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STUN Usage for Consent Freshness
draft-ietf-rtcweb-stun-consent-freshness-00

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7675.
Authors Muthu Arul Perumal , Dan Wing , Ram R , Tirumaleswar Reddy.K
Last updated 2013-09-20
Replaces draft-muthu-behave-consent-freshness
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state WG Document
Document shepherd Ted Hardie
IESG IESG state Became RFC 7675 (Proposed Standard)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
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draft-ietf-rtcweb-stun-consent-freshness-00
RTCWEB                                                    Muthu. Perumal
Internet-Draft                                                   D. Wing
Intended status: Standards Track                         R. Ravindranath
Expires: March 24, 2014                                         T. Reddy
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                      September 20, 2013

                    STUN Usage for Consent Freshness
              draft-ietf-rtcweb-stun-consent-freshness-00

Abstract

   Verification of peer consent before sending traffic is necessary in
   WebRTC deployments to ensure that a malicious JavaScript cannot use
   the browser as a platform for launching attacks.  A related problem
   is session liveness.  WebRTC application may want to detect
   connection failure and take appropriate action.

   This document describes how a WebRTC browser can verify peer consent
   to continue sending traffic and detect connection failure.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on March 24, 2014.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents

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   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Design Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Solution Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   5.  W3C API Implications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  Interaction with Keepalives used for Refreshing NAT Bindings    5
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   9.  Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   10. Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   To prevent attacks on WebRTC peers, WebRTC browsers have to ensure
   the remote peer wants to receive traffic.  This is performed both
   when the session is first established to the remote peer (using ICE
   connectivity checks), and periodically for the duration of the
   session (using the procedure defined in this document).

   When a session is first established, WebRTC implementations are
   required to perform STUN connectivity checks as part of ICE
   [RFC5245].  That initial consent is not described further in this
   document.

   Related to consent is loss of connectivity ("liveness").  WebRTC
   applications want notification of connection failure to take
   appropriate actions (e.g., alert the user, try switching to a
   different interface).

   This document describes a new STUN usage with a request and response
   which verifies the remote peer consents to receive traffic, and
   detects loss of liveness.  To meet the security needs of consent, the
   JavaScript application has no control over the consent requests or
   the requirement to receive a consent response.  However, the
   JavaScript does get notification of consent failure and loss of
   connectivity.

2.  Terminology

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   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].

   Consent:  It is the mechanism of obtaining permission from the peer
      to send traffic on a candidate pair.

   Consent Freshness:  It is the mechanism of obtaining permission from
      the peer to continue sending traffic on a nominated candidate pair
      after ICE has concluded.

   Session Liveness:  It is the mechanism of detecting connectivity on a
      nominated candidate pair after ICE has concluded.

   Transport Address:  The combination of an IP address and port number
      (such as a UDP or TCP port number).

3.  Design Considerations

   Although ICE requires periodic keepalive traffic to be sent in order
   to keep NAT bindings alive (Section 10 of [RFC5245], [RFC6263]),
   those keepalives are send-and-forget, and do not evoke a response.  A
   response is necessary both for consent to continue sending traffic,
   as well as to ensure connectivity.  Thus, we need a request/response
   mechanism.

   Though ICE specifies STUN Binding indications to be used for
   keepalives, it requires that an agent be prepared to receive
   connectivity check as well.  If a connectivity check is received, a
   response is generated and there is no impact on ICE processing, as
   described in section 10 of [RFC5245].

   The above considerations suggest that STUN Binding request/response
   is most suitable for performing consent freshness.

4.  Solution Overview

   Consent freshness serves as a circuit breaker (so that if the path or
   remote peer fails the WebRTC browser stops sending all traffic on
   that remote peer), determining session liveness serves the purpose of
   notifying the application of connectivity failure so that the
   application can take appropriate action.

   The solution uses three values:

   1.  A consent timer, Tc, whose value is determined by the browser.
       This value MUST be 15 seconds.

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   2.  A packet receipt timer, Tr, whose value is determined by the
       application, but MUST NOT be shorter than 1 second or longer than
       15 seconds, and SHOULD have a default value of 5 seconds.

   3.  A consent timeout, Tf, which is how many seconds elapse without a
       consent response before the browser ceases transmission of media.
       Its value MUST be 15 seconds or less, and the value 15 seconds is
       RECOMMENDED.

