Network Working Group A. Farrel
Internet-Draft Juniper Networks
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: July 21, 2014 S. Farrell
Trinity College, Dublin
January 21, 2014
Opportunistic Encryption in MPLS Networks
draft-farrelll-mpls-opportunistic-encrypt-01.txt
Abstract
This document describes a way to apply opportunistic encryption
between adjacent nodes on an MPLS Label Switched Path (LSP) or
between end points of an LSP. It explains how keys may be exchanged
to enable the encryption, and indicates how key identifiers are
exchanged in encrypted MPLS packets. Finally, this document
describes the applicability of opportunistic encryption in MPLS
networks with an indication of the level of improved security as well
as the continued vulnerabilities.
This document does not describe security for MPLS control plane
protocols.
Status of This Memo
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provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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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carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................... 3
2. Principles of Opportunistic Encryption ......................... 4
2.1 Why Do We Need Opportunistic Encryption? ..................... 4
2.2 Opportunistic Encryption at 10,000ft ......................... 5
2.3 What about a Man-in-the-Middle? .............................. 6
2.4 OE in MPLS Overview ........................................... 8
3. MPLS Packet Encryption ......................................... 9
3.1. Opportunistic Encryption Label Indicator .................... 12
3.2. Opportunistic Encryption Label .............................. 12
3.3. Control Word ................................................ 13
3.4. Considerations for ECMP ..................................... 14
3.5. Backward Compatibility ...................................... 14
3.6. MTU Considerations .......................................... 15
3.7. Recursive OE ................................................ 15
4. Key Exchange For Opportunistic Encryption in MPLS ............. 16
4.1. Associated Channel for Key Exchange ......................... 16
4.2. Key Exchange Protocol ....................................... 17
4.3. Protecting the Key Exchange Protocol Messages ............... 19
5. Applicability of MPLS Opportunistic Encryption ................ 19
6. Security Considerations ....................................... 21
6.1. Security Improvements ....................................... 21
6.2. Continued Vulnerabilities ................................... 21
6.3. New Security Considerations ................................. 21
7. Manageability Considerations .................................. 22
7.1. MITM Detection .............................................. 22
8. IANA Considerations .......................................... 22
8.1. Opportunistic Encryption Label Indicator .................... 22
8.2. Pseudowire Associated Channel Types ......................... 23
8.3. Key Derivation Functions and Symmetric Algorithms ........... 23
9. Acknowledgements ............................................. 23
10. References .................................................. 24
10.1. Normative References ...................................... 24
10.2. Informative References .................................... 24
Authors' Addresses ............................................... 25
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1. Introduction
MPLS is an established data plane protocol in the Internet. It is
found in the majority of core service provider networks and most end-
to-end traffic in the Internet will be carried over MPLS at some
point in its path. The MPLS data plane is defined by [RFC3031] and
[RFC3032].
Data security (i.e., confidentiality) in MPLS has previously relied
on just two features:
- Physical isolation of MPLS networks has been used to ensure that
interception of MPLS traffic was not possible.
- Higher-layer protocol security (such as IPsec [RFC4302], [RFC4303])
has been used whenever a particular flow has determined that
security was desirable.
These features have a number of significant vulnerabilities:
- Networks are increasingly easily compromised physically such that
"taps" may be inserted in links between routers.
- Routers may be compromised either in their entirety or through
the management/control plane (or misconfiguration). This may
result in packets being diverted to transit inspection points on
their way to their destination.
- The increased support for point-to-multipoint (P2MP) MPLS means
that routers can easily be configured (or misconfigured) to make a
copy of data and to send it to an additional destination.
- End-to-end payload security may be hard to manage and operate and
is not turned on by default by many users. While this form of
security is desirable, the network should also improve the security
of data transfer that it offers.
This document describes a mechanism for opportunistic encryption of
the MPLS data plane. It shows what part of an MPLS packet may be
encrypted and provides a way to indicate that the packet is encrypted
as well as to carry a key identifier with each packet.
MPLS opportunistic encryption can be achieved between adjacent Label
Switching Routers (LSRs) on an MPLS Label Switched Path (LSP), and
also between end points of an LSP.
This document also provides a mechanism for keys to be exchanged to
facilitate encryption. Finally, this document describes the
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applicability of opportunistic encryption in MPLS networks with an
indication of the level of improved security as well as the continued
vulnerabilities.
This document does not describe security for MPLS control plane
protocols.
Please note that a discussion of the applicability of MPLS
Opportunistic Encryption is provided in Section 5.
2. Principles of Opportunistic Encryption
[[Editor note - the introductory material in Sections 2.1 to 2.3
here will likely be mostly or fully replaced with a reference to
a more generic OE draft that is in the process of being written.
That may lead to some terminology changes, but shouldn't impact
on functionality.]]
2.1 Why Do We Need Opportunistic Encryption?
To introduce this discussion we start from a basic view of how
encryption is used in IETF protocols.
Say we have two protocol entities, Alice and Bob, and they would like
some message "M" sent from Alice to Bob to have confidentiality.
Then Alice needs to send M encrypted with algorithm "E" under some
some symmetric (e.g., AES) key, "k". Thus Alice wants to send Bob
"E(k,M)", but since she and Bob don't yet have such a shared secret
they need to agree on the key, "k".
