Internet Draft                            Hormuzd Khosravi, Intel
  Expires: January 2007                     Paul Sangster, Symantec

  Working Group: NEA                               July 2006




                 Requirements for Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA)
                    draft-khosravi-nea-requirements-01.txt



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  Copyright Notice

      Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).

  Conventions used in this document

   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].

  Abstract

   This document defines the interface (protocol) requirements between
   the components of the NEA (Network Endpoint Assessment) conceptual
   architecture.  NEA provides owners of networks (e.g. an enterprise



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   offering remote access) a mechanism to learn the operational state
   or posture of a system requesting network access and then apply this
   knowledge to the network admission decision.  In this case,
   operational posture refers to information about the configuration
   and use of hardware and software capabilities available or running
   on the system.  This information is frequently useful for detecting
   systems that are lacking (or have out of date) security protective
   mechanisms (e.g. anti-virus, firewall.)

   In order to provide context for the requirements, a conceptual
   architecture and terminology is introduced.  This architecture is
   provided for informational purposes but is based on the models used
   by NAC[9], NAP[10] and TNC[8].

  Authors

   The participants in the NEA Requirements Team who were instrumental
   in the creation of this requirements draft are:

   Kevin_Amorin, Diana Arroyo, Uri Blumenthal, Steve Hanna, Thomas
   Hardjono, Hormuzd Khosravi, Ravi Sahita, Mauricio Sanchez, Paul
   Sangster, Jeff Six, Joseph Tardo, Susan Thompson, John Vollbrecht,
   Hao Zhou


   1. Introduction....................................................2
   2. Definitions.....................................................3
   3. Architecture and Components.....................................4
   4. Common Requirements Across Architecture.........................5
   5. Protocol Requirements...........................................6
 5.1
.Pos
ture
 At
tr
ibute
 (PA)
 Protocol
 Requirements.....................6
 5.2
.Pos
ture
 Broker
 (PB)
 Protocol Requirements........................7
 5.3
.Posture
 Transpor
t (PT)
 Protocol
 Requirements.....................8
 5.3
.1
.EAP Usage Within
 PT............................................9
   6. Security Analysis/Requirements.................................10
   7. Operational Considerations.....................................12
   8. Security Considerations........................................13
 8.1
.Scope
 and Over
lap...............................................13
 8.2.Relevant
 Classes
 of
 At
tack......................................14
  8.2
.1
.Man-
in-the-Middle
 (MITM).....................................14
  8.2
.2
.Message Modification.........................................14
  8.2.3
.Message Replay or
 Theft......................................15
   9. References.....................................................15
 9.1
. Normat
ive
 References...........................................15
 9.2. Informat
ive
 References.........................................16
   Authors' Addresses & Acknowledgments..............................16


 1.
    Introduction




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   Today, most network providers can leverage existing standards-based
   technologies to restrict access to the network based upon the
   requesting system's user or host-based identity, source IP address
   or physical access point.  However these approaches still leave the
   network prone to malware-based attack, when an authorized but
   infected system is admitted and the malware is able to spread
   throughout the internal network.

   As a result, network operators need the ability to preemptively
   detect systems that are prone or already contain malware potentially
   dangerous to the network.  If a system is determined to be prone to
   attack by lacking proper defensive mechanisms such as the absence of
   up to date firewall and anti-virus software, there should be a way
   to safely repair (remediate) the system so that it can be
   subsequently trusted to join and operate on the network.

   The Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA) system is a complementary
   technology to existing authentication and authorization approaches
   allowing the network to have visibility into the contents of the
   system (security posture) requesting access so that its risk profile
   can be factored into the admission decision.  NEA typically involves
   the use of trusted agents running on the requesting machine which
   observe and report on the posture of the system to network
   infrastructure.  The infrastructure has equivalent components which
   are capable of evaluating the posture information and feeding the
   result to an appropriate network admission decision maker.  Finally
   the admission decision is provisioned to the enforcement mechanisms
   on the network and/or system requesting access.  The decision might
   allow for no access, limited access (possibly to allow for
   remediation), or full access to the network.

