Larger Packets for RADIUS over TCP
draft-ietf-radext-bigger-packets-01

Network Working Group                                         S. Hartman
Internet-Draft                                         Painless Security
Updates: 6613, 6614 (if approved)                           July 2, 2014
Intended status: Experimental
Expires: January 3, 2015

                   Larger Packets for RADIUS over TCP
                draft-ietf-radext-bigger-packets-01.txt

Abstract

   The RADIUS over TLS experiment described in RFC 6614 has opened
   RADIUS to new use cases where the 4096-octet maximum RADIUS packet
   proves problematic.  This specification extends the RADIUS over TCP
   experiment to permit larger RADIUS packets.  This specification
   compliments other ongoing work to permit fragmentation of RADIUS
   authorization information.  This document registers a new RADIUS
   code, an action which requires IESG approval.

Status of This Memo

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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Changes to Packet Processing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Status-Server Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Forward and backward Compatibility  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.2.  Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  Too Big Response  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Response Length       Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.2.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   The Remote Access Dial-In User Server (RADIUS) over TLS [RFC6614]
   experiment provides strong confidentiality and integrity for RADIUS
   [RFC2865].  This enhanced security has opened new opportunities for
   using RADIUS to convey additional authorization information.  As an
   example, [I-D.ietf-abfab-aaa-saml] describes a mechanism for using
   RADIUS to carry Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) messages in
   RADIUS.  Many attributes carried in these SAML messages will require
   confidentiality or integrity such as that provided by TLS.

   These new use cases involve carrying additional information in RADIUS
   packets.  The maximum packet length of 4096 octets is proving
   insufficient for some SAML messages and for other structures that may
   be carried in RADIUS.

   One approach is to fragment a RADIUS message across multiple packets
   at the RADIUS layer.RADIUS Fragmentation
   [I-D.ietf-radext-radius-fragmentation] provides a mechanism to split
   authorization information across multiple RADIUS messages.  That
   mechanism is necessary in order to split authorization information
   across existing unmodified proxies.

   However, there are some significant disadvantages to RADIUS
   fragmentation.  First, RADIUS is a lock-step protocol, and only one
   fragment can be in transit at a time as part of a given request.

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   Also, there is no current mechanism to discover the path Maximum
   Transmission Unit (MTU) across the entire path that the fragment will
   travel.  As a result, fragmentation is likely both at the RADIUS
   layer and at the transport layer.  When TCP is used, much better
   transport characteristics can be achieved by fragmentation only at
   the TCP layer.  This specification provides a mechanism to achieve
   these better transport characteristics when TCP is used.  As part of
   this specification, a new RADIUS code is registered.

1.1.  Requirements notation

   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].

2.  Changes to Packet Processing

   The maximum length of a RADIUS message is increased from 4096 to
   65535.  A RADIUS Server implementing this specification MUST be able
   to receive a packet of maximum length.  Servers MAY have a maximum
   size over which they choose to return an error as discussed in
   Section 4 rather than processing a received packet; this size MUST be
   at least 4096 octets.

   Clients implementing this specification MUST be able to receive a
   packet of maximum length; that is clients MUST NOT close a TCP
   connection simply because a large packet is sent over it.  Clients
   MAY include the Response-Length attribute defined in Section 5 to
   indicate the maximum size of a packet that they can successfully
   process.  Clients MAY silently discard a packet greater than some
   configured size; this size MUST be at least 4096 octets.  Clients
   MUST NOT retransmit an unmodified request whose response is larger
   than the client can process as subsequent responses will likely
   continue to be too large.

   Proxies SHOULD be able to process and forward packets of maximum
   length.  Proxies MUST include the Response-Length attribute when
   forwarding a request received over a transport with a 4096-octet
   maximum length over a transport with a higher maximum length.

2.1.  Status-Server Considerations

   This section extends processing of Status-Server messages as
   described in section 4.1 and 4.2 of [RFC5997].

