely for
security reasons. In such a case, limited access to external PKI
services will be allowed in carefully controlled short periods of
time, for example when a batch of new devices is deployed, and
forbidden or prevented at other times.
B.6. Sites with Insufficient Level of Operational Security
The RA performing (at least part of) the authorization of a
certification request is a critical PKI component and therefore
requires higher operational security than components utilizing the
issued certificates for their security features. CAs may also demand
higher security in the registration procedures from RAs, which domain
registrars with co-located RAs may not be able to fulfill.
Especially the CA/Browser forum currently increases the security
requirements in the certificate issuance procedures for publicly
trusted certificates, i.e., those placed in trust stores of browsers,
which may be used to connect with devices in the domain. In case the
on-site components of the target domain cannot be operated securely
enough for the needs of an RA, this service should be transferred to
an off-site backend component that has a sufficient level of
security.
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Appendix C. History of Changes TBD RFC Editor: please delete
List of reviewers (besides the authors):
* Toerless Eckert (document shepherd)
* Michael Richardson
* Rajeev Ranjan
From IETF draft ae-02 -> IETF draft ae-03:
* In response to review by Toerless Eckert,
- many editorial improvements and clarifications as suggested,
such as the comparison to plain BRSKI, the description of
offline vs. synchronous message transfer and enrollment, and
better differentiation of RA flavors.
- clarify that for transporting certificate enrollment messages
between pledge and registrar, the TLS channel established
between these two (via the join proxy) is used and the
enrollment protocol MUST support this.
- clarify that the enrollment protocol chosen between pledge and
registrar MUST also be used for the upstream enrollment
exchange with the PKI.
- extend the description and requirements on how during the
certificate enrollment phase the registrar MAY handle requests
by the pledge itself and otherwise MUST forward them to the PKI
and forward responses to the pledge.
* Change "The registrar MAY offer different enrollment protocols" to
"The registrar MUST support at least one certificate enrollment
protocol ..."
* In response to review by Michael Richardson,
- slightly improve the structuring of the Message Exchange
Section 4.2 and add some detail on the request/response
exchanges for the enrollment phase
- merge the 'Enhancements to the Addressing Scheme' Section 4.3
with the subsequent one: 'Domain Registrar Support of
Alternative Enrollment Protocols'
- add reference to SZTP (RFC 8572)
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- extend venue information
- convert output of ASCII-art figures to SVG format
- various small other text improvements as suggested/provided
* Remove the tentative informative instantiation to EST-fullCMC
* Move Eliot Lear from co-author to contributor, add him to the
acknowledgments
* Add explanations for terms such as 'target domain' and 'caPubs'
* Fix minor editorial issues and update some external references
From IETF draft ae-01 -> IETF draft ae-02:
* Architecture: clarify registrar role including RA/LRA/enrollment
proxy
* CMP: add reference to CoAP Transport for CMPV2 and Constrained
BRSKI
* Include venue information
From IETF draft 05 -> IETF draft ae-01:
* Renamed the repo and files from anima-brski-async-enroll to anima-
brski-ae
* Added graphics for abstract protocol overview as suggested by
Toerless Eckert
* Balanced (sub-)sections and their headers
* Added details on CMP instance, now called BRSKI-CMP
From IETF draft 04 -> IETF draft 05:
* David von Oheimb became the editor.
* Streamline wording, consolidate terminology, improve grammar, etc.
* Shift the emphasis towards supporting alternative enrollment
protocols.
* Update the title accordingly - preliminary change to be approved.
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* Move comments on EST and detailed application examples to
informative annex.
* Move the remaining text of section 3 as two new sub-sections of
section 1.
From IETF draft 03 -> IETF draft 04:
* Moved UC2-related parts defining the pledge in responder mode to a
separate document. This required changes and adaptations in
several sections. Main changes concerned the removal of the
subsection for UC2 as well as the removal of the YANG model
related text as it is not applicable in UC1.
* Updated references to the Lightweight CMP Profile.
* Added David von Oheimb as co-author.
From IETF draft 02 -> IETF draft 03:
* Housekeeping, deleted open issue regarding YANG voucher-request in
UC2 as voucher-request was enhanced with additional leaf.
* Included open issues in YANG model in UC2 regarding assertion
value agent-proximity and CSR encapsulation using SZTP sub
module).
From IETF draft 01 -> IETF draft 02:
* Defined call flow and objects for interactions in UC2. Object
format based on draft for JOSE signed voucher artifacts and
aligned the remaining objects with this approach in UC2 .
* Terminology change: issue #2 pledge-agent -> registrar-agent to
better underline agent relation.
* Terminology change: issue #3 PULL/PUSH -> pledge-initiator-mode
and pledge-responder-mode to better address the pledge operation.
* Communication approach between pledge and registrar-agent changed
by removing TLS-PSK (former section TLS establishment) and
associated references to other drafts in favor of relying on
higher layer exchange of signed data objects. These data objects
are included also in the pledge-voucher-request and lead to an
extension of the YANG module for the voucher-request (issue #12).