   Architectures, similar to NEA, have been defined in the industry
   (e.g. TNC, NAP, NAC) to assess the software or hardware
   configuration of endpoint devices for the purposes of monitoring or
   enforcing compliance of endpoints to an organization's policy on
   access to the network. These architectures are not interoperable
   since most of the technologies used to implement the architecture
   are not standards.

   The NEA working group is working on defining standard protocols so
   as to enable interoperability between devices from different vendors
   allowing network owners to deploy truly heterogeneous solutions.
   This document describes the requirements for NEA candidate
   technologies and protocols.

 2.
    Definitions

   Component – Software, hardware or firmware entity performing a
   particular logical function within the NEA conceptual architecture.




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   For the purposes of assessment, a component may be a particular
   vendor product (e.g. Symantec Anti-Virus), class of application
   (e.g. Firewall), or be more general to represent groupings of
   software services (e.g. Operating System kernel.)

   Dialog – Sequence of request/response messages exchanged over one or
   more sessions.

   Message – Self contained unit of communication between components.
   For example, a PA message might carry a set of attributes from a
   Posture Collector to a Validator.

   Session – Common PB transport connection capable of carrying one or
   more messages from multiple subscribed Posture Collectors and
   Validators.

   Please refer to [3] for the NEA terminology.

 3.
    Architecture and Components

   The major components of NEA architecture are shown in Figure 1. The
   PV and NAE protocols are identified for completeness but are not the
   focus of the initial phase of NEA work items.

     |-------------|                          |----------------|
     | Posture     |  <--------PA--------->   |   Posture      |
     | Collectors  |                          |   Validators   |
     | (1 ...N)    |                          |   (1 ...N)     |
     |-------------|                          |----------------|
           |                                          |
           |                                         PV
           |                                          |
     |-------------|                          |----------------|
     |   Client    |  <--------PB--------->   |     Server     |
     |   Broker    |                          |     Broker     |
     |--------- ---|                          |----------------|
           |                                          |
           |                                          |
     |-------------|  <--------PT--------->   |----------------|
     |             |                          |                |
     | Network     |    |--------|            |   Network      |
     | Access      |----|Network |------------|   Access       |
     | Requestor   |    |Enforcer| <---NAE--> |   Authority    |
     |-------------|    |--------|            |----------------|

       NEA CLIENT                                  NEA SERVER


              Figure 1: NEA Components and Protocols





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 4.
    Common Requirements Across Architecture

   The following are the common requirements that apply to the PA, PB
   and PT protocols in NEA conceptual architecture:

   1. NEA protocols MUST be capable of performing a multiple message
   dialog between the client (agent) and server.  This enables the
   server to request additional information or updates to the posture
   data already reported. The updates allow for detection of recent
   changes in the client state (e.g. possibly due to a remediation.)

   2. NEA protocols MUST allow the NEA server to initiate requests for
   posture information prior to network access and at any time after
   the client has established an identity on the network (e.g. IP
   address.)  This enables the NEA server to evaluate posture prior to
   allowing access and to periodically re-validate systems already
   admitted to the network to assure they are still in compliance with
   the current policies.

   3. NEA protocols MUST provide a way for the NEA client to initiate a
   posture re-evaluation request as needed.  This allows the client to
   proactively request a posture re-evaluation by the NEA Server after
   detection of a potentially suspicious event.

   4. NEA protocols MUST provide protection against active and passive
   attacks by intermediaries (e.g. man-in-the-middle.)  Such protection
   might come from a strong (e.g. cryptographic) binding between the
   authenticated identity of the requesting system and the reported
   posture information.  This protection MUST prevent replay based
   attacks (preventing a malicious machine from later replaying a
   healthy posture report.)

   5. The PA and PB protocols defined by NEA MUST be agnostic of the
   transport i.e. PT protocol. For example, the PB protocol must
   provide a transport independent interface allowing the PA protocol
   to operate without change across a variety of network protocol
   environments (e.g. EAP/802.1X, PANA, and IKE/IPsec.)

