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Integrity Transform Carrying Roll-Over Counter for the Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)
draft-lehtovirta-srtp-rcc-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 4771.
Authors Karl Norrman , Mats Naslund , Vesa Lehtovirta
Last updated 2020-01-21 (Latest revision 2006-10-06)
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Intended RFC status Proposed Standard
Formats
Stream WG state (None)
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state Became RFC 4771 (Proposed Standard)
Action Holders
(None)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD Russ Housley
Send notices to ldondeti@qualcomm.com
draft-lehtovirta-srtp-rcc-06
Internet Engineering Task Force        Lehtovirta, Naslund, Norrman
                                                            (Ericsson)
   INTERNET-DRAFT
   EXPIRES: March 2007                                    October 2006

             Integrity Transform Carrying Roll-over Counter
                   <draft-lehtovirta-srtp-rcc-06.txt>

Status of this memo

   By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
   applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
   have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
   aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire in March 2007.

Abstract

   This document defines an integrity transform for SRTP [RFC3711],
   which allows the roll-over counter (ROC) to be transmitted in SRTP
   packets as part of the authentication tag.  The need for sending the
   ROC in SRTP packets arises in situations where the receiver joins an
   ongoing SRTP session, and needs to quickly and robustly synchronize.
   The mechanism also enhances SRTP operation in cases where there is a
   risk of loosing sender-receiver synchronization.



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   TABLE OF CONTENTS

    1. Introduction...................................................2
    2. The transform..................................................4
    3. Transform modes................................................5
    4. Parameter negotiation..........................................6
    5. Security Considerations........................................8
    6. IANA Considerations...........................................10
    7. Acknowledgements..............................................10
    8. Author's Addresses............................................11
    9. References....................................................11

1. Introduction

   When a receiver joins an ongoing SRTP session, out of band signaling
   must provide the receiver with the value of the ROC the sender is
   currently using.  For instance, it can be transferred in the Common
   Header Payload of a MIKEY [RFC3830] message.  In some cases the
   receiver will not be able to synchronize his ROC with the one used
   by the sender even if it is signaled to him out of band.  Examples
   of where synchronization failure will appear are:

   1. The receiver receives the ROC in a MIKEY message together with
      a key required for a particular continuous service.  He does,
      however, not join the service until after a few hours, at which
      point the sender's sequence number (SEQ) has wrapped around, and
      the sender hence has meanwhile increased the value of ROC.  When
      the user joins the service he grabs the SEQ from the first seen
      SRTP packet and prepends the ROC to build the index.  If
      integrity protection is used, the packet will be discarded.  If
      there is no integrity protection, the packet may (if key
      derivation rate is non-zero) be decrypted using the wrong session
      key as ROC is used as input in session key derivation.  In either
      case, the receiver will not have its ROC synchronized with the
      sender, and it is not possible to recover without out-of-band
      signalling.

   2. If the receiver leaves the session (due to being out of radio
      coverage or because of a user action), and does not start
      receiving traffic from the service again until after 2^15 packets
      has been sent, the receiver will be out of synchronization (for
      the same reasons as in example 1).

   3. The receiver joins a service when the SEQ is close after
      wraparound, say SEQ = 0x0001.  The sender generates a MIKEY
      message, and includes the current value of ROC, say ROC = 1, in

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      the MIKEY message. The MIKEY message reaches the receiver, who
      reads the ROC value and initializes its local ROC to 1.  Now, if
      a SRTP packet prior to wraparound, i.e., with a SEQ lower than 0,
      say SEQ = 0xffff, was delayed and reaches the receiver as the
      first SRTP packet he sees, the receiver will initialize its
      highest received sequence number, s_l, to 0xffff.  Next the
      receiver will receive SRTP packets with sequence numbers larger
      than zero, and will deduce that the SEQ has wrapped.  Hence, the
      receiver will incorrectly update the ROC and will be out of
      synchronization.

   4. Similarly to (3), since the initial SEQ is selected at random by
      the sender, it may happen to be selected as a value very close to
      0xffff.  In this case, should the first few packets be lost, the
      receiver may similarly end up out of synchronization.

