One document matched: draft-matuszewski-p2psip-security-requirements-06.xml
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<front>
<title abbrev="P2PSIP Security Overview">P2PSIP Security Overview and Risk
Analysis</title>
<author fullname="Song Haibin" initials="H." surname="Song">
<organization>Huawei</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Baixia Road No. 91</street>
<city>Nanjing</city>
<region>Jiangsu Province</region>
<code>210001</code>
<country>P.R.China</country>
</postal>
<phone>+86-25-84565867</phone>
<facsimile>+86-25-84565085</facsimile>
<email>melodysong@huawei.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Marcin Matuszewski" initials="M." surname="Matuszewski">
<organization>Future Invest</organization>
<address>
<email>marcin.matuszewski@futureinvest.pl</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Dan York" initials="D." surname="York">
<organization abbrev="Voxeo">Voxeo Corporation</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street></street>
<city>Keene</city>
<region>NH</region>
<code></code>
<country>USA</country>
</postal>
<phone>+1-407-455-5859</phone>
<email>dyork@voxeo.com</email>
<uri>http://www.voxeo.com/</uri>
</address>
</author>
<date year="2009" />
<area>Real-time Applications and Infrastructure</area>
<workgroup>P2PSIP Working Group</workgroup>
<keyword>Security</keyword>
<keyword>P2PSIP</keyword>
<abstract>
<t>This document provides a security overview and analysis for the
Peer-to-Peer Session Initiation Protocol (P2PSIP) overlay network. It
discusses security threats for the P2PSIP architecture and its
components. It compares security difference between client/server (C/S)
and P2P implementations of SIP, and then partitions the P2PSIP
architecture into layers and analyzes the security issues in each layer
and the security relationship among the layers.</t>
</abstract>
</front>
<middle>
<section title="Introduction">
<t>The scope of this document is to analyze security threats concerning
a P2PSIP overlay architecture as described in the concepts and
terminology for P2PSIP document <xref
target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-concepts"></xref> . It presents an introduction
to security threats to P2PSIP environments and then compares security
difference between client/server (C/S) and P2P implementations of SIP,
and then partitions the P2PSIP architecture into layers and analyzes the
security issues in each layer and the security relationship among the
layers. This draft also classifies the application scenarios into two
main types and then analyzes in detail the security threats with these
two types of scenarios. Some solutions to certain attacks are given as
an example in the analysis text. In the end, it provides user and system
security considerations for the P2PSIP overlay network. This document is
designed to complement the <xref
target="I-D.bryan-p2psip-requirements">P2PSIP Protocol Framework and
Requirements document</xref>.</t>
</section>
<section title="Terminology">
<t>We use the terminology and definitions from the Concepts and
Terminology for Peer to Peer SIP <xref
target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-concepts"></xref> draft extensively in this
document. Other terms used in this document are defined inline when used
and are also defined below for reference.</t>
<t>O P2PSIP Network Entity: A P2PSIP network entity is a peer, client,
or other functional node that may become a part of a P2PSIP overlay.</t>
<t>O P2PSIP System: A P2PSIP system consists of the P2PSIP overlay as
defined in <xref target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-concepts"></xref> and one or
more enrollment servers. The enrollment servers issue unique identities
and credentials that are used to authenticate and admit P2PSIP network
entities to the overlay and allow a user to use services provided by the
P2PSIP overlay. The enrollment server may also provide an initial set of
bootstrap nodes.</t>
<t>O P2P Overlay Base: A P2P Overlay Base includes all the Peers that
participate in the p2p overlay. The P2P Overlay Base provides
distributed storage and routing services to both peers and clients.</t>
<t>O Trusted P2P Overlay Base: All peers in a Trusted P2P Overlay Base
are trusted. The Peers in the overlay are all of good behaviors and
under control due to deployment. For example, a carrier deploys a
Trusted P2P Overlay Base to provide service to his customers, and all
the peers are the carrier's devices.</t>
<t>O Untrusted P2P Overlay Base: Peers in a Untrusted P2P Overlay Base
are not all trusted. There may exist some malicious behaving nodes in
the P2P Overlay Base.</t>
</section>
<section title="Security threats">
<t>This section analyses security threats in the Peer-to-Peer SIP
architecture.</t>
<section title="Replay Attacks">
<t>Replay attacks are a form of network attacks where a valid data
transmission is repeated or delayed. A badly behaving node may take an
older message sent by another node, resend it to the overlay, and thus
replace any newer data with the old information present in this
message. During those procedures, an attacker may be able to enroll
credentials for himself, or replace existing entry in the P2PSIP
overlay by an older entry. Thus, the architecture must consider this
issue in the process of both enrollment and modification of P2PSIP
resource (user) records in a P2PSIP overlay.</t>
<t>This is especially applicable to P2PSIP overlays that use the
recursive routing mode. In the recursive routing mode, data sent in a
PUT request traverses many peers in the overlay. If there is no
protection against the replay attacks any peer that forwards the
request may store a copy of the request and resend the captured
request corrupting data stored in the overlay.</t>
</section>
<section title="Message Insertion, Modification, Deletion">
<t>The message insertion, modification, and deletion attacks are where
an attacker is able to alter the messages being exchanged between two
end points.</t>
<t>P2PSIP peers connect to other peers to form the P2PSIP overlay
network. Typically peers provide storage, routing and bootstrap
services for other peers and clients. They allow P2PSIP entities to
PUT information to or GET information from the P2PSIP overlay network.