   6. The selection process for NEA protocols MUST evaluate and prefer
   the reuse of existing open standards that meet the requirements
   before defining new ones.  The goal of NEA is not to create
   additional alternative protocols where acceptable solutions already
   exist.

   7. NEA protocols MUST be highly scalable allowing for many Posture
   Collectors on large deployments of NEA Clients to be assessed by
   numerous Posture Validators residing on multiple NEA Servers.  For
   example, the protocols need to be capable of naming large numbers of
   types of collectors, validators, and components.




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 5.
    Protocol Requirements

5.1.Posture Attribute (PA) Protocol Requirements

   The PA protocol defines the transport and data model to carry
   posture and validation information between a particular Posture
   Collector associated with a NEA client and a Posture Validator
   associated with a NEA Server. The Posture Attribute protocol carries
   collections of core attributes and vendor defined attributes. The PA
   protocol will be carried inside the Posture Broker (PB) protocol.
   The following requirements define the desired properties that form
   the basis for the working group’s comparison and evaluation of
   candidate PA protocols.  The requirements do not require that
   deployers use these properties merely that the candidate protocol be
   capable of offering the property should it be needed.

   1. The PA protocol MUST support transport of the required (core)
   attributes defined in the data model to report information
   determined by a Posture Collector. Examples of core attributes
   include Vendor id, Application version, and Operational status.

   2. The PA protocol MUST support the transport of vendor defined
   attributes enabling communication of a richer, potentially vendor
   specific set of attributes describing the requested component.

   3. The PA protocol MUST enable the Posture Validator to request
   posture information about particular components on the NEA Client
   system.  The posture information may be represented as one or more
   attributes (core and/or vendor specific) that describe the
   operational properties of the component.

   4. The PA protocol MUST allow for the Posture Validator to request
   posture information on more then one occasion using an existing or
   if unavailable on a new session.  This enables the Posture Validator
   to re-assess the posture of a particular component (in case it has
   changed) or to request information about additional components
   (possibly due to something learned from an earlier request.)

   5. The PA protocol MUST be capable of returning the Posture
   Validator’s results and any necessary remediation instructions.
   This allows the Posture Collector to learn the specific reason for a
   failed assessment to aid in remediation and notification of the
   system owner.

   6. The selection process for the PA protocol MUST evaluate and
   prefer the reuse of existing open standards that are applicable to
   the transport and representation of an extensible set of attributes.




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   In particular, extensible structured data formats such as XML should
   be considered.

   7. The PA protocol SHOULD support expression of core attributes to
   describe remediation state of components for example, last update
   time, remediation server used. These attributes are used after
   remediation so that a Posture Validator can synchronize with a
   Posture Collector and continue remediation.

   8. The PA protocol MUST support authentication, integrity and
   confidentiality of attributes, results and remediation instructions
   sent between a Posture Collector and Validator.  This enables end to
   end security across an NEA deployment that might involve the
   traversal of several systems. Deployers of Posture Collectors and
   Posture Validators should use at least authentication and integrity
   protection for their messages, and may also employ confidentiality
   protection if necessary for their environment.

   9. The PA protocol SHOULD optimize transport of messages and
   minimize Posture Broker protocol round trips. To achieve this, the
   PA protocol should support configuration/negotiation of the maximum
   size and timeout period for interaction of a Posture Collector with
   a Posture Validator.


5.2.Posture Broker (PB) Protocol Requirements

   The PB protocol supports multiplexing of Posture Attribute messages
   (based on PA protocol) from multiple Posture Collectors associated
   with a NEA Client and de-multiplexing these messages to multiple
   Posture Validators associated with a NEA Server. The PB protocol
   transports the global decision made by the Server Broker, taking
   into account the results of the Posture Validators involved in the
   assessment, to the Client Broker.
   The PB protocol also transports the aggregated remediation
   instructions from one or more Posture Validators.