   A WebRTC browser performs a combined consent freshness and session
   liveness test using STUN request/response as described below:

   Every Tc seconds, the WebRTC browser sends a STUN Binding Request to
   the peer.  This request MUST use a new, cryptographically random
   Transaction ID [RFC4086], and is formatted as for an ICE connectivity
   check [RFC5245].  A valid STUN Binding Response is also formatted as
   for an ICE connectivity check [RFC5245].  The STUN Binding Request
   and STUN Binding Response are validated as for an ICE connectivity
   check [RFC5245].  The difference from ICE connectivity check is that
   there is no exponential back off for retransmissions.

   If a valid STUN Binding Response is received, the consent timer is
   reset and fires again Tc seconds later.

   If a valid STUN Binding Response is not received after 500ms, the
   STUN Binding Request is retransmitted (with the same Transaction ID
   and all other fields).  As long as a valid STUN Binding Response is
   not received, this retransmission is repeated every 500ms until Tf
   seconds have elapsed or a valid response is received.  If no valid
   response is received after Tf seconds, the WebRTC browser MUST quit
   transmitting traffic to this remote peer.  Considering the default
   value of Tf=15 seconds, this means transmission will stop after 30
   consent check packets have resulted in no response.

   Liveness timer: If no packets have been received on the local port in
   Tr seconds, the WebRTC browser MUST inform the JavaScript that
   connectivity has been lost.  The JavaScript application will use this
   notification however it desires (e.g., cease transmitting to the
   remote peer, provide a notification to the user, etc.).  Note the
   definition of a received packet is liberal, and includes an SRTP
   packet that fails authentication, a STUN Binding Request with an
   invalid USERNAME or PASSWORD, or any other packet.

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5.  W3C API Implications

   For the consent freshness and liveness test the W3C specification
   should provide APIs as described below:

   1.  Ability for the browser to notify the JavaScript that a consent
       freshness transaction has failed for a media stream and the
       browser has stopped transmitting for that stream.

   2.  Ability for the JavaScript to start and stop liveness test and
       set the liveness test interval.

   3.  Ability for the browser to notify the JavaScript that a liveness
       test has failed for a media stream.

6.  Interaction with Keepalives used for Refreshing NAT Bindings

   When not actively sending traffic on a nominated candidate pair,
   performing consent freshness does not serve any purpose from a
   security perspective.  If consent freshness is not performed during
   this period, the browser continues to performs the ICE keepalives
   [RFC5245] or RTP keepalive [RFC6263] to refresh NAT bindings.

7.  Security Considerations

   Security considerations discussed in [RFC5245] are to be taken into
   account.

   The browser MUST use short-term credential to authenticate the STUN
   messages used for Consent freshness, session liveness and perform
   message integrity check on STUN binding request/response.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not require any action from IANA.

9.  Acknowledgement

   Thanks to Eric Rescorla, Harald Alvestrand, Martin Thomson, Bernard
   Aboba, Cullen Jennings and Simon Perreault for their valuable inputs
   and comments.

10.  Normative References

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

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   [RFC4086]  Eastlake, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, "Randomness
              Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086, June 2005.

   [RFC5245]  Rosenberg, J., "Interactive Connectivity Establishment
              (ICE): A Protocol for Network Address Translator (NAT)
              Traversal for Offer/Answer Protocols", RFC 5245, April
              2010.

   [RFC6263]  Marjou, X. and A. Sollaud, "Application Mechanism for
              Keeping Alive the NAT Mappings Associated with RTP / RTP
              Control Protocol (RTCP) Flows", RFC 6263, June 2011.

Authors' Addresses

   Muthu Arul Mozhi Perumal
   Cisco Systems
   Cessna Business Park
   Sarjapur-Marathahalli Outer Ring Road
   Bangalore, Karnataka  560103
   India

   Email: mperumal@cisco.com

   Dan Wing
   Cisco Systems
   821 Alder Drive
   Milpitas, California  95035
   USA

   Email: dwing@cisco.com

   Ram Mohan Ravindranath
   Cisco Systems
   Cessna Business Park
   Sarjapur-Marathahalli Outer Ring Road
   Bangalore, Karnataka  560103
   India

   Email: rmohanr@cisco.com

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   Tirumaleswar Reddy
   Cisco Systems
   Cessna Business Park, Varthur Hobli
   Sarjapur Marathalli Outer Ring Road
   Bangalore, Karnataka  560103
   India

   Email: tireddy@cisco.com

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