Network Working Group                                         M. Bhatia
Internet-Draft                                            Alcatel-Lucent
Intended status: Standards Track                              V. Manral
Expires: April 22, 2013                              Hewlett-Packard Co.
                                                                D. Zhang
                                                                  Huawei
                                                        October 19, 2012


                BFD Generic Cryptographic Authentication
                 draft-ietf-bfd-generic-crypto-auth-03

Abstract

   This document proposes an extension to Bidirectional Forwarding
   Detection (BFD) to allow the use of any cryptographic authentication
   algorithm in addition to the already-documented authentication
   schemes described in the base specification.  This document adds the
   basic infrastructure that is required for supporting algorithm and
   key agility for BFD.

Requirements Language

   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].

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 April 22, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.



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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   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
   2.  BFD Security Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Authentication Procedures  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.1.  Authentication Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.2.  Authentication Section Format  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.3.  Procedures at the Sending Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.4.  Procedure at the Receiving Side  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.5.  Key Selection for BFD Packet Transmission  . . . . . . . .  8
     3.6.  Replay Protection using Extended Sequence Numbers  . . . .  9
   4.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   5.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   6.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   7.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     7.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12






















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1.  Introduction

   The base specification of bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)
   [RFC5880] defines five authentication schemes: Simple Password, Keyed
   MD5 , Meticulous Keyed MD5, Keyed SHA-1, and Meticulous SHA-1.  In
   Simple Password, passwords are transferred in plaintext.  An attacker
   with physical access to the network can easily eavesdrop on the
   password and compromise the security of the BFD packet exchanges.  In
   Keyed MD5 and Meticulous Keyed MD5, the BFD devices on the both sides
   of a BFD session share a secret key which is used to generate a keyed
   MD5 digest for each packet, and a monotonically increasing sequence
   number scheme is used to prevent replay attacks.  Keyed SHA-1 and
   Meticulous SHA-1 modes are similar to MD5, and it uses SHA-1 instead
   of MD5 to generate a digest for each packet.

   A concern with existing authentication schemes of BFD is that the
   security strength of the cryptographic algorithms adopted in the
   schemes is relatively weak.  Both the MD5 algorithm and the SHA-1
   algorithm are known to be vulnerable to collision attacks.  In [MD5-
   attack] and [Dobb96a, Dobb96b], several methods of generating hash
   collisions for some applications of MD5 are proposed.  Similar
   security vulnerabilities of SHA-1 are introduced in [SHA-1-attack1]
   and [SHA-1-attack2].  It is therefore desired that BFD must support
   newer algorithms that have not yet been broken.  Additionally, the
   transition mechanism from one algorithm to the other must be
   seamless.

   The other issue with the existing authentication schemes is the
   vulnerability to replay attacks.  In non-meticulous authentication
   schemes, sequence numbers are only increased occasionally.  This
   behavior can be taken advantage of by an attacker to perform intra-
   session replay attacks.  In meticulous authentication schemes,
   sequence numbers are required to monotonically increase with each
   successive packet, which eliminates the possibility of intra-session
   replay attacks.

   BFD session timers are often defined with the granularity of
   microseconds.  Although in practice BFD devices send packets at
   millisecond intervals, they can potentially send packets at a much
   higher rate.  Since the cryptographic sequence number space is only
   32 bits, when using Meticulous Authentication, a sequence number used
   in a BFD session can reach its maximum value and roll over within a
   short period.  For instance, if the value of a sequence number is
   increased by one every millisecond, then it will reach its maximum in
   less than 8 weeks.  This can potentially be exploited to launch
   inter-session replay attacks.

   In order to address the issues mentioned above, this document



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   proposes two new authentication types that can be used to secure the
   BFD packets.  The two authentication types are - Cryptographic
   Authentication (CRYPTO_AUTH) and Meticulous Cryptographic
   Authentication (MET_ CRYPTO_AUTH).  Unlike earlier authentication
   types that were defined in BFD, the proposed authentication types are
   not tied to any particular authentication algorithm or construct.
   These can use different authentication algorithms and constructs like
   MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2, HMAC-SHA1, HMAC-SHA2, etc. to provide
   authentication and data integrity protection for BFD control packets.

