ACE Working Group S. Gerdes Internet-Draft Universitaet Bremen TZI Intended status: Informational L. Seitz Expires: February 26, 2016 SICS Swedish ICT AB G. Selander Ericsson C. Bormann, Ed. Universitaet Bremen TZI August 25, 2015 An architecture for authorization in constrained environments draft-ietf-ace-actors-00 Abstract Constrained-node networks are networks where some nodes have severe constraints on code size, state memory, processing capabilities, user interface, power and communication bandwidth (RFC 7228). This document provides terminology, and elements of an architecture / a problem statement, for authentication and authorization in these networks. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on February 26, 2016. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2015 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 Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents 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. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Architecture and High-level Problem Statement . . . . . . . . 5 2.1. Elements of an Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2. Architecture Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.3. Information flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.4. Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 3. Security Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 3.1. End-to-End Security Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4. Authentication and Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 5. Actors and their Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 5.1. Constrained Level Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 5.2. Principal Level Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5.3. Less-Constrained Level Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 6. Kinds of Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 6.1. Constrained Level Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 6.1.1. Cross Level Support Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 6.2. Less-Constrained Level Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 7. Elements of a Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 7.1. Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 7.2. Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 7.3. Communication Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 7.4. Cryptographic Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 8. Assumptions and Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 8.1. Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 8.2. Constrained Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 8.3. Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 8.4. Server-side Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 8.5. Client-side Authorization Information . . . . . . . . . . 23 8.6. Server-side Authorization Information . . . . . . . . . . 23 8.7. Resource Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 8.8. Keys and Cipher Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 8.9. Network Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 8.10. Legacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 9.1. Physical Attacks on Sensor and Actuator Networks . . . . 26 9.2. Time Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 11. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 12. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 1. Introduction Constrained nodes are small devices with limited abilities which in many cases are made to fulfill a specific simple task. They have limited hardware resources such as processing power, memory, non- volatile storage and transmission capacity and additionally in most cases do not have user interfaces and displays. Due to these constraints, commonly used security protocols are not always easily applicable. Constrained nodes are expected to be integrated in all aspects of everyday life and thus will be entrusted with vast amounts of data. Without appropriate security mechanisms attackers might gain control over things relevant to our lives. Authentication and authorization mechanisms are therefore prerequisites for a secure Internet of Things. In some cases authentication and authorization can be addressed by static configuration provisioned during manufacturing or deployment by means of fixed trust anchors and access control lists. This is particularly applicable to siloed, fixed-purpose deployments. However, as the need for flexible access to assets already deployed increases, the legitimate set of authorized entities as well as their privileges cannot be conclusively defined during deployment, without any need for change during the lifetime of the device. Moreover, several use cases illustrate the need for fine-grained access control policies, for which the access control lists concept may not be sufficiently generic. The limitations of the constrained nodes ask for security mechanisms which take the special characteristics of constrained environments into account; not all constituents may be able to perform all necessary tasks by themselves. In order to meet the security requirements in constrained scenarios, the necessary tasks need to be assigned to logical functional entities. This document provides some terminology, as well as elements of an architecture to represent the relationships between the logical functional entities involved; on this basis, a problem description for authentication and authorization in constrained-node networks is provided. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 1.1. Terminology Readers are required to be familiar with the terms and concepts defined in [RFC4949], including "authentication", "authorization", "confidentiality", "(data) integrity", "message authentication code", and "verify". REST terms including "resource", "representation", etc. are to be understood as used in HTTP [RFC7231] and CoAP [RFC7252]. Terminology for constrained environments including "constrained device", "constrained-node network", "class 1", etc. are defined in [RFC7228]. In addition, this document uses the following terminology: Resource (R): an item of interest which is represented through an interface. It might contain sensor or actuator values or other information. Constrained node: a constrained device in the sense of [RFC7228]. Actor: A logical functional entity that performs one or more tasks. Multiple actors may be present within a single device or a single piece of software. Resource Server (RS): An entity which hosts and represents a Resource. Client (C): An entity which attempts to access a resource on an RS. Principal: (Used in its English sense here, and specifically as:) An individual that is either RqP or RO or both. Resource Owner (RO): The principal that is in charge of the resource and controls its access permissions. Requesting Party (RqP): The principal that is in charge of the Client and controls the requests a Client makes and its acceptance of responses. Authorization Server (AS): An entity that prepares and endorses authentication and authorization data for a Resource Server. Client Authorization Server (CAS): An entity that prepares and endorses authentication and authorization data for a Client. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 Authenticated Authorization: A synthesis of mechanisms for authentication and authorization. Note that other authorization architectures such as OAuth [RFC6749] or UMA [I-D.hardjono-oauth-umacore] focus on the authorization problems on the RS side, in particular what accesses to resources the RS is to allow. In this document the term authorization includes this aspect, but is also used for client-side authorization, i.e., more generally to describe allowed interactions with other endpoints. 2. Architecture and High-level Problem Statement 2.1. Elements of an Architecture This document deals with how to control and protect resource-based interaction between potentially constrained endpoints. The following setting is assumed: o An endpoint may host functionality of C, RS or both C and RS. o C in one endpoint requests to access R on a RS in another endpoint. o A priori, the endpoints do not necessarily have a pre-existing security relationship to each other. o Either of the endpoints, or both, may be constrained. Without loss of generality, we focus on the C functionality in one endpoint, which we therefore also call C, accessing the RS functionality in another endpoint, which we therefore also call RS. More on the security objectives of the constrained level in Section 5.1. -------------- -------------- | ------- | | ------- | | | C | ------ requests resource -----> | RS | | | ------- <----- provides resource ------ ------- | | Endpoint | | Endpoint | -------------- -------------- Figure 1: Constrained Level The authorization decisions at the endpoints are made on behalf of the principals that control the endpoints. To reuse OAuth and UMA terminology, the present document calls C's controlling principal the Requesting Party (RqP), and calls RS's controlling principal the Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 Resource Owner (RO). Each principal makes authorization decisions (possibly encapsulating them into security policies) which the endpoint it controls then enforces. The specific security objectives will vary, but for any specific version of this scenario will include one or more of: o Objectives of type 1: No entity not authorized by the RO has access to (or otherwise gains knowledge of) R. o Objectives of type 2: C is exchanging information with (sending a request to, accepting a response from) a resource only where it can ascertain that RqP has authorized the exchange with R. Objectives of type 1 require performing authorization on the Resource Server side while objectives of type 2 require performing authorization on the Client side. More on the security objectives of the principal level in Section 5.2. ------- ------- | RqP | | RO | Principal Level ------- ------- | | in charge of in charge of | | V V ------- ------- | C | -- requests resource --> | RS | Constrained Level ------- <-- provides resource-- ------- Figure 2: Constrained Level and Principal Level The use cases defined in [I-D.ietf-ace-usecases] demonstrate that constrained devices are often used for scenarios where their principals are not present at the time of the communication, are not able to communicate directly with the device because of a lack of user interfaces or displays, or may prefer the device to communicate autonomously. Moreover, constrained endpoints may need support with tasks requiring heavy processing, large memory or storage, or interfacing to humans, such as management of security policies defined by a principal. The principal, in turn, requires some agent maintaining the policies governing how its endpoints will interact. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 For these reasons, another level of nodes is introduced in the architecture, the less-constrained level. Using OAuth terminology, AS acts on behalf of the RO to control and support the RS in handling access requests, employing a pre-existing security relationship with RS. We complement this with CAS acting on behalf of RqP to control and support the C in making resource requests and acting on the responses received, employing a pre-existing security relationship with C. To further relieve the constrained level, authorization (and related authentication) mechanisms may be employed between CAS and AS (Section 6.2). (Again, both CAS and AS are conceptual entities controlled by their respective principals. Many of these entities, often acting for different principals, can be combined into a single server implementation; this of course requires proper segregration of the control information provided by each principal.) ------- ------- | RqP | | RO | Principal Level ------- ------- | | controls controls | | V V -------- ------- | CAS | <- AuthN and AuthZ -> | AS | Less-Constrained Level -------- ------- | | controls and supports controls and supports authentication authentication and authorization and authorization | | V V ------- ------- | C | -- requests resource --> | RS | Constrained Level ------- <-- provides resource-- ------- Figure 3: Overall architecture 2.2. Architecture Variants The elements of the architecture described above are architectural. In a specific scenario, several elements can share a single device or even be combined in a single piece of software. If C is located on a more powerful device, it can be combined with CAS: Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 ------- -------- | RqP | | RO | Principal Level ------- -------- | | in charge of in charge of | | V V ------------ -------- | CAS + C | <- AuthN and AuthZ -> | AS | Less-Constrained Level ------------ -------- ^ | \__ | \___ authentication \___ and authorization requests resource/ \___ support provides resource \___ | \___ | V V ------- | RS | Constrained Level ------- Figure 4: Combined C and CAS If RS is located on a more powerful device, it can be combined with AS: Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 ------- ------- | RqP | | RO | Principal Level ------- ------- | | in charge of in charge of | | V V ---------- ----------- | CAS | <- AuthN and AuthZ -> | RS + AS | Less-Constrained Level ---------- ----------- | ^ authentication ___/ and authorization ___/ support ___/ request resource / provides resource | ___/ V ___/ ------- / | C | <- ------- Figure 5: Combined AS and RS If C and RS have the same principal, CAS and AS can be combined. ------------ | RqP = RO | Principal Level ------------ | in charge of | V -------------- | CAS + AS | Less-Constrained Level -------------- / \ / \ authentication authentication and authorization and authorization support support / \ V V ------- ------- | C | -- requests resource --> | RS | Constrained Level ------- <-- provides resource -- ------- Figure 6: CAS combined with AS Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 2.3. Information flows In this subsection, we complement the abstracted architecture described above with a discussion of the information flows in scope, mentioning that each endpoint may assume both a client and a server role and that communication may be via intermediaries. The less-constrained nodes, CAS and AS, control the interactions between the endpoints by supporting the potentially constrained nodes with control information, for example permissions of clients, conditions on resources, attributes of client and resource servers, keys and credentials. The control information may be rather different for C and RS, reflecting the intrinsic asymmetry with C initiating the request for access to a resource, and RS acting on a received request, and C finally acting on the received response. The information flows are shown in Figure 7. The arrows with control information only indicate origin and destination of information, actual message flow may pass intermediary nodes (both nodes that are identified in the architecture and other nodes). ------- ------ ------- ------ | CAS | | AS | | CAS | | AS | ------- ------ ------- ------ | | | | | | | | | | control | | control | | information | | information | | | | ------------------- ------------------- | | | | | | | | | v | | | | v | ------- ---------- request -----------> ------- | | | C1 | <---------- response ------------ | RS2 | | | ------- | | | | ------- | | v | | v | | ------- | | ------- | | | RS1 | <---- request ----- | C2 | | | ------- ----- response ---> ------- | | | | | | Endpoint 1 | | Endpoint 2 | ------------------- ------------------- Figure 7: Information flows that need to be protected o We assume that the necessary keys/credentials for protecting the control information between the potentially constrained nodes and Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 their associated less-constrained nodes are pre-established, for example as part of the commissioning procedure. o The messages between the endpoints also need to be protected, potentially end-to-end through intermediary nodes (Section 3.1). Any necessary keys/credentials for protecting the interaction between the endpoints will need to be established and maintained as part of a solution. 2.4. Problem statement The problem statement for authorization in constrained environments can be summarized as follows: o The interaction between potentially constrained endpoints is controlled by control information provided by less-constrained nodes on behalf of the principals of the endpoints. o The interaction between the endpoints needs to be secured, as well as the establishment of the necessary keys for securing the interaction, potentially end-to-end through intermediary nodes. o The mechanism for transferring control information needs to be secured, potentially end-to-end through intermediary nodes. Pre- established keying material may need to be employed for establishing the keys used to protect these information flows. 3. Security Objectives The security objectives that are addressed by an authorization solution include confidentiality and integrity. Additionally, allowing only selected entities limits the burden on system resources, thus helping to achieve availability. Misconfigured or wrongly designed authorization solutions can result in availability breaches: Users might no longer be able to use data and services as they are supposed to. Authentication mechanisms can achieve additional security objectives such as non-repudiation and accountability. These additional objectives are not related to authorization and thus are not in scope of this draft, but may nevertheless be relevant. Non-repudiation and accountability may require authentication on a device level, if it is necessary to determine which device performed an action. In other cases it may be more important to find out who is responsible for the device's actions. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 The security objectives and their relative importance differ for the various constrained environment applications and use cases [I-D.ietf-ace-usecases]. In many cases, one participating party has different security objectives than another. To achieve a security objective of one party, another party may be required to provide a service. E.g., if RqP requires the integrity of representations of a resource R that RS is hosting, both C and RS need to partake in integrity-protecting the transmitted data. Moreover, RS needs to protect any write access to this resource as well as to relevant other resources (such as configuration information, firmware update resources) to prevent unauthorized users from manipulating R. 3.1. End-to-End Security Objectives In many cases, the information flows described in Section 2.3 need to be protected end-to-end. For example, AS may not be connected to RS (or may not want to exercise such a connection), relying on C for transferring authorization information. As the authorization information is related to the permissions granted to C, C must not be in a position to manipulate this information, which therefore requires integrity protection on the way between AS and RS. As another example, resource representations sent between endpoints may be stored in intermediary nodes, such as caching proxies or pub- sub brokers. Where these intermediaries cannot be relied on to fulfill the security objectives of the endpoints, these will need to protect the exchanges end-to-end. Note that there may also be cases of intermediary nodes that very much partake in the security objectives to be achieved. What is the endpoint to which communication needs end-to-end protection is defined by the use case. In order to support the required communication and application security, keying material needs to be established between the relevant nodes in the architecture. 