   1. The PB protocol MUST be capable of carrying the global decision
   and, if appropriate, the global remediation instructions  from the
   Server Broker to the Client Broker.

   2. The PB protocol MUST contain information used by the Brokers to
   route (deliver) messages between particular types of Posture
   Collectors and Posture Validators. Such message routing information
   should enable dynamically (de)registered Posture Collectors and
   Validators to receive appropriate messages.  For example, a
   dynamically registered Anti-Virus Posture Validator should be able
   to subscribe to receive messages from its respective Anti-Virus
   Posture Collector on NEA Clients.




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   3. The PB protocol MUST support a message dialog to occur between
   one or more Posture Collectors and Posture Validators.  This allows
   each party to send multiple messages before the dialog is complete.

   4. The PB protocol MUST support authentication, integrity and
   confidentiality of the PA messages, broker global decision and
   remediation instructions sent between an NEA Client and Server.
   This provides security protection for the aggregated set of PA
   messages exchanged and the result between the NEA Client and Server.
   Such protection is orthogonal to PA protections (which are end to
   end) and allow for simpler Posture Collector and Validators to be
   implemented and consolidation of cryptographic operations possibly
   improving scalability and manageability.

   5. The PB protocol SHOULD support grouping of attributes to optimize
   transport of messages and minimize round trips.

5.3.Posture Transport (PT) Protocol Requirements

   The PT is the transport protocol between the Network Access
   Requestor (NAR) in the NEA Client and the Network Access Authority
   (NAA) within the NEA Server present on the network owner’s
   infrastructure.  PT is responsible for providing a protected
   transport (frequently using a tunnel) for the PB protocol. The PT
   protocol may in turn be transported by a lower layer protocol such
   as: 802.1x, RADIUS, TLS, IKE/IPsec or TCP,UDP/IP.  This section
   defines the requirements which candidate PT protocols must be
   capable of supporting.  The deployer’s policy will dictate how these
   apply to a particular environment.


   1. The PT protocol SHOULD incur low overhead to accommodate for use
   on low bandwidth links.

   2. The PT protocol SHOULD be capable of supporting a half duplex
   communication environment.

   3. The PT protocol MUST NOT attempt to interpret the contents of the
   PB messages being transported, i.e. the data it is carrying must be
   opaque to it.

   4. The PT protocol MUST be capable of protecting the integrity and
   confidentiality of the PB messages being transported between the NAR
   and NAA.

   5. The PT protocol MUST provide reliable delivery of PB messages.
   This includes the ability to perform fragmentation, detect
   duplicates, and reorder data, if necessary.




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   6. The PT protocol MUST be capable of supporting mutual
   authentication of the communicating parties.  This MAY occur by
   initially authenticating the NEA Server and leveraging byproducts
   (e.g. keys) associated with this authentication to construct a
   confidential channel where the NEA Client can authenticate.

   7. The PT protocol MUST be able to establish a restricted session
   between the NAR and the NAA prior to the NAR granting general
   network access.

   8. The PT protocol MUST allow the NAR or NAA to initiate the
   establishment of a restricted session for use by NEA when both
   parties have necessary network addresses established.

5.3.1. EAP Usage Within PT

   When EAP is being used within PT,  the PT protocol can be split into
   two groups: Posture Transport Tunnel (PTT) and Posture Transport
   Carrier (PTC). PTT is the EAP method used between the NAR and NAA
   (e.g. EAP-FAST, PEAP, EAP-TTLS), and PTC is the transport protocol
   carrying EAP. When Network Enforcer (NE) is a separate entity from
   Network Access Authority, PTC is further broken into two protocols,
   one between NAR and NE (named NRE) and one between NE and NAA (named
   NAE). Examples of NRE are EAPOL, PPP, IPSec etc. Examples of NAE are
   RADIUS, Diameter, etc. This section defines the requirements which
   candidate PTT and PTC protocols must be capable of supporting, in
   addition to those outlined in Section 4 Common Requirements Across
   Architecture. The deployer's policy will dictate how these apply to
   a particular environment.


