One document matched: draft-ietf-btns-abstract-api-01.xml
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<rfc docName="draft-ietf-btns-abstract-api-01.txt" ipr="full3978">
<front>
<title abbrev="btns-abstract-api">An abstract interface between
applications and IPsec</title>
<author fullname="Michael C. Richardson" initials="M."
surname="Richardson">
<organization abbrev="SSW">Sandelman Software Works</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>470 Dawson Avenue</street>
<city>Ottawa</city>
<region>ON</region>
<code>K1Z 5V7</code>
<country>CA</country>
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<email>mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca</email>
<uri>http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/</uri>
</address>
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<author initials="W." surname="Sommerfeld" fullname="Bill Sommerfeld">
<organization abbrev="Sun">Sun Microsystems</organization>
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<region>MA</region>
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<date year="2008" />
<abstract>
<t>
This document explains in the abstract (no language bindings are
provided) how an application may learn that IPsec has been applied to a
conversation or specify that IPsec should be used. Though this is
useful in general it is particularly useful for applications that wish
to use BTNS (Better Than Nothing Security -- a mode of IPsec keying),
either in conjunction with channel binding or otherwise.
</t>
</abstract>
</front>
<middle>
<section title="Overview">
<t>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 RFC2119 <xref
target="RFC2119"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section title="Introduction">
<t>Implementation of application protocols that depend on IPsec
<xref target='RFC4301'/> tend to depend on configuration of
IPsec, without having any portable (or even non-portable) way
to ensure that IPsec is being used properly. This state of
affairs is unfortunate, as it limits use of IPsec and
encourages applications not to rely on IPsec, which in
environments that do use IPsec, may lead to redudant
cryptographic protection layers.</t>
<t>This document describes an abstract application programming
interface (API) that is intended to interface applications
with IPsec. It is abstract in that no programming language
specific bindings are given here, nor is this API specified in
terms of familiar APIs such as the "BSD sockets API," for
example. Programming language specific bindings, and
operating system specific bindings are left to other
documents.</t>
</section>
<section title="Objects involved">
<t>There are two major kinds of objects that are defined by this
document. These are the Protection Token (pToken) and the Identity Token
(iToken). Both objects are abstracted into unique opaque tokens which
may be manipulated only indirectly by applications. Here we use
the term "opaque token" to mean much what "object" means in a
typical object-oriented programming language, but with no public
fields (only methods or generic functions). Additionally, the
iToken may be serialized -- that is, converted, by application of
a suitable function, into an octet string that can later be
imported to create a new iToken object that is equivalent to the
original (though a value equality test applied to both iTokens may
fail).</t>
<t>Each object has a series of attributes associated with it. The API
provides a mechanism to query the value of attributes of the token. The
attributes are where all of the content of the objects are.</t>
<t>Each token has a scope - the place and time in which it can be
considered valid. There are many conflicting qualities that one would
wish for the token, and the result is a different compromise among these
qualities for each token type. The tokens should be: <list>
<t>easy to allocate and release</t>
<t>automatically cleaned up when an application terminates (both
properly and inproperly)</t>
<t>easily compared (for equivalence)</t>
<t>easily interfaced with existing APIs (such as the BSD
sockets API, in that case as "auxiliary data")</t>
</list></t>
<t>We use terms such as "process" and "address space" without
explaining them or providing references, much as with
"object." The terms refer to pervasive, common concepts in
operating systems theory and practice over the past several
decades.</t>
<section title="Scope of Protection Token">
<t>The protection token has a per-process (i.e. per-address
space) scope, though it may be inherited by child processes
in operating systems that have a "fork()" operation. It
SHOULD always be possible to obtain a current protection
token for an established connection (whether for a
connection-oriented transport protocol or for a "connected"
UDP socket). that is equivalent to any previous protection
token that was obtained. The scope of the token is not
related to any specific underlying Security Associations
used by IPsec, but to the entire set of past, current and
future SAs that will be used by IPsec to protect that
connection [connection-latching].
</t>
</section>
<section title="Scope of Identity Token">
<t>The identity token also has a per-process scope, but is
serializable such that its serialized form has a per-system
or even universal, scope. (We have to consider whether we
want universal scope for serialized iTokens, much as with
exported name objects in the GSS-API, which would mean
agreeing on a standard, extensible representation and
encoding.)</t>
</section>
<section title="Validity period of Protection Token">
<t>A pToken is valid only within the scope of a single
process (though it may be inherited by child processes which
share the parent's address space with copy on write semantics).
