One document matched: draft-josefsson-kerberos5-starttls-08.xml


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE rfc SYSTEM "rfc2629.dtd">

<!-- Copyright (C) 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Simon Josefsson -->

<?rfc compact="no"?>
<?rfc toc="yes"?>
<?rfc symrefs="yes"?>

<rfc category="info" ipr="pre5378Trust200902"
     docName="draft-josefsson-kerberos5-starttls-08">

  <front>

    <title abbrev="Protecting Kerberos V5 with TLS">
      Using Kerberos V5 over the Transport Layer Security (TLS)
      protocol
    </title>

    <author initials="S." surname="Josefsson" fullname="Simon Josefsson">
      <organization abbrev="SJD AB">
	Simon Josefsson Datakonsult AB
      </organization>
      <address>
       <postal>
           <street>Hagagatan 24</street>
           <city>Stockholm</city>
           <code>113 47</code>
           <country>Sweden</country>
       </postal>
	<email>simon@josefsson.org</email>
	<uri>http://josefsson.org/</uri>
      </address>
    </author>
    
    <date month="January" year="2010"/>

    <abstract>

      <t>This document specify how the Kerberos V5 protocol can be
	transported over the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol,
	to provide additional security features.</t>

    </abstract>

  </front>
  
  <middle>

    <section title="Introduction and Background">

      <t>This document describe how a <xref target="RFC4120">Kerberos
	  V5</xref> implementation may upgrade communication between
	clients and Key Distribution Centers (KDCs) to use
	the <xref target="RFC5246">Transport Layer Security
	  (TLS)</xref> protocol.</t>

      <t>The TLS protocol offer integrity and privacy protected
	exchanges that can be authentication using X.509
	certificates, <xref target="RFC5081">OpenPGP keys</xref>, and
	user name and passwords via <xref target="RFC5054">Secure
	Remote Password (SRP)</xref>.</t>

      <t>There are several reasons to use Kerberos V5 over TLS.</t>

      <t><list style="symbols">

	  <t>Prevents downgrade attacks affecting, e.g., encryption
	    types and pre-auth data negotiation.  The encryption type
	    field in KDC-REQ, and the METHOD-DATA field with the
	    requested pre-auth types from the server in
	    KDC_ERR_PREAUTH_REQUIRED errors in KDC-REP, are sent
	    without integrity or privacy protection in Kerberos 5.
	    This allows an active attacker to replace the encryption
	    type with a compromised encryption type, e.g., 56-bit DES,
	    or request that clients should use a broken pre-auth type.
	    Since clients in general cannot know the encryption types
	    other servers support, or the pre-auth types servers
	    prefer or require, it is difficult for the client to
	    detect if there was a man-in-the-middle or if the remote
	    server simply did not support a stronger encryption type
	    or preferred another pre-auth type.</t>

	  <t>Kerberos exchanges are privacy protected.  Part of many
	    Kerberos packets are transferred without privacy protection
	    (i.e., encryption).  That part contains information, such as
	    the client principal name, the server principal name, the
	    encryption types supported by the client, the lifetime of
	    tickets, etc.  Revealing such information is, in some threat
	    models, considered a problem.</t>

	  <t>Additional authentication against the KDC.  In some
	    situations, users are equipped with smart cards with a RSA
	    authentication key.  In others, users have a OpenPGP
	    client on their desktop, with a public OpenPGP key known
	    to the server.</t>

	  <t>Explicit server authentication of the KDC to the client.
	    In traditional Kerberos 5, authentication of the KDC is
	    proved as a side effect that the KDC knows your encryption
	    key (i.e., your password).</t>
	  
      </list></t>

      <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 <xref target="RFC2119">RFC 2119</xref>.</t>

    </section>

    <section title="Kerberos V5 STARTTLS Extension">

      <t>The STARTTLS extension uses
	the <xref target="RFC5021">Kerberos V5 TCP extension
	mechanism</xref>.  The extension uses bit #TBD in the
	extension bitmask.</t>

      <t>The protocol is as follows.  The client requests the
	extension by setting the STARTTLS bit in the TCP extension
	mechanism bitmask.  (How to deal with extension negotiation
	failures at this point is described in <xref target="RFC5021"
	/>.)  After the server has sent the 4-octet value 0x00000000
	to indicate support of this extension, the stream will be
	controlled by the TLS protocol and its framing.  The TLS
	protocol is initiated by the client.</t>

      <t>Typically, the client initiate the TLS handshake protocol by
	sending a client hello, and the server responds, and the
	handshake continues until it either succeed or fails.</t>

      <t>If for any reason the handshake fails, the STARTTLS protocol
	will also fail, and the TLS error is used as the error
	indication.  In this case, no further messages can be
	exchanged over the same TCP session.</t>

      <t>If the handshake succeeds, the Kerberos V5 authentication
	protocol is performed within the protected TLS channel, like a
	normal TCP Kerberos V5 exchange.  In particular, this means
	that every Kerberos V5 packet will be prefixed by a 4-octet
	length field, that indicate the length of the Kerberos V5
	packet.</t>

      <t>When no further Kerberos V5 messages needs to be transferred
	in the TLS session, the TLS session MUST be shut down properly
	using the close_notify alert.  When the TLS session is shut
	down, the TCP connection cannot be re-used to send any further
	data and MUST be closed.</t>

    </section>

    <section title="Examples">

      <t>A complete packet flow for a successful AS-REQ/REP exchange
	protected by this mechanism will be as follows.  The
	"STARTTLS-bit" is a 4-octet value with only the bit allocated
	for this extension set, and | is the binary OR operation.</t>

      <figure>
	<artwork>
    Client                                               Server

     [ Kerberos V5 TCP extension mechanism negotiation starts ]