In the P2PSIP overlay that allows for a recursive routing, peers are
responsible for forwarding messages (requests and responses) received
from P2PSIP network entities to other peers. Depending on the size of
the overlay a single message can be forwarded by many peers before it
reaches a destination. In the iterative routing peers are responsible
for redirecting the requests to other peers. They do not forward the
requests to other peers. They respond to a request originator with an
address of a peer that should be contacted in the next step. In such
an environment a badly behaving peer may:</t>
<t><list style="symbols">
<t>modify incoming messages,</t>
<t>discard incoming messages (the peer can discard requests and
responses it is supposed to forward),</t>
<t>generate incorrect responses to requests that are directed to
some other nodes.</t>
</list></t>
<t>The first bullet point describes the attack that allows the peer to
cause the overlay to store unauthorized or outdated information in the
resource (user) records or return corrupted data to the originator of
the GET request (a peer or client). The peer may change the data
record in the overlay by changing incoming PUT messages or modify
result of the GET operation by modifying incoming GET responses. With
this type of attack the integrity of the P2PSIP system can become
compromised.</t>
<t>The middle bullet point is related not only to attacks that allow a
malicious peer to prevent access to a P2PSIP resource (user) record,
but also to attacks that can degrade the performance of the P2PSIP
system making it useless from the end-user perspective. The second
problem is of high importance in P2PSIP overlays that store user's
reachability data which is much more time-critical than content stored
in file sharing networks.</t>
<t>The attack described in the last bullet above may lead to a
requestor receiving corrupted data e.g. a connectivity information
that points to some other node. This may happen if a malicious peer
can respond to incoming requests that are directed to another
peer.</t>
<t>Besides peers may act as relays relaying traffic between two P2PSIP
network entities or act as a SIP proxy and a SIP registrar. Providing
those services a malicious peer may perform a similar attacks as
described above. Let us consider the following deployment scenario
where some peers act as SIP registrars or/and SIP proxies and allow a
conventional SIP UA to access resources of the P2PSIP overlay network.
An unmodified SIP UA sends an SIP Invite request towards an unknown
peer that acts as a SIP proxy. If the SIP messages are not
cryptographically protected, this peer may act maliciously and proxy a
request to other than intended node or modify SDP messages in order to
stay on the media path. Similarly a peer that acts as a SIP Registrar
may modify registration information before it sends it to a peer that
is responsible for storing the P2PSIP user record of a registering SIP
UA. Those attacks do not have impact on the integrity of the overlay.
Nevertheless those attacks must be addressed by designers of service
specific protocols such as <xref target="RFC3261">SIP</xref>.</t>
</section>
<section title="Man-In-The-Middle">
<t>In man-in-the-middle (m-i-m) attacks a malicious node can hijack a
connection established between two legitimate nodes, or just listen
and/or modify messages exchanged between two nodes. In contrast to the
attacks presented in Section 13.2 man-in-the middle attacks are
prevalent in pairing and authentication procedures.</t>
<t>The m-i-m threat can be mitigated by using well-established
authentication protocols. The authentication protocols may be used to
verify if a certain P2PSIP entity is the entity it claims to be, for
example if it is really a peer that is identified by a certain peer
ID. The authentication protocols can also be used to verify if a
particular P2PSIP entity belongs to a particular overlay or not.
However, authentication protocols cannot fully mitigate all of the
attacks presented in Section 13.2. There can be malicious peers that
are authorized overlay participants with a particular peer
identifiers.</t>
<t>If a bootstrap process is fully decentralized and a bootstrap node
is not trusted or authentication of the bootstrap node is not
possible, then the joining node can easily be attacked, e.g. it may be
redirected to another overlay or a part of the legacy overlay that is
controlled by the attacker. However if it is possible to authenticate
a particular peer in the overlay the joining peer may use P2P specific
mechanisms to detect if it is redirected to the right overlay or the
right place in the overlay.</t>
<t>Conventional SIP proxy and SIP registrars are servers maintained by
a service provider. If a user trust a service provider he also trusts
servers the service provider maintains. In P2PSIP SIP proxies and
registrars can be maintained by users themselves (they can be
collocated with peers). In a distributed environment it is very
difficult to trust all of peers in the overlay. Without an efficient
verification mechanism that allows to verify which peers are be
trusted, peers that act as SIP proxies and registrars may easily
perform m-i-m attacks. The problem must be solved by SIP designers as
well as by the P2PSIP community.</t>
</section>
<section title="Offline Cryptographic Attacks">
<t>The incentive to break a secure system dominates the effort to do
so. It is likely that P2PSIP systems do not pose a likely target for
attacks, and if state-of-the art security methods are used, the needed
effort to break the system by breaking cryptography is very likely to
be higher than by finding and exploiting software errors and
vulnerabilities.</t>
</section>
<section title="Unauthorized Usage">
<t>The basic notions of authentication and authorization, when
implemented correctly and consistently should protect against
unauthorized usage of the P2PSIP system. However, the trustworthiness
of an identity may be weak i.e. the enrollment system might be fairly
open and allow devices and persons that wish to attack the system.