4. Authentication and Authorization Server-side authorization solutions aim at protecting the access to items of interest, e.g. hardware or software resources or data: They enable the resource owner to control who can access it and how. To determine if an entity is authorized to access a resource, an authentication mechanism is needed. According to the Internet Security Glossary [RFC4949], authentication is "the process of Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 verifying a claim that a system entity or system resource has a certain attribute value." Examples for attribute values are the ID of a device, the type of the device or the name of its owner. The security objectives the authorization mechanism aims at can only be achieved if the authentication and the authorization mechanism work together correctly. We speak of authenticated authorization to refer to the required synthesis of mechanism for authentication and authorization. Where used for authorization, the set of authenticated attributes must be meaningful for this purpose, i.e., authorization decisions must be possible based on these attributes. If the authorization policy assigns permissions to an individual entity, the set of authenticated attributes must be suitable to uniquely identify this entity. In scenarios where devices are communicating autonomously there is often less need to uniquely identify an individual device: For a principal, the fact that a device belongs to a certain company or that it has a specific type (e.g. light bulb) or location may be more important than that it has a unique identifier. (As a special case for the authorization of read access to a resource, RS may simply make an encrypted representation available to anyone [OSCAR]. In this case, controlling read access to that resource can be reduced to controlling read access to the key; partially removing access also requires a timely update of the key for RS and all participants still authorized.) Principals (RqP and RO) need to decide about the required level of granularity for the authorization. For example, we distinguish device authorization from owner authorization, and flat authorization from unrestricted authorization. In the first case different access permissions are granted to individual devices while in the second case individual owners are authorized. If flat authorization is used, all authenticated entities are implicitly authorized and have the same access permissions. Unrestricted authorization for an item of interest means that no authorization mechanism is used for accessing this resource (not even by authentication) and all entities are able to access the item as they see fit (note that an authorization mechanism may still be used to arrive at the decision to employ unrestricted authorization). More fine-grained authorization does not necessarily provide more security but can be more flexible. Principals need to consider that an entity should only be granted the permissions it really needs Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 (principle of least privilege), to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of resources. For all cases where an authorization solution is needed (all but Unrestricted Authorization), the enforcing party needs to be able to authenticate the party that is to be authorized. Authentication is therefore required for messages that contain (or otherwise update) representations of an accessed item. More precisely: The enforcing party needs to make sure that the receiver of a message containing a representation is authorized to receive it, both in the case of a client sending a representation to a server and vice versa. In addition, it needs to ensure that the actual sender of a message containing a representation is indeed the one authorized to send this message, again for both the client-to-server and server-to-client case. To achieve this, integrity protection of these messages is required: Authenticity cannot be assured if it is possible for an attacker to modify the message during transmission. In some cases, only one side (client or server side) requires the integrity and / or confidentiality of a resource value. Principals may decide to omit authentication (unrestricted authorization), or use flat authorization (just employing an authentication mechanism). However, as indicated in Section 3, the security objectives of both sides must be considered, which can often only be achieved when the the other side can be relied on to perform some security service. 5. Actors and their Tasks This and the following section look at the resulting architecture from two different perspectives: This section provides a more detailed description of the various "actors" in the architecture, the logical functional entities performing the tasks required. The following section then will focus on the protocols run between these functional entities. For the purposes of this document, an actor consists of a set of tasks and additionally has a security domain (client domain or server domain) and a level (constrained, principal, less-constrained). Tasks are assigned to actors according to their security domain and required level. Note that actors are a concept to understand the security requirements for constrained devices. The architecture of an actual solution might differ as long as the security requirements that derive from the relationship between the identified actors are considered. Several actors might share a single device or even be combined in a single piece of software. Interfaces between actors Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 may be realized as protocols or be internal to such a piece of software. 5.1. Constrained Level Actors As described in the problem statement (see Section 2), either C or RS or both of them may be located on a constrained node. We therefore define that C and RS must be able to perform their tasks even if they are located on a constrained node. Thus, C and RS are considered to be Constrained Level Actors. C performs the following tasks: o Communicate in a secure way (provide for confidentiality and integrity of messages), including access requests. o Validate that an entity is an authorized server for R. RS performs the following tasks: o Communicate in a secure way (provide for confidentiality and integrity of messages), including responses to access requests. o Validate the authorization of the requester to access the requested resource as requested. R is an item of interest such as a sensor or actuator value. R is considered to be part of RS and not a separate actor. The device on which RS is located might contain several resources of different ROs. For simplicity of exposition, these resources are described as if they had separate RS. As C and RS do not necessarily know each other they might belong to different security domains. (See Figure 8.) ------- -------- | C | -- requests resource ---> | RS | Constrained Level ------- <-- provides resource--- -------- Figure 8: Constrained Level Actors Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 5.2. Principal Level Actors Our objective is that C and RS are under control of principals in the physical world, the Requesting Party (RqP) and the Resource Owner (RO) respectively. The principals decide about the security policies of their respective endpoints and belong to the same security domain. RqP is in charge of C, i.e. RqP specifies security policies for C, e.g. with whom C is allowed to communicate. By definition, C and RqP belong to the same security domain. RqP must fulfill the following task: o Configure for C authorization information for sources for R. RO is in charge of R and RS. RO specifies authorization policies for R and decides with whom RS is allowed to communicate. By definition, R, RS and RO belong to the same security domain. RO must fulfill the following task: o Configure for RS authorization information for accessing R. (See Figure 2.) 