   The packet replay mechanism has also been modified to improve its
   capability in handling inter and intra-session replay attacks.

   It should be noted that this document attempts to fix the manual key
   management procedure that currently exists within BFD, as part of the
   Phase One described in KARP-design-guide
   [I-D.ietf-karp-design-guide].  Therefore, only the pre-shared keys is
   considered in this document.  However, the solution described in this
   document is generic and does not preclude the possibility of
   supporting keys derived from an automated key management protocol.


2.  BFD Security Association

   The BFD protocol does not include an in-band mechanism to create or
   manage BFD Security Associations (BFD SA).  A BFD SA contains a set
   of shared parameters between any two legitimate BFD devices.

   The parameters associated with a BFD SA are listed as follows:

   o Authentication Algorithm : This indicates the authentication
   algorithm to be used with the BFD SA.  This information SHOULD never
   be sent in plaintext over the wire.

   o Authentication Key : This indicates the cryptographic key
   associated with this BFD SA.  The length of this key is variable and
   depends upon the authentication algorithm specified by the BFD SA.
   Operators MUST ensure that this is never sent over the network in
   clear-text via any protocol.  Care should also be taken to ensure
   that the selected key is unpredictable, avoiding any keys known to be
   weak for the algorithm in use.  [RFC4086] contains helpful
   information on both key generation techniques and cryptographic
   randomness.

   o Authentication Key Identifier (Key ID) : This is a two octet
   unsigned integer used to uniquely identify the BFD SA.  This ID could
   be manually configured by the network operator (or, in the future,
   possibly by some key management protocol specified by the IETF).  The



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   receiver determines the active SA by looking at this field in the
   incoming packet.  The sender puts this Key ID in the BFD packet based
   on the active configuration.  Using Key IDs makes changing keys while
   maintaining protocol operation convenient.  Normally, an
   implementation would allow the network operator to configure a set of
   keys in a key chain, with each key in the chain having fixed
   lifetime.  The actual operation of these mechanisms is outside the
   scope of this document.

   A key ID indicates a tuple of an authentication key and an associated
   authentication algorithm.  If a key is expected to be applied with
   different algorithms, different Key IDs must be used to identify the
   associations of the key with its authentication algorithms
   respectively.  However, the application of a key for different
   purposes must be very careful, since it may make an adversary easier
   to collect more material to compromise the key.

   o Not Before Time : The time point before which the key should not be
   used.

   o Not After Time : The time point after which the key should not be
   used.


3.  Authentication Procedures

   In the proposed authentication extension, an optional authentication
   section (Generic Authentication Section) and two authentication types
   (Generic Cryptographic Authentication and Generic Meticulous
   Cryptographic Authentication) are specified.

3.1.  Authentication Types

   The Authentication section is only present in a BFD packet if the
   Authentication Present (A) bit is set in the packet header.  The Auth
   Type in the Authentication section is set to 6 when Generic
   Cryptographic Authentication is in use, while it is set to 7 when
   Generic Meticulous Cryptographic Authentication is in use.

   Both the authentication types use a monotonically increasing sequence
   number to protect the BFD session against reply attacks.  The only
   difference between the two types is that the sequence number is
   occasionally incremented in the Cryptographic Authentication mode, as
   against the Meticulous Cryptographic Authentication mode, where it is
   incremented on every packet.

   As a result of this, in the Cryptographic Authentication scheme, a
   replay attack is possible till the next sequence number is sent out.



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3.2.  Authentication Section Format

   A new authentication type, 6 or 7, indicating the generic
   cryptographic authentication mechanism in use, is inserted in the
   first octet of Authentication Section of the BFD control packet.

