Internet Engineering Task Force                               J. Jaeggli
Internet-Draft                                                     Zynga
Intended status: Informational                                L. Colitti
Expires: June 6, 2014                                          W. Kumari
                                                                  Google
                                                               E. Vyncke
                                                                   Cisco
                                                                 M. Kaeo
                                                    Double Shot Security
                                                          T. Taylor, Ed.
                                                     Huawei Technologies
                                                        December 3, 2013


           Why Operators Filter Fragments and What It Implies
                     draft-taylor-v6ops-fragdrop-02

Abstract

   This memo was written to make application developers and network
   operators aware of the significant possibility that IPv6 packets
   containing fragmentation extension headers may fail to reach their
   destination.  Some protocol or application assumptions about the
   ability to use messages larger than a single packet may accordingly
   not be supportable in all networks or circumstances.

   This memo provides observational evidence for the dropping of IPv6
   fragments along a significant number of paths, explores the
   operational impact of fragmentation and the reasons and scenarios
   where drops occur, and considers the effect of fragment drops on
   applications where fragmentation is known to occur, particularly
   including DNS.

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."




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   This Internet-Draft will expire on June 6, 2014.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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   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  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Observations and Rationale  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Possible Causes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
       2.1.1.  Stateful inspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       2.1.2.  Stateless ACLs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       2.1.3.  Performance considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       2.1.4.  Other considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       2.1.5.  Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.2.  Impact on Applications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   Measurements of whether Internet Service Providers and edge networks
   deliver IPv6 fragments to their destination reveal that for IPv6 in
   particular, fragments are being dropped along a substantial number of
   paths.  The filtering of IPv6 datagrams with fragmentation headers is
   presumed to be a non-issue in the core of the Internet, where
   fragments are routed just like any other IPv6 datagram.  However,
   fragmentation can creates operational issues at the edges of the
   Internet that may lead to administratively imposed filtering or
   inadvertent failure to deliver the fragment to the end-system or
   application.





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   Section 2 begins with some observations on how often IPv6 fragment
   loss occurs in practice.  We go on to look at the operational reasons
   for filtering fragments, a key aspect of which is the limitations
   they expose in the application of security policy, at resource
   bottlenecks and in forwarding decisions.  Section 2.2 then looks at
   the impact on key applications, particularly DNS.

   In the longer run, as network operators gain a better understanding
   of the risks and non-risks of fragmentation and as middlebox,
   customer premise equipment (CPE), and host implementations improve,
   we believe that some incidence of fragment dropping currently
   required will diminish.  Some of the justifications for filtering
   will persist in the long-term, and application developers and network
   operators must remain aware of the implications.

   This document deliberately refrains from discussing possible
   responses to the problem posed by the dropping of IPv6 fragments.
   Such a discussion will quickly turn up a number of possibilities,
   application-specific or more general; but the amount of time needed
   to specify and deploy a given resolution will be a major constraint
   in choosing amongst them.  In any event, that discussion is likely to
   proceed in multiple directions, occur in different areas and is
   therefore considered beyond the scope of this memo.

2.  Observations and Rationale

   [Blackhole] is a good public reference for some empirical data on
   IPv6 fragment filtering.  It describes experiments run to determine
   the incidence and location of ICMP Packet Too Big and fragment
   filtering.  The authors used fragmented DNS packets to determine the
   latter, setting the servers to an IPv6 minimum of 1280 bytes to avoid
   any PMTU issues.  The tests found for IPv6 that filtering appeared to
   be occurring on some 10% of the tested paths.  The filtering appeared
   to be located at the edge (enterprise and customer networks) rather
   than in the core.

2.1.  Possible Causes

   Why does such filtering happen?  One cause is non-conforming
   implementations in CPE and low-end routers.  Some network managers
   filter fragments on principle, thinking this is an easier way to
   deter realizable attacks utilizing IPv6 fragments without thinking of
   other network impacts, similar to the practice of filtering ICMP
   Packet Too Big. Both implementations and management should improve
   over time, reducing the problem somewhat.

   Some filtering and dropping of fragments is known to be done for
   hardware, performance, or topological considerations.



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2.1.1.  Stateful inspection

   Stateful inspection devices or destination hosts can readily
   experience resource exhaustion if they are flooded with fragments
   that are not followed in a timely manner by the remaining fragments
   of the original datagram.  Holding fragments for reassembly even on
   end-system firewalls can readily result in an effective denial of
   service by memory and CPU exhaustion even if techniques, such as
   virtual re-assambly exist.

2.1.2.  Stateless ACLs

   Stateless ACLs at layer 4 and up may be difficult to apply to
   fragments other than the first one in which enough of the upper layer
   header is present.  As [Attacks] demonstrates, inconsistencies in
   reassembly logic between middleboxes or CPEs and hosts can cause
   fragments to be wrongfully discarded, or can allow exploits to pass
   undetected through middleboxes.  Stateless load balancing schemes may
   hash fragmented datagrams from the same flow to different paths
   because the 5-tuple may be available on only the initial fragment.
   While rehashing has the possibility of reordering packets in ISP
   cores it is not disastrous.  However, in front of a stateful
   inspection device, load balancer tier, or anycast service instance,
   where headers other than the L3 header -- for example, the L4 header,
   interface index (for traffic already rehashed onto different paths),
   DS fields -- are considered as part of the hash, rehashing may result
   in the fragments being delivered to different end-systems

2.1.3.  Performance considerations

   Leaving aside these incentives towards fragment dropping, other
   considerations may weigh on the operator's mind.  One example cited
   on the NANOG list was that of a router where fragment processing was
   done by the control plane processor rather than in the forwarding
   plane hardware, with a consequent hit on performance.