5.3. Less-Constrained Level Actors Constrained level actors can only fulfill a limited number of tasks and may not have network connectivity all the time. To relieve them from having to manage keys for numerous endpoints and conducting computationally intensive tasks, another complexity level for actors is introduced. An actor on the less-constrained level belongs to the same security domain as its respective constrained level actor. They also have the same principal. The Client Authorization Server (CAS) belongs to the same security domain as C and RqP. CAS acts on behalf of RqP. It assists C in authenticating RS and determining if RS is an authorized server for R. CAS can do that because for C, CAS is the authority for claims about RS. CAS performs the following tasks: o Validate on the client side that an entity has certain attributes. o Obtain authorization information about an entity from C's principal (RqP) and provide it to C. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 o Negotiate means for secure communication to communicate with C. The Authorization Server (AS) belongs to the same security domain as R, RS and RO. AS acts on behalf of RO. It supports RS by authenticating C and determining C's permissions on R. AS can do that because for RS, AS is the authority for claims about C. AS performs the following tasks: o Validate on the server side that an entity has certain attributes. o Obtain authorization information about an entity from RS' principal (RO) and provide it to RS. o Negotiate means for secure communication to communicate with RS. 6. Kinds of Protocols Devices on the less-constrained level potentially are more powerful than constrained level devices in terms of processing power, memory, non-volatile storage. This results in different characteristics for the protocols used on these levels. 6.1. Constrained Level Protocols A protocol is considered to be on the constrained level if it is used between the actors C and RS which are considered to be constrained (see Section 5.1). C and RS might not belong to the same security domain. Therefore, constrained level protocols need to work between different security domains. Commonly used Internet protocols can not in every case be applied to constrained environments. In some cases, tweaking and profiling is required. In other cases it is beneficial to define new protocols which were designed with the special characteristics of constrained environments in mind. On the constrained level, protocols need to address the specific requirements of constrained environments. Examples for protocols that consider these requirements is the transfer protocol CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) [RFC7252] and the Datagram Transport Layer Security Protocol (DTLS) [RFC6347] which can be used for channel security. Constrained devices have only limited storage space and thus cannot store large numbers of keys. This is especially important because constrained networks are expected to consist of thousands of nodes. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 Protocols on the constrained level should keep this limitation in mind. 6.1.1. Cross Level Support Protocols Protocols which operate between a constrained device on one side and the corresponding less-constrained device on the other are considered to be (cross level) support protocols. Protocols used between C and CAS or RS and AS are therefore support protocols. Support protocols must consider the limitations of their constrained endpoint and therefore belong to the constrained level protocols. 6.2. Less-Constrained Level Protocols A protocol is considered to be on the less-constrained level if it is used between the actors CAS and AS. CAS and AS might belong to different security domains. On the less-constrained level, HTTP [RFC7230] and Transport Layer Security (TLS) [RFC5246] can be used alongside or instead of CoAP and DTLS. Moreover, existing security solutions for authentication and authorization such as the OAuth web authorization framework [RFC6749] and Kerberos [RFC4120] can likely be used without modifications and there are no limitations for the use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). 7. Elements of a Solution Without anticipating specific solutions, the following considerations may be helpful in discussing them. 7.1. Authorization The core problem we are trying to solve is authorization. The following problems related to authorization need to be addressed: o AS needs to transfer authorization information to RS and CAS needs to transfer authorization information to C. o The transferred authorization information needs to follow a defined format and encoding, which must be efficient for constrained devices, considering size of authorization information and parser complexity. o C and RS need to be able to verify the authenticity of the authorization information they receive. Here as well, there is a trade-off between processing complexity and deployment complexity. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 o The RS needs to enforce the authorization decisions of the AS, while C needs to abide with the authorization decisions of the CAS. The authorization information might require additional policy evaluation (e.g. matching against local access control lists, evaluating local conditions). The required "policy evaluation" at the constrained actors needs to be adapted to the capabilities of the devices implementing them. o Finally, as is indicated in the previous bullet, for a particular authorization decision there may be different kinds of authorization information needed, and these pieces of information may be transferred to C and RS at different times and in different ways prior to or during the client request. 7.2. Authentication The following problems need to be addressed, when considering authentication: o RS needs to authenticate AS, and C needs to authenticate CAS, to ensure that the authorization information and related data comes from the correct source. o CAS and AS may need to to authenticate each other, both to perform the required business logic and to ensure that CAS gets security information related to the resources from the right source. o In some use cases RS needs to authenticate some property of C, in order to map it to the relevant authorization information. In other use cases, authentication and authorization of C may be implicit, e.g. by encrypting the resource representation the RS only providing access to those who possess the key to decrypt. o C may need to authenticate RS, in order to ensure that it is interacting with the right resources. Alternatively C may just verify the integrity of a received resource representation. o CAS and AS need to authenticate their communication partner (C or RS), in order to ensure it serves the correct device. 