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Problems with STUN long-term Authentication for TURN
draft-ietf-tram-auth-problems-02

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 7376.
Authors Tirumaleswar Reddy.K , Ram R , Muthu Arul Perumal , Alper E. Yegin
Last updated 2014-07-18 (Latest revision 2014-07-03)
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
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Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Gonzalo Camarillo
Shepherd write-up Show Last changed 2014-07-05
IESG IESG state Became RFC 7376 (Informational)
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Responsible AD Spencer Dawkins
Send notices to tram-chairs@tools.ietf.org, draft-ietf-tram-auth-problems@tools.ietf.org
IANA IANA review state IANA - Review Needed
draft-ietf-tram-auth-problems-02
TRAM                                                            T. Reddy
Internet-Draft                                           R. Ravindranath
Intended status: Informational                            Muthu. Perumal
Expires: January 4, 2015                                           Cisco
                                                                A. Yegin
                                                                 Samsung
                                                            July 3, 2014

          Problems with STUN long-term Authentication for TURN
                    draft-ietf-tram-auth-problems-02

Abstract

   This document discusses some of the issues with STUN authentication
   for TURN messages.

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
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   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 January 4, 2015.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2014 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
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Notational Conventions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Problems with STUN long-term Authentication for TURN  . . . .   4
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN) [RFC5766] is a protocol that is
   often used to improve the connectivity of P2P applications (as
   defined in section 2.7 of [RFC5128]).  TURN ensures that a connection
   can be established even when one or both sides is incapable of a
   direct P2P connection.  The TURN server is also a a building block to
   support interactive, real-time communication using audio, video,
   collaboration, games, etc., between two peer web browsers using the
   Web Real-Time communication (WebRTC) [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview]
   framework.

   TURN server is also used in the following scenarios:

   o  Users of RTCWEB based web application may use TURN server to hide
      host candidate addresses from the remote peer for privacy.

   o  Enterprise networks deploy firewalls which typically block UDP
      traffic.  When SIP user agents or WebRTC endpoints are deployed
      behind such firewalls, media cannot be sent over UDP across the
      firewall, but must be sent using TCP (which causes a different
      user experience).  In such cases a TURN server deployed in the
      DeMilitarized Zone (DMZ) MAY be used to traverse firewalls.

   o  The use-case explained in "Simple Video Communication Service,
      enterprise aspects" (Section 3.2.5 of
      [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-use-cases-and-requirements]) refers to deploying
      a TURN server in the DMZ to audit all media sessions from inside
      an Enterprise premises to any external peer.

   o  TURN server could also be deployed for RTP Mobility
      [I-D.wing-tram-turn-mobility] etc.

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   o  TURN Server may be used for IPv4-to-IPv6, IPv6-to-IPv6, and IPv6 -
      to-IPv4 relaying [RFC6156].

   o  ICE connectivity checks using server reflexive candidates could
      fail when the endpoint is behind NAT that performs Address-
      dependent mapping.  In such cases relayed candidate allocated from
      the TURN server is used for media.

   STUN [RFC5389] specifies an authentication mechanism called the long-
   term credential mechanism.  TURN [RFC5766] in section 4 specifies
   that TURN servers and clients MUST implement this mechanism and the
   TURN server MUST demand that all requests from the client be
   authenticated using this mechanism, or that a equally strong or
   stronger mechanism for client authentication be used.

   In the above scenarios applications would use Interactive
   Connectivity Establishment (ICE) protocol [RFC5245] for gathering
   candidates.  ICE agent can use TURN to learn server reflexive and
   relayed candidates.  If the TURN server requires the TURN request to
   be authenticated then ICE agent will use the long-term credential
   mechanism explained in section 10 of [RFC5389] for authentication and
   message integrity.  TURN specification [RFC5766] in section 10
   explains the importance of long-term credential mechanism to mitigate
   various attacks, client authentication is essential to prevent un-
   authorized users from accessing the TURN server and misuse of
   credentials could impose significant cost on the victim TURN server.

   This note focuses on listing the problems with current STUN
   authentication for TURN so that it can serve as the basis for
   stronger authentication mechanisms.

   Compared to a Binding request the Allocate request is more likely to
   be identified by a server administrator as needing client
   authentication and integrity protection of messages exchanged.
   Hence, the issues discussed here in STUN authentication are
   applicable mainly in the context of TURN messages.

2.  Notational Conventions

   This note uses terminology defined in [RFC5389], [RFC5766].

3.  Scope

   This document can be used as an input to design solution(s) to
   address the problems with the current STUN authentication for TURN
   messages.