   PTT EAP Method Requirements:

   1. The PTT EAP Method SHOULD be standardized from one or more
   existing methods if possible or modifying existing methods if where
   necessary to make them appropriate to be standardized. The use of
   existing standard EAP method for PTT SHOULD be giving preference
   over creating a new EAP method.

   2. The PTT EAP Method MUST NOT attempt to interpret the contents of
   the PB messages being transported, i.e. the data it is carrying must
   be opaque to it. This is mapped to PT Requirement 3.

   3. The PTT EAP Method MUST support integrity and confidentiality to
   protect key material and data. This is mapped to PT Requirement 4.







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   4. The PTT EAP Method MUST support fragmentation of payloads larger
   then the minimum EAP MTU, and reassembly. This is mapped to PT
   Requirement 5.

   5. The PTT EAP Method MUST have support for mutual authentication.
   This is mapped to PT Requirement 6.

   6. The PTT EAP Method MUST have support and have protection for PB
   protocol in the form of "inner EAP methods" or TLV/AVP. It SHOULD
   support transporting of arbitrarily large posture data or
   fragmentation of the data.

   7. The PTT EAP Method MUST be lower layer agnostic and have support
   for multiple carrier protocols (RADIUS, Diameter, EAPOL, etc.).

   8. The PTT EAP Method MUST be able to dynamically generate key
   material.

   9. The PTT EAP Method MUST support transport PB with or without
   identity authentication, before or after identity authentication.

   10. The PTT EAP Method MUST support multiple message dialogs of PB
   protocol.

   11. The PTT EAP Method SHOULD use open (publicly available and
   proven) algorithms in its encryption and key creation.

   12. The PTT EAP Method SHOULD be able to perform key negotiation,
   and cipher suite negotiation.


   PTC Requirements

   PTC MUST meet the following requirements, in addition to the
   requirements described in RFC 3748 Section 3 Lower Layer Behavior.

   1. The PTC protocol MUST be able to establish an assessment session
   between the NAR and the NAA prior to the NAR being granted general
   network access. This is mapped to PT Requirement 7.

   2. The PTC protocol MUST allow the NAR or NAA to trigger
   reassessment when there are changes in client posture and/or server
   policy after network access is granted. This is mapped to PT
   Requirement 8.


 6.
    Security Analysis/Requirements






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   There are several entities that comprise the described NEA
   conceptual architecture. From security viewpoint, their relations
   and communications should adhere to the following requirements.

   End-points must be able to authenticate their peers (i.e. Posture
   Collector and Posture Validator), for without that no meaningful
   posture information exchange is possible.

   1. PA Protocol
       - Posture Validator MUST be able to ascertain that the traffic
   (posture) it received is "fresh". This freshness prevents a third
   party from replaying the posture information produced by an earlier
   Posture Collector use without detection.
       - It may be necessary (especially in case of multiple exchanges
   between Posture Collector and Posture Validator) that Posture
   Collector "recognizes" and trusts the given Posture Validator. This
   ensures that Posture Collector is doing work on behalf of authentic
   Posture Validator.

   2. PB Protocol
       - Communications between Client Broker and Server Broker MAY
   need to be protected at least from active attacker (integrity,
   confidentiality, timeliness). Integrity and timeliness are of the
   utmost importance, to prevent third parties (any parties - including
   Network Enforcer) from interfering with posture validation and
   affecting PDP decisions. Confidentiality may be useful here, for
   example to prevent attackers from determining which host would be
   the most vulnerable target based on its posture information.
   However there is privacy concern that the host should be able to
   "see" what potentially privacy sensitive information about it is
   being sent out.  This concern may prevent encryption from being used
   or force a pre-screening of the posture information against a
   privacy policy before allowing it to be sent over the network.

   3. PT Protocol
       - This communication channel MUST be protected: endpoint mutual
   authentication with subsequent secure pipe establishment. Otherwise
   third parties could launch a variety of attacks.