Thus, there is a significant threat of attacks from within the
system.</t>
<t>A malicious peer may do a multitude of attacks towards the overlay
including:</t>
<t><list style="symbols">
<t>ignoring, changing, and deleting records in DHT that is it
responsible for,</t>
<t>misbehaving during data lookups (ie, giving wrong node
addresses, discarding queries).</t>
</list></t>
<t>The first bullet point is related to attacks that may cause DHT to
contain unauthorized, outdated information and/or miss information
about users or resources. Each peer is responsible for a part of the
hash space. Peers store resource (user) records that fall into their
part of the hash space. A malicious peer may modify or delete resource
(user) records it is supposed to store. It may also reply with
incorrect information to the GET requests addressed to resource (user)
records it is responsible for. In addition it may ignore any record
updates. These attacks are not limited to peers that are responsible
for primary copies of resource (user) records. They are also related
to peers that store replicas of resource (user) records. Besides a
bootstrap node may also respond with wrong bootstrapping
information.</t>
<t>The second bullet point addresses attacks that may impact
correctness of routing mechanisms. If the recursive routing is used a
malicious peer can forward messages to another malicious node rather
than forwarding the messages according to the legitimate routing
information. This may also impact the iterative routing being
corrupted when the peer redirects the requester to a malicious
node.</t>
</section>
<section title="Inappropriate Usage">
<t>The P2PSIP overlay essentially provides a distributed storage for
P2PSIP resource (user) records. The data stored in the distributed
database can be used in an inappropriate manner. If there is no access
control to a resource (user) records stored in the overlay and any
node can update or retrieve information stored in the overlay. An
attacker may request data stored in the P2PSIP resource (user) records
and perform inappropriate usage attacks. Besides the attacker may also
update entries of other users or resources.</t>
<t>The individual services provided by P2PSIP (messaging, real-time
communication) have their respective threat models regarding
inappropriate use (Spam, viruses, ...) but these can be considered out
of scope for this document.</t>
</section>
<section title="Denial of Service">
<t>In the P2PSIP architecture <xref
target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-concepts"></xref>, the P2PSIP resource (user)
records are not maintained in a central, trustworthy storage system,
rather they are distributed among peers participating in the system.
Routing, relaying, SIP proxy and registrar services are also
distributed among P2PSIP entities. In cases where authentication in
the P2PSIP overlay is weak or where the system is fairly open to new
participants the "infiltration" is trivial (e.g., Sybil attack).</t>
<t>If peers in the P2PSIP overlay can freely choose peer IDs or/and
easily modify previously selected peer IDs the attacker may use
join-leave attacks to place a malicious peer intentionally at any
location in overlay. Placing the peer at any location allows an
attacker to obtain control of the location in the overlay where the
attacked user or resource is registered. A malicious peer may discard,
modify the data it is supposed to store and may discard lookup
requests or reply with incorrect entries to the incoming requests.</t>
<t>The attacker may also try to register a large number of resources
to the P2PSIP overlay increasing processing load on peers that are
responsible for storing the resources and limiting the overall
capacity of the P2PSIP overlay network. It may also try to register
all popular names preventing the name holders from registering their
preferred URIs.</t>
<t>Another critical point where a D-o-S attack can be mounted is the
enrollment system.</t>
</section>
<section title="Communication security threats">
<t>The main places where communication security becomes an issue in
the P2PSIP context is the enrollment process and the communication
between endpoints. The last ones are subject to all typical threats in
this domain, however they have been individually considered in the
earlier sections of this chapter.</t>
<t>This document assumes that the actual SIP service implementation
provides its own communication security, and the P2PSIP adds to that
only in providing a means for the communication endpoints to establish
a shared key for further security needs. Otherwise, the communication
security threats in that domain is out-of-scope for this
discussion.</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Security Comparison between C/S and P2P">
<t>In a Client Server(C/S) architecture, a client asks for a specific
service only from a specific server. The destination contact
address(i.e. the address of that server) can be acquired from the
trusted DNS system directly. Given this, the security issues exist only
with the connection between the client and the server. Typically, making
the connection secure between the client and the server addresses most
of the security issues related to the client.</t>
<t>However, in a P2P architecture the security issues are more
complex.</t>
<t>First, where in a C/S architecture specific servers provide certain
services, in a P2P architecture, each peer in the P2P overlay can
provide distributed storage and transport services for other P2P
entities. There is also no hierarchy of servers but instead the peers
self-organize into the P2P overlay.</t>
<t>Second, where in a C/S architecture a client sends its request
directly to a server, in a P2P architecture a peer sends messages
through Key-Based-Routing and it doesn't know where the destination is.