The token may not be serialized, and, therefore, may not be
saved in any long term storage.</t>
<t>It is permitted for one protection token to be replaced with
another (equivalent) protection token due to a node moving, suspending
and resuming, or due to extended network outages, however the
underlying identity token would be guaranteed to be the same. This
would most likely occur with unconnected sockets, where due to the
outage/downtime, the keying system was unable to maintain a keying
channel, and had to re-create the keys from scratch.</t>
</section>
<section title="Validity period of Identity Token">
<t>The iToken may be valid across the entire system, although it may
need to be turned into an external representation (serialization).
Some forms of
identity token may be valid across systems, but in general an identity
token is only valid in reference to a local policy. (See
<xref target="RFC2692"></xref>).</t>
</section>
<section title="Serialization">
<t>
Serialization refers to the process of turning an in memory object
into a format which can be saved on disk, and re-imported by the
same implementation. This document does not require a
specification for the serialization format, only that it be
possible. The format is a local matter.
</t>
<section title="Serialization of Protection Token">
<t>
There is no requirement to serialize the protection token, or
the attribrutes contained within.
There is a desire to serialize templates for protection tokens
such that a set of minimum security requirements can be saved for
future connections to the same peer.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Serialization of Identity Token">
<t>
There is a desire to be able to to serialize the identity token
in such a way that future communications can be confirmed to be
with the same identity as before.
</t>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Namespace">
<t>All symbols (functions, macros, etc.) defined by this API are
prefixed with "ipsec_". Specific rules for capitalizations should
be driven by the specific language binding.</t>
<t>Whenever sensible, the enumerated values defined in <xref
target="RFC2367"></xref> are used if appropriate.</t>
</section>
<section title="pToken discovery">
<t>An application that receives a connection using accept(2) (or
recvmsg(2)), or makes a connection using connect(2), needs to get a
protection token that is associated with the socket.</t>
<t>For connected sockets (UDP, TCP, some SCTP modes, etc.), the
protection token MUST not change during the lifetime of the socket, so
a simple process is appropriate. (<xref target="I-D.ietf-btns-connection-latching" />)</t>
<t>As the pToken will not change during the
connection. (see notes about rekeying). A simple function is provided to
return a pToken from a file descriptor. Many implementions are likely to
implement this using getsockopt(2), but an interface in those terms is
not specified in order to keep it more abstract, and therefore more
portable.</t>
<t>For unconnected sockets (such as UDP and some SCTP modes), each
datagram received may be received may arrive from a different source,
and therefore may have different protections applied. A protection token
needs to be returned with each datagram, so it must be returned as
ancilliary data with recvmsg(2).</t>
<t>A server using unconnected sockets, would receive a protection token
as ancilliary data, and then would provide the same protection token
as ancilliary data on the corresponding sendmsg(2) call.</t>
</section>
<section title="pToken templates">
<t>
A pToken template is a type of pToken which is used only when
setting up a connection, or setting up a socket to listen for
connections.
</t>
<t>
Properties which are not set on a pToken, are assumed to be
do-not-care values.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Properties of pToken objects">
<t><list>
<t>privacyProtected - boolean.
Set to false if the connection has either no privacy
configured (AH, ESP-null), or if the privacy configured is known to
be untrustworthy by the administrator. Returns true otherwise. (XXX:
False does not mean that there will be no IPsec, but that it should
not be considered useful)</t>
<t>integrityProtected - boolean.
Set to false if there is no data integrity protection
other than the UDP/TCP checksum.</t>
<t>compressionAvailable - boolean.
Set to true if data count sent/received from socket may
not map linearly to data sent/received on wire.</t>
<t>policyName - string. A handle which describes the system policy
which was used (or is desired), to establish the connection.
This is a string, such as: "secure", "ospf", "iSCSI",
"very-secure", "do-not-tell-mom-secure", "minimum-security",
"was-posted-on-usenet-security".</t>
<t>iToken - object. Set
to iToken object which represents identity of remote system.</t>
<t>remote_iToken - object. Set
to iToken object which was used to represent our identity to the
remote system.</t>
<t>tunnelMode - boolean. Set if tunnel mode was used, or if it
is desired. </t>
<t>ipoptionsProtected - boolean. Set if ip options (and IPv6
header extensions), are protected. </t>
<t>auditString - string. readonly. Not part of a template.
Valid only after connection establishment. Contains a string which
can be used in system auditing and logging functions which describes
the details of the IPsec SA that was negotiated. No structure of
this string may be assumed. No session keys are disclosed by this
string. </t>
<t>informationString - string. readonly. Not part of a template.