   4. Communications between Posture Collector(s) and Client Broker MAY
   need protection, especially if those are different software
   entities. It is important that a Client Broker be allowed to
   communicate with only the authorized Posture Collectors because of
   the trust issue. Denial of Service is the most obvious threat here.
   Forging a posture should not be feasible because of PA protocol.

   5. Communication between Client Broker and Network Access Requestor
   MAY need protection.




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   6. Communication between Server Broker and Network Access Authority
   MAY be protected.

 7.
    Operational Considerations

   The NEA technology intends to address a major issue for owners of
   networks by extending their existing ability to limit admission to
   the network by inspection of the security posture of the system.  In
   order to offer a solution to this issue, NEA needs to provide a
   scalable solution addressing a vast majority of the systems deployed
   while remaining manageable.  This introduces several issues which
   should be considered during the definition of the protocols,
   interfaces, architecture and their policies.

   1. Some network devices (e.g. printers, legacy systems) will not
   have support for NEA agents present.  In this situation, the NEA
   server must be able to detect that the system requesting access is
   incapable of responding to NEA protocols and thus will not be able
   to report its security posture.  The NEA architecture should allow
   for this event to be detected and reported to other components which
   might be able to evaluate risk via other mechanisms (e.g. using
   scanning techniques) and report back a suggested action.

   2. Admission policy should be capable of being combined with
   authentication policy so differentiated posture evaluation is
   possible based on the identity and other factors about the
   requesting system.  For example, in many cases customers may wish to
   allow certain individuals (e.g. executives) to always be allowed
   access to the network even if NEA detects a problem.  Similarly,
   different posture checking profiles might be applied depending on
   the requesting system or user’s identity.

   3. Due to the potentially large number of systems offering and/or
   evaluating posture information and the quantity of enforcement
   devices, this presents a distributed policy issue for NEA deployers.
   The NEA components should be manageable using data model definitions
   associated within existing management protocol environments (e.g.
   SNMP, CIM.)

   4. Because the NEA infrastructure is involved in making decisions
   about every system’s request to join and remain on the network, NEA
   deployments should have mechanisms that protect it from direct
   attack or operational situations where it might be unavailable.
   Highly available, distributed deployment architectures should help
   minimize downtown and avoid single point of failure scenarios.
   However NEA solutions may need to offer deployers some policy-driven
   flexibility in how the NEA components respond when faced with an
   unavailable NEA Server component.




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 8.
    Security Considerations

   This document defines the requirements for the interfaces
   (protocols) for a security mechanism assessment and enforcement
   scheme.  As such, it does not define a specific solution or set of
   technologies, so this section will highlight security issues that
   may apply to NEA in general or to particular aspects of the eventual
   technical architecture.


8.1. Scope and Overlap

   Inherent in the requirements is a desire for NEA candidate protocols
   throughout the architecture to accommodate the use of strong
   security mechanisms as dictated by the deployer.  In some cases,
   these mechanisms may appear to provide overlapping protections.  The
   overlaps may be desired by deployer to offer a defense in depth
   approach; however because of the layering of the protocols each
   mechanism offers slightly different protection benefits and levels
   of granularity.

   For example, a deployer may wish to encrypt traffic at the PT layer
   to protect against some forms of traffic analysis or interception by
   an eavesdropper. Additionally, the deployer may also selectively
   encrypt a Posture Collector's set of reported attributes at the PA
   layer to allow the peer Posture Verifier to achieve end to end
   confidentiality.  In particular, this might be desired when the NEA
   Server side decision point spans several systems so the NAA is on a
   different system from the Verifier.