In many IETF protocols, such as TLS (as commonly used) or S/MIME
(CMS) or PGP, Alice simply invents a random key "k" and then encrypts
that under Bob's public key "Pub-b" and sends Bob E(Pub-b,k) and
E(k,M) together. (There are lots of other details and other options
for how this can be handled, but we ignore those for now.) In such
cases, before Alice can send "E(k,M)", she needs to first get Bob's
public key and she needs to be certain that it really is Bob's public
key and not Charlie's. That knowledge requires some long-term key
management, which is often done using a Public Key Infrastructure
(PKI) so that Alice actually stores the public key (Pub-ca) of a
Certification Authority (CA), and Bob gets his public key (Pub-b)
"certified" by the CA, which means the CA creates a digitally signed
data structure "Cert(Pub-ca,Pub-b)". The crucial thing is that
Alice, Bob, and a CA need to co-ordinate before Alice and Bob can
agree on a key "k", and that process imposes a key-management burden.
Doing such key management is clearly quite possible, since TLS and
IPsec and other well-deployed technologies depend on it. But, in
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the case of HTTP/TLS on the public web, we see that only roughly 30%
of web sites actually take on this burden, even though the software
required is ubiquitous and, at least for 2nd level DNS domains in
.com for example, there are CAs who offer free domain-validated
certificates. While, some of the 70% who don't set up certificates
might not actually want confidentiality, there are certainly some who
would and arguably many that would benefit from confidentiality, if
it just happened out of the box, without an administrator having to
do anything. And there are also arguably many other protocols where
the same is true.
Opportunistic encryption (OE) offers a mechanisms to achieve
encryption between Alice and Bob without resorting to key-management
through CAs and without relying on manual configuration of keys.
2.2 Opportunistic Encryption at 10,000ft
Instead of the "key transport" mechanisms described in Section 2.1,
opportunistic encryption uses "key agreement". With key agreement,
both Alice and Bob contribute to calculating "k" (instead of the
the mechanism where Alice invents "k" and safely transports it to
Bob encrypted with Bob's public key as "E(Pub-b,k)").
Assume that Alice and Bob are using some protocol where they can
exchange a few messages in order to agree on the key "k" to use.
With a Diffie-Hellman key agreement ("D-H") both Alice and Bob have
public and private values, where the private value can be randomly
generated, perhaps even once per message "M". They swap the public
values, and can then, thanks to the "magic" of Diffie-Hellman, derive
a key "k" that nobody else can know.
In this way Alice sends Bob "Pub-a" and Bob sends Alice "Pub-b" and
at that point both of them can safely calculate a shared secret "k"
from those values. And after that Alice can send Bob "E(k,M)".
From here on, we change the terminology slightly and refer to
Alice as the initiator, with private key "i" and Bob as the
recipient, with private key "r" so that our notation is closer
to that used in IPsec's IKE, on which we model our use of OE.
The "magic" of D-H works as follows. Let "p" be well-known large
prime number that we use for all modular arithmetic (meaning that
"a^b" is actually "(a^b) mod p"), and let "g" be another well-known
value (called a generator for the group determined by "p"). Also let
Alice and Bob's private values be "i" and "r" respectively.
Now, if Alice sends Bob "g^i" as her public value, and Bob
similarly sends Alice "g^r" then both of them can easily
calculate "g^(i*r)" or "g^ir" but nobody else can, since calculating
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"x" when only given "g^x" is a computationally hard
problem for any "x". Once both Alice and Bob have the value "g^ir"
in hand, they can easily derive a value "k" from that using any of a
number of well-known key derivation functions (KDF).
As you can see from the above, Alice and Bob do not need to pre-
arrange anything other than "g" and "p", and those can be public
values, that are used by everyone everywhere (or at least by all
participants in a particular deployment). Yet, Alice and Bob have
managed to derive a common value for a key "k" that they can use to
encrypt (and decrypt) "M".
This kind of opportunistic encryption provides strong
confidentiality and can be built into any protocol that allows Alice
and Bob to occasionally exchange public values.
There are also additional advantages to key agreement when
compared to key transport. The most important of those is
that with key agreement we can easily ensure that k has a
property called Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). That means
that an attacker has to separately attack each key k. In
contrast, if we use the key transport approach, then an
attacker who somehow accesses Bob's private key "Priv-b"
can record lots of traffic and later go back and decrypt all
the "E(Pub-b,k)" values that all Alice's ever sent to Bob.
With key agreement as described, since both Alice and Bob
contribute to the value k, and since Alice and Bob will
typically periodically generate new private values i and r
(perhaps even for every single M), compromise of one party
is far less catastrophic, and an attacker who gets access to
one private value gets far less benefit.
2.3 What about a Man-in-the-Middle?
But OE is not resilient to Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. The
problem is that Alice does not know that it was really Bob's public
value that she received; it could have been Charlie's public value
sent by Charlie. And Charlie could also send Bob his public value
pretending to be Alice. Now Charlie can share a key with Alice and
a key with Bob so that Charlie can sit between Alice and Bob
decrypting what he gets from Alice and then re-encrypting it to send
to Bob. Neither Alice nor Bob can tell that Charlie is present as a
"Man-in-the-Middle" and both Alice and Bob think they are safely
exchanging encrypted messages.
A MITM attack like that is bad and making a protocol proof against
such attacks comes at the cost of the key-management burden described
in Section 2.1. Most IETF protocols to date require that such MITM
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attacks not be feasible.