There are intermediate nodes between the source and destination.</t>
<t>Third, where in a C/S architecture the client can trust the
information from the server, in a P2P architecture, one peer does not
know whether it should trust the information acquired from the
overlay.</t>
<t>So in a P2P architecture, security issues not only exist between end
to end entities, but also between hop by hop services. They are not only
related to the routing security, but also related to the content
security.</t>
<figure>
<preamble></preamble>
<artwork align="center">
+------------+----------------------+--------------------------+
| | | |
| | C/S | P2P |
+------------+----------------------+--------------------------+
| | | |
| transport | authenticate between | authentication between |
| | client and server | P2PSIP network entities |
| | | |
+------------+----------------------+--------------------------+
| |need one hop security;| need hop by hop security|
| routing |transport layer | to ensure the end to end|
| |security can ensure it| security |
+------------+----------------------+--------------------------+
| | | responsible peer may not |
| storage | server is trusted for| trusted, need for resource|
| | storage | data management security |
+------------+----------------------+--------------------------+
| | | |
| application| out of scope of this| out of scope of this |
| | specification | specification |
| | | |
+------------+----------------------+--------------------------+
Figure 1 Comparison between C/S and P2P security</artwork>
<postamble></postamble>
</figure>
</section>
<section title="Security Analysis with P2P Layers">
<t>The overall security of a P2PSIP system depends upon the security of
each layer of the P2PSIP architecture. In this section we split the
P2PSIP architecture into four main layers, as shown in the following
figure, and analyze the security issues from the P2PSIP architecture
perspective.</t>
<figure>
<preamble></preamble>
<artwork align="center">
Application
+-------+ +-------+
| SIP | | XMPP | ...
| Usage | | Usage |
+-------+ +-------+
-------------------------------------- Messaging API
+------------------+ +---------+
| Message |<--->| Storage |
| Transport | +---------+
+------------------+ ^
^ ^ |
| v v
| +-------------------+
| | Topology |
| | Plugin |
| +-------------------+
| ^
v v
+------------------+
| Forwarding & |
| Link Management |
+------------------+
-------------------------------------- Overlay Link API
+-------+ +------+
|TLS | |DTLS | ...
+-------+ +------+
Figure 2 P2PSIP architecture</artwork>
<postamble></postamble>
</figure>
<t>The major components of RELOAD are:</t>
<t><list>
<t>Usage Layer: Each application defines a RELOAD usage; a set of
data kinds and behaviors which describe how to use the services
provided by RELOAD. These usages all talk to RELOAD through a common
Message Transport API.</t>
<t>Message Transport: Handles the end-to-end reliability, manages
request state for the usages, and forwards Store and Fetch
operations to the Storage component. Delivers message responses to
the component initiating the request.</t>
<t>Storage: The Storage component is responsible for processing
messages relating to the storage and retrieval of data. It talks
directly to the Topology Plugin to manage data replication and
migration, and it talks to the Message Transport to send and receive
messages.</t>
<t>Topology Plugin: The Topology Plugin is responsible for
implementing the specific overlay algorithm being used. It uses the
Message Transport component to send and receive overlay management
messages, to the Storage component to manage data replication, and
directly to the Forwarding Layer to control hop-by-hop message
forwarding. This component closely parallels conventional routing
algorithms, but is more tightly coupled to the Forwarding Layer
because there is no single "routing table" equivalent used by all
overlay algorithms.</t>
<t>Forwarding and Link Management Layer: Stores and implements the
routing table by providing packet forwarding services between nodes.
It also handles establishing new links between nodes, including
setting up connections across NATs using ICE.</t>
<t>Overlay Link Layer: TLS and DTLS are the "link layer" protocols
used by RELOAD for hop-by-hop communication. Each such protocol
includes the appropriate provisions for per-hop framing or
hop-by-hop ACKs required by unreliable transports.</t>
</list></t>
<section title="Overlay Link Layer Security">
<t>Given that a P2PSIP overlay can run on top of the Internet or other
untrusted network, messages between associated nodes should be
protected against attacks(such as Man-in-the-Middle). In order to
establish the identity trust association, nodes must authenticate each
other with e.g. TLS and DTLS. If transport service security is
provided, we can prevent nodes without valid identities to participate
in the overlay. This layer must provides reliable and secure
hop-by-hop transport service for the P2P overlay. This alone, though,
is not enough to secure the P2P system.</t>
</section>
<section title="Forwarding and Link Management Layer Security">
<t>Each Peer in the P2PSIP overlay provides key-based routing service
to other peers and a routing maintenance mechanism is used to keep the
routing table timely and correct for the routing service. There are
some security threats with the routing table updating interaction and
the key-based routing.</t>
<t>Even if all the nodes participating in the P2PSIP overlay have
valid identities, the overlay may still be attacked by responding with
fake routing table to UPDATE requests. If the routing table is false,
the routing determination based on it will be false too. So,
verification mechanisms should be adopted to verify if the routing
table received by the peer correct or not. A correct routing table is
important for hop by hop forwarding security.</t>
<t>Second, some attackers may discard the messages when forwarding, or
on purpose forward the message to a wrong next hop. The overlay should
include some method to detect incorrectly forwarded messages.</t>
<t>Third, some attacks may cause high churn rate to the overlay. For
example, some peers may frequently join and leave the overlay. Overlay
wastes much more traffic to update the routing table, and transfer