   These problems have been recognized in, e.g., 3GPP2 and 3GPP, where
   SRTP is used for streaming media protection in their respective
   multicast/broadcast solutions [BCMCS][MBMS].  Problem 4 actually
   exists inherently due to the way SEQ initialization is done in RTP.

   One possible approach to address the issue could be to carry the ROC
   in the MKI field of each SRTP packet.  This has the advantage that
   the receiver immediately knows the entire index for a packet.
   Unfortunately, the MKI has no semantics in RFC 3711 (other than
   specifying master key), and a regular RFC 3711 compliant
   implementation would not be able to make use of the information
   carried in the MKI.  Furthermore, the MKI field is not integrity
   protected, and hence care must be taken to avoid obvious attacks
   against the synchronization.

   In this document a solution is presented where the ROC is carried in
   the authentication tag of a special integrity transform in selected
   SRTP packets.

   The benefit of this approach is that the functionality of fast and
   robust synchronization can be achieved as a separate integrity
   transform, using the hooks existing in SRTP.  Furthermore, when the
   ROC is transmitted to the receiver it needs to be integrity
   protected, to avoid persistent DoS attacks or transmission errors
   bringing the receiver out of synchronization.  (A DoS attack is
   regarded as persistent if it can last after the attacker has left
   the area, e.g., in this particular case an attacker could modify the
   ROC in one packet and the victim would be out of synchronization
   until the next ROC is transmitted). The above discussion leads to
   that it makes sense to carry the ROC inside the authentication tag
   of an integrity transform.

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   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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

2. The transform

   The transform, hereafter called Roll-over Counter Carrying Transform
   (or RCC for short), works as follows.

   The sender processes the RTP packet according to RFC 3711.  When
   applying the message integrity transform, the sender checks if the
   SEQ is equal to 0 modulo some non-zero integer constant R.  If that
   is the case, the sender computes the MAC in the same way as is done
   when using the default integrity transform (i.e., HMAC-
   SHA1(auth_key, Authenticated_portion || ROC)).  Next the sender
   truncates the MAC by 32 bits to generate MAC_tr, i.e., MAC_tr is the
   tag_length - 32 most significant bits of the MAC.  Next the sender
   constructs the tag as TAG = ROC_sender || MAC_tr, where ROC_sender
   is the value of his local ROC, and appends the tag to the packet.
   See the security considerations section for discussions on the
   effects of shortening the MAC.  In particular note that a tag-length
   of 32 bits gives no security at all.

   If the SEQ is not equal to 0 mod R, the sender just proceeds to
   process the packet according to RFC 3711 without performing the
   actions in the previous paragraph.

   The value R is the rate at which the ROC is included in the SRTP
   packets.  Since the ROC consumes four octets, this gives the
   possibility to use it sparsely.

   When the receiver receives an SRTP packet, it processes the packet
   according to RFC 3711 except that during authentication processing
   ROC_local is replaced by ROC_sender (retrieved from the packet).
   This works as follows.  In the step where integrity protection is to
   be verified, if the SEQ is equal to 0 modulo R, the receiver
   extracts ROC_sender from the TAG and verifies the MAC computed (in
   the same way as if the default integrity transform was used) over
   the authenticated portion of the packet (as defined in [RFC3711])
   but concatenated with ROC_sender instead of concatenated with the
   local_ROC.  The receiver generates MAC_tr for the MAC verification
   in the same was as the sender did.  Note that the session key used
   in the MAC calculation is dependent on the ROC, and during the
   derivation of the session integrity key, the ROC found in the packet

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   under consideration MUST be used.  If the verification is
   successful, the receiver sets his local ROC equal to the ROC carried
   in the packet.  If the MAC does not verify, the packet MUST be
   dropped.  The rationale for using the ROC from the packet in the MAC
   calculation is that if the receiver has an incorrect ROC value, MAC
   verification will fail, and the receiver will not correct his ROC
   because of this.

   If the SEQ is not equal to 0 mod R, the receiver just proceeds to
   process the packet according to RFC 3711 without performing the
   actions in the previous paragraph.

   Since SRTCP already carries the entire index in-band, there is no
   reason to apply this transform to SRTCP.  Hence, the transform SHALL
   only be applied to SRTP, and SHALL NOT be used with SRTCP.

