An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of Web Insecurity
draft-tschofenig-secure-the-web-01
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
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| Authors | Mike Hanson , Hannes Tschofenig , Sean Turner | ||
| Last updated | 2012-05-09 | ||
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draft-tschofenig-secure-the-web-01
Network Working Group M. Hanson
Internet-Draft Mozilla
Intended status: Informational H. Tschofenig
Expires: November 10, 2012 Nokia Siemens Networks
S. Turner
IECA, Inc.
May 9, 2012
An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of Web Insecurity
draft-tschofenig-secure-the-web-01.txt
Abstract
The year 2011 has been quite exciting from a Web security point of
view: a number of high-profile security incidents have gotten a lot
of press attention but also new initiatives, such as the National
Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), had been
launched to improve the Web identity eco-system. The NSTIC strategy
paper, for example, observes problems with Internet security due to
the widespread usage of low-entropy passwords and the lack of widely
deployed authentication and attribute assurance services.
With this memorandum we try to develop a shared vision for how to
deal with the most pressing Internet security problems.
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 November 10, 2012.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. From Documents to Mobile Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Mashups and Data Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. The Real-Time Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Roadmap for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. From Two-Party to N-Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8. Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
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1. Introduction
HTTP is an IETF standard and documented in RFC 2616 [RFC2616] and
provides the core foundation of the browser-based platform but is
also widely used for non-browser-based applications. Like any other
specification in the IETF HTTP also comes with various security
mechanims. Digest authentication support in HTTP was published in
1997 with RFC 2069 [RFC2069] and later updated in 1999 by RFC 2617
[RFC2617]. The HTTP state management mechanism, namely cookies, was
initially published in 1997 with RFC 2109 [RFC2109], and re-written
in 2000 by RFC 2965 [RFC2965].
For client side authentication two different solution tracks have
therefore been offered from the IETF, namely TLS client side
authenication (at that time using certificates) and also application
level authentication via HTTP basic and digest. TLS client
authentication was quite complex for users to configure (and still is
complex today). HTTP based authentication on the other hand did not
found widespread usage either for a number of reasons. First, the
user interface was rendered differently than in regular Web
application form making it less attractive for users. At that time
HTTP had a semantic that was closer to file system access control and
therefore the decision making process was binary, either the user was
granted access to the resource or it wasn't. With the HTTP 401 there
was no way for a user to, for example, recover from a lost password
or other forms of failure cases. The authentication and
authorization process was not seen as continuium but rather as a
binary decision. For these reasons form-based authentication
mechanisms had found widespread acceptance by the Web application
developer community. To add to this problem cookies were and still
are the most common mechanism for session management, i.e., a non-
cryptographic way to bind the initial authentication to the
subsequent HTTP protocol exchanges. Cookies introduce various
weaknesses into HTTP, including the ability for attackers to perform
session hijacking.
In the last few years a few other standardization efforts were
started: RFC 2965 HTTP state management specification was recently
revised to capture deployment reality [RFC6265]. HTTP Strict
Transport Layer Security (HSTS)
[I-D.ietf-websec-strict-transport-sec] allows Web sites to declare
themselves accessible only via secure connections, and the attemp to
clarify the Web Origin Concept [I-D.ietf-websec-origin], which covers
the principles that underlies the concept of origin as used to scope
of authority or privilege by user agents. The HTTPbis Working Group
[I-D.ietf-httpbis-p7-auth] revises RFC 2616 plus those parts from RFC
2617 that describe the authentication schemes.
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A lot has changed over the last 10 years in the Web eco-system, as
briefly described in the sub-sections below, and various efforts are
still ongoing or have recently been started to provide make Web
applications even more powerful. Unfortunately, the underlying Web
platform had not been able to keep up with these changes and the
security weaknesses will only became more apparent. It is time to
tackle this problem and to develop a common understanding of the
problem and the desired design goals.
1.1. From Documents to Mobile Code
During the last 10 years the Web has changed quite fundamentally with
the widespread usage of JavaScript. While Web pages have for a long
time been dynamically generated the ever increasing capabilities of
JavaScript, with respect to functionality and performance, have
changed the security model. A typical Website collects content from
multiple other Web sites and delivers it to the user's browser and by
delivering code inside HTML new security challenges have emerged.