relative resource objects under churn. It can also make the routing
messages fail.</t>
<t>In this case, we need a method to control nodes joining the
overlay. The join control entity, which may be a bootstrap server or
enrollment server, or a bootstrap peer, makes records of peers'
historical behaviors in the overlay and their historical join
requests. When it receives the join request from a peer to join the
overlay, it checks the historical records as mentioned above to
determine whether this peer is permitted to join at this point. It
will deny the node to join the overlay when it determines the peer is
not permitted to join. For example, if a peer joins and leaves too
frequently, it will be denied to join the overlay as a peer for a
period of time and instead it will be allowed to join the overlay as a
client.</t>
<t>Chosen-ID attack makes the above security issues much more
worse.</t>
<t>In general, the main security issues in this layer are about
routing table maintenance security, and the the KBR function
security.</t>
</section>
<section title="Topology Plugin Security">
<t>The security issues with with this component are rather p2p
algorithm specific.</t>
</section>
<section title="Storage Security">
<t>The storage component provides distributed storage service for the
resource objects that located in one's responsible resource ID range,
and the replication service to keep the availability of resource
objects under churn. The security issues here are typically end to
end, and about the content and authority security.</t>
<t>First, We need to protect resource objects when needed against
unauthorized data operation such as fetch, modify or remove. A
solution for authorization is needed.</t>
<t>Second, The P2PSIP overlay needs a method to prevent attackers from
publishing malicious information that will cause a DDOS attack. For
example, Peer A may publish a very popular resource record with the
contact address of Peer B without B's permission. That causes
unexpected connections to B which will overload Peer B. Using
certificates can't solve this problem, a check mechanism for the
resource object is needed.</t>
<t>Third, overlays work well for a reasonable amount of resource
objects, but crash more or less when inserting big number of resource
objects per node. Spam attacks can make overlays go down. Open issue:
Should spam attack be considered in the storage layer? Or is it only
the responsibility of the application layer to handle this
problem?</t>
<t>Fourth, for the availability of the resource records in the overlay
network, replication is needed, but attackers can replicate excessive
amount of resources in the overlay network. So, only authorized peers
can replicate certain resources, and the number of resources one can
replicate is limited.</t>
</section>
<section title="Message Transport Security">
<t>Some attacker who is not responsible for the destination ID may
respond to some requests when he is in the intermediate routing
path(May respond with a fabricated resource object or just says that
the searched resource object doesn't exist). Should the source node
verify whether the response peer is responsible for the request? When
and how does the source peer do that? Whether the response peer is
responsible for the request is important for the end to end message
transport security.</t>
<t>Another security issue in this layer is about the message state
maintenance. The timeout value for the end to end message transport
must be chosen appropriately, because too short timeout value will
cause the overlay be flooded with messages since the initiator will
send the request again before the response is received. And too long
timeout value will not satisfy the requirement for communication
efficiency when routing failures occur. An open issue here is: How to
derive the appropriate timeout value and should the timeout value be
changed when the overlay size changes?</t>
</section>
<section title="Usage Layer Security">
<t>The SIP usage security analysis is briefly discussed in the
Security Considerations section of <xref target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-sip">
</xref>.</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Security Analysis with Application Scenarios">
<t>As mentioned in the security considerations section in <xref
target="I-D.bryan-p2psip-app-scenarios">the application scenarios
draft</xref>, the security requirements of the various application
scenarios vary tremendously. So in this section, we divide the
application scenarios into two main types, instead of analyzing all the
security threats with each specific scenario described in the
application scenarios draft, we just analyze the relative security
threats of these two types, which represent most of the likely
deployment scenarios in the real world. For example, the "Public P2P
VoIP Service Providers" scenario in section 4.1.1 of application
scenarios draft may be deployed using the first type(refer to section
6.1 of this specification), and the "Open Global P2P VoIP Network"
scenario in section 4.1.2 of application scenarios draft may be deployed
using the second type(refer to section 6.2 of this specification).</t>
<section title="Trusted P2P Overlay Base">
<t>In a trusted P2P Overlay Base, all the peers are deemed to be
trustworthy and are assumed to behave in a good manner. They may be
deployed to provide reliable and high quality services, and may also
do some management services for the overlay. All P2PSIP clients access
the overlay service through an associated trusted peer, as shown in
figure 3.</t>
<figure>
<preamble></preamble>
<artwork align="center">
+---------+ +---------+
| Trusted +---------------+ Trusted |
| Peer | | Peer |
+---+-----+ +----+----+
| |
| |
| |
| |
| P2PSIP Peer Protocol |
+---+-----+ (RELOAD) +----+----+
| Trusted +---------------+ Trusted |
| Peer | | Peer |
+---+-----+ +----+----+
| |
P2PSIP Peer P2PSIP Peer
Protocol(RELOAD) Protocol(RELOAD)
+---+-----+ +----+----+
| | | |
|Client | | Client |
+---------+ +---------+
Figure 3 Trusted P2P Overlay Base</artwork>
<postamble></postamble>
</figure>
<t>In these scenarios, we regard the P2P Overlay Base to be secure.
The security issues to be considered are the transport security
between trusted peers and the security issues associated with clients.