3. Transform modes

   The above given transform only provides integrity protection for the
   packets that carry the ROC (this will be referred to mode 1).  In
   the cases where there is a need to integrity protect all the
   packets, the packets that do not have SEQ equal to 0 mod R, MUST be
   protected using the default integrity transform (this will be
   referred to as mode 2).

   Under some circumstances, it may be acceptable to not use integrity
   protection on any of the packets; this will be referred to as mode
   3.  Without integrity protection of the packets carrying the ROC, a
   DoS attack, that will prevail until the next correctly received ROC,
   is possible.  It should be made sure to carefully read the security
   considerations in Section 5 before using mode 3.

   In case no integrity protection is offered, i.e., mode 3, the
   following applies.  The receiver's SRTP layer SHOULD ignore the ROC
   value from the packet if the application layer can indicate to it
   that the local ROC is synchronized with the sender (the packet would
   hence be processed using the local ROC).  Note that the received ROC
   still MUST be removed from the packet before continued processing.
   In this scenario, the application layer feedback to the SRTP layer
   need not be on a per-packet basis, and it can consist merely of a
   boolean value set by the application layer and read by the SRTP
   layer.

   Thus, note the following difference. Using mode 2 will integrity
   protect all RTP packets, but only add ROC to those having SEQ
   divisible by R.  Using mode 1 and setting R equal to one, will also
   integrity protect all packets, but will in addition add ROC to each

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   packet.  Modes 1 and 2 MUST compute the MAC in the same way as the
   pre-defined authentication transform for SRTP, i.e. HMAC-SHA1.

   To comply with this specification, mode 1, mode 2 and mode 3 are
   MANDATORY to implement.  However, it is up to local policy to decide
   which mode(s) are allowed to be used.

4. Parameter negotiation

   RCC requires that a few parameters are signaled out of band.  The
   parameters that must be in place before the transform can be used
   are integrity transform mode and the rate, R, at which the ROC will
   be transmitted.  This can be done using, e.g., MIKEY [RFC3830].

   To perform the parameter negotiation using MIKEY, there is a need to
   register three integrity transforms, RCCm1, RCCm2 and RCCm3 in Table
   6.10.1.c of [RFC3830] for the three modes defined.

                       Table 1. Integrity transforms

                           SRTP auth alg | Value
                           --------------+------
                           RCCm1         |     2
                           RCCm2         |     3
                           RCCm3         |     4

   Furthermore, the parameter R, must be registered in Table 6.10.1.a
   of [RFC3830].

                   Table 2. Integrity transform parameter

             Type | Meaning                     | Possible values
             -----+-----------------------------+----------------
              13  | ROC transmission rate       |  16-bit integer

   The ROC transmission rate, R, is given with the leftmost bit being
   the most significant.  R MUST be a non-zero unsigned integer.  If
   the ROC transmission rate is not included in the negotiation, the
   default value of 1 SHALL be used.

   To be able to use different integrity transforms for SRTP and SRTCP,
   which is needed in connection to the use of RCC, the following

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   additional parameters must be registered in Table 6.10.1.a of
   [RFC3830]:

                       Table 3. Integrity parameters

           Type | Meaning                     | Possible values
           -----+-----------------------------+----------------
            14  | SRTP Auth. algorithm        | see below
            15  | SRTCP Auth. algorithm       | see below
            16  | SRTP Session Auth. key len  | see below
            17  | SRTCP Session Auth. key len | see below
            18  | SRTP Authentication tag len | see below
            19  | SRTCP Authentication tag len| see below

   The possible values for authentication algorithms (type 14 and 15)
   are the same as for the "Authentication algorithm" parameter (type
   2) in Table 6.10.1.a of RFC3830 with the addition of the values
   found in Table 1 above.

   The possible values for session authentication key lengths (type 16
   and 17) are the same as for the "Session Auth. key length" parameter
   (type 3) in Table 6.10.1.a of RFC3830.

   The possible values for authentication tag lengths (type 18 and 19)
   are the same as for the "Authentication tag length" parameter (type
   11) in Table 6.10.1.a of RFC3830 with the addition that the length
   of ROC MUST be included in the "Authentication tag length"
   parameter.  This means that the minimum tag length when using RCC is
   32 bits.

