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Requirements for Diet-ESP the IPsec/ESP protocol for IoT
draft-mglt-6lo-diet-esp-requirements-00

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Authors Daniel Migault , Tobias Guggemos
Last updated 2015-01-08
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draft-mglt-6lo-diet-esp-requirements-00
6lo                                                      D. Migault, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                    Orange
Intended status: Standards Track                        T. Guggemos, Ed.
Expires: July 12, 2015                                        LMU Munich
                                                        January 08, 2015

        Requirements for Diet-ESP the IPsec/ESP protocol for IoT
              draft-mglt-6lo-diet-esp-requirements-00.txt

Abstract

   IPsec/ESP is used to secure end-to-end communications.  This document
   lists the requirements Diet-ESP should meet to design IPsec/ESP for
   IoT.

Status of This Memo

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   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on July 12, 2015.

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   Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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Table of Contents

   1.  Requirements notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Protocol Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   5.  Byte-Alignment  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   6.  Crypto-Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   7.  Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   8.  Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   9.  Code Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   10. Usability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   11. Compatibility with IP compression Protocols . . . . . . . . .   6
   12. Compatibility with Standard ESP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   13. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   14. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   15. Acknowledgment  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   16. Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Appendix A.  Power Consumption Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Appendix B.  Document Change Log  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Requirements notation

   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.  Introduction

   IoT devices can carry all kind of small applications and some of them
   require a secure communication.  They can be life critical devices
   (like a fire alarm), security critical devices (like home theft
   alarms) and home automation devices.  Smart grid is one application
   where supplied electricity is based on information provided by each
   home.  Similarly, home temperature might be determined by servo-
   controls based on information provided by temperature sensors.

   Using IPsec [RFC4301] in the IoT world provides some advantages, such
   as:

   -  IPsec secures application communications transparently as security
      is handled at the IP layer.  As such, applications do not need to
      be modified to be secured.

   -  IPsec does not depend on the transport layer.  As a result, the
      security framework remains the same for all transport protocols,
      like UDP or TCP.

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   -  IPsec is well designed for sleeping nodes as there are no
      sessions.

   -  IPsec defines security rules for the whole device, which outsource
      the device security to a designated area.  Therefore IPsec can be
      seen like a tiny firewall securing all communication for an IoT
      device.

   IPsec is mostly implemented in the kernel, whereas application are in
   the user space.  This is often considered as a disadvantage for
   IPsec.  However, as there are no real distinctions between these two
   spaces in IoT and that IoT devices are mostly designed to a specific
   and unique task, this may not be an issue anymore.

   IoT constraints have not been considered in the early design of
   IPsec.  In fact IPsec has mainly been designed to secure
   infrastructure.  This document describes the requirements of Diet-
   ESP, the declination of IPsec/ESP for IoT, enabling optimized IPsec/
   ESP for the IoT.

3.  Terminology

   -  IoT: Internet of Things

4.  Protocol Design

   Diet-ESP is based on IPsec/ESP and is adapted for IoT. Adaptation to
   IoT scenarios must not be at the expense of security, and the
   security evaluation of Diet-ESP should benefit as far as possible
   from the long experience of already existing protocols.  As a result
   the protocol design requirements for Diet-ESP are as follows:

   R1: Diet-ESP MUST benefit from the IPsec/ESP security.

   R2: Diet-ESP MUST NOT introduce vulnerabilities over IPsec/ESP.  This
      means that at some points IPsec/ESP is implemented.  A foreseen
      way to reach that goal is to associate IPsec/ESP with compressors/
      decompressors.

   R3: Diet-ESP SHOULD rely on existing protocol or frameworks.

5.  Byte-Alignment

   IP extension headers MUST have 32 bit Byte-Alignment in IPv4 (section
   3.1 of [RFC0791] - Padding description) and a 64 bit Byte-Alignment
   in IPv6 (section 4 of [RFC2460]).  As ESP [RFC4303] is such an
   extension header, padding is mandatory to meet the alignment
   constraint.  This alignment is mostly caused by compiler and OS

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   requirements dealing with a 32 or 64 Bit processor.  In the world of
   IoT, processors and compilers are highly specialized and alignment is
   often not necessary 32 Bit, but 16 or 8 bit.  As a result, the byte-
   alignment requirement is as follows:

   R4: Diet-ESP MUST support Byte-Alignment that are different from 32
      bits or 64 bits to prevent unnecessary padding.