   In general, the NEA architecture's protocols are intending to
   provide to the Posture Collector the ability to safely send its
   measurement attributes across an untrustworthy network to a peer
   Posture Validator and receive protected requests/responses.  The
   architecture is not intending to provide local integrity protection
   for the proper operation of the Posture Collector itself.  For
   example, NEA technologies do not claim to prevent a carefully
   crafted piece of malware (e.g. rootkit) from tricking the Posture
   Collector into inaccurately reporting the state of the system so it
   can remain undetected.  Such integrity protection of the Collector
   and other aspects of the system might be offered by orthogonal
   security mechanisms leveraging security hardware and/or protected
   trusted software.

   Different use cases and environments for the NEA technologies will
   likely influence the selection of the strength and security
   mechanisms employed during an assessment.  The goal of the NEA



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   requirements is to encourage the selection of technologies and
   protocols that are capable of enforcing the necessary protections
   for a wide variety of assessment use cases.

8.2. Relevant Classes of Attack

   A variety of attacks are possible against current assessment
   technologies. This section does not include a full threat analysis,
   but wishes to highlight a few attacks which influenced the
   requirement definition and should be considered by deployers
   selecting use of protective mechanisms within the conceptual
   architecture.

   The following types of attacks are possible against each of the
   network protocols defined in the conceptual architecture and thus
   should be considered by deployers.

8.2.1. Man-in-the-Middle (MITM)

   MITM attacks against a network protocol exist when a 3rd party can
   sit between two legitimate communicating parties without detection.
   For example, a malware infested machine might wish to join the
   network using measurements collected by a clean system by inserting
   itself into and proxying an assessment message exchange. The impact
   of the damage caused by the MITM can be limited or prevented by
   selection of appropriate protective mechanisms.

   The requirement for PT to be capable of supporting bi-directional
   authentication prevents the attacker from inserting themselves as an
   active participant (proxy) within the communications without
   detection (assuming attacker lacks credentials convincing either
   party it is legitimate.) Re-usable credentials should not be exposed
   on the network to assure the MITM doesn't have a way to impersonate
   either party.

   However the MITM might still act as a message relay between the
   parties and change, eavesdrop, or steal and replay the
   communications.  These forms of attack require additional
   protections discussed below.

8.2.2. Message Modification

   Without message protection, an attacker capable of interception of
   an assessment message would be capable of modifying the contents and
   causing an incorrect action to occur.  For example, the attacker
   might change the measurement attributes to always reflect incorrect
   values and thus prevent a system from joining the network.  Unless
   the NEA Server could detect this change, the attacker could prevent
   network admission to large numbers of clean systems. Conversely, the




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   attacker could allow malware infested machine to be admitted by
   changing the attributes.

   In order to protect against such attacks, the PT includes a
   requirement for strong integrity protection (e.g. including a
   protected hash of the message) so this change will be detected.  PA
   includes a similar requirement to enable end to end integrity
   protection of the message.

   It is important that integrity protection schemes leverage secret
   information (not known by the attacker) that are bound to the
   transaction such as an encrypted message hash or HMAC [REF] linked
   to the authentication. Message hash keys from prior transactions
   possibly involving other systems must not be re-usable without
   detection.

8.2.3. Message Replay or Theft

   A passive attacker might listen to the network recording messages
   from a healthy client for later re-use to the same NEA Server or
   just to build an inventory of software running on other systems.
   The NEA Server needs to be capable of detecting the replay or the
   architecture must assure that the eavesdropper can not obtain the
   attribute values in the first place.

   The protection of the PT, PB or PA messages using encryption
   prevents the passive listener from learning the exchanged attribute
   values for theft or replay.  By linking the encrypted transaction to
   the authentication event and leveraging a per-transaction freshness
   exchange, this prevents a replay of the encrypted transaction.

   As discussed, there are a variety of protective mechanisms included
   in the requirements for candidate NEA protocols. Different use cases
   and environments may cause deployers to decide not to use some of
   these mechanisms; however this should be done with an understanding
   that the architecture may become vulnerable to some classes of
   attack.  As always a balance of risk vs. performance, usability,
   manageability and other factors should be taken into account.