Also the standardization landscape had been challenged by this new
development and [I-D.tschofenig-post-standardization] documents
architectural implications.
1.2. Mashups and Data Sharing
With the increasing specialization of Web sites developers started to
outsource functionality to other sites. Partially this is a user-
convenience aspect (e.g., users do not want to create a new address
book with every site, publish their latest status on each and every
site again and again) but often also driven by business interestes.
In any case, the need to access resources hosted on other sites
emerged and often these resources were not visible to everyone.
Sharing long-term passwords is considered a bad habit and
consequently the Web Authorization (OAuth) protocol
[I-D.ietf-oauth-v2] started to become used widely. OAuth avoids the
need to share long-term credentials with random Web sites.
1.3. The Real-Time Web
As HTTP became the protocol of choice for many application
developers, also because of it's ability to go through firewalls and
NATs, requirements for asynchronous protocol communication had to be
addressed as well. HTTP, as a request/response protocol, was
initially not designed for pushing data from the server-side to the
client as soon as it is available. Long polling requests and other
tricks had been used to allow bi-directional communication between
the HTTP client and the HTTP server. More recently the BiDirectional
or Server-Initiated HTTP (hybi) working group was created, which only
concerns one aspect of real-time communication. To allow one Web
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browser to communicate directly with another Web browser the same-
origin security framework utilized by the browser has to be bypassed
and the work on Real-Time Communication in WEB-browsers (rtcweb) was
chartered very recently to develop a architecture. More details can
be found in [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-security] and in
[I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview]. Extending Web clients with real-time
communication capabilities opens the doors for a large number of
applications that had previously only been available for downloadable
applications.
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2. 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].
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3. Passwords
Passwords present a number of challenges, including:
o Users re-use the same password at multiple sites. This allows a
rouge provider to attempt to impersonate users on other sites.
o Password are often stored in cleartext. In case of a data breach
account information, including the password, becomes accessible to
an attacker.
o Users are tricked in typing their password into a Website
maintained by the attacker. Furthermore, some Websites request
username and password for access to protected resources maintained
by other Websites for usability purposes.
o many password based authenication protocols are not secure against
eavesdropping, or allow easy ways for offline dictionary attacks.
So, why do we need passwords at all? It is easy to dream up
solutions that uses hardware-based mechanisms (e.g., such as hardware
tokens). There are, however, reasons why alternatives have not found
widespread deployment on the Internet, such as
o Passwords are cheap (at least the primary costs) for user's and
service providers. Hardware tokens on the other hand have a
certain amount of cost associated with them.
o Provisioning new users with passwords is easy. Tools and
processes exist and are widely accepted.
o Service providers have no external dependency when they manage
user accounts themselves (unlike with many third party identity
management solutions).
o Users are familiar with password-based systems and the acceptance
is good.
o Passwords can easily be delegated to others.
o Users typically feel quite secure when they are using shared
secrets and it fits into their mental model of self-securing.
o Passwords can easily be transferred to multiple devices used by a
single user.
Note that the credential question and the actual form of where these
credentials are stored (e.g., software, hardware) is orthogonal to
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the actual identity proofing process. Stronger form of identity
proofing (e.g., in the form of in person identity proofing with a
passport) can be quite expensive. There are also secondary costs in
the form of support calls and education if credential provisioning is
more complicated, as it is often the case with client certificates.
Regardless how many disadvantages passwords have they will be with us
for a long time. As such, out attempt is therefore to start from the
currently deployment and to look towards a future where fewer of them
are used, and if they are used then in a more secure fashion.
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4. Roadmap for the Future
It is our aim to accomplish three types of goals:
1. Reduce the number of passwords used
2. Increase the safety and security of how passwords are used
3. Broaden the use of other credentials
A non-goal of this document is to evaluate ways for improving
identity proofing, which is a requirement for accomplishing higher
levels of assurance.
We do not believe that the technical community should be attempting
to come up with the single and best solution to satisfy these three
goals. We would like to leave room for innovation and room for many
different solutions to co-exist. Therefore, we try to highlight a
few guiding principles that solutions should follow.