   Clients implementing this specification SHOULD include the Response-
   Length attribute in Status-Request messages.  Servers are already
   required to ignore unknown attributes received in this message.  by

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   including the attribute, the client indicates how large of a response
   it can process to its Status-Server request.  It is very unlikely
   that a response to Status-Server is greater than 4096 octets.
   However the client also indicates support for this specification
   which triggers server behavior below.

   If a server implementing this specification receives a Response-
   Length attribute in a Status-Server request, it MUST include a
   Response-Length attribute indicating the maximum size request it can
   process in its response to the Status-Server request.

3.  Forward and backward Compatibility

   An implementation of [RFC6613] will silently discard any packet
   larger than 4096 octets and will close the TCP connection.  This
   section provides guidelines for interoperability with these
   implementations.  These guidelines are stated at the SHOULD level.
   In some environments support for large packets will be important
   enough that roaming or other agreements will mandate their support.
   In these environments, all implementations might be required to
   support this specification removing the need for interoperability
   with RFC 6613.  It is likely that these guidelines will be relaxed to
   the MAY level and support for this specification made a requirement
   if RADIUS over TLS and TCP are moved to the standards track in the
   future.

   Clients SHOULD provide configuration for the maximum size of a
   request sent to each server.  Servers SHOULD provide configuration
   for the maximum size of a response sent to each client.  If dynamic
   discovery mechanisms are supported, configuration SHOULD be provided
   for the maximum size of clients and servers in each dynamic discovery
   category.

   If a client sends a request larger than 4096 octets and the TCP
   connection is closed without a response, the client SHOULD treat the
   request as if a request too big error (Section 4) specifying a
   maximum size of 4096 is received.  Clients or proxies sending
   multiple requests over a single TCP connection without waiting for
   responses SHOULD implement capability discovery as discussed in
   Section 3.2.

   By default, a server SHOULD not generate a response larger than 4096
   octets.  The Response-Length attribute MAY be included in a request
   to indicate that larger responses are desirable.  Other attributes or
   configuration MAY be used as an indicator that large responses are
   likely to be acceptable.

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   A proxy that implements both this specification and RADIUS
   Fragmentation [I-D.ietf-radext-radius-fragmentation] SHOULD use
   RADIUS fragmentation when the following conditions are met:

   1.  A packet is being forwarded towards an endpoint whose
       configuration does not support a packet that large.

   2.  RADIUS Fragmentation can be used for the packet in question.

3.1.  Rationale

   The interoperability challenge appears at first significant.  This
   specification proposes to introduce behavior where new
   implementations will fail to function with existing implementations.

   However, these capabilities are introduced to support new use cases.
   If an implementation has 10000 octets of attributes to send, it
   cannot in general trim down the response to something that can be
   sent.  Under this specification a large packet would be generated
   that will be silently discarded by an existing implementation.
   Without this specification, no packet is generated because the
   required attributes cannot be sent.

   The biggest risk to interoperability would be if requests and
   responses are expanded to include additional information that is not
   strictly necessary.  So, avoiding creating situations where large
   packets are sent to existing implementations is mostly an operational
   matter.  Interoperability is most impacted when the size of packets
   in existing use cases is significantly increased and least impacted
   when large packets are used for new use cases where the deployment is
   likely to require updated RADIUS implementations.

   There is a special challenge for proxies or clients with high request
   volume.  When an RFc 6113 implementation receives a packet that is
   too large, it closes the connection and does not respond to any
   requests in process.  Such a client would lose requests and might
   find distinguishing request-too-big situations from other failures
   difficult.  In these cases, the discovery mechanism described in
   Section 3.2 can be used.

   Also, RFC 6613 is an experiment.  Part of running that experiment is
   to evaluate whether additional changes are required to RADIUS.  A
   lower bar for interoperability should apply to changes to
   experimental protocols than standard protocols.

   This specification provides good facilities to enable implementations
   to understand packet size when proxying to/from standards-track UDP
   RADIUS.