However, despite its vulnerability to MITM attacks, OE still has
value in some circumstances. This value arises because of the
difficulty of inserting a MITM actor, and the cost of processing for
the MITM in the case of a very large number of OE relationships. In
particular, where the choice is between no encryption (as has been
the case for MPLS to date) and OE, it is clear that using OE offers
better (although not the best) security.
Consider the case where an attacker taps a link on the path between
Alice and Bob. In this case, the attacker can capture every packet
between the two parties, and if there is no encryption, can read
every message. Furthermore, consider that the attacker could tap a
fiber in the core of the network and so capture every packet between
a large number of Alices and their corresponding Bobs. In these
cases, Charlie can operate as a "passive MITM" since all he has to do
is watch the packets.
With OE in use, Charlie is forced to be an "active MITM". That is he
must engage in the D-H exchange between each pair of Alices and Bobs,
and he must must decrypt and encrypt each packet he wants to inspect.
This imposes a higher cost and is especially burdensome if he is
attempting to do it in parallel for lots of Alice/Bob pairs using
lots of different keys and communication sessions.
Furthermore, when D-H is in use for OE, management tools can be used
to detect the presence of Charlie as a MITM. This is because
Charlie has to agree one key "kA" with Alice, and a different key
"kB" with Bob. As far as we know, Charlie cannot arrange that kA
equals kB because both sides contribute to the key value in the D-H
key agreement. That means that if Alice and Bob can check with each
other what value of "k" they are using and the values do not match,
then they know that Charlie is present. What is more, Alice and Bob
can make this check on the value of "k" for any of the "E(k,M)" they
ever exchanged.
Thus, in the case of a fiber tap where many Alice/Bob pairs are
being monitored, it only takes one Alice and Bob to detect the MITM
attack for all Alice/Bob pairs to be alerted to the problem. In
such cases the cost of detection for Charlie may be even greater than
the cost of performing the MITM attack.
Hence we conclude that OE can have considerable value when used in
MPLS networks.
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2.4 OE in MPLS Overview
[[Editor Note - the details here are suitable for an early revision
draft.
We might change to ECDH later, or to use another KDF, or symmetric
cipher mode. All that is for discussion.]]
The basic requirement for MPLS OE is that we want to provide a way
for two MPLS nodes to do an OE key exchange and to derive a session
key from that to use in MPLS packet encryption.
To do that we use a Diffie-Hellman key exchange as outlined in
Section 2.2. We model this on IKE [RFC5996] using essentially the
same parameters. We feed the shared Diffie-Hellman value, which is
g^ir, into a standard key derivation function (KDF)
that also takes as input the LSP identifier (LSP ID) together with
the sending and receiving LSR IDs - where the the sending LSR is the
point of encryption and the receiving LSR is the point of decryption
such that the pair of LSRs define the Security Association (SA).
These additional inputs are used to ensure that we end up with
different keys on an LSP even if the same g^i and g^r values
are re-used. The KDF to be used here is as defined in [RFC5869].
D-H values used for MPLS OE MUST be of at least 2048-bits.
Implementations of MPLS OE MUST support the 2048-bit modular
exponentiation (MODP) group from Section 3 of [RFC3526] and SHOULD
support the larger MODP groups from [RFC3526].
This document also defines the mechanism used to derive an identifier
for a key (the key-id) from the shared Diffie-Hellman value, which
is also based on the KDF output. The key will be used with a
symmetric encryption algorithm, such as AEAD_AES_GCM_128 (the
default, following [RFC5116]).
As with any symmetric block cipher, one should not use the same key
for too long. The nonce defined for MPLS OE keys is derived using
a 96 bit counter incremented by one for each encrypted packet.
It is critical for security that nonce values MUST NOT be re-used
with a given key. (This is an inherent issue with how AES-GCM or any
counter mode achieves high performance.)
Accordingly, implementations are RECOMMENDED to change keys at least
every 2^32 packets, and MUST change keys before encrypting 2^64
packets. For an LSP running over a fully-busy 100Gbe interface,
we might assume that means roughly 160 million packets per second,
or roughly 2^44 packets per day. The 2^64 limit therefore means
changing keys daily in the busiest cases of some of the largest
current links capacities.
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To support key change, this document defines a way for two LSRs using
a key on an LSP to agree a new key and to switch over to using that
key when desired. That means that implementations MUST be able to
handle at least two keys (old and new) for a given LSP. Once a new
key has been agreed then it should be used for sending packets; once
encrypted data packets protected with the new key have been
successfully received, the old key should be discarded. Section 4
describes how two LSRs agree keys, and to agree a new key, two LSRs
simply run the same key agreement exchange, but this time protected
with the old session key as described in Section 4.3. This process
can, of course, be repeated any number of times for the same LSP. It
is RECOMMENDED that the key on an LSP be changed at least once every
day or every 10^6 packets whichever is sooner.
[[Editor Note: These values need considered in the light of latest
cryptology advice, but also understanding that this is "best-
effort" OE]]
In the event of a key agreement exchange or decryption failure, an
alarm MUST be raised to the operator. Default (i.e., node-wide) and
per-LSP behavior SHOULD be configurable in this case: actions may
include reverting to non-encrypted traffic, re-attempting key
exchange, or tearing down the LSP. Note that a simple attack on OE
is to tamper with key agreement exchange messages or encrypted
packets so that OE fails. Such attacks may be intended to cause the
LSP to operate without encryption, so an operator should consider
this when setting the behavior in this case.