 9.
    References
9.1.Normative References

  1. S. Bradner, "The Internet Standards Process -Revision 3", RFC 2026,
     October 1996.

  2. S. Bradner, "Keywords for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
     Levels", RFC2119 (BCP), IETF, March 1997.




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  3. S. Hanna, et. al., "Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA) Problem
     Statement", draft-thomson-nea-problem-statement-01.txt, March 2006.

  4.  Aboba,  B.,  Blunk,  L.,  Vollbrecht,  J.,  Carlson,  J.,  and  H.
     Levkowetz, "Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)", RFC 3748,
     June 2004.

  5. Rigney, C., Willens, S., Rubens, A., and W. Simpson, "Remote
     Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)", RFC 2865, June 2000.

  6. T.  Dierks,  E.  Rescorla,  “The  Transport  Layer  Security  (TLS)
     Protocol Version 1.1”, RFC 4346, April 2006.

  7. S. Kent, R. Atkinson, “Security Architecture for the Internet
     Protocol”, RFC 2401, November 1998. (IPSec)


9.2.Informative References

  8. “TCG Trusted Network Connect (TNC) Architecture for
     Interoperability”,
     https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/specs/TNC/TNC_Architecture_v1
     _1_r2.pdf, May 2006.

  9. Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC), http://www.cisco.com/go/nac

  10.  Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP),
     http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/network/nap/default.ms
     px

  11.  IEEE, "Local and Metropolitan Area Networks: Port-based Network
     Access Control", 2004. (802.1x)

  12.  Forsberg, D., "Protocol for Carrying Authentication for Network
     Access (PANA)", draft-ietf-pana-pana-11 (work in progress), March
     2006.


 Authors' Addresses & Acknowledgments

   Hormuzd Khosravi (co-editor)
   Intel
   2111 NE 25th Avenue
   Hillsboro, OR 97124 USA
   Phone: +1 503 264 0334



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Internet Draft             NEA Requirements                 July 2006
   Email: hormuzd.m.khosravi@intel.com

   Paul Sangster (co-editor)
   Symantec Corporation
   6825 Citrine Dr
   Carlsbad, CA 92009 USA
   Email: paul_sangster@symantec.com

   Kevin Amorin
   Harvard University
   79 JFK St.
   Cambridge, MA 02138
   Phone: +1 617-384-6699
   Email: Kevin_Amorin@Harvard.edu

   Diana Arroyo
   IBM
   11501 Burnet Road
   Austin, Tx  78758
   Phone: +1 512-838-0088
   Email: darroyo@us.ibm.com

   Uri Blumenthal
   Intel Corporation
   1515 Route 10,
   Parsippany, NJ 07054
   Phone: +1 973-967-6446
   Email: uri.blumenthal@intel.com

   Steve Hanna
   Juniper Networks, Inc.
   35 Forest Ridge Road
   Concord, MA 01742
   Phone: +1 978-371-3980
   Email: shanna@juniper.net

   Thomas Hardjono
   SignaCert, Inc.
   707 SW Washington St./Suite 700,
   Portland, OR 97205
   Phone: +1 503-227-2207
   Email: thardjono@signacert.com

   Ravi Sahita
   Intel Corporation
   2111 NE 25th Ave
   Hillsboro OR 97124
   Email: Ravi.sahita@intel.com





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   Mauricio Sanchez
   Email: mauricio.sanchez@hp.com

   Jeff Six
   Email: jeffsix@thematrix.ncsc.mil

   Joseph Tardo
   Nevis Networks
   500 N. Bernardo Ave.
   Mountain View, CA 94043
   Email: joseph.tardo@nevisnetworks.com

   Susan Thomson
   Cisco Systems
   499 Thornall Street, 8th floor
   Edison, NJ  08837
   U.S.A
   Email: sethomso@cisco.com

   John Vollbrecht
   9682 Alice Hill Drive
   Dexter, Mi. 48130
   Email: jrv@merit.edu

   Hao Zhou
   Cisco Systems
   4125 Highlander Parkway
   Richfield, OH  44286
   U.S.A.
   Email: hzhou@cisco.com

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