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The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Digest Authentication Scheme
draft-ietf-sipcore-digest-scheme-00

The information below is for an old version of the document.
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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 8760.
Author Rifaat Shekh-Yusef
Last updated 2019-04-18
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draft-ietf-sipcore-digest-scheme-00
SIP Core                                                  R. Shekh-Yusef
Internet-Draft                                                     Avaya
Updates: 3261 (if approved)                               April 18, 2019
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: October 20, 2019

   The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Digest Authentication Scheme
                  draft-ietf-sipcore-digest-scheme-00

Abstract

   This document updates the Digest Access Authentication scheme used by
   the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to add support for secure
   digest algorithms to replace the broken MD5 algorithm.

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
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   Drafts is at https://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 October 20, 2019.

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

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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  The SIP Digest Authentication Scheme  . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Hash Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Representation of Digest Values . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.3.  The Authenticate Response Header  . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.4.  The Authorization Request Header  . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.5.  Forking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.6.  HTTP Modifications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Augmented BNF for the SIP Protocol  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   The SIP protocol [RFC3261] uses the same mechanism used by the HTTP
   protocol for authenticating users, which is a simple challenge-
   response authentication mechanism that allows a server to challenge a
   client request and allows a client to provide authentication
   information in response to that challenge.

   The SIP protocol uses the Digest Authentication scheme that is used
   with the HTTP authentication mechanism, which by default uses MD5 as
   the default algorithm.

   The HTTP Digest Access Authentication [RFC7616] document defines the
   Digest Authentication scheme and defines a few algorithms that could
   be used with the Digest Authentication scheme, and establishes a
   registry for these algorithms to allow for additional algorithms to
   be added in the future.

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   This document updates the Digest Access Authentication scheme used by
   SIP to support the list of digest algorithms defined in the "Hash
   Algorithms for HTTP Digest Authentication" registry defined by
   [RFC7616].

1.1.  Terminology

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

2.  The SIP Digest Authentication Scheme

   This section describes the modifications to the operation of the
   Digest mechanism as specified in [RFC3261] in order to support the
   SHA- 256 and SHA-512/256 algorithms as described in [RFC7616], and
   also to require support for the "qop" option."

2.1.  Hash Algorithms

   The Digest scheme has an 'algorithm' parameter that specifies the
   algorithm to be used to compute the digest of the response.  The IANA
   registry named "HTTP Digest Hash Algorithms" specifies the algorithms
   that correspond to 'algorithm' values, and specifies a priority for
   each algorithm.

   [RFC3261] specifies only one algorithm, MD5, which is used by
   default.  This document extends [RFC3261] to allow use of any
   registered algorithm.

   The priority of the algorithm defines its usage preference.  UAs
   SHOULD prefer algorithms with higher priorities.

   Note that [RFC7616] defines a -sess variant for each algorithm; the
   -sess variants are not used with SIP.

2.2.  Representation of Digest Values

   The size of the digest depends on the algorithm used.  The bits in
   the digest are converted from the most significant to the least
   significant bit, four bits at a time to the ASCII representation as
   follows.  Each four bits is represented by its familiar hexadecimal
   notation from the characters 0123456789abcdef, that is binary 0000 is
   represented by the character '0', 0001 by '1' and so on up to the

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   representation of 1111 as 'f'.  If the MD5 algorithm is used to
   calculate the digest, then the digest will be represented as 32
   hexadecimal characters, SHA-256 and SHA-512/256 by 64 hexadecimal
   characters.

2.3.  The Authenticate Response Header

   When a UAS receives a request from a UAC, and an acceptable
   Authorization header is not sent, the UAS can challenge the
   originator to provide credentials by rejecting the request with a
   401/407 status code with the WWW-Authenticate/Proxy-Authenticate
   header field.  The UAS MAY include multiple WWW-Authenticate/Proxy-
   Authenticate headers to allow the UAS to utilize the best available
   algorithm supported by the client.

   If the UAS challenges with multiple WWW-Authenticate/Proxy-
   Authenticate headers with the same realm, then each one of these
   headers MUST use a different digest algorithm.  The UAS MUST add
   these headers to the response in the order that it would prefer to
   see them used, starting with the most preferred algorithm at the top,
   followed by the less preferred algorithms.

2.4.  The Authorization Request Header

   When the UAC receives a response with multiple headers with the same
   realm it SHOULD use the topmost header that it supports, unless a
   local policy dictates otherwise.  The client MUST ignore any
   challenge it does not understand.

   When the UAC receives a 401 response with multiple WWW-Authenticate
   headers with different realms it SHOULD retry and include an
   Authorization header containing credentials that match the topmost
   header of any one of the realms.

   If the UAC cannot respond to any of the challenges in the response,
   then it should abandon attempts to send the request; e.g., if the UAC
   does not have credentials for any of the realms.

2.5.  Forking

   Section 22.3 of [RFC3261] discusses the operation of the proxy-to-
   user authentication, which describes the operation of the proxy when
   it forks a request.  This section introduces some clarification to
   that operation.