   To avoid ambiguities when introducing these new parameters that have
   overlapping functionality to existing parameters in Table 6.10.1.a
   of RFC3830, the following approach MUST be taken: If any of the
   parameter types 14-19 (specifying behavior specific to SRTP or
   SRTCP) and a corresponding general parameter (type 2, 3, or 11) are
   both present in the policy, the more specific parameter SHALL have
   precedence. For example, if the "Authentication algorithm" parameter
   (type 2) is set to HMAC-SHA-1 and the "SRTP Auth. Algorithm" (type
   14) is set to RCCm1, SRTP will use the RCCm1 algorithm, but since
   there is no specific algorithm chosen for SRTCP, the more generally
   specified one (HMAC-SHA-1) is used.

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5. Security Considerations

   An analogous method already exists in SRTCP (the SRTCP index is
   carried in each packet under integrity protection) and to the best
   of our knowledge, the only security consideration introduced here is
   that the entire SRTP index (ROC || SEQ) will become public since it
   is transferred without encryption. (In normal SRTP operation, only
   the SEQ-part of the index is disclosed). However, RFC 3711 does not
   identify a need for encrypting the SRTP index.

   It is important to realize that only every Rth packet is integrity
   protected in mode 1, so unless R = 1, the mechanism should be seen
   for what it is: a way to improve sender-receiver synchronization,
   and not a replacement for integrity protection.

   The use of mode 3 (NULL-MAC) introduces a vulnerability not present
   in RFC 3711, namely, if an attacker modifies the ROC, the
   modification will go undetected by the receiver, and the receiver
   will lose cryptographic synchronization until the next correct ROC
   is received.  This implies that an attacker can perform a DoS attack
   by only modifying every Rth packet.  Because of this, NULL-MAC MUST
   only be used after proper risk assessment of the underlying network.
   Besides the considerations in Section 9.5 and 9.5.1 of RFC 3711,
   additional requirements of the underlying transport network must be
   met.

   . The transport network must only consist of trusted domains.  That
      means that everyone on the path from the source to the destination
      is trusted not to modify or inject packets.
   . The transport network must be protected from packet injection,
      i.e., it must be ensured that the only packets present on the path
      from the source to the destination(s) originates from trusted
      sources.
   . If the packets, on their way from the source to the
      destination(s), travel outside of a trusted domain, their
      integrity must be assured (e.g., by using a VPN connection or a
      trusted leased line).

   In the (assumed common) case that the last link to the
   destination(s) is a wireless link, the possibility that an attacker
   injects forged packets here must be carefully considered before
   using NULL-MAC. Especially, if used in a broadcast setting, many
   destinations would be affected by the attack.  However, unless R is
   big, this DoS attack would be similar in effect to radio jamming,
   which would be easier to perform.

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   It must also be noted that if the ROC is modified by an attacker and
   no integrity protection is used, the output of the decryption will
   not be useful to the upper layers, and these must be able to cope
   with the randomly looking data.  In the case integrity protection is
   used on the packets containing the ROC and the ROC is modified by an
   attacker (and the receiver already has an approximation of the ROC,
   e.g., by getting it previously), the packet will be discarded and
   the receiver will not be able to decrypt correctly.  Note however
   that the situation is better in the later case, since the receiver
   now can try different ROC values in a neighborhood around the
   approximate value he already has.

   As RCC is expected to be used in a broadcast setting where group
   membership will be based on access to a symmetric group key, it is
   important to point out the following.  With symmetric key based
   integrity protection, it may be as easy, if not easier, to get
   access to the integrity key (often a combination of a low-cost
   activity of purchasing a subscription and breaking the security of a
   terminal to extract the integrity key) as being able to transmit.

