Suite B Profile for Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)
RFC 6380

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                         K. Burgin
Request for Comments: 6380                      National Security Agency
Category: Informational                                          M. Peck
ISSN: 2070-1721                                    The MITRE Corporation
                                                            October 2011

         Suite B Profile for Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)

Abstract

   The United States Government has published guidelines for "NSA
   Suite B Cryptography" dated July, 2005, which defines cryptographic
   algorithm policy for national security applications.  This document
   specifies the conventions for using Suite B cryptography in IP
   Security (IPsec).

   Since many of the Suite B algorithms are used in other environments,
   the majority of the conventions needed for the Suite B
   algorithms are already specified in other documents.  This document
   references the source of these conventions, with some relevant
   detail repeated to aid developers who choose to support Suite B.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6380.

Burgin & Peck                 Informational                     [Page 1]
RFC 6380                      Suite B IPsec                 October 2011

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 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
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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.

   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................3
   2. Conventions Used in This Document ...............................3
   3. Suite B Requirements ............................................3
   4. Minimum Levels of Security (minLOS) .............................4
      4.1. Non-Signature Primitives ...................................4
      4.2. Suite B IPsec Cryptographic Suites .........................4
      4.3. Suite B IKEv2 Authentication ...............................5
      4.4. Digital Signatures and Certificates ........................6
   5. Suite B Security Associations (SAs) for IKEv2 and IPsec .........6
   6. The Key Exchange Payload in the IKE_SA_INIT Exchange ............7
   7. Generating Keying Material for the IKE SA .......................7
   8. Additional Requirements .........................................7
   9. Security Considerations .........................................8
   10. References .....................................................9
      10.1. Normative References ......................................9
      10.2. Informative References ...................................10

Burgin & Peck                 Informational                     [Page 2]
RFC 6380                      Suite B IPsec                 October 2011

1.  Introduction

   This document specifies the conventions for using NSA Suite B
   Cryptography [SuiteB] in IP Security (IPsec).

   IP Security (IPsec) provides confidentiality, data integrity, access
   control, and data source authentication to IP datagrams.  The
   Internet Key Exchange (IKE) provides an automated key management for