7.3. Communication Security There are different alternatives to provide communication security, and the problem here is to choose the optimal one for each scenario. We list the available alternatives: o Session-based security at transport layer such as DTLS [RFC6347] offers security, including integrity and confidentiality Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 protection, for the whole application layer exchange. However, DTLS may not provide end-to-end security over multiple hops. Another problem with DTLS is the cost of the handshake protocol, which may be too expensive for constrained devices especially in terms of memory and power consumption for message transmissions. o An alternative is object security at application layer, e.g. using [I-D.selander-ace-object-security]. Secure objects can be stored or cached in network nodes and provide security for a more flexible communication model such as publish/subscribe (compare e.g. CoRE Mirror Server [I-D.koster-core-coap-pubsub]). A problem with object security is that it can not provide confidentiality for the message headers. o Hybrid solutions using both session-based and object security are also possible. An example of a hybrid is where authorization information and cryptographic keys are provided by AS in the format of secure data objects, but where the resource access is protected by session-based security. 7.4. Cryptographic Keys With respect to cryptographic keys, we see the following problems that need to be addressed: Symmetric vs Asymmetric Keys We need keys both for protection of resource access and for protection of transport of authentication and authorization information. Do we want to support solutions based on asymmetric keys or symmetric keys in both cases? There are classes of devices that can easily perform symmetric cryptography, but consume considerably more time/battery for asymmetric operations. On the other hand asymmetric cryptography has benefits e.g. in terms of deployment. Key Establishment How are the corresponding cryptographic keys established? Considering Section 7.1 there must be a mapping between these keys and the authorization information, at least in the sense that AS must be able to specify a unique client identifier which RS can verify (using an associated key). One of the use cases of [I-D.ietf-ace-usecases] describes spontaneous change of access policies - e.g. giving a hitherto unknown client the right to temporarily unlock your house door. In this case C is not previously known to RS and a key must be provisioned by AS. Revocation and Expiration Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 How are keys replaced and how is a key that has been compromised revoked in a manner that reaches all affected parties, also keeping in mind scenarios with intermittent connectivity? 8. Assumptions and Requirements In this section we list a set of candidate assumptions and requirements to make the problem description in the previous sections more concise and precise. 8.1. Architecture The architecture consists of at least the following types of nodes: o RS hosting resources, and responding to access requests o C requesting access to resources o AS supporting the access request/response procedure by providing authorization information to RS * AS may support this by aiding RS in authenticating C, or providing cryptographic keys or credentials to C and/or RS to secure the request/response procedure. o CAS supporting the access request/response procedure by providing authorization information to C * CAS may support this by aiding C in authenticating RS, forwarding information between AS and C (possibly ultimately for RS), or providing cryptographic keys or credentials to C and/or RS to secure the request/response procedure. o The architecture allows for intermediary nodes between any pair of C, RS, AS, and CAS, such as forward or reverse proxies in the CoRE architecture. (Solutions may or may not support all combinations.) * The architecture does not make a choice between session based security and data object security. 8.2. Constrained Devices o C and/or RS may be constrained in terms of power, processing, communication bandwidth, memory and storage space, and moreover: * unable to manage complex authorization policies Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 21]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 * unable to manage a large number of secure connections * without user interface * without constant network connectivity * unable to precisely measure time * required to save on wireless communication due to high power consumption o CAS and AS are not assumed to be constrained devices. o All devices under consideration can process symmetric cryptography without incurring an excessive performance penalty. * We assume the use of a standardized symmetric key algorithm, such as AES. * Except for the most constrained devices we assume the use of a standardized cryptographic hash function such as SHA-256. o Public key cryptography requires additional resources (e.g. RAM, ROM, power, specialized hardware). o A DTLS handshake involves significant computation, communication, and memory overheads in the context of constrained devices. * The RAM requirements of DTLS handshakes with public key cryptography are prohibitive for certain constrained devices. * Certificate-based DTLS handshakes require significant volumes of communication, RAM (message buffers) and computation. o A solution will need to consider support for a simple scheme for expiring authentication and authorization information on devices which are unable to measure time (cf. section Section 9.2). 8.3. Authentication o RS needs to authenticate AS to ensure that the authorization information and related data comes from the correct source. o Similary, C needs to authenticate CAS to ensure that the authorization information and related data comes from the correct source. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 22]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 o Depending on use case and authorization requirements, C, RS, CAS, or AS may need to authenticate messages from each other. 