Section 7.1 also discusses a mechanism that allows a pair of LSRs
using OE on an LSP to detect that a MITM attack has happened. For
this, we simply define a function of the shared secret, which can be
logged and later compared. Note that logging a sample of these
"witness" values will likely be sufficient to detect pervasive MITM
attacks. As with the key-id, we base this on the same KDF output.
An additional discussion of the applicability of MPLS OE is found in
Section 5.
3. MPLS Packet Encryption
MPLS packets may be individually encrypted according to the
mechanisms described in this section.
When an MPLS packet is encrypted, this is indicated by the insertion
of a new special purpose label [ID.ietf-mpls-special-purpose-labels]
in the label stack. This is referred to as the Opportunistic
Encryption Label Indicator (OELI). The format of the OELI is
described in Section 3.1.
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The OELI is followed immediately by a further label stack entry that
contains an identifier of the key and algorithm that is in use. This
label stack entry is referred to as the Opportunistic Encryption
Label (OEL). The format of the OEL is described in Section 3.2.
The OEL MUST have the bottom of stack bit (the S bit) set and MUST be
followed by a pseudowire control word [RFC4385]. The format of the
control word is described in Section 3.3.
The remainder of the MPLS packet is encrypted and cannot be parsed
without decryption. Implementations MUST support the
AEAD_AES_GCM_128 encryption algorithm, as specified in Section 5.1
of [RFC5116], which is the default as described in Section 4.2 of
this document.
Note that it is critical that a new nonce is used for every
encryption. The nonce is an implicit packet counter. The
initial nonce value is derived from the HKDF output at key
agreement time and the counter is incremented by one for
each packet encrypted on the sending side and by one
for each packet successfully decrypted on the receiver side.
Although the nonce is not transmitted with the packets, a 3-bit
counter indicates the nonce value modulo 8. This feature allows a
receiving node to quickly spot that a packet has been dropped and
resynch its own counter in order to be able to continue to decrypt
received packets. In the event that more than 7 packets are lost in
one batch the receiver will encounter a decryption error. In this
case the receiver may report a general decryption error or may
attempt to resynchronize by advancing its own counter in units of 8
according to the modulo value in the received packet. Note that
incrementing the counter in order to test for decryption failure
does generate a potential DoS if e.g. an attacker decrements the
nonce-mod-8 value. Implementations that do such tests SHOULD
maintain a small maximum window size beyond which they will cease
attempting to decrypt. It could be that throwing an error might
be the more effective response if the packet loss rates are
expected to be low enough.
It should also be noted that the output from encryption will be 16
octets longer than the input.
The bottom of stack bit is set in the OEL to stop implementations
continuing to search down the label stack (which is encrypted) and
attempting to use the data as though it was a valid label stack. The
control word is needed because many implementations that find the
bottom of stack expect the next bytes to be a control word or
protocol indicator.
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The position of the OELI, OEL, and control word depend on whether
hop-by-hop or end-to-end encryption is being applied.
Figure 1 illustrates the format of an example MPLS packet before and
after hop-by-hop opportunistic encryption. The left hand part of the
figure shows a normal MPLS packet with a label stack and payload.
The bottom label in the stack has the S bit set. The payload is the
data carried by the MPLS packet (such as IP) and may be prefixed by a
control word.
The right hand part of Figure 1 shows the same packet after it has
been encrypted. The top of stack is the OELI followed by the OEL
with the S bit set. The OEL is followed by a control word.
Everything that follows the control word is the entire original MPLS
packet encrypted.
----------- . -----------
| Top Label | . | OELI |
+-----------+ . +-----------+
| Label | . | OEL S=1 |
+-----------+ . +-----------+
| Label S=1 | .| Ctrl Word |
+-----------+ +-----------+
| | | |
~ Payload ~ ~ Encrypted ~
| | | |
-----------........-----------
Figure 1 : The Use of the OEL for Hop-by-Hop Opportunistic Encryption
Figure 2 illustrates the format of an example MPLS packet before and
after end-to-end opportunistic encryption. The left hand part of the
figure shows a normal MPLS packet with a label stack and payload.
The bottom label in the stack has the S bit set and the payload may
be prefixed by a control word. The right hand part of the figure
shows how the top two labels (or however many labels are needed for
end-to-end delivery) remain at the top of the label stack. Then
follows the OELI and OEL with S bit set, and a control word. The
remainder of the packet is encrypted and contains the rest of the
label stack and the payload.
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----------- -----------
| Top Label | | Top Label |
+-----------+ +-----------+
| Label | | Label |
+-----------+. +-----------+
| Label | . | OELI |
+-----------+ . +-----------+
| Label | . | OEL S=1 |
+-----------+ . +-----------+
| Label S=1 | .| Ctrl Word |
+-----------+ +-----------+
| | | |
~ Payload ~ ~ Encrypted ~
| | | |
-----------........-----------
Figure 2 : The Use of the OEL for End-to-End Opportunistic Encryption
3.1. Opportunistic Encryption Label Indicator
The Opportunistic Encryption Label Indicator (OELI) is a normal label
stack entry carrying a special purpose label with value TBD1 to be
assigned by IANA. The format of the label stack entry is defined in
[RFC3032] and shown in Figure 3.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Label | TC |S| TTL |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 3 : Format of the OELI Label Stack Entry
Label: Set to TBD1 to indicate this is an OELI
TC: SHOULD be copied from the TC of the first encrypted label.