Move Authentication down into the Platform:
Exposing authentication protocol functionality to the user and
requiring Web application developers to write security related
code has proven to lead to various problems. Avoid user
interaction related to security whenever possible but keep in mind
that authorization decisions, particularly with regard to data
sharing, require a consent. Ensure that library support is
available for Web developers to allow them easy integration of
security functionality into their applications. Unfortunately a
protocol design also needs to consider the transition scenario
where the Web endpoints are not yet upgraded to support the new
functionality and that the authentication functionality is not yet
available.
Design for Growth:
No single authentication mechanism nor credential is able to
fulfill all use cases. Design for later extensions and develop
the protocol architecture in such a way that components are
interchangable. In particular, there are a number of
authentication mechanisms already in use in other deployment
environments.
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Context Matters:
Users require context for all disclosures and the sequence of
interactions matters. A monolitic authentication protocol that
provides mutual authentication is less likely going to capture the
context related disclosures. Server-side authentication is the
first interaction that will have to be provided to guarantee
genuine content as well as the prerequisity of an early setup for
a confidentiality protected channel. Client side authentication
may, however, come at a much later stage of the application
interaction. It is often bundled with an authorization decision
where different application execution paths depend on the level of
authorization.
Discussion: Is it indeed given that client authentication will
have to happen at a later stage given that platform-level
authentication proliferates and "authenticated by default"
becomes the norm? If so, then strong signals in UIs of
authenticated status, identity selection, and anonymous/
pseudonymous modes become more important. One could compare
this to the evolution in the telephony communication where
caller ID information was initially not provided but became the
norm later and blocking the caller ID instead became the
expection.
Transform Long-Term Passwords to Short-Term Credentials:
One of the function of authentication protocols is to transform
long-term credentials into short term secrets. Long-term
credentials, such as passwords, require substantial protection in
a protocol exchange and therefore this interaction often leads to
a computationally expensive, multi-roundtrip protocol exchange.
We do, however, encourage protocol designers to make heavier use
of this transformation step into short term credentials.
Furthermore, the initial step of entity authentication cannot be
seen in isolution of the ultimate purpose of application protocol
interaction that requires session management to take place. While
this session management today happens in most cases in a non-
cryptographic way (i.e., without data origin authentication) we
believe it is time revisit this practice.
Keep the User Experience in Mind:
Design your protocol stack in such a way that developers up the
stack can give good advice to users. The use case analysis should
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include common failure scenarios since error paths need as much
expressiveness as success paths, whereby expressiveness refers to
the ability to communicate with the user about failure cases.
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5. From Two-Party to N-Party
It would be short sighted to write about a topic like this without
touching a commonly desired way to reduce the number of long term
credentials: federated login
Federated login allows a user to utilize his credential obtained from
one organization, acting as the Identity Provider, for accessing a
resource at another, who acts as a Relying Party. While this
approach addresses some of our design goals it causes secondary
problems to appear; particularly related to privacy.
The following issues in this transition from a two-party to a three-
party model are to observe:
Introduction:
How do the three parties find each other? In particular, how does
the user (via his user agent) inform the relying party about the
identity provider it wants to use? How does the relying party
inform the user agent (and user) about the identity providers it
is able and willing to interact with? How does the relying party
find the identity provider for a given user?
Mutual Authentication:
How do we ensure that each party is authenticated to each other?
Authorization and Trust:
What information should the user share with the relying party and
how can he be reassured that the information is used in the way he
permitted? What information is needed by the Relying Party for
the application specific functionality? How is the identity
provider able to protect its users against misbehaving relying
parties?
Collusion:
How should a user be protected against identity providers and
relying parties conspiring?
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Security:
How can it be ensured that the interactions between the three
parties are not manipulated or attacked?
Note: While this text talks about three parties there may well be
more parties involved in the exchange. The role of the identity
consists of a credential provider and an attribute provider that may
be provided by different parties. Furthermore, attributes associated
with personal data may be contributed by multiple attribute
providers, not just by a single entity. There may also be additional
parties involved in the communication between the identity provider
and the relying party the trust path from the identity provider to
the relying party.
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6. IANA Considerations
This document does not require actions by IANA.
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7. Acknowledgments
The content of this document has been created based on discussions
with a number of persons, including
o Jeff Hodges
o Michael Garcia
o Adam Barth
o Brad Hill
o Dan Mills
o Ed Felton
o Tara Whalen
o Andy Steingruebl
o Tim Polk
o Dirk Balfanz
o Nico Williams
o Tobias Gondrom
o Julian Reschke
We would like to thank them for their input. We would also like to
thank the participants of the May 2011 W3C Identity in the Browser
workshop for their discussion feedback.