   For a BFD packet, if the Authentication Present (A) bit is set in the
   header and the Authentication Type field is 6 (Generic Cryptographic
   Authentication) or 7 (Generic Meticulous Cryptographic
   Authentication), the Authentication Section has the following format:
    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
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |   Auth Type   |   Auth Len    |         Auth Key ID           |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |           Sequence Number (High Order 32 Bits)                |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |           Sequence Number (Low Order 32 Bits)                 |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                                                               |
   |                  Authentication Data (Variable)               |
   |                                                               |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   o  Auth Type: The Authentication Type, which in this case is 6
      (Cryptographic Authentication) or 7 (Meticulous Cryptographic
      Authentication).

   o  Auth Len: The length of the Authentication Section.

   o  Auth Key ID: The Key ID of the authentication key used for this
      packet, enabling multiple keys to be active simultaneously.

   o  Sequence Number: A 64-bit sequence number that is used to prevent
      replay attacks.  For Cryptographic Authentication this value is
      incremented occasionally.  For Meticulous Cryptographic
      Authentication, this value is incremented for each successive
      packet transmitted for a session.

   o  Authentication Data: This field carries the digest computed by
      whatever Cryptographic Authentication algorithm is being used to
      authenticate the BFD control packet.

3.3.  Procedures at the Sending Side

   Before a BFD device sends a BFD packet out, the device needs to
   select an appropriate BFD SA from its local key database if a keyed
   digest for the packet is required.  If no appropriate SA is



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   available, the BFD packet MUST be discarded.

   If an appropriate SA is available, the device then derives the key
   and the associated authentication algorithm from the SA.

   The device sets the Authentication Present (A) bit in the packet
   header.

   The device MUST fill the Auth Type and the Auth Len fields before the
   authentication data is computed.  The Sequence Number field MUST be
   set to bfd.XmitAuthSeq.

   The Auth Len field in the Authentication section is set as per the
   authentication algorithm that is being used.

   The Key ID field is filled.

   The computation of the digest is performed.  The computing process
   can be various when different algorithms are adopted and is out of
   the scope of this document.

   The generated digest is placed in the Authentication Data field.

3.4.  Procedure at the Receiving Side

   When a BFD Control packet is received, the following procedure MUST
   be followed, in the order specified.

   If the Authentication Present (A) bit is set in the packet header and
   the receiver will try to find a appropriate BFD SA in its local key
   table to process the packet.  The BFD SA is identified by the Key ID
   field in the Authentication Section of the incoming BFD packet.

   If the Auth Key ID field does not match the ID of any configured
   authentication key or the associated key is not in its valid period,
   the received packet MUST be discarded.

   If bfd.AuthSeqKnown is 1, examine the Sequence Number field.  For
   Cryptographic Authentication, if the Sequence Number lies outside of
   the range of bfd.RcvAuthSeq to bfd.RcvAuthSeq+(3*Detect Mult)
   inclusive (when treated as an unsigned 32 bit circular number space),
   the received packet MUST be discarded.  For Meticulous Cryptographic
   Authentication, if the Sequence Number lies outside of the range of
   bfd.RcvAuthSeq+1 to bfd.RcvAuthSeq+(3*Detect Mult) inclusive (when
   treated as an unsigned 32 bit circular number space, the received
   packet MUST be discarded.

   The device then prepares for generating a digest of the packet.



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   First of all, the authentication data in the Authentication Value
   field needs to be saved somewhere else.  Then the Authentication
   Value field is set with a pre-specified value (which may be various
   in different security algorithms) according the authentication
   algorithm indicated in the SA.  After this, the device starts
   performing the digest generating operations.  The work of defining
   actual digest generating operations is out of the scope of this
   document.

   The calculated data is compared with the received authentication data
   in the packet and the packet MUST be discarded if the two do not
   match.  In such a case, an error event SHOULD be logged.

   An implementation MAY have a transition mode where it includes
   CRYPTO_AUTH or the MET_CRYPTO_AUTH information in the packets but
   does not verify this information.  This is provided as a transition
   aid for networks in the process of migrating to the new CRYPTO_AUTH
   and MET_CRYPTO_AUTH based authentication schemes.