Security issues also focus on distributed storage layer.</t>
<figure>
<preamble></preamble>
<artwork>
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| Possible Attacks | Descriptions | Considerations |
|--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| | 1.Message Privacy | TLS and DTLS |
| Transport Related | 2.ID hijack | |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
|Unauthorized Data | Unauthorized Access, | Certificate |
|Operation | Modification, Removing| Mechanism |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| | In the progress of | |
| Man In the Middle | Authentication between| Authentication |
| | client and its | Security |
| | associated peer | |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| | | |
| data pollution and |1.Publish Fake Resource| 1.Check Mechanism? |
| poison | Objects | |
| |2.Publish malicious | 2.Black List? |
| | contact information | |
| | (DDOS attack) | |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| | | |
| Spam Attack | Publish lots of | 1. Check Mechanism? |
| | redundant resources | 2. Limit one's |
| | | publication number |
| | | per time unit |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
Figure 4 Possible Attacks on Trusted Overlay Base Scenarios</artwork>
<postamble></postamble>
</figure>
</section>
<section title="Untrusted P2P Overlay Base">
<t>In an untrusted P2P Overlay Base, there are peers who are not
trusted by other peers. Some of the untrusted peers may do harmful
things or abnormal behaviors to the overlay due to malicious or
unknown intentions. There may be trusted peers in the overlay, as
Shown in Figure 5.</t>
<figure>
<preamble></preamble>
<artwork align="center">
+---------+ +---------+
|Untrusted+---------------+ Trusted |
| Peer | | Peer |
+---+-----+ +----+----+
| |
| |
| |
| |
| P2PSIP Peer Protocol |
+---+-----+ (RELOAD) +----+----+
| Trusted +---------------+Untrusted|
| Peer | | Peer |
+---+-----+ +----+----+
| |
P2PSIP Peer P2PSIP Peer
Protocol(RELOAD) Protocol(RELOAD)
+---+-----+ +----+----+
| | | |
|Client | | Client |
+---------+ +---------+
Figure 5 Untrusted P2P Overlay Base
</artwork>
<postamble></postamble>
</figure>
<t>In these scenarios, the security threats with the Trusted P2P
Overlay Base still exist. However there are many additional security
threats because there may exist malicious peers in these networks.
Each layer of the P2PSIP architecture and the enrollment may be
attacked. The attacks beyond those in the Trusted Overlay Base
scenarios are listed in Figure 6.</t>
<figure>
<preamble></preamble>
<artwork align="center"> +--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| Possible Attacks | Descriptions | Considerations |
|--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| |1.Chosen-ID attack | 1.Enrollment Server |
| Identity Attack |2.Sybil Attack | |
| |3.Fabricated response | 2.A proof mechanism |
| | from the intermediate| to verify whether it|
| | peer | is a true root? |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| |1.discard messages | 1.message signature?|
| Forwarding Attack |2.Forwarding to a wrong| 2.A diagnosis |
| |next hop node | mechanism for |
| |3.modify messages when | detecting which |
| |forwarding | intermediate peer is|
| | | a bad man? |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| | Intermediate peer | |
| Replay Attack | stores messages and |Timestamp to |
| | replays |recognize timed |
| | |messages? |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
| | give malicious | |
| Routing Table | response info to an |Per DHT specific? |
| Attack | updating routing table| |
| | request | |
+--------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
Figure 6 Possible Attacks on Untrusted Overlay Base Scenarios,not
covered by Figure 4</artwork>
<postamble></postamble>
</figure>
<t>As for these security issues, <xref
target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-diagnostics">the P2PSIP diagnostics
draft</xref> provides a framework using diagnostic methods to diagnose
some of the problems in the P2PSIP overlay.</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Interconnection to other networks">
<t>While some P2PSIP systems may exist that only allow communication
between P2PSIP peers within the system, other P2PSIP systems may have
connections to other networks such as the traditional Public Switched
Telephone Network (PSTN) or newer SIP-based networks.</t>
<t>For example, a P2PSIP system might be deployed within a branch office
with a connection from the P2PSIP system going back to a SIP-based
communication network in a main corporate office. Alternatively, a small
office might deploy a P2PSIP system and then have some gateway to the
PSTN for external communication.</t>
<t>In examples such as these, care must be taken to ensure the security
of communication to those external networks. Note that the level of
concern may vary depending upon whether the P2PSIP overlay base is
trusted or untrusted, as discussed in the previous section.</t>
<section title="Connections to SIP networks">
<t>A common scenario may be for a P2PSIP system to be connected to
another SIP network. This could be to a main corporate network as
described earlier, or it could be to a SIP-based Service Provider who
would then provide inbound and / or outbound connectivity to the PSTN.
It could also be to an on-premise device such as an IP-PBX or SIP
application server that would provide connectivity to other
networks.</t>
<t>Important considerations here include: <list style="symbols">
<t>How is the P2PSIP overlay network connected to the SIP network?