S: MUST be set to zero.
TTL: SHOULD be set to the TTL of the first encrypted label.
3.2. Opportunistic Encryption Label
The Opportunistic Encryption Label (OEL) is carried in a normal label
stack entry immediately following an OELI. The format of the label
stack entry is defined in [RFC3032] and shown in Figure 4.
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Label | TC |S| TTL |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 4 : Format of the OEL Label Stack Entry
Label: Any value from 16 to 1048575 used as a look-up into a table of
encryption algorithms and keys that has been established
through configuration or dynamic key exchange as described in
Section 4.
This label MUST NOT be used for forwarding, and MUST NOT come
from the range 0 through 15.
TC: This field contains the packet counter (nonce) for the
encryption algorithm and key currently in use modulo 8. It
can be used by a receiver to quickly check that the value of
the nonce being used for decryption is likely to be correct.
S: MUST be set to one.
TTL: SHOULD be set to zero to prevent encrypted packets being
accidentally forwarded beyond the point of intended
decryption.
3.3. Control Word
The control word is inserted after the OEL as described in Section 3.
The S bit set to one in the OEL and the presence of the control word
helps protect against transit nodes that may perform hashing or
inspection of the label stack and payload packet headers when
forwarding MPLS packets (for example, to enable ECMP). The control
word indicates that the payload is not a protocol that can be
meaningfully hashed or inspected.
The format of the control word is defined in [RFC4385] and shown in
Figure 5.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0 0 0 1|Version| Reserved | Channel Type |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 5: Control Word for Opportunistically Encrypted MPLS
Version: MUST be zero.
Reserved: MUST be sent as 0, and ignored on receipt.
Channel Type: Set to TBD2 to indicate that the following bytes are
encrypted MPLS.
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3.4. Considerations for ECMP
As previously stated, the S bit set in the OEL and the presence of
the control word prevent implementations from attempting to use the
encrypted MPLS packet and its payload to determine a hash value for
uses such as ECMP. However, the resultant label stack shown in
Figure 2 will probably not provide sufficient entropy for ECMP
purposes.
In order to increase the entropy, an implementation that inserts an
OELI and OEL MAY also insert an Entropy Label Indicator (ELI) and
Entropy Label (EL) as defined in [RFC6790]. The ELI and EL are
positioned in the label stack before the OELI and OEL. The setting
of the fields in the ELI and EL label stack entries are as described
in [RFC6790].
The ELI and EL will normally occur immediately before the OELI, but
they MAY be placed higher up the label stack.
-----------
| Top Label |
+-----------+
| Label |
----------- +-----------+
| Top Label | | ELI |
+-----------+ +-----------+
| Label | | EL |
+-----------+. +-----------+
| Label | . | OELI |
+-----------+ . +-----------+
| Label | . | OEL S=1 |
+-----------+ . +-----------+
| Label S=1 | .| Ctrl Word |
+-----------+ +-----------+
| | | |
~ Payload ~ ~ Encrypted ~
| | | |
-----------........-----------
Figure 6 : The Use of ELI and EL with OEL
3.5. Backward Compatibility
Keys and encryption algorithms may be configured manually or
exchanged dynamically as described in Section 4. These mechanisms
provide a preliminary way to protect against a sender encrypting data
that the receiver cannot decrypt, however, misconfiguration may lead
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to a sender using the OELI when the receiver does not support
opportunistic encryption.
When a node finds an unknown label at the top of the label stack it
must discard the packet as described in [RFC3031]. Therefore, when a
receiver discovers the OELI and does not support opportunistic
encryption it will discard the packet. The net result is that when a
sender uses opportunistic encryption in error, all packets that it
sends on the LSP will be discarded by the receiver. Note that in
this discussion, "the receiver" may be the next hop if single hop
encryption is used, or may be the end of the LSP if end-to-end
encryption is used.
Transit nodes that are not actively participating in the encryption
will not inspect the OELI except potentially as part of an ECMP hash.
This means that transit nodes will not encounter the OELI during
normal packet processing and will not discard packets.
3.6. MTU Considerations
Adding the OELI and OEL as described above will reduce the available
data size by 8 octets. Furthermore, as described in in Section 3,
the output of the encryption algorithm is 16 octets longer than the
input. Therefore, the use of MPLS OE reduces the available MTU by 20
octets.
When end-to-end OE is in use this can be considered by the ingress
LSR, however, when single-hop OE is in use the participating LSRs
need to advertise this reduction in link MTU so that the packets do
not overflow. MPLS packets MUST NOT be fragmented as a result of
OE.
3.7. Recursive OE
The use of OELI, OEL, and control word described in Section 3 may
be applied recursively. That is, the payload of an encrypted MPLS
packet may, itself be an encrypted MPLS packet. This may be
particularly useful in the case where an MPLS VPN has native MPLS
traffic.
There are no special considerations except to note that encryption
and decryption processing may be burdensome if an LSP and its payload
LSP have OE applied at the same LSR. Additionally, it should be
noted that, as described in Section 3.6, each recursive encryption
reduces the MTU by 20 octets.
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4. Key Exchange For Opportunistic Encryption in MPLS
For encryption to be useful both ends of an encrypted session must
know which algorithm is in use and which key to use. The mechanism
described in Section 3 provides a way to indicate an index into a
table of algorithms and keys that can be used to decrypt an encrypted
MPLS packet.