   R5: Each peer MUST be able to advertise and negotiate the Byte-
      Alignment, used for Diet-ESP.  This could be done for example
      during the IKEv2 exchange.

6.  Crypto-Suites

   IEEE 802.15.4 defines AES-CCM*, that is AES-CTR and CBC-MAC, for link
   layer security with upper layer key-management.  Therefore it is
   usually supported by hardware acceleration.  This leads to the
   following crypto-suite requirement:

   R6: Diet-ESP MUST support AES-CCM and MUST be able to take advantage
      of AES-CCM hardware acceleration.  Diet-ESP MAY support other
      modes.

7.  Compression

   Sending data is very expensive regarding to power consumption, as
   illustrated in Appendix A. Compression can be performed at different
   layers.  An encrypted ESP packet is an ESP Clear Text Data encrypted
   and eventually concatenated with the Initialization Vector IV to form
   an Encrypted Data Payload.  This encrypted Data Payload is then
   placed between an ESP Header and an ESP Trailer.  Eventually, this
   packet is authenticated with an ICV appended to ESP Trailer.
   Compression can be performed at the ESP layer that is to say for the
   fields of the ESP Header, ESP Trailer and the ICV.  In addition, ESP
   Clear Text Data may also be compressed with non ESP mechanisms like
   ROHC [RFC3095], [RFC5225] for example, resulting in a smaller payload
   to be encrypted.  If ESP is using encryption, these mechanisms MUST
   be performed over the ESP Clear Text Data before the ESP/Diet-ESP
   processing as missing of encrypted fields make decryption harder.  As
   a result, compression requirements are as follows:

   R7: Diet-ESP MUST be able to compress/remove all static ESP fields
      (SPI, Next Header) as well as the other fields SN, Padding, Pad
      Length or ICV.

   R8: Diet-ESP SHOULD also allow compression mechanisms before the
      IPsec/ESP processing.

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   R9: Diet-ESP SHOULD NOT allow compressed fields, not aligned to 1
      byte in order to prevent alignment complexity.  In other words,
      Diet-ESP do not consider finer granularity than the byte.

8.  Flexibility

   Diet-ESP can compress some of the ESP fields as Diet-ESP is optimized
   for IoT. Which field may be compressed or not, depends on the
   scenario and current and future scenarios cannot been foreseen.  As a
   result, the flexibility requirements are as follows:

   R10: Diet-ESP MUST be able to compress any field independently from
      another.

   R11: Diet-ESP SHOULD provide different ways to compress a single
      field, so the most appropriated way can be agreed between the
      peers.

   R12: Each peer MUST be able to announce and negotiate the different
      compressed fields as well as the used method.

   In fact Diet-ESP and ESP differs in the following point: ESP has been
   designed so that any ESP secured communication so any device is able
   to communicate with another.  This means that ESP has been designed
   to work for large Security Gateway under thousands of connections, as
   well as devices with a single ESP communication.  Because, ESP has
   been designed not to introduce any protocol limitations, counters and
   identifiers may become over-sized in an IoT context.

9.  Code Complexity

   IoT devices have limited space for memory and storage, which leads to
   the following requirement.

   R13: Diet-ESP MUST be able to be implemented with minimal complexity.
      More especially, Diet-ESP MUST consider small implementation that
      implement only a subset of all Diet-ESP capabilities without
      requiring involving standard ESP, specific compressors and de-
      compressors.

10.  Usability

   Application Developer usually do not want to take care about the
   underlying protocols and security.  In addition, the security
   configuration should remain feasible by a standard software
   developer.  The usability requirements regarding Diet-ESP are as
   follows:

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   R14: Diet-ESP MUST remain independent from the application.

   R15: Diet-ESP MUST detail for each field how compression impacts the
      security of the device.  Although the creation of profiles is out
      of scope of Diet-ESP, it is expected that profiles may be defined
      latter by the usage.

11.  Compatibility with IP compression Protocols

   There are different protocols providing IP layer compression for
   constraint devices like IoT (6LoWPAN [RFC6282] ) or Mobile Devices
   (ROHC).  The requirements regarding interactions of Diet-ESP and
   additional compression protocols are as follows:

   R16: Diet-ESP MUST be able to interact with IP compression protocols.
      More especially, this means that a Diet-ESP packet MUST be able to
      be sent in a ROHC or a 6LowPAN packet.  Diet-ESP document should
      explicitly detail how this can be achieved.