Valid only after connection establishment. Contains a string which
can be displayed to a user, informing them of what kind of
security association was established for this connection. This
string may be localized. No session keys are disclosed by this
string. </t>
<t></t>
</list></t>
</section>
<section title="Properties of iToken objects">
<t><list>
<t>auditString - string. readonly on responder and readonly on
initiator after connection establishment. Contains a string which
can be used in system auditing and logging functions which describes
the remote identity, and the method by which it was authenticated
(i.e. it may list the CA or origin of a public key)</t>
<t>authenticationMethod - enumerated type. Indicates which method
was used to authenticate the peer, possible values are:<list>
<t>NONE - the peer was not authenticated in anyway</t>
<t>BTNS - the peer was authenticated using an inline key which
was not verified in anyway</t>
<t>LEAFOFFAITH - the peer was authenticated using a key which
was previously cached, but was previously received inline, and
was not verified in anyway.</t>
<t>PRESHAREDKEY - the peer was authenticated using a unique
pre-shared key</t>
<t>GROUPKEY - the peer was authenticated using a non-unique
pre-shared key</t>
<t>XAUTH - the type of phase1/PARENT-SA is not relevant, as the
peer was authenticated using a username/password.</t>
<t>EAP - the type of phase1/PARENT-SA is not relevant, as the
peer was authenticated using an EAP method. (Additional
properties may provide more information)</t>
<t>PKIX_TRUSTED - the peer was authenticated using a PKIX/X.509
certificate that was found in the trusted store.</t>
<t>PKIX_INLINE - the peer was authenticated using a PKIX/X.509
certificate that was transmitted inline, and was verified by
using a Certificate Authority that was found in the trusted
store.</t>
<t>PKIX_OFFLINE - the peer was authenticated using a PKIX/X.509
certificate that was retrieved out-of-band (such as by LDAP or
HTTP), and was verified by using a Certificate Authority that
was found in the trusted store.</t>
<t></t>
</list>certificateAuthorityDN - string. readonly. the
Distinguished Name (DN) of certificate authority that was used to
verify the key (for methods that involved PKIX)</t>
<t>certificateDN - string. readonly. the DN of the peer that was
authenticated</t>
<t>pubKeyID - string. readonly. a somewhat unique identifier for the
public key. A suggestion is to use the first 9 base64 digits of the
RFC3110 public key modulus, but this is a local matter.</t>
<t>channelBinding - binary blog. readonly. provides the concatenated
set of public keys</t>
</list></t>
</section>
<section title="Accessor Functions">
<t>Methods to access the properties of the two objects are specific to
the language in which the bindings are done. See YYYY for
C-bindings.</t>
</section>
<section title="Use Cases">
<t>
Explain slides from IETF68.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Security Considerations">
<t>Probably lots to say here. Please help.</t>
</section>
<section title="IANA Considerations">
<t>There are no registries created by this document. The names (and
language specific enum, if applicable) of the pToken and iToken
proprties are internal to a single system, and therefore do not need
standization.</t>
</section>
<section title="Acknowledgments">
<t>stuff</t>
</section>
<section title="TRACKING">
<t>
<figure anchor="tracking" title="document tracking">
<preamble>Document RCS tracking info</preamble>
<artwork>
$Revision: 1.6 $
$Log: ietf-btns-abstract-api.xml,v $
Revision 1.6 2008/02/18 02:37:45 mcr
updated edits.
Revision 1.5 2007/07/24 22:15:51 nico
New abstract, new intro, various minor changes (scope of objects,
etc...).
Revision 1.4 2007/07/24 03:30:19 mcr
edits to token scope, in collaboration with Nico.
Revision 1.3 2007/07/19 20:09:50 mcr
added more properties to describe the type of the SA.
Revision 1.2 2007/07/19 19:45:55 mcr
edits from 2007-07-19 discussion.
Revision 1.1 2007/06/25 15:34:08 mcr
renamed drafts in Makefile
Revision 1.3 2007/05/14 19:56:37 mcr
added abstract
Revision 1.2 2007/05/12 20:38:56 mcr
fixed id string
Revision 1.1 2007/05/12 01:31:00 mcr
updates to abstract api document
Revision 1.4 2007/02/16 03:24:09 mcr
updated to make XML happy, and dates corrected
Revision 1.3 2007/02/16 03:04:44 mcr
C API document.
Revision 1.2 2006/03/21 22:02:47 mcr
added API requirements and skeleton of original API spec
Revision 1.1 2006/03/21 21:04:43 mcr
added documents from ipsp WG
Revision 1.1 2003/06/03 20:45:06 mcr
initial template
</artwork>
<postamble></postamble>
</figure>
</t>
</section>
</middle>
<back>
<references title="Normative references">
&RFC2119;
&RFC2367;
&RFC2692;
&connection-latching;
<!-- DNSSEC -->
</references>
<references title="Non-normative references">
&RFC4301;
</references>
</back>
</rfc>
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