It is possible that this table has been manually configured or set up
using a key exchange protocol such as Internet Key Exchange version 2
(IKEv2) [RFC5996]. However, such a process implies a stable security
association between encrypter and decrypter of MPLS packets. Such a
stable association is not consistent with the concept of
opportunistic encryption.
This section provides a mechanism for adjacent MPLS LSRs, or for a
pair of LSRs at opposite ends of an MPLS LSP, to dynamically
exchange keys and algorithm identifiers so that encryption may be
applied opportunistically.
The mechanism uses message exchange in the MPLS Generic Associated
Channel (G-ACh) [RFC5586]. This channel is in-band with an LSP and
may be used to carry messages between neighbors or between the end
points of the LSP. A type field within the common message header,
the Associated Channel Header (ACH), is used to indicate the type of
message carried.
Nodes that receive G-ACh messages and do not understand them, or
nodes that understand the G-ACh but do not recognize the ACH message
type drop the packets as described in [RFC5586].
4.1. Associated Channel for Key Exchange
The Associated Channel Type value TBD3 indicates that the packet
contains a Key Exchange Protocol message as defined in Section 4.2.
Implementations that do not support key exchange in this manner will
discard received packets with this Associated Channel Type as
described in [RFC5586]. This will result in no dynamic key exchange,
but other key definitions are still supported (such as manual
configuration) and may be used to construct a table of algorithms and
keys that can be used to achieve MPLS encryption using the mechanisms
described in Section 3.
Note that TBD3 indicates the use of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. If
ECDH is added later a new value will be required.
[[Editor Note. An alternative to this is to embed the type of key
exchange within the key exchange messages.]]
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4.2. Key Exchange Protocol
A session key is to be established between an initiator (Alice) and
a recipient (Bob). The D-H public value for Alice is g^i and for
Bob, g^r. The shared Diffie-Hellman value is g^ir.
g^ir is represented as a string of octets in big endian
order padded with zeros if necessary to make it the length of the
modulus.
Both g^i and g^r will be 2048 bits long, if the Diffie-Hellman
modulus is 2048 bits long.
The key exchange payload is modelled on that from Section 3.4 of
[RFC5996], and is shown in Figure 7.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|D| Payload Length | algorithm | Group Num |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
~ D-H Public value ~
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 7 - Key Exchange Message
The flag D denotes the direction of the message, '0' indicates a
message from initiator (Alice) to recipient. '1' indicates the
reverse direction.
The Payload Length field contains the number of octets following the
payload length field (including the group number). This is 15 bits
wide.
The algorithm field is a one octet field that specifies both the KDF
to use and the symmetric algorithm to be used for data packet
encryption. A registry for values of this field is defined in
Section 8.3. The value 0 is used to indicate the default KDF and
symmetric encryption mode.
The Diffie-Hellman Group Num is from [RFC3526], so the group number
for 2048 MODP is decimal 14. Note that this is a one octet field,
but is two octets in the [RFC5996] equivalent. This is not an issue
because there are only 30 MODP groups defined at present and new
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groups are not added frequently.
The D-H public value will contain g^i or g^r depending on the
direction (i.e., the setting of the D flag) and is in big endian
order.
The length of the Diffie-Hellman public value for MODP groups MUST be
equal to the length of the prime modulus over which the
exponentiation was performed, prepending zero bits to the value if
necessary.
Once both sides have derived g^ir they need to feed that and the
other inputs described in Section 2.4 into the KDF indicated by the
algorithm field. With the default algorithm (value zero), the KDF to
be used is HKDF as specified in [RFC5869].
The parameters for the use of HKDF are:
Hash: SHA-256
Salt: not used [[Editor Note: maybe we should?]]
Skip: do not skip
Info: The catenation of a fixed string indicating use of MPLS OE,
with the value "MPLS-OE", the first 32 bits of the key
exchange message, with the D flag set to 0, plus the LSP
ID and the sender and receiver LSR IDs in that order. That
is:
MPLS-OE||0||payloadLen||alg||group Num||LSP-ID||i-LSR-ID||r-LSR-ID
L: The output length in bits is 272.
The fixed string "MPLS-OE" is used as an input here to prevent
potential cross-protocol attacks. Those might otherwise be
possible if this mechanism were to be copied in other protocols.
(If copying this mechanism for any reason, then a different
fixed string value should be used.)
The default encryption algorithm, AEAD_AES_GCM_128, specified
in Section 3, requires a 128 bit session key.
The 272-bit HKDF output is the catenation of the session key, the key
id, the witness value and the high-order 16 bits of the initial nonce
value in that order. That is the session key is
the leftmost 128 bits of the HKDF output. The key-id is the next 16
bits, the witness value is the next 112 bits and the last 16 bits
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are the 16 most significant bits of the initial nonce value. The
low order 64 bits of the initial nonce value are set to zero before
the first call to the AES-GCM encryption function.
The key-id is prepended with four bits set to one and used as the
label value in the OEL (see Section 3.2) so that the label does not
take any of the values 0-15.