   A word of warning is in place when it comes to the choice of length
   of the authentication tag.  It shall be noted that, in contrast to
   common MAC tags, there is a clear distinction made between the RCC
   authentication tag and the RCC MAC.  The tag is the container
   holding the MAC (and for some packets also the ROC), and the MAC is
   the output from the MAC-algorithm (i.e., HMAC-SHA1).  The length of
   the authentication tag with the RCC transform includes the four
   octet ROC in some packets. This means that for a tag-length of n
   octets, there is only room for a MAC of length n - 4, i.e., a tag-
   length of n octets does not provide a full n-octet integrity
   protection on all packets.  There are five cases:

      1. RCCm1 is used and tag-length is n.  For those packets that SEQ
        = 0 mod R, the ROC is carried in the tag and occupies four
        octets.  This leaves n - 4 octets for the MAC.

      2. RCCm1 is used and tag-length is n.  For those packets that SEQ
        != 0 mod R, there is no ROC carried in the tag.  For RCCm1
        there is no MAC on packets not carrying the ROC, so neither the
        length of the MAC nor the length of the tag has any relevance.

      3. RCCm2 is used and tag-length is n.  For those packets that SEQ
        = 0 mod R, the ROC is carried in the tag and occupies four
        octets.  This leaves n - 4 octets for the MAC (this is
        equivalent to case 1).

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      4. RCCm2 is used and tag-length is n.  For those packets that SEQ
        != 0 mod R, there is no ROC carried in the tag.  This leaves n
        octets for the MAC.

      5. RCCm3 is used.  RCCm3 does not use any MAC, but the ROC still
        occupies four octets in the tag for packets with SEQ = 0 mod R,
        so the tag-length MUST be set to four.  For packets with SEQ !=
        0 mod R, neither the length of the MAC nor the length of the
        tag has any relevance.

   The conclusion is that in cases 1 and 3, the length of the MAC is
   shorter than the length of the authentication tag.  To achieve the
   same (or less) MAC forgery success probability on all packets when
   using RCCm1 or RCCm2, as with the default integrity transform in
   RFC3711, the tag-length must be set to 14 octets, which means that
   the length of MAC_tr is 10 octets.

   It is recommended to set the tag-length to 14 octets when RCCm1 or
   RCCm2 is used, and the tag-length MUST be set to four octets when
   RCCm3 is used.

6. IANA Considerations

   Please add the following to the IANA registry at
   http://www.iana.org/assignments/mikey-payloads (This paragraph to be
   removed after IANA processing).

   According to Section 10 of RFC 3830, IETF consensus is required to
   register values in the range 0-240 in the SRTP auth alg namespace
   and the SRTP Type namespace.

   It is requested to register the value 2 for RCCm1,the value 3 for
   RCCm2 and the value 4 for RCCm3 in the SRTP auth alg namespace as
   specified in Table 1 in Section 4.

   It is also requested to register the value 13 for ROC transmission
   rate in the SRTP Type namespace as specified in Table 2 in Section
   4.

   It is also requested to register the values 14 to 19 according to
   Table 3 in Section 4 to the SRTP Type namespace.

7. Acknowledgements

   We would like to thank Nigel Dallard, Lakshminath Dondeti and David
   McGrew for fruitful comments and discussions.

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8. Author's Addresses

   Questions and comments should be directed to the authors:

      Vesa Lehtovirta
      Ericsson Research
      02420 Jorvas           Phone:  +358 9 2993314
      Finland                EMail:  vesa.lehtovirta@ericsson.com

      Mats Naslund
      Ericsson Research
      SE-16480 Stockholm     Phone:  +46 8 58533739
      Sweden                 EMail:  mats.naslund@ericsson.com

      Karl Norrman
      Ericsson Research
      SE-16480 Stockholm     Phone:  +46 8 4044502
      Sweden                 EMail:  karl.norrman@ericsson.com

9. References

   Normative

   [RFC3830] Arkko et al., "MIKEY: Multimedia Internet KEYing", RFC
   3830, August 2004.

   [RFC3711] Baugher et al., "The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol
   (SRTP)", RFC3711, March 2004.

   [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key Words for Use in RFCs to Indicate
   Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC2119, March 1997.

   Informative

   [MBMS] 3GPP TS 33.246, "Technical Specification 3rd Generation
   Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Services and
   System Aspects; Security; Security of Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast
   Service."

   [BCMCS] 3GPP2 X.S0022-0, "Broadcast and Multicast Service in
   cdma2000 Wireless IP network"

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