Is it through a single designated peer? Is it through multiple
peers?</t>
<t>How is the availability of the connection to the SIP network
preserved?</t>
<t>How susceptible to Denial of Service attacks is the
connection?</t>
<t>How are the authentication credentials for the SIP connection
protected?</t>
<t>What kind of transport security is deployed for the
connection?</t>
<t>How are firewall traversal issues addressed?</t>
</list></t>
<t>Care must be taken that the confidentiality, integrity and
availability of this connection be maintained.</t>
</section>
<section title="Direct connections to the PSTN">
<t>While some P2PSIP systems may choose to connect to SIP-based
Service Providers to achieve PSTN connectivity, others might opt for
direct connectivity to the PSTN through local gateways such as
hardware cards. For instance, a small office might have a PC or other
device with a hardware card that provided connectivity to a
traditional analog line to the PSTN. Similarly, a desk phone may be
created with both an IP connection and an analog line connection.</t>
<t>In these cases, one or more of the P2PSIP Peers may have these
devices installed and may then advertise these resources as being
available. Important considerations here include: <list
style="symbols">
<t>How is the availability of the Peer(s) providing the PSTN
gateway?</t>
<t>Are there protections in place to ensure that routing tables
aren't manipulated so that other Peers cannot find the
gateways?</t>
</list></t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Security considerations">
<t>This section describes aspects of security considerations in a P2PSIP
system.</t>
<section title="User security considerations">
<t>The user wants available and reliable service that enables him to
interact with other users and resources in a secure way. This means
that the P2PSIP system must provide:</t>
<t><list style="symbols">
<t>lookup and discovery of users and resources that is secure and
reliable,</t>
<t>certainty of user and resource identity,</t>
<t>confidentiality and integrity of end-to-end multimedia
communication,</t>
<t>easy and secure enrollment to the P2PSIP system,</t>
</list></t>
</section>
<section title="System security considerations">
<t>In order for a P2PSIP system to function properly and that the end
user gets a proper service, there are several aspects that the P2PSIP
system must take in to account.</t>
<section title="Dependence of reachability of a centralized server">
<t>Considering the nature of P2P in general, the dependence of
reachability of a centralized server should be minimized. There may
be unavoidable situations such as the enrollment process, where this
is not possible. However, the normal functioning of the P2PSIP
overlay such as join and leave operations, modification, retrieval
and deletion of P2PSIP resource (user) records from the P2PSIP
system should not depend on the reachability of a centralised
server.</t>
</section>
<section title="Scalability">
<t>P2PSIP security should scale from a small ad-hoc network to a
network with hundred millions of network nodes and users.</t>
</section>
<section title="Preference of existing security mechanisms">
<t>Although P2PSIP defines a new architecture, and thereby new
interfaces and protocols, for security there are several
standardized solutions for access control, authentication, integrity
protection and communication security. Using established protocols
minimizes potential security loopholes that need to be patched
later. Besides implementation is easier if chosen security protocols
are widely implemented and used.</t>
</section>
<section title="Base P2P security design considerations and guideline">
<t>All of the security operations should be specified in such a way
that they do not impose new unnecessary requirements on a base P2P
algorithm (e.g., DHT implementations) and limit its scalability. The
security issues that are not introduced by the P2P algorithm must
not be left to the P2P algorithm to solve.</t>
<t>A P2PSIP system should provide methods to support various level
of security provisioning. Security requirements in P2P systems can
be different, depending on level of trust in the central entities
and connectivity to the global Internet. Security operations should
be specified in a manner that they do not overload base P2P
algorithms (e.g. DHT implementations). Security risks, not covered
by these, should be further investigated in research projects.</t>
</section>
<section title="Node and user identification">
<t>The P2PSIP system must preserve user and resource identities. It
must NOT be possible to steal a P2PSIP identity from another
user.</t>
<t>Because some attackers may try to use identities of another
P2PSIP network entities it should be possible to verify the identity
of another party.</t>
</section>
<section title="Enrollment">
<t>The enrollment process defines the set of users and P2PSIP
network entities that may participate in a P2PSIP system. Each
P2PSIP system may establish its own policy for who can join the
system. The enrollment process policy may define:</t>
<t><list style="symbols">
<t>how many and what user IDs and peer IDs a user or a P2PSIP
network entity may register,</t>
<t>and how often they must re-new their subscription to the
P2PSIP system.</t>
</list></t>
<t>As it was indicated in <xref
target="I-D.bryan-p2psip-requirements"></xref> the enrollment
process may take several measures in admitting a user or a network
node to the P2PSIP system to increase security:</t>
<t><list style="symbols">
<t>may require strong identity such as employment or identity
provided by a trusted 3rd party or by the P2PSIP service
operator,</t>
<t>may apply reputation mechanisms.</t>
</list></t>
<t>Although the user probably is the entity that enrolls to the
P2PSIP system, the credentials that are the result of the enrollment
are used to grant a device the right to function as a peer, client
or any other operative function possible in the system. Thus the
security of enrollment also translates to the security of the device
itself where the credentials are stored, and threats related to
device security in general.</t>
</section>
<section title="Replay attacks">
<t>An attacker should not be able to repeat or delay valid data
transmission during enrollment and modification of P2PSIP resource
(user) records in a P2PSIP overlay.</t>
</section>
<section title="Unauthorized data access">
<t>An attacker must NOT be able to easily corrupt, delete, or
overwrite other user's or resource's data stored in P2PSIP resource
(user) records as well as routing tables. Only authorized users must
be able to modify, delete or overwrite their P2PSIP resource (user)
records in the P2PSIP system. P2PSIP security should allow users and
P2PSIP network entities to register the same resources (e.g.
TURN@overlay.net), however each entity should have rights only to
its own part of a resource record. In other words each entity should
be able to perform the same operations on its part of a resource
record as on its own resource (user) records.</t>
<t>The owner of the P2PSIP resource (user) records should be able to
authorize other users and network entities to modify, delete their
P2PSIP resource (user) records.</t>
</section>
<section title="Data validation">
<t>First and foremost it must be possible to verify that the data
stored in or retrieved from the P2PSIP overlay is authentic, i.e.