[[Editor note - we might want to consider deriving the witness
value from a separate invocation of the KDF that does not depend
on the LSP-specific inputs. The benefit from that would be
that the same MITM-detection infrastructure could be used for
many protocols. However, that would require standardizing a
generic D-H MITM-detection protocol, or at least formats, in
order to be useful. We also need to consider what additional
information needs to be logged with the witness value so that
comparisons can easily be made at scale but without creating
new privacy-invasive meta-data. (That last is not much of an
issue for MPLS-OE, but could be elsewhere.) At present we do
not intend to go for the generic MITM-detection approach, but
it is worth considering.]]
4.3. Protecting the Key Exchange Protocol Messages
As described in Section 2.4, once one key exchange has been
successfully completed, further key exchanges should be protected
using a previous key. This is simply achieved since key exchange
messages are, themselves, carried in MPLS packets on the LSP and may
be subject to encryption exactly as any other packet.
5. Applicability of MPLS Opportunistic Encryption
MPLS OE provides another tool in the security and privacy toolkit.
It is not a panacea and does not solve (nor is it intended to solve)
all security or privacy problems. In particular, the use of MPLS OE
does not protect user-data end-to-end that might be better secured
using encryption at the IP layer or at higher layers.
As noted throughout this document, the intention of OE in MPLS is to
allow one LSR to enable encryption between itself and its neighbor,
or between itself and the other end of an LSP, in a dynamic and un-
planned way. This can have benefits in a number of scenarios where
the network that generates MPLS traffic transmits it over another
network (for example, carrier's carrier, or some deployments of
enterprise network). Additionally, the use of MPLS OE might allow a
service provider to offer a secure edge-to-edge service for a variety
of applications ranging from VPNs through pseudowires and where the
payload traffic might not always be IP. Lastly, in some non-
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traditional carriers the user data belongs to the operator or is the
direct responsibility of the operator (for example, in data centers,
or in large-scale private networks).
As with all security mechanisms, there is a trade-off between a
number of factors. On one side is the completeness of the security
of the user-data, and on the other side is the complexity of
configuring and managing the necessary security associations.
Furthermore, while mechanisms closer to the end-user than MPLS OE
(for example, TLS and IPsec in tunnel mode) provide better security
for user-data by virtue of not transmitting the data across any
network hops without it being encrypted, such mechanisms often
expose more metadata for inspection by snoopers within the network.
Additionally, while a variety of per-link encryption mechanisms exist
and could be used to guard against attacks such as fiber taps, those
approaches do not protect against subverted nodes (i.e., routers) on
the path since, by definition, per-link encryption does not protect
packets once they come off the link. MPLS OE in the end-to-end LSP
mode protects packets on the links and as they cross transit routers.
Nevertheless, it is not the purpose of this document to recommend the
use of MPLS OE to the exclusion of all other encryption techniques.
As already mentioned, MPLS OE is offered as another tool in the tool
kit and users as well as network operators are strongly advised to
consider using a variety of tools to achieve the level of security
and privacy that they desire.
Note that, in order that OE can be used, one end of a peering
(neighbor or LSP end) must decide to attempt OE and the other end
must support it. This can be determined by the message exchanges
described in Section 4.2 since if one peer does not send a key
exchange message then encryption will not be used, and if the other
peer does not respond then it is unwilling or unable to decrypt
messages.
MPLS OE should be applicable to all forms of MPLS. That is, it should
be possible to use it in RSVP-TE systems, in LDP systems, and in
MPLS-TP systems (by which we mean those that have manually configured
LSPs). Equally, it should work for point-to-point (P2P) and
multipoint-to-point (MP2P) uses of MPLS because there is a simple
relationship between the sender (encrypter) and the receiver
(decrypter) in both cases. In the MP2P case, the sender's identity
can be extracted from the key identifier and there are considered to
be enough key identifiers to allow an arbitrary number of senders on
the LSP. There will, however, be the need for the receiver to hold OE
state (keys, packet counters) for each sender which may be a
significant amount of data for an MP2P LSP (although no more than if
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the same LSP were replaced by multiple P2P LSPs). Additionally, it
should be noted that not only will each sender on an MP2P LSP have a
different key, but each may separately decide whether to encrypt data
or not.
At this time it is not certain whether MPLS OE can be applied to a
point-to-multipoint (P2MP) or a multipoint-to-multipoint LSP in its
entirety because packet replication cannot handle the necessary key
conversions for each receiver. However, MPLS OE can certainly be
applied to individual hops on these LSPs. Further work is needed to
determine whether non-branching multi-hop segments of P2MP and MP2P
LSPs can also be protected using MPLS OE.
6. Security Considerations
6.1. Security Improvements
See section 2.1.
6.2. Continued Vulnerabilities
The mechanisms described in this document do not provide protection
against certain types of MITM attacks. For example, the key exchange
protocol in Section 4.2 will not detect if key exchange messages or
their responses are intercepted and discarded such that the
initiating peer believes that encryption is not supported.
Similarly, those messages may be tampered with such that a receiver
cannot determine the correct table index to algorithm and key mapping
when an encrypted packet is received. Furthermore, the OEL in an
MPLS packet is not protected and may be overwritten such that a
receiver is unable to decrypt the packet.
See Section 7.1 for a discussion of how active MITM attacks can be
detected.
6.3. New Security Considerations
If a pair of LSRs do not do the key exchange before sending any data
packets on the LSP then those first packets will not be protected by
OE and hence will be available to a monitor.
If a MITM can prevent the OE key exchange from completing, e.g.
via deleting messages or changing bits in messages, and if the LSRs
continue to send data regardless then those data packets will be
available to a monitor. See Section 2.4 and Section 7 for a
description of how alarms should be raised in these circumstances.