8.4. Server-side Authorization o RS enforces authorization for access to a resource based on credentials presented by C, the requested resource, the REST method, and local context in RS at the time of the request, or on any subset of this information. o The credentials presented by C may have been provided by CAS. o The underlying authorization decision is taken either by AS or RS. o The authorization decision is enforced by RS. * RS needs to have authorization information in order to verify that C is allowed to access the resource as requested. * RS needs to make sure that it provides resource access only to authorized clients. o Apart from authorization for access to a resource, authorization may also be required for access to information about a resource (e.g. resource descriptions). o The solution may need to be able to support the delegation of access rights. 8.5. Client-side Authorization Information o C enforces client-side authorization by protecting its requests to RS and by authenticating results from RS, making use of decisions and policies as well as keying material provided by CAS. 8.6. Server-side Authorization Information o Authorization information is transferred from AS to RS using Agent, Push or Pull mechanisms [RFC2904]. o RS needs to authenticate that the authorization information is coming from AS (integrity). o The authorization information may also be encrypted end-to-end between AS and RS (confidentiality). o The architecture supports the case where RS may not be able to communicate with AS at the time of the request from C. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 23]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 o RS may store or cache authorization information. o Authorization information may be pre-configured in RS. o Authorization information stored or cached in RS needs to be possible to change. The change of such information needs to be subject to authorization. o Authorization policies stored on RS may be handled as a resource, i.e. information located at a particular URI, accessed with RESTful methods, and the access being subject to the same authorization mechanics. AS may have special privileges when requesting access to the authorization policy resources on RS. o There may be mechanisms for C to look up the AS which provides authorization information about a particular resource. 8.7. Resource Access o Resources are accessed in a RESTful manner using GET, PUT, POST, DELETE. o By default, the resource request needs to be integrity protected and may be encrypted end-to-end from C to RS. It needs to be possible for RS to detect a replayed request. o By default, the response to a request needs to be integrity protected and encrypted end-to-end from RS to C. It needs to be possible for C to detect a replayed response. o RS needs to be able to verify that the request comes from an authorized client o C needs to be able to verify that the response to a request comes from the intended RS. o There may be resources whose access need not be protected (e.g. for discovery of the responsible AS). 8.8. Keys and Cipher Suites o A constrained node and its authorization manager (i.e., RS and AS, and C and CAS) have established cryptographic keys. For example, they share a secret key or each have the other's public key. o The transfer of authorization information is protected with symmetric and/or asymmetric keys. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 24]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 o The access request/response can be protected with symmetric and/or asymmetric keys. o There must be a mechanism for RS to establish the necessary key(s) to verify and decrypt the request and to protect the response. o There must be a mechanism for C to establish the necessary key(s) to protect the request and to verify and decrypt the response. o There must be a mechanism for C to obtain the supported cipher suites of a RS. 8.9. Network Considerations o A solution will need to consider network overload due to avoidable communication of a constrained node with its authorization manager (C with CAS, RS with AS). o A solution will need to consider network overload by compact authorization information representation. o A solution may want to optimize the case where authorization information does not change often. o A solution may consider support for an efficient mechanism for providing authorization information to multiple RSs, for example when multiple entities need to be configured or change state. 8.10. Legacy Considerations o A solution may consider interworking with existing infrastructure. o A solution may consider supporting authorization of access to legacy devices. 9. Security Considerations This document discusses authorization-related tasks for constrained environments and describes how these tasks can be mapped to actors in the architecture. The entire document is about security. Security considerations applicable to authentication and authorization in RESTful environments are provided in e.g. OAuth 2.0 [RFC6749]. In this section we focus on specific security aspects related to authorization in constrained-node networks. Section 11.6 of [RFC7252], "Constrained node considerations", discusses implications Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 25]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 of specific constraints on the security mechanisms employed. A wider view of security in constrained-node networks is provided in [I-D.garcia-core-security]. 9.1. Physical Attacks on Sensor and Actuator Networks The focus of this work is on constrained-node networks consisting of connected sensors and actuators. The main function of such devices is to interact with the physical world by gathering information or performing an action. We now discuss attacks performed with physical access to such devices. The main threats to sensors and actuator networks are: o Unauthorized access to data to and from sensors and actuators, including eavesdropping and manipulation of data. o Denial-of-service making the sensor/actuator unable to perform its intended task correctly. A number of attacks can be made with physical access to a device including probing attacks, timing attacks, power attacks, etc. However, with physical access to a sensor or actuator device it is possible to directly perform attacks equivalent of eavesdropping, manipulating data or denial of service. For example: o Instead of eavesdropping the sensor data or attacking the authorization system to gain access to the data, the attacker could make its own measurements on the physical object. o Instead of manipulating the sensor data the attacker could change the physical object which the sensor is measuring, thereby changing the payload data which is being sent. o Instead of manipulating data for an actuator or attacking the authorization system, the attacker could perform an unauthorized action directly on the physical object. o A denial-of-service attack could be performed physically on the object or device. All these attacks are possible by having physical access to the device, since the assets are related to the physical world. Moreover, this kind of attacks are in many cases straightforward (requires no special competence or tools, low cost given physical access, etc.) Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 26]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 As a conclusion, if an attacker has full physical access to a sensor or actuator device, then much of the security functionality elaborated in this draft is not effective to protect the asset during the physical attack. Since it does not make sense to design a solution for a situation that cannot be protected against we assume there is no need to protect assets which are exposed during a physical attack. In other words, either an attacker does not have physical access to the sensor or actuator device, or if it has, the attack shall only have effect during the period of physical attack, and shall be limited in extent to the physical control the attacker exerts (e.g., must not affect the security of other devices.) 9.2. Time Measurements Measuring time with certain accuracy is important to achieve certain security properties, for example to determine whether a public key certificate, access token or some other assertion is valid. Dynamic authorization in itself requires the ability to handle expiry or revocation of authorization decisions or to distinguish new authorization decisions from old. For certain categories of devices we can assume that there is an internal clock which is sufficiently accurate to handle the time measurement requirements. If RS can connect directly to AS it could get updated in terms of time as well as revocation information. If RS continuously measures time but can't connect to AS or other trusted source, time drift may have to be accepted and it may not be able to manage revocation. However, it may still be able to handle short lived access rights within some margins, by measuring the time since arrival of authorization information or request. Some categories of devices in scope may be unable measure time with any accuracy (e.g. because of sleep cycles). This category of devices is not suitable for the use cases which require measuring validity of assertions and authorizations in terms of absolute time. 10. IANA Considerations This document has no actions for IANA. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 27]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 11. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Olaf Bergmann, Robert Cragie, Klaus Hartke, Sandeep Kumar, John Mattson, Corinna Schmitt, Mohit Sethi, Hannes Tschofenig, Vlasios Tsiatsis and Erik Wahlstroem for contributing to the discussion, giving helpful input and commenting on previous forms of this draft. The authors would also like to specifically acknowledge input provided by Hummen and others [HUM14delegation]. 12. Informative References [HUM14delegation] Hummen, R., Shafagh, H., Raza, S., Voigt, T., and K. Wehrle, "Delegation-based Authentication and Authorization for the IP-based Internet of Things", 11th IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON'14), June 30 - July 3, 2014. [I-D.garcia-core-security] Garcia-Morchon, O., Kumar, S., Keoh, S., Hummen, R., and R. Struik, "Security Considerations in the IP-based Internet of Things", draft-garcia-core-security-06 (work in progress), September 2013. [I-D.hardjono-oauth-umacore] Hardjono, T., Maler, E., Machulak, M., and D. Catalano, "User-Managed Access (UMA) Profile of OAuth 2.0", draft- hardjono-oauth-umacore-13 (work in progress), April 2015. [I-D.ietf-ace-usecases] Seitz, L., Gerdes, S., Selander, G., Mani, M., and S. Kumar, "ACE use cases", draft-ietf-ace-usecases-04 (work in progress), June 2015. [I-D.koster-core-coap-pubsub] Koster, M., Keranen, A., and J. Jimenez, "Publish- Subscribe Broker for the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)", draft-koster-core-coap-pubsub-02 (work in progress), July 2015. [I-D.selander-ace-object-security] Selander, G., Mattsson, J., Palombini, F., and L. Seitz, "June 29, 2015", draft-selander-ace-object-security-02 (work in progress), June 2015. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 28]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 [OSCAR] Vucinic, M., Tourancheau, B., Rousseau, F., Duda, A., Damon, L., and R. Guizzetti, "OSCAR: Object Security Architecture for the Internet of Things", CoRR vol. abs/1404.7799, 2014. [RFC2904] Vollbrecht, J., Calhoun, P., Farrell, S., Gommans, L., Gross, G., de Bruijn, B., de Laat, C., Holdrege, M., and D. Spence, "AAA Authorization Framework", RFC 2904, DOI 10.17487/RFC2904, August 2000, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2904>. [RFC4120] Neuman, C., Yu, T., Hartman, S., and K. Raeburn, "The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5)", RFC 4120, DOI 10.17487/RFC4120, July 2005, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4120>. [RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2", FYI 36, RFC 4949, DOI 10.17487/RFC4949, August 2007, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4949>. [RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, DOI 10.17487/ RFC5246, August 2008, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5246>. [RFC6347] Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, DOI 10.17487/RFC6347, January 2012, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6347>. [RFC6749] Hardt, D., Ed., "The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework", RFC 6749, DOI 10.17487/RFC6749, October 2012, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6749>. [RFC7228] Bormann, C., Ersue, M., and A. Keranen, "Terminology for Constrained-Node Networks", RFC 7228, DOI 10.17487/ RFC7228, May 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7228>. [RFC7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing", RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>. [RFC7231] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content", RFC 7231, DOI 10.17487/RFC7231, June 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7231>. Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 29]
Internet-Draft ace-actors August 2015 [RFC7252] Shelby, Z., Hartke, K., and C. Bormann, "The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7252, DOI 10.17487/ RFC7252, June 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7252>. Authors' Addresses Stefanie Gerdes Universitaet Bremen TZI Postfach 330440 Bremen D-28359 Germany Phone: +49-421-218-63906 Email: gerdes@tzi.org Ludwig Seitz SICS Swedish ICT AB Scheelevaegen 17 Lund 223 70 Sweden Email: ludwig@sics.se Goeran Selander Ericsson Faroegatan 6 Kista 164 80 Sweden Email: goran.selander@ericsson.com Carsten Bormann (editor) Universitaet Bremen TZI Postfach 330440 Bremen D-28359 Germany Phone: +49-421-218-63921 Email: cabo@tzi.org Gerdes, et al. Expires February 26, 2016 [Page 30]