* Details on trust relationship between registrar-agent and
registrar (issue #4, #5, #9) included in UC2.
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* Recommendation regarding short-lived certificates for registrar-
agent authentication towards registrar (issue #7) in the security
considerations.
* Introduction of reference to agent signing certificate using SKID
in agent signed data (issue #11).
* Enhanced objects in exchanges between pledge and registrar-agent
to allow the registrar to verify agent-proximity to the pledge
(issue #1) in UC2.
* Details on trust relationship between registrar-agent and pledge
(issue #5) included in UC2.
* Split of use case 2 call flow into sub sections in UC2.
From IETF draft 00 -> IETF draft 01:
* Update of scope in Section 1.2 to include in which the pledge acts
as a server. This is one main motivation for use case 2.
* Rework of use case 2 to consider the transport between the pledge
and the pledge-agent. Addressed is the TLS channel establishment
between the pledge-agent and the pledge as well as the endpoint
definition on the pledge.
* First description of exchanged object types (needs more work)
* Clarification in discovery options for enrollment endpoints at the
domain registrar based on well-known endpoints in Section 4.3 do
not result in additional /.well-known URIs. Update of the
illustrative example. Note that the change to /brski for the
voucher-related endpoints has been taken over in the BRSKI main
document.
* Updated references.
* Included Thomas Werner as additional author for the document.
From individual version 03 -> IETF draft 00:
* Inclusion of discovery options of enrollment endpoints at the
domain registrar based on well-known endpoints in Section 4.3 as
replacement of section 5.1.3 in the individual draft. This is
intended to support both use cases in the document. An
illustrative example is provided.
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* Missing details provided for the description and call flow in
pledge-agent use case UC2, e.g. to accommodate distribution of CA
certificates.
* Updated CMP example in Section 5 to use Lightweight CMP instead of
CMP, as the draft already provides the necessary /.well-known
endpoints.
* Requirements discussion moved to separate section in Section 3.
Shortened description of proof-of-identity binding and mapping to
existing protocols.
* Removal of copied call flows for voucher exchange and registrar
discovery flow from [RFC8995] in Section 4 to avoid doubling or
text or inconsistencies.
* Reworked abstract and introduction to be more crisp regarding the
targeted solution. Several structural changes in the document to
have a better distinction between requirements, use case
description, and solution description as separate sections.
History moved to appendix.
From individual version 02 -> 03:
* Update of terminology from self-contained to authenticated self-
contained object to be consistent in the wording and to underline
the protection of the object with an existing credential. Note
that the naming of this object may be discussed. An alternative
name may be attestation object.
* Simplification of the architecture approach for the initial use
case having an offsite PKI.
* Introduction of a new use case utilizing authenticated self-
contain objects to onboard a pledge using a commissioning tool
containing a pledge-agent. This requires additional changes in
the BRSKI call flow sequence and led to changes in the
introduction, the application example,and also in the related
BRSKI-AE call flow.
* Update of provided examples of the addressing approach used in
BRSKI to allow for support of multiple enrollment protocols in
Section 4.3.
From individual version 01 -> 02:
* Update of introduction text to clearly relate to the usage of
IDevID and LDevID.
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* Definition of the addressing approach used in BRSKI to allow for
support of multiple enrollment protocols in Section 4.3. This
section also contains a first discussion of an optional discovery
mechanism to address situations in which the registrar supports
more than one enrollment approach. Discovery should avoid that
the pledge performs a trial and error of enrollment protocols.
* Update of description of architecture elements and changes to
BRSKI in Section 4.1.
* Enhanced consideration of existing enrollment protocols in the
context of mapping the requirements to existing solutions in
Section 3 and in Section 5.
From individual version 00 -> 01:
* Update of examples, specifically for building automation as well
as two new application use cases in Appendix B.
* Deletion of asynchronous interaction with MASA to not complicate
the use case. Note that the voucher exchange can already be
handled in an asynchronous manner and is therefore not considered
further. This resulted in removal of the alternative path the
MASA in Figure 1 and the associated description in Section 4.1.
* Enhancement of description of architecture elements and changes to
BRSKI in Section 4.1.
* Consideration of existing enrollment protocols in the context of
mapping the requirements to existing solutions in Section 3.
* New section starting Section 5 with the mapping to existing
enrollment protocols by collecting boundary conditions.
Contributors
Eliot Lear
Cisco Systems
Richtistrasse 7
CH-8304 Wallisellen
Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 878 9200
Email: lear@cisco.com
Authors' Addresses
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David von Oheimb (editor)
Siemens AG
Otto-Hahn-Ring 6
81739 Munich
Germany
Email: david.von.oheimb@siemens.com
URI: https://www.siemens.com/
Steffen Fries
Siemens AG
Otto-Hahn-Ring 6
81739 Munich
Germany
Email: steffen.fries@siemens.com
URI: https://www.siemens.com/
Hendrik Brockhaus
Siemens AG
Otto-Hahn-Ring 6
81739 Munich
Germany
Email: hendrik.brockhaus@siemens.com
URI: https://www.siemens.com/
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