was not tampered by unauthorized P2PSIP network entities.</t>
<t>The peer that stores P2PSIP resource (user) records must be able
to validate the data received in the process of P2PSIP resource
(user) record insertion and modification.</t>
</section>
<section title="Denial of Service (DOS) attacks">
<t>It must NOT be possible to obtain control of the location in the
overlay where the attacked user's or resource's records are
registered. In order to prevent so-called Sybil or join-leave
attacks the attacker should NOT be able to easily register a
unlimited number of IDs of his choice in the P2SIP overlay. The
P2PSIP system should be able to control ID assignment. Once
assigned, an ID or a set of IDs should be difficult to change.</t>
<t>In addition the P2PSIP architecture should make sure that data
stored in a P2PSIP overlay is persistent, meaning that even if a
number of nodes (but not all of nodes in the overlay) fails the data
stored by those nodes is not lost. In addition the attacker must NOT
be able to register unlimited number of resources in the
overlay.</t>
</section>
<section title="Privacy Protection">
<t>The security of P2PSIP systems must guarantee privacy of the
P2PSIP network participants. The P2PSIP security should allow the
users and P2PSIP network entities to indicate which other users or
P2PSIP network entities can retrieve, modify, and delete data stored
in their P2PSIP resource (user) records. The owner of a P2PSIP
resource (user) record should be able to limit the access to his own
resource (user) records, and this feature should be enforced by the
P2P network.</t>
<t>It must also be difficult to monitor who is communicating with a
particular user, or retrieve any contextual data about the user
without the user's explicit consent. The P2PSIP network entities
must be provided with option to encrypt data exchanged with other
P2PSIP network entities.</t>
</section>
<section title="Badly behaving nodes">
<t>It should be possible to limit potential damage caused by
malfunctioning and badly behaving nodes in a P2PSIP system. As the
policy taken by the P2PSIP system operator/community may be very
liberal, any user can obtain the right to be a user of a P2PSIP
system. It may be that some users behave badly intentionally in
which case it should be possible to limit the impact of the badly
behaving nodes on the overall system security. There should be
methods to look for badly behaving nodes and exclude or reject them
from the P2PSIP system.</t>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="sec-security" title="Security Considerations">
<t>This memo discusses security threats in P2PSIP overlay networks.
Security aspects are discussed throughout the document. However, this
document does not introduce any security risk by itself.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="sec-iana" title="IANA Considerations">
<t>There are no IANA considerations associated to this memo.</t>
</section>
<section title="Acknowledgments">
<t>The authors would like to thank the many people of the IETF P2PSIP WG
that have contributed to discussions and provided input invaluable in
assembling this document.</t>
<t>Acknowledgement is also given to Jan-Erik Ekberg and Pekka Laitinen,
both with Nokia, and to Jiang Xingfeng with Huawei for their work on
earlier versions of the documents now incorporated into this draft.
Acknowledgement is also given to Christian Schmidt with Nokia Siemens
Networks, Roni Even with Gesher Erove for providing valuable input to
this document, and also to Bruce Lowekamp for valuable comments to this
document.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="Changes" title="Changes">
<t>NOTE TO RFC EDITOR: Please remove this section prior to publication.
It is included only to aid in the discussion and development of the
document.</t>
<section title="Revision 5">
<t>This document represents a merge of two drafts:<list
style="symbols">
<t>draft-matuszewski-p2psip-security-requirements</t>
<t><xref target="I-D.song-p2psip-security-eval"></xref></t>
</list>with some post-merge editing by Song Haibin, Dan York and
Marcin Matuszewski. The authors have finished with the work that is
promised in the previous version. The main changes include:<list
style="symbols">
<t>The security requirements have been taken out from this
document, which have been sent out to the P2PSIP mailing list to
provide security guidance for the base draft. And this document
has become an analysis and tutorial for p2psip security.</t>
<t>The document is synchronized with the recently released updates
to the RELOAD protocol as documented by editor Bruce Lowekamp in
<xref target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-sip"></xref> and <xref
target="I-D.ietf-p2psip-base"></xref></t>
<t>The merge between the two previous documents is completed and
the text flows better.</t>
<t>A section will be added on security requirements related to
interconnection of P2PSIP networks to other networks including
non-P2P SIP networks and the PSTN.</t>
<t>A subsection about SIP usage security has been created.</t>
<t>Various wording changes based on comments from Christian
Schmidt.</t>
</list></t>
</section>
<section title="Revision 6 / Overview -00">
<t>This revision primarily is the change of the name to
'draft-matuszewski-p2psip-security-overview-00' for consideration
for adoption as a working group document.</t>
<t>Additionally, the following changes were made:
<list style="symbols">
<t>IPR declaration changed to 'pre5378Trust200902' based on
feedback from other authors.</t>
<t>Removed references to RFC 2119 and began removal of normative language.</t>
<t>Figures changed to reflect RELOAD protocol.</t>
<t>Reference to "I-D.zheng-p2psip-diagnose" changed to "I-D.ietf-p2psip-diagnostics".</t>
<t>Affiliation of Marcin Matuszewski changed to "Future Invest".</t>
<t>Acknowledgements changed to add notes about Roni Even and
Bruce Lowekamp.</t>
</list></t>
</section>
</section>
</middle>
<back>
<references title="Normative References">
&RFC3261;
&I-D.ietf-p2psip-sip;
&I-D.ietf-p2psip-base;
&I-D.ietf-p2psip-concepts;
&I-D.song-p2psip-security-eval;
&I-D.bryan-p2psip-app-scenarios;
&I-D.bryan-p2psip-requirements;
&I-D.ietf-p2psip-diagnostics;
</references>
</back>
</rfc>
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