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8. Open Issues
This document version serves as a starting point for a discussion.
As such, there are several things not yet mentioned, such as
o The introduction section should also point to SPDY as recent
development in the are of HTTP evolution.
o The browser security model should be briefly described. As a
comparison, in the browser, we use cross-site communication
techniques (redirects, JavaScript) and SSL. In the OS/platform,
we use trusted APIs, e.g., signed code, OS-level APIs. In the
hardware, we use trusted computing bases (e.g., SIM cards or
locked-down platforms).
o The current document does not discuss how the relying party can
trust the information it receives from the identity provider nor
how the identity provider makes sure that the relying party adhere
to any privacy requirements it has. Various models for
accomplishing this trust have been mentioned in the past,
including trust frameworks as used by the General Services
Administration (GSA) Identity, Credential and Access Management
(ICAM), or the work envisioned by Application Bridging for
Federated Access Beyond web (abfab) [I-D.ietf-abfab-arch].
o The document should also discuss the problems related to the PKI
as used by web browsers, the procedures for how trust anchors are
provisioned, and the lack of liability in the PKI.
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9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
[RFC2617] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P., Hostetler, J., Lawrence, S.,
Leach, P., Luotonen, A., and L. Stewart, "HTTP
Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication",
RFC 2617, June 1999.
[RFC2109] Kristol, D. and L. Montulli, "HTTP State Management
Mechanism", RFC 2109, February 1997.
[RFC6265] Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265,
April 2011.
[RFC2965] Kristol, D. and L. Montulli, "HTTP State Management
Mechanism", RFC 2965, October 2000.
9.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-oauth-v2]
Hammer-Lahav, E., Recordon, D., and D. Hardt, "The OAuth
2.0 Authorization Framework", draft-ietf-oauth-v2-26 (work
in progress), May 2012.
[RFC5849] Hammer-Lahav, E., "The OAuth 1.0 Protocol", RFC 5849,
April 2010.
[I-D.ietf-websec-origin]
Barth, A., "The Web Origin Concept",
draft-ietf-websec-origin-06 (work in progress),
October 2011.
[I-D.ietf-websec-strict-transport-sec]
Hodges, J., Jackson, C., and A. Barth, "HTTP Strict
Transport Security (HSTS)",
draft-ietf-websec-strict-transport-sec-07 (work in
progress), May 2012.
[RFC2069] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P., Hostetler, J., Leach, P.,
Luotonen, A., Sink, E., and L. Stewart, "An Extension to
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HTTP : Digest Access Authentication", RFC 2069,
January 1997.
[I-D.ietf-abfab-arch]
Howlett, J., Hartman, S., Tschofenig, H., and E. Lear,
"Application Bridging for Federated Access Beyond Web
(ABFAB) Architecture", draft-ietf-abfab-arch-01 (work in
progress), March 2012.
[I-D.ietf-httpbis-p7-auth]
Fielding, R., Lafon, Y., and J. Reschke, "HTTP/1.1, part
7: Authentication", draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth-19 (work in
progress), March 2012.
[I-D.tschofenig-post-standardization]
Aboba, B., McPherson, D., Tschofenig, H., and J. Peterson,
"Trends in Web Applications and the Implications on
Standardization", draft-tschofenig-post-standardization-01
(work in progress), October 2011.
[I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview]
Alvestrand, H., "Overview: Real Time Protocols for Brower-
based Applications", draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview-03 (work
in progress), March 2012.
[I-D.ietf-rtcweb-security]
Rescorla, E., "Security Considerations for RTC-Web",
draft-ietf-rtcweb-security-02 (work in progress),
March 2012.
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Authors' Addresses
Mike Hanson
Mozilla
Phone:
Email: mhanson@mozilla.com
Hannes Tschofenig
Nokia Siemens Networks
Linnoitustie 6
Espoo 02600
Finland
Phone: +358 (50) 4871445
Email: Hannes.Tschofenig@gmx.net
URI: http://www.tschofenig.priv.at
Sean Turner
IECA, Inc.
3057 Nutley Street, Suite 106
Fairfax, VA 22031
USA
Phone:
Email: turners@ieca.com
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