CBOR Working Group M. Richardson
Internet-Draft Sandelman Software Works
Intended status: Standards Track 21 April 2021
Expires: 23 October 2021
CBOR tags for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and prefixes
draft-ietf-cbor-network-addresses-04
Abstract
This document describes two CBOR Tags to be used with IPv4 and IPv6
addresses and prefixes.
RFC-EDITOR-please remove: This work is tracked at https://github.com/
cbor-wg/cbor-network-address
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3.1. IPv6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3.2. IPv4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Encoder Consideration for prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Decoder Considerations for prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7.1. Tag 54 - IPv6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7.2. Tag 52 - IPv4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
8. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Appendix A. Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
[RFC8949] defines a number of CBOR Tags for common items.
Not included are ones to indicate if the item is an IPv4 or IPv6
address, or if it is an address plus prefix length. This document
defines them.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Protocol
These tags can applied to byte strings to represent a single address.
When applied to an array, the represent a CIDR-style prefix. When a
byte string (without prefix) appears in a context where a prefix is
expected, then it is to be assumed that all bits are relevant. That
is, for IPv4, a /32 is implied, and for IPv6, a /128 is implied.
3.1. IPv6
IANA has allocated tag 54 for IPv6 uses. (Note that this is the
ASCII code for '6'.)
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An IPv6 address is to be encoded as a sixteen-byte byte string
([RFC8949] section, 3.1, major type 2), prefixed with Tag(54).
An IPv6 prefix, such as 2001:db8:1234::/48 is to be encoded as a two
element array, with the length of the prefix first. Trailing zero
bytes MUST be omitted.
For example:
54([ 48, h'20010db81234'])
3.2. IPv4
IANA has allocated tag 54 for IPv4 uses. (Note that this is the
ASCII code for '4'.)
An IPv4 address is to be encoded as a four-byte byte string
([RFC8949] section, 3.1, major type 2), prefixed with Tag(52).
An IPv4 prefix, such as 192.0.2.1/24 is to be encoded as a two
element array, with the length of the prefix first. Trailing zero
bytes MUST be omitted.
For example:
52([ 24, h'C00002'])
4. Encoder Consideration for prefixes
An encoder may omit as many right-hand (trailing) bytes which are all
zero as it wishes.
There is no relationship between the number of bytes omitted and the
prefix length. For instance, the prefix 2001:db8::/64 is optimally
encoded as:
54([64, h'20010db8'])
An encoder MUST take care to set all trailing bits to zero. While
decoders are expected to ignore them, such garbage entities could be
used as a covert channel, or may reveal the state of what would
otherewise be private memory contents. So for example,
2001:db8:1230::/44 MUST be encoded as:
52([44, h'20010db81230'])
even though variations like:
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54([44, h'20010db81233']) WRONG
54([45, h'20010db8123f']) WRONG
would be parsed in the exact same way.
The same considerations apply to IPv4 prefixes.
5. Decoder Considerations for prefixes
A decoder MUST consider all bits to the right of the prefix length to
be zero.
A decoder MUST handle the case where a prefix length specifies that
more bits are relevant than are actually present in the byte-string.
As a pathological case, ::/128 can be encoded as
54([128, h''])
A recommendation for implementation is to first create an array of 16
(or 4) bytes in size, set it all to zero.
Then looking at the length of the included byte-string, and of the
prefix-length, rounded up to the next multiple of 8, and taking
whichever is smaller, copy that many bytes from the byte-string into
the array.
Finally, looking at the last three bits of the prefix-length (that
is, the prefix-length modulo 8), use a static array of 8 values to
force the lower bits, non-relevant bits to zero.
A particularly paranoid decoder could examine the lower non-relevant
bits to determine if they are non-zero, and reject the prefix. This
would detect non-compliant encoders, or a possible covert channel.
6. Security Considerations
Identifying which byte sequences in a protocol are addresses may
allow an attacker or eavesdropper to better understand what parts of
a packet to attack.
Reading the relevant RFC may provide more information, so it would
seem that any additional security that was provided by not being able
to identify what are IP addresses falls into the security by
obscurity category.
The right-hand bits of the prefix, after the prefix-length, are
ignored by this protocol. A malicious party could use them to
transmit covert data in a way that would not affect the primary use
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of this encoding. Such abuse would be detected by examination of the
raw protocol bytes. Users of this encoding should be aware of this
possibility.
7. IANA Considerations
IANA has allocated two tags from the Specification Required area of
the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) Tags:
7.1. Tag 54 - IPv6
Data Item: byte string or array
Semantics: IPv6 or [prefixlen,IPv6]
7.2. Tag 52 - IPv4
Data Item: byte string or array
Semantics: IPv4 or [prefixlen,IPv4]
8. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8949] Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object
Representation (CBOR)", STD 94, RFC 8949,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8949, December 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8949>.
Appendix A. Changelog
This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
* 03
* 02
* 01 added security considerations about covert channel
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Acknowledgements
none yet
Author's Address
Michael Richardson
Sandelman Software Works
Email: mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca
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