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Cryptographic Suites for IPsec
draft-ietf-ipsec-ui-suites-06

The information below is for an old version of the document that is already published as an RFC.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 4308.
Author Paul E. Hoffman
Last updated 2020-01-21 (Latest revision 2004-04-14)
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Intended RFC status Proposed Standard
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IESG IESG state Became RFC 4308 (Proposed Standard)
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Responsible AD Russ Housley
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draft-ietf-ipsec-ui-suites-06
Internet Draft                                           Paul Hoffman
draft-ietf-ipsec-ui-suites-06.txt                      VPN Consortium
April 14, 2004
Expires in six months
Intended status: Best Common Practice

                      Cryptographic Suites for IPsec

Status of this Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all
provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups
may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.

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."

The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt

The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

Abstract

The IPsec, IKE, and IKEv2 protocols rely on security algorithms to
provide privacy and authentication between the initiator and responder.
There are many such algorithms available, and two IPsec systems cannot
interoperate unless they are using the same algorithms. This document
specifies optional suites of algorithms and attributes that can be used
to simplify the administration of IPsec when used in manual keying mode,
with IKE version 1, or with IKEv2.

1. Introduction

This document is a companion to IPsec [RFC2401] and its two key exchange
protocols, IKE [RFC2409] and IKEv2 [IKEv2]. Like most security
protocols, IPsec, IKE, and IKEv2 allow users to chose which
cryptographic algorithms they want to use to meet their security needs.

Implementation experience with IPsec in manual key mode and with IKE has
shown that there are so many choices for typical system administrators
to make that it is difficult to achieve interoperability without careful
pre-agreement. Because of this, the IPsec Working Group agreed that
there should be a small number of named suites that cover typical
security policies. These suites may be presented in the administrative
interface of the IPsec system. These suites, often called "UI suites"
("user interface suites"), are optional and do not prevent implementers
from allowing individual selection of the security algorithms.

Although the UI suites listed here are optional to implement, this
document is intended for Best Common Practice because implementers who
call particular suites by the names used here have to conform to the
suites listed in this document. These suites should not be considered
extensions to IPsec, IKE, and IKEv2, but instead administrative methods
for describing sets of configurations.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" in
this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

2 UI suites

This section lists optional, non-mandatory suites that may be presented
to system administrators to ease the burden of choosing among the many
options in IPsec systems. These suites cannot cover all of the options
that an administrator needs to select. Instead, they give values for a
subset of the options.

Note that these UI suites are simply collections of values for some
options in IPsec. Use of UI suites does not change the IPsec, IKE, or
IKEv2 protocols in any way. Specifically, the transform substructure in
IKE and IKEv2 must be used to give the value for each specified option
regardless of whether or not UI suites are used.

Implementations that use UI suites SHOULD also provide a management
interface for specifying values for individual cryptographic options.
That is, it is unlikely that UI suites are a complete solution for
matching the security policies of many IPsec users, and therefore an
interface that gives a more complete set of options should be used as
well.

IPsec implementations that use these UI suites SHOULD use the suite
names listed here. IPsec implementations SHOULD NOT use names different
than those listed here for the suites that are described, and MUST NOT
use the names listed here for suites that do not match these values.
These requirements are necessary for interoperability.

Note that the suites listed here are for use of IPsec in virtual private
networks. Other uses of IPsec will probably want to define their own
suites and give them different names.

Additional suites can be defined by RFCs. The strings used to identify
UI suites are registered by IANA.

2.1 Suite "VPN-A"

This suite matches the commonly-used corporate VPN security used in
IKEv1 at the time this document's publication.

IPsec:
Protocol                 ESP [RFC2406]
ESP encryption           TripleDES in CBC mode [RFC2451]
ESP integrity            HMAC-SHA1-96 [RFC2404]

IKE and IKEv2:
Encryption               TripleDES in CBC mode [RFC2451]
Pseudo-random function   HMAC-SHA1 [RFC2104]
Integrity                HMAC-SHA1-96 [RFC2404]
Diffie-Hellman group     1024-bit MODP [RFC2409]

Rekeying of Phase 2 (for IKE) or the CREATE_CHILD_SA (for IKEv2) MUST be
supported by both parties in this suite. The initiator of this exchange
MAY include a new Diffie-Hellman key; if it is included, it MUST be of
type 1024-bit MODP. If the initiator of the exchange includes a
Diffie-Hellman key, the responder MUST include a Diffie-Hellman key, and
it MUST of type 1024-bit MODP.