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4.  Problems with STUN long-term Authentication for TURN

   1.  The long-term credential mechanism in [RFC5389] could use
       traditional "log-in" username and password given to users which
       does not change for extended periods of time and uses the key
       derived from user credentials to generate message integrity for
       every TURN request/response.  An attacker that is capable of
       eavesdropping on a message exchange between a client and server
       can determine the password by trying a number of candidate
       passwords and checking if one of them is correct by calculating
       the message-integrity of the message using these candidate
       passwords and comparing with the message integrity value in the
       MESSAGE-INTEGRITY attribute.

   2.  When TURN server is deployed in the DMZ and requires requests to
       be authenticated using the long-term credential mechanism in
       [RFC5389], TURN server needs to be aware of the username and
       password to validate the message integrity of the requests and to
       provide message integrity for responses.  This results in
       management overhead on the TURN server.  Long-term credentials
       (username, realm, and password) need to be stored on the server-
       side using MD5 hash over the the credentials.  It is not possible
       to use STUN long-term credentials in US FIPS 140-2 [FIPS-140-2]
       compliant implementations, since MD5 isn't an approved algorithm.

   3.  The long-term credential mechanism in [RFC5389] requires that the
       TURN client must include username value in the USERNAME STUN
       attribute.  An adversary snooping the TURN messages between the
       TURN client and server can identify the users involved in the
       call resulting in privacy leakage.  If TURN usernames are linked
       to real usernames then it will result in privacy leakage, but in
       certain scenarios TURN usernames need not be linked to any real
       usernames given to users as they are just provisioned on a per
       company basis.

   4.  STUN authentication relies on HMAC-SHA1 [RFC2104].  There is no
       mechanism for hash agility in the protocol itself, although
       Section 16.3 of [RFC5389] does discuss a plan for migrating to a
       more secure algorithm in case HMAC-SHA1 is found to be
       compromised.

   5.  A man-in-the middle attacker posing as a TURN server challenges
       the client to authenticate, learns the USERNAME of the client and
       later snoops the traffic from the client identifying the user
       activity resulting in privacy leakage.

   6.  Hosting multiple realms on a single IP address is challenging
       with TURN.  When a TURN server needs to send the REALM attribute

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       in response to an unauthenticated request, it has no useful
       information for determining which realm it should send, except
       the source transport address of the TURN request.  Note this is a
       problem with multi-tenant scenarios only.  This may not be a
       problem when TURN server is located in enterprise premises.

   7.  In WebRTC the Javascript code needs to know the username and
       password to use in W3C RTCPeerConnection API to access the TURN
       server.  This exposes the user credentials to the Javascript
       which could be malicious.  The malicious java script could misuse
       or leak the credentials.  If the credentials happen to be used
       for accessing services other than TURN then the security
       implications are much larger.

5.  Security Considerations

   This document lists problems with current STUN authentication for
   TURN so that it can serve as the basis for stronger authentication
   mechanisms.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not require any action from IANA.

7.  Acknowledgments

   Authors would like to thank Dan Wing, Harald Alvestrand, Sandeep Rao,
   Prashanth Patil, Pal Martinsen, Marc Petit-Huguenin, Gonzalo
   Camarillo and Simon Perreault for their comments and review.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC5389]  Rosenberg, J., Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and D. Wing,
              "Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5389,
              October 2008.

   [RFC5766]  Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and J. Rosenberg, "Traversal Using
              Relays around NAT (TURN): Relay Extensions to Session
              Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5766, April 2010.

   [RFC6156]  Camarillo, G., Novo, O., and S. Perreault, "Traversal
              Using Relays around NAT (TURN) Extension for IPv6", RFC
              6156, April 2011.

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8.2.  Informative References

   [FIPS-140-2]
              NIST, , "NIST, "Security Requirements for Cryptographic
              Modules"", June 2005,
              <http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips140-2/
              fips1402.pdf>.

   [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview]
              Alvestrand, H., "Overview: Real Time Protocols for
              Browser-based Applications", draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview-10
              (work in progress), June 2014.

   [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-use-cases-and-requirements]
              Holmberg, C., Hakansson, S., and G. Eriksson, "Web Real-
              Time Communication Use-cases and Requirements", draft-
              ietf-rtcweb-use-cases-and-requirements-14 (work in
              progress), February 2014.

   [I-D.wing-tram-turn-mobility]
              Wing, D., Patil, P., Reddy, T., and P. Martinsen,
              "Mobility with TURN