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3.2.  Discovery

   As discussed in Section 2.1, a client MAY send a Status-Server
   message to discover whether an authentication or accounting server
   supports this specification.  The client includes a Response-Length
   attribute; this signals the server to include a Response-Length
   attribute indicating the maximum packet size the server can process.
   In this one instance, Response-Length indicate the size of a request
   that can be processed rather than a response.

4.  Too Big Response

   When a RADIUS server receives a request that is larger than can be
   processed, it generates a Too-Big response as follows:

      The code is TBDCODE.

      The identifier is the identifier from the request.

      The Response-Length attribute MUST be included and its value is
      the maximum size of request that will be processed.

      No other attributes SHOULD be included.  Additional attributes
      MUST be ignored by the client.

   Clients will not typically be able to adjust and resend requests when
   this error is received.  In some cases the client can fall back to
   RADIUS Fragmentation.  In other cases this code will provide for
   better client error reporting and will avoid retransmitting requests
   guaranteed to fail.

5.  Response Length Attribute

   The following RADIUS attribute type values [RFC3575] are assigned.
   The assignment rules in section 10.3 of [RFC6929] are used.

   +---------------------+---------------+-----------------------------+
   | Name                | Attribute     | Description                 |
   +---------------------+---------------+-----------------------------+
   | Response-Length     | TBD           | 2-octet unsigned integer    |
   |                     |               | maximum response length     |
   +---------------------+---------------+-----------------------------+

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   The Response-Length attribute MAY be included in any RADIUS request.
   In this context it indicates the maximum length of a response the
   client is prepared to receive.  Values are between 4096 and 65535.
   The attribute MAY also be included in a response to a Status-Server
   message.  In this case the attribute indicate the maximum size RADIUS
   request that is permitted.

6.  IANA Considerations

   A new RADIUS packet type code is registered in the RADIUS packet type
   codes registry discussed in section 2.1 of RFC 3575 [RFC3575].  The
   name is "Too-Big" and the code is TBDCODE.  The IESG is requested to
   approve this registration along with approving publication of this
   document.

   IANA is requested to assign the RADIUS type defined in section
   Section 5

7.  Security Considerations

   This specification updates RFC 6613 and will be used with [RFC6614].
   When used over plain TCP, this specification creates new
   opportunities for an on-path attacker to impact availability.  these
   attacks can be entirely mitigated by using TLS.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2865]  Rigney, C., Willens, S., Rubens, A., and W. Simpson,
              "Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)", RFC
              2865, June 2000.

   [RFC3575]  Aboba, B., "IANA Considerations for RADIUS (Remote
              Authentication Dial In User Service)", RFC 3575, July
              2003.

   [RFC5997]  DeKok, A., "Use of Status-Server Packets in the Remote
              Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) Protocol",
              RFC 5997, August 2010.

   [RFC6613]  DeKok, A., "RADIUS over TCP", RFC 6613, May 2012.

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   [RFC6614]  Winter, S., McCauley, M., Venaas, S., and K. Wierenga,
              "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Encryption for RADIUS",
              RFC 6614, May 2012.

   [RFC6929]  DeKok, A. and A. Lior, "Remote Authentication Dial In User
              Service (RADIUS) Protocol Extensions", RFC 6929, April
              2013.

8.2.  References

   [I-D.ietf-abfab-aaa-saml]
              Howlett, J. and S. Hartman, "A RADIUS Attribute, Binding,
              Profiles, Name Identifier Format, and Confirmation Methods
              for SAML", draft-ietf-abfab-aaa-saml-09 (work in
              progress), February 2014.

   [I-D.ietf-radext-radius-fragmentation]
              Perez-Mendez, A., Lopez, R., Pereniguez-Garcia, F., Lopez-
              Millan, G., Lopez, D., and A. DeKok, "Support of
              fragmentation of RADIUS packets", draft-ietf-radext-
              radius-fragmentation-06 (work in progress), April 2014.

Author's Address

   Sam Hartman
   Painless Security

   Email: hartmans-ietf@mit.edu

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