3.5.  Key Selection for BFD Packet Transmission

   In [I-D.ietf-karp-crypto-key-table], a conceptual key database called
   "key table" is introduce.  A key table is located in the middle of
   key management protocols and security protocols so that a security
   protocol can derive long-term keys from the key table but does not
   have to know the details of key management.  This section describes
   how the proposed security solution selects long-lived keys from key
   tables [I-D.ietf-karp-crypto-key-table].

   Assume that a device R1 tries to send a unicast BFD packet from its
   interface I1 to the interface R2 of a remote device R2 at time T.
   Because the key should be shared by the by both R1 and R2 to protect
   the communication between I1 and I2, R1 needs to provide a protocol
   ("BFD"), an interface identifier (I1) and a peer identifier (R2) into
   the key selection function.  Any key that satisfies the following
   conditions may be selected:

   o  The Peer field includes the device ID of R2.

   o  the Protocol field matches "BFD"

   o  The PeerKeyName field is not "unknown".

   o  The Interface field includes I1 or "all".

   o  The Direction field is either "out" or "both".





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   o  SendNotBefore <= current time <= SendNotAfter.

   After a set of keys are provided, a BFD implementation should support
   selection of keys based on algorithm preference.

   Upon R2 receives the BFD packet from R1, R2 provides the protocol
   ("BFD"), the peer identifier (R1), the key identifier derived from
   the incoming packet (L), and the interface (I2) to the key table.
   Any key that satisfies the following conditions may be selected:

   o  The Peer field includes the device ID of R1.

   o  the Protocol field matches "BFD"

   o  the LocalKeyName is L

   o  The Interface field includes I2 or "all".

   o  The Direction field is either "out" or "both".

   o  SendNotBefore <= current time <= SendNotAfter.

3.6.  Replay Protection using Extended Sequence Numbers

   As described in Section 1, if the BFD packets in a session are
   transferred with a high frequency, a 32-bit sequence number may reach
   its maximum and have to roll back before the session finishes.  A
   attacker thus can replay the packets intercepted before the sequence
   number wrapped without being detected.  To address this problem, the
   length of the sequence number in the proposed authentication section
   has been extended to 64 bits.  After the extension, the sequence
   number space of a device will not be exhausted within half of a
   million years even if the device sends out a BFD packet in every
   micro-second.  Therefore, the replay attack risks caused by the
   limited sequence number space can be largely addressed.  However, in
   Generic Cryptographic Authentication, the sequence number is only
   required to increase occasionally.  Therefore, a replayed packet may
   be regarded as a legal one until the packet with a larger sequence
   number is received.  This type of intra-session replay attack cannot
   be addressed only by extending the length of sequence numbers.

   An anti-replay solution for BFD also needs to consider the scenarios
   where a BFD device loses its prior sequence number state (e.g.,
   system crash, loss of power).  In such cases, a BFD device has to re-
   initialize its sequence number.  Taking this opportunity, an attacker
   may be able to replay the antique packets intercepted in previous
   sessions without being detected.




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   To address this problem, in the proposed solution, the most
   significant 32-bit value of the sequence number is used to contain a
   boot count, and the remainder 32-bit value is used as an ordinary 32-
   bit monotonically increasing sequence number.  In Generic
   Cryptographic Authentication, the remainder 32-bit value is required
   to increase occasionally, while in Generic Meticulous Cryptographic
   Authentication, the lower order 32-bit sequence number MUST be
   incremented for every BFD packet sent by a BFD device.  The BFD
   implementations are required to retain the boot count in non-volatile
   storage for the deployment life the BFD device.  The boot count
   increases each time when the BFD device loses its prior sequence
   number state.  The SNMPv3 snmpEngineBoots variable [RFC4222] MAY be
   used for this purpose.  However, maintaining a separate boot count
   solely for BFD sequence numbers has the advantage of decoupling SNMP
   re-initialization and BFD re-initialization.  Also, in the rare event
   that the lower order 32- bit sequence number wraps, the boot count
   can be incremented to preserve the strictly increasing property of
   the aggregate sequence number.  Hence, a separate BFD boot count is
   RECOMMENDED.