    0x80000000 | STARTTLS-bit    -------->
                                                    0x00000000
                                 <--------

                         [ TLS negotiation starts ]


    ClientHello                  -------->
                                                    ServerHello
                                                   Certificate*
                                             ServerKeyExchange*
                                            CertificateRequest*
                                 <--------      ServerHelloDone
    Certificate*
    ClientKeyExchange
    CertificateVerify*
    [ChangeCipherSpec]
    Finished                     -------->
                                             [ChangeCipherSpec]
                                 <--------             Finished

                    [ Kerberos V5 negotiation starts ]

    4 octet length field
    Kerberos V5 AS-REQ           -------->
                                             4 octet length field
                                             Kerberos V5 AS-REP
                                 <--------

    * Indicates optional or situation-dependent messages that are not
      always sent.
	</artwork>
      </figure>

    </section>

    <section title="STARTTLS aware KDC Discovery">

      <t>Section 7.2.3 of <xref target="RFC4120">Kerberos V5</xref>
	describe how <xref target="RFC2782">Domain Name System (DNS)
	SRV records</xref> can be used to find the address of an KDC.
	We define a new Proto of "tls" to indicate that the particular
	KDC is intended to support this STARTTLS extension.  The
	Service, Realm, TTL, Class, SRV, Priority, Weight, Port and
	Target have the same meaning as in RFC 4120.</t>

      <t>For example:</t>

      <figure>
	<artwork>
_kerberos._tls.EXAMPLE.COM. IN SRV 0 0 88 kdc1.example.com.
_kerberos._tls.EXAMPLE.COM. IN SRV 1 0 88 kdc2.example.com.
	</artwork>
      </figure>

    </section>

    <section title="Server Certificates">

      <t>The TLS protocol may be used in a mode that provides server
	authentication using, for example, X.509 and OpenPGP.</t>

      <t>The Kerberos V5 STARTTLS protocol do not require clients to
	verify the server certificate.  The goal is that support for
	TLS in Kerberos V5 clients should be as easy to implement and
	deploy as support for UDP/TCP.  Use of TLS, even without
	server certificate validation, protects against some attacks
	that Kerberos V5 over UDP/TCP do not.  (For example, passive
	network sniffing between the user and the KDC to track which
	Kerberos services are used by the user.)  To require server
	certificates to be validated at all times would lead to
	disabling of TLS when clients are unable to validate server
	certificates, and this may have worse security properties than
	using TLS and not validate the server certificate would
	have.</t>

      <t>Many client environments do not have secure long-term
	storage, which is required to validate certificates.  This
	makes it impossible to use server certificate validation on a
	large number of client systems.</t>

      <t>When clients have the ability, they MUST validate the server
	certificate.  For this reason, if a KDC presents a X.509
	server certificate over TLS, it MUST contain an otherName
	Subject Alternative Name (SAN) identified using a type-id of
	id-krb5starttls-san.  The intention is to bind the server
	certificate to the Kerberos realm for the purpose of using
	Kerberos V5 STARTTLS.  The value field of the otherName should
	contain the realm as the "Realm" ASN.1 type.</t>

      <figure>
	<artwork>
       id-krb5starttls-san OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::=
         { iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1)
           private(4) enterprise(1) gnu(11591)
           shishi(6) krb5starttls-san(1) }
	</artwork>
      </figure>

      <t>To validate a server certificate, the client MAY use local
	configuration (e.g., a list that maps the Kerberos realm to a
	copy of the server's certificate) and compare that with the
	authentication information provided from the server via TLS.
	For illustration, the server certificate could be a X.509
	certificate or an OpenPGP key.  In this mode, the client need
	no processing related to id-krb5starttls-san.</t>

      <t>When the server presents a X.509 server certificate, clients
	MAY use "Certification Path Validation" as described in
	<xref target="RFC5280" /> to validate the KDC server
	certificate.  In addition, unless the client can otherwise
	verify that the server certificate is bound to the KDC of the
	target realm, the client MUST verify that the server
	certificate contains the id-krb5starttls-san SAN and that the
	value is identical to the intended Kerberos realm.</t>

    </section>

    <section title="IANA Considerations">

      <t>The IANA is requested to allocate a bit in the "Kerberos TCP
	Extensions" registry for the extension described in this
	document, as per <xref target="RFC5021"/>.</t>

    </section>

    <section title="Acknowledgements">

      <t>Miguel A. Garcia, Jeffrey Hutzelman, Sam Hartman, and Magnus
	Nyström (in alphabetical order) provided comments that
	improved the protocol and document.</t>

    </section>

    <section title="Security Considerations">

      <t>The security considerations in Kerberos V5, TLS, and the
	Kerberos V5 TCP extension mechanism are inherited.</t>

      <t>Note that TLS does not protect against Man-In-The-Middle
	(MITM) attacks unless clients verify the KDC's credentials
	(X.509 certificate, OpenPGP key, etc) correctly.</t>

      <t>If server authentication is used, some information about the
	server (such as its name) is visible to passive attackers.</t>

      <t>To protect against the inherent downgrade attack in the
	extension framework, implementations SHOULD offer a policy
	mode that requires this extension to always be successfully
	negotiated, for a particular realm, or generally.  For
	interoperability with implementations that do not support this
	extension, the policy mode SHOULD be disabled by default.</t>

    </section>

  </middle>

  <back>

    <references title="Normative References">

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2119.xml"?>
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2782.xml"?>
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.4120.xml"?>
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5246.xml"?>
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5021.xml"?>
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5280.xml"?>

    </references>

    <references title="Informative References">

      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5054.xml"?>
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.5081.xml"?>

    </references>

  </back>

</rfc>

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