   R17: Diet-ESP MUST also detail how compression of layers above IP
      with ROHC or 6LowPAN is compatible with Diet-ESP.

12.  Compatibility with Standard ESP

   IPsec/ESP is widely deployed by different vendors on different
   machines.  IoT devices MAY have to communicate with Standard ESP
   implementations.  The ESP compatibility requirements is as follows:

   R18: Diet-ESP MUST be able to communicate with Standard ESP.

13.  IANA Considerations

   There are no IANA consideration for this document.

14.  Security Considerations

   Security Considerations have been expressed as one of the
   requirement.

15.  Acknowledgment

   The current work on Diet-ESP results from exchange and cooperation
   between Orange, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Munich, Universite
   Pierre et Marie Curie.  We thank Daniel Palomares and Carsten Bormann
   for their useful remarks, comments and guidances on the design.  We
   thank Sylvain Killian for implementing an open source Diet-ESP on
   Contiki and testing it on the FIT IoT-LAB [fit-iot-lab] funded by the
   French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.  We thank the IoT-

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   Lab Team and the INRIA for maintaining the FIT IoT-LAB platform and
   for providing feed backs in an efficient way.

16.  Normative References

   [RFC0791]  Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, September
              1981.

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

   [RFC2460]  Deering, S.E. and R.M. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version
              6 (IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.

   [RFC3095]  Bormann, C., Burmeister, C., Degermark, M., Fukushima, H.,
              Hannu, H., Jonsson, L-E., Hakenberg, R., Koren, T., Le,
              K., Liu, Z., Martensson, A., Miyazaki, A., Svanbro, K.,
              Wiebke, T., Yoshimura, T., and H. Zheng, "RObust Header
              Compression (ROHC): Framework and four profiles: RTP, UDP,
              ESP, and uncompressed", RFC 3095, July 2001.

   [RFC4301]  Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the
              Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005.

   [RFC4303]  Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)", RFC
              4303, December 2005.

   [RFC5225]  Pelletier, G. and K. Sandlund, "RObust Header Compression
              Version 2 (ROHCv2): Profiles for RTP, UDP, IP, ESP and
              UDP-Lite", RFC 5225, April 2008.

   [RFC6282]  Hui, J. and P. Thubert, "Compression Format for IPv6
              Datagrams over IEEE 802.15.4-Based Networks", RFC 6282,
              September 2011.

   [fit-iot-lab]
              , "Future Internet of Things (FIT) IoT-LAB", , <https://
              www.iot-lab.info>.

Appendix A.  Power Consumption Example

   IoT devices are often installed once and left untouched for a couple
   of years.  Furthermore they often do not have a power supply
   wherefore they have to be fueled by a battery.  This battery may have
   a limited capacity and maybe not replaceable.  Therefore, power can
   be a limited resource in the world of IoT. Table 1 and Table 2 shows
   the costs for transmitting data and computation

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   Note these data are mentioned here with an illustrative purpose, for
   our motivations.  These data may vary from one device to another, and
   may change over time.

           +-------------------------+---------------------+
           |                         | power consumption   |
           +-------------------------+---------------------+
           | low-power radios < 10mW | (100nJ - 1uJ) / bit |
           +-------------------------+---------------------+

             Table 1: Power consumption for data transmission.

       +----------------------------------+---------------------+
       |                                  | power consumption   |
       +----------------------------------+---------------------+
       | energy-efficient microprocessors | 0.5nJ / instruction |
       | high-performance microprocessors | 200nJ / instruction |
       +----------------------------------+---------------------+

                Table 2: Power consumption for computation.

   From these tables, sending 1 bit costs as much as 10-100 instructions
   in the CPU.  Therefore there is a high interest to reduce the number
   of bits sent on the wire, even if it generates costs for computation.

Appendix B.  Document Change Log

   [draft-mglt-6lo-diet-esp-requirements-00.txt]: Published: Minor re-
   wordings

   [draft-mglt-ipsecme-diet-ipsec-requirements-00.txt]: First version
   published.

Authors' Addresses

   Daniel Migault (editor)
   Orange
   38 rue du General Leclerc
   92794 Issy-les-Moulineaux Cedex 9
   France

   Phone: +33 1 45 29 60 52
   Email: mglt.ietf@gmail.com

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   Tobias Guggemos (editor)
   LMU Munich
   Am Osteroesch 9
   87637 Seeg, Bavaria
   Germany

   Email: tobias.guggemos@gmail.com

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