2.2 Suite "VPN-B"

This suite is what many people expect the commonly-used corporate VPN
security that will be used within a few years of the time this
document's publication.

IPsec:
Protocol                 ESP [RFC2406]
ESP encryption           AES with 128-bit keys in CBC mode [AES-CBC]
ESP integrity            AES-XCBC-MAC-96 [AES-XCBC-MAC]

IKE and IKEv2:
Encryption               AES with 128-bit keys in CBC mode [AES-CBC]
Pseudo-random function   AES-XCBC-PRF-128 [AES-XCBC-PRF-128]
Integrity                AES-XCBC-MAC-96 [AES-XCBC-MAC]
Diffie-Hellman group     2048-bit MODP [RFC3526]

Rekeying of Phase 2 (for IKE) or the CREATE_CHILD_SA (for IKEv2) MUST be
supported by both parties in this suite. The initiator of this exchange
MAY include a new Diffie-Hellman key; if it is included, it MUST be of
type 2048-bit MODP. If the initiator of the exchange includes a
Diffie-Hellman key, the responder MUST include a Diffie-Hellman key, and
it MUST of type 2048-bit MODP.

2.3 Lifetimes for IKEv1

IKEv1 has two security parameters that do not appear in IKEv2, namely
the lifetime of the Phase 1 and Phase 2 SAs. Systems that use IKEv1 with
either the VPN-A or VPN-B suites MUST use an SA lifetime of 86400
seconds (1 day) for Phase 1 and an SA lifetime of 28800 seconds (8
hours) for Phase 2.

3. Acknowledgements

Much of the text and ideas in this document came from earlier versions
of the IKEv2 document edited by Charlie Kaufman. Other text and ideas
were contributed by other members of the IPsec Working Group.

4. Security considerations

This document inherits all of the security considerations of the IPsec,
IKE, and IKEv2 documents.

Some of the security options specified in these suites may be found in
the future to have properties significantly weaker than those that were
believed at the time this document was produced.

5. References

5.1 Normative references

[AES-CBC] "The AES Cipher Algorithm and Its Use With IPsec",
draft-ietf-ipsec-ciph-aes-cbc, work in progress.

[AES-XCBC-MAC] "The AES-XCBC-MAC-96 Algorithm and Its Use With IPsec",
draft-ietf-ipsec-ciph-aes-xcbc-mac, work in progress.

[AES-XCBC-PRF-128] "The AES-XCBC-PRF-128 algorithm for IKE",
draft-ietf-ipsec-aes-xcbc-prf, work in progress.

[IKEv2] "Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) Protocol",
draft-ietf-ipsec-ikev2, work in progress.

[RFC2104] "HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication", RFC 2104.

[RFC2119] "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels",
RFC 2119.

[RFC2401] "Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol", RFC 2401.

[RFC2404] "The Use of HMAC-SHA-1-96 within ESP and AH", RFC 2404.

[RFC2406] "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)", RFC 2406.

[RFC2409] "The Internet Key Exchange (IKE)", RFC 2409.

[RFC2451] "The ESP CBC-Mode Cipher Algorithms", RFC 2451.

[RFC3526] "More MODP Diffie-Hellman groups for IKE", RFC 3526.

6. IANA Considerations

IANA is asked to create and maintain a registry called "Cryptographic
Suites for IKEv1, IKEv2, and IPsec". The registry consists of a text
string and an RFC number that lists the associated transforms. New
entries can be added to the registry only after RFC publication and
approval by an expert designated by the IESG.

The initial values for the new registry are:

Identifier    Defined in
VPN-A         RFC [this document]
VPN-B         RFC [this document]

7. Author's address

Paul Hoffman
VPN Consortium
127 Segre Place
Santa Cruz, CA  95060  USA
paul.hoffman@vpnc.org

A. Changes from the -05 draft

[[ To be removed when turned into an RFC ]]

Changed the IANA considerations to require expert review.