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7. Manageability Considerations
As described in Section 2.4 node-wide and per-LSP behavior SHOULD be
configurable to describe the action where key agreement exchange or
packet decryption fails. In any case, such events MUST trigger
alarms to the operator.
7.1. MITM Detection
Section 2.4 introduces the concept of a function of the shared
secret that can be compared by two LSRs that are using OE to see
whether they are victims of an active MITM attack.
Section 4.2 describes how a witness value is derived for the
default KDF, HKDF.
The participating LSRs can simply log this value plus the LSP
and LSR IDs from time to time and a management application can
compare the values. If they are different for the same LSP ID,
then an active MITM attack has taken place.
It needs to be carefully noted that the management channel used to
log or otherwise compare the witness values from the two LSRs MUST be
secure. It is likely that routers use relatively high security
management channels for configuration and other management
operations.
[[Editor note - please see the note in 4.2 about generic
MITM-detection. Changes there could affect what needs to be
done here.]]
8. IANA Considerations
8.1. Opportunistic Encryption Label Indicator
IANA maintains a registry called "Multiprotocol Label Switching
Architecture (MPLS) Label Values" with a single sub-registry called
"Label Values". This registry is to be renamed "Special Purpose MPLS
Label Values according to [ID.ietf-mpls-special-purpose-labels].
IANA is requested to assign a value from this registry as follows:
Value | Description | Reference
------+-------------------------------------------------+-----------
TBD1 | Opportunistic Encryption Label Indicator (OELI) | [This.ID]
The value 8 is suggested.
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[RFC Editor is requested to replace the string "TBD1" with the value
assigned by IANA throughout this document, and to remove this note.]
8.2. Pseudowire Associated Channel Types
IANA maintains a registry called "Pseudowire Name Spaces (PWE3)" with
a sub-registry called "Pseudowire Associated Channel Types". IANA is
requested to assign a value as follows:
Value | Description | Reference
------+-------------------------------------------------+-----------
TBD3 | Opportunistic Key Exchange Protocol for MPLS | [This.ID]
TBD2 | Opportunistically Encrypted MPLS | [This.ID]
The values 19 and 20 are suggested. It is suggested that TBD3 have
a value 1 smaller than TBD2.
[RFC Editor is requested to replace the string "TBD2" and "TBD3" with
the values assigned by IANA throughout this document, and to remove this
note.]
8.3. Key Derivation Functions and Symmetric Algorithms
IANA is requested to create a new MPLS registry called the "MPLS
Opportunistic Encryption Algorithms Registry". New values are to
be assigned through "IETF Review" as defined in [RFC5226].
The available range is 0 - 255.
IANA is requested to record the following information and create an
initial entry as follows:
Value | Key Derivation Function | Symmetric Algorithm | Reference
------+-------------------------+---------------------+-----------
0 | HKDF | AEAD_AES_GCM_128 | [This.I-D]
1-255 | Unassigned | |
9. Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Alia Atlas for detailed discussion of the implications
of MPLS opportunistic encryption. Thanks also to Ron Bonica for
encouraging this work, to Sean Turner and Stewart Bryant for early
review, and to Jeff Haas and Ross Callon for discussions.
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10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4385] Bryant, S., Swallow, G., Martini, L., and D. McPherson,
"Pseudowire Emulation Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) Control Word for
Use over an MPLS PSN", RFC 4385, February 2006.
[RFC5586] Bocci, M., Vigoureux, M., and S. Bryant, "MPLS Generic
Associated Channel", RFC 5586, June 2009.
[RFC6790] Kompella, K., Drake, J., Amante, S., Henderickx, W., and
L. Yong, "The Use of Entropy Labels in MPLS Forwarding",
RFC 6790, November 2012.
[ID.ietf-mpls-special-purpose-labels]
Kompella, K., Andersson, L., and A. Farrel, "Allocating
and Retiring Special Purpose MPLS Labels" draft-ietf-mpls-
special-purpose-labels, work in progress.
[RFC3526] Kivinen, T., and M. Kojo, "More Modular Exponential (MODP)
Diffie-Hellman groups for Internet Key Exchange (IKE)",
RFC 3526, May 2003.
[RFC5116] D. McGrew, "An Interface and Algorithms for Authenticated
Encryption", RFC 5116, January 2008.
[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
[RFC5869] Krawczyk, H. and P. Eronen, "HMAC-based Extract-and-Expand
Key Derivation Function (HKDF)", RFC 5869, May 2010.
10.2. Informative References
[RFC3031] Rosen, E., Viswanathan, A., and R. Callon, "Multiprotocol
Label Switching Architecture", RFC 3031, January 2001.
[RFC3032] Rosen, E., Tappan, D., Fedorkow, G., Rekhter, Y.,
Farinacci, D., Li, T., and A. Conta, "MPLS Label Stack
Encoding", RFC 3032, January 2001.
[RFC4302] Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302,
December 2005.
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[RFC4303] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
RFC 4303, December 2005.
[RFC5996] Kaufman, C., Hoffman, P., Nir, Y., and P. Eronen,
"Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)",
RFC 5996, September 2010.
Authors' Addresses
Adrian Farrel
Juniper Networks
EMail: adrian@olddog.co.uk
Stephen Farrell
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, 2
Ireland
Phone: +353-1-896-2354
Email: stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie
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