2.1.4.  Other considerations

   Another incentive toward dropping of fragments is the
   disproportionate number of software errors still being encountered in
   fragment processing.  Since this code is exercised less frequently
   than the rest of the stack, bugs remain longer in the code before
   they are detected.  Some of these software errors can introduce
   vulnerabilities subject to exploitation.  It is common practice
   [RFC6192] to recommend that control-plane ACLs protecting routers and
   network devices be configured to drop all fragments.





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2.1.5.  Conclusions

   Operators weigh the risks associated with each of the considerations
   just enumerated, and come up with the most suitable policy for their
   circumstances.  It is likely that at least some operators will find
   it desirable to drop fragments in at least some cases.

   The IETF and operators can help this effort by identifying specific
   classes of fragments that do not represent legitimate use cases and
   hence should always be dropped.  Examples of this work are given by
   [RFC6946] and [I-D.ietf-6man-oversized-header-chain].  The problem of
   inconsistent implementations may also be mitigated by providing
   further advice on the more difficult points.  However, some cases
   will remain where legitimate fragments are discarded for legitimate
   reasons.  The potential problems these cases pose for applications is
   our next topic.

2.2.  Impact on Applications

   Some applications can live without fragmentation, some cannot.  UDP
   DNS is one application that has the potential to be impacted when
   fragment dropping occurs.  EDNS0 extensions [RFC2671] allow for
   responses in UDP PDUs that are greater than 512 bytes.  Particularly
   with DNSSEC [RFC4033], responses may be larger than the link MTU and
   fragmentation would therefore occur at the sending host in order to
   respond using UDP.  The current choices open to the operators of DNS
   servers in this situation are to defer deployment of DNSSEC, fragment
   responses, or use TCP if there are cases where the rrset would be
   expected to exceed the MTU.  The use of fallback to TCP will impose a
   major resource and performance hit and increases vulnerability to
   denial of service attacks.

   Other applications, such as the Network File System, NFS, are also
   known to fragment large UDP packets for datagrams larger than the
   MTU.  NFS is most often restricted to the internal networks of
   organizations.  In general, managing NFS connectivity should not be
   impacted by decisions mananging fragment drops at network borders or
   end-systems.

3.  Acknowledgements

   The authors of this document would like to thank the RIPE Atlas
   project and NLNetlabs whose conclusions ignited this document.

4.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.




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5.  Security Considerations

   The potential for denial of service attacks, as well as limitations
   inherent in upper-layer filtering when dealing with non-initial
   fragments are significant issues under consideration by operators and
   end-users filtering fragments.  This document does not offer
   alternative solutions to that problem, it does describe the impact of
   those filtering practices.

6.  Informative References

   [Attacks]  Atlasis, A., "Attacking IPv6 Implementation Using
              Fragmentation", March 2012.

              http://media.blackhat.com/bh-eu-12/Atlasis/bh-eu-12
              -Atlasis-Attacking_IPv6-WP.pdf

   [Blackhole]
              de Boer, M. and J. Bosma, "Discovering Path MTU black
              holes on the Internet using RIPE Atlas", July 2012.

              http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/publications/pmtu-black-
              holes-msc-thesis.pdf

   [I-D.ietf-6man-oversized-header-chain]
              Gont, F., Manral, V., and R. Bonica, "Implications of
              Oversized IPv6 Header Chains", draft-ietf-6man-oversized-
              header-chain-08 (work in progress), October 2013.

   [RFC2671]  Vixie, P., "Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)", RFC
              2671, August 1999.

   [RFC4033]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements", RFC
              4033, March 2005.

   [RFC6192]  Dugal, D., Pignataro, C., and R. Dunn, "Protecting the
              Router Control Plane", RFC 6192, March 2011.

   [RFC6946]  Gont, F., "Processing of IPv6 "Atomic" Fragments", RFC
              6946, May 2013.

Authors' Addresses








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   Joel Jaeggli
   Zynga
   630 taylor ct #10
   Mountain View, CA  94043
   USA

   Email: jjaeggli@zynga.com


   Lorenzo Colitti
   Google

   Email: lorenzo@google.com


   Warren Kumari
   Google
   1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
   Mountain View, CA  94043
   USA

   Email: warren@kumari.net


   Eric Vyncke
   Cisco
   De Kleetlaan 6A
   Diegem  1831
   Belgium

   Email: evyncke@cisco.com


   Merike Kaeo
   Double Shot Security

   Email: merike@doubleshotsecurity.com


   Tom Taylor (editor)
   Huawei Technologies
   Ottawa, Ontario
   Canada

   Email: tom.taylor.stds@gmail.com






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