4.  IANA Considerations

   This document currently defines a value of 6 to be used to denote
   Cryptographic Authentication mechanism for authenticating BFD control
   packets and 7 for Meticulous Cryptographic Authentication.


5.  Security Considerations

   The proposed sequence number extension offers most of the benefits of
   of more complicated mechanisms involving challenges.  There are,
   however, a couple drawbacks to this approach.  First, it requires the
   BFD implementation to be able to save its boot count in non-volatile
   storage.  If the non-volatile storage is ever repaired or upgraded
   such that the contents are lost or the BFD device is replaced with a
   model, the keys MUST be changed to prevent replay attacks.  Second,
   if a device is taken out of service completely (either intentionally
   or due to a persistent failure), the potential exists for re-
   establishment of a BFD adjacency by replaying the entire BFD session
   establishment.  This scenario is however, extremely unlikely and can
   be easily avoided.  For instance, after recovering from a system
   failure, a BFD device has to re-establish BFD sessions.  At this
   stage, if the device randomly selects its discriminators to identify
   new BFD sessions, the possibility of reestablishing a BFD session by
   replaying the entire BFD session establishment will be eliminated.
   For the implementations in which discriminators are not randomly
   selected, this issue can be largely mitigated by integrating the boot



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   count of the remote BFD router in the generation of the
   authentication data for outgoing BFD packets.  Of course, this attack
   could also be thwarted by changing the relevant manual keys.

   There is a transition mode suggested where devices can ignore the
   CRYPTO_AUTH or the MET_CRYPTO_AUTH information carried in the
   packets.  The operator must ensure that this mode is only used when
   migrating to the new CRYPTO_AUTH/MET_CRYPTO_AUTH based authentication
   scheme as this leaves the device vulnerable to an attack.


6.  Acknowledgements


7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

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

7.2.  Informative References

   [Dobb96a]  Dobbertin, H., "Cryptanalysis of MD5 Compress", May 1996.

   [Dobb96b]  Dobbertin, H., "The Status of MD5 After a Recent Attack",
              CryptoBytes", 1996.

   [I-D.ietf-karp-crypto-key-table]
              Housley, R., Polk, T., Hartman, S., and D. Zhang,
              "Database of Long-Lived Symmetric Cryptographic Keys",
              draft-ietf-karp-crypto-key-table-03 (work in progress),
              June 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-karp-design-guide]
              Lebovitz, G. and M. Bhatia, "Keying and Authentication for
              Routing Protocols (KARP) Design Guidelines",
              draft-ietf-karp-design-guide-10 (work in progress),
              December 2011.

   [MD5-attack]
              Wang, X., Feng, D., Lai, X., and H. Yu, "Collisions for
              Hash Functions MD4, MD5, HAVAL-128 and RIPEMD",
              August 2004.

   [RFC1321]  Rivest, R., "The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC 1321,
              April 1992.




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   [RFC4086]  Eastlake, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, "Randomness
              Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086, June 2005.

   [RFC4222]  Choudhury, G., "Prioritized Treatment of Specific OSPF
              Version 2 Packets and Congestion Avoidance", BCP 112,
              RFC 4222, October 2005.

   [RFC5880]  Katz, D. and D. Ward, "Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
              (BFD)", RFC 5880, June 2010.

   [SHA-1-attack1]
              Wang, X., Yin, Y., and H. Yu, "Finding Collisions in the
              Full SHA-1", 2005.

   [SHA-1-attack2]
              Wang, X., Yao, A., and F. Yao, "New Collision Search for
              SHA-1", 2005.


Authors' Addresses

   Manav Bhatia
   Alcatel-Lucent
   Bangalore
   India

   Email: manav.bhatia@alcatel-lucent.com


   Vishwas Manral
   Hewlett-Packard Co.
   19111 Pruneridge Ave.
   Cupertino, CA  95014
   USA

   Email: vishwas.manral@hp.com


   Dacheng Zhang
   Huawei
   Beijing,
   China

   Email: zhangdacheng@huawei.com







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