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   If a request is forked, various proxy servers and/or UAs may wish to
   challenge the UAC.  In this case, the forking proxy server is
   responsible for aggregating these challenges into a single response.
   Each WWW-Authenticate and Proxy-Authenticate value received in
   responses to the forked request MUST be placed into the single
   response that is sent by the forking proxy to the UA.

   When the forking proxy places multiple WWW-Authenticate and Proxy-
   Authenticate header fields from one received response into the single
   response it MUST maintain the order of these header fields.  The
   ordering of the header field values from the various proxies is not
   significant.

2.6.  HTTP Modifications

   This section describes the modifications and clarifications required
   to apply the HTTP Digest authentication scheme to SIP.  The SIP
   scheme usage is similar to that for HTTP.  The changes specified here
   are mostly copied from section 22.4 of [RFC3261] with few changes.

   SIP clients and servers MUST NOT accept or request Basic
   authentication.

   The rules for Digest authentication follow those defined in HTTP,
   with "HTTP/1.1" replaced by "SIP/2.0" in addition to the following
   differences:

   1.  The URI included in the challenge has the following BNF:

      URI = Request-URI

   2.  The 'uri' parameter of the Authorization header field MUST be
   enclosed in quotation marks.

   3.  The BNF for digest-uri-value is:

      digest-uri-value = Request-URI

   4.  The example procedure for choosing a nonce based on Etag does not
   work for SIP.

   5.  The text in [RFC7234] regarding cache operation does not apply to
   SIP.

   6.  [RFC7616] requires that a server check that the URI in the
   request line and the URI included in the Authorization header field
   point to the same resource.  In a SIP context, these two URIs may

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   refer to different users, due to forwarding at some proxy.
   Therefore, in SIP, a server MAY check that the Request-URI in the
   Authorization header field value corresponds to a user for whom the
   server is willing to accept forwarded or direct requests, but it is
   not necessarily a failure if the two fields are not equivalent.

   7.  As a clarification to the calculation of the A2 value for message
   integrity assurance in the Digest authentication scheme, implementers
   should assume, when the entity-body is empty (that is, when SIP
   messages have no body) that the hash of the entity-body resolves to
   the hash of an empty string:

      H(entity-body) = <algorithm>("")

   For example, when the chosen algorithm is SHA-256, then:

      H(entity-body) = SHA-256("") =
      "e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855"

   8.  Servers MUST be able to properly handle "qop" parameter received
   in an authorization header field, and clients MUST be able to
   properly handle "qop" parameter received in WWW-Authenticate and
   Proxy-Authenticate header fields.  Servers MUST always send a "qop"
   parameter in WWW-Authenticate and Proxy-Authenticate header field
   values, and clients MUST send the "qop" parameter in any resulting
   authorization header field.

   The usage of the Authentication-Info header field continue to be
   allowed, since it provides integrity checks over the bodies and
   provides mutual authentication.

3.  Augmented BNF for the SIP Protocol

   This document updates the Augmented BNF for the SIP Protocol as
   follows.

   It extends the request-digest as follows to allow for different
   digest sizes:

      request-digest = LDQUOT *LHEX RDQUOT

   The number of hex digits must be specified by the specification of
   the algorithm used.

   It extends the algorithm parameter as follows to allow for SHA2
   algorithms to be used:

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      algorithm = "algorithm" EQUAL ( "MD5" / "SHA-512-256" / "SHA-256"
      / token )

4.  Security Considerations

   This specification adds new secure algorithms to be used to with the
   Digest mechanism to authenticate users, but leaves the broken MD5
   algorithm for backward compatibility.

   This opens the system to the potential of a downgrade attack by man-
   in-the-middle.  The most effective way of dealing with this type of
   attack is to either validate the client and challenge it accordingly,
   or remove the support for backward compatibility by not supporting
   MD5.

   See section 5 of [RFC7616] for a detailed security discussion of the
   Digest scheme.

5.  IANA Considerations

   [RFC7616] defines an IANA registry named "Hash Algorithms for HTTP
   Digest Authentication" to simplify the introduction of new algorithms
   in the future.  This document will use the algorithms defined in that
   registry.

6.  Acknowledgments

   The author would like to thank the following individuals for their
   careful reviews, comments, and suggestions: Paul Kyzivat, Olle
   Johansson, Dale Worley, Michael Procter, Inaki Baz Castillo, Tolga
   Asveren, Christer Holmberg, and Brian Rosen.

7.  Normative References

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

   [RFC3261]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, H., Johnston,
              A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
              Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
              June 2002.

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   [RFC7234]  Fielding, R., Nottingham, M., and J. Reschke, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching", RFC 7234, June
              2014.

   [RFC7616]  Shekh-Yusef, R., Ahrens, D., and S. Bremer, "HTTP Digest
              Access Authentication", RFC 7616, September 2015.

Author's Address

   Rifaat Shekh-Yusef
   Avaya
   425 Legget Dr.
   Ottawa, Ontario
   Canada

   Phone: +1-613-595-9106
   EMail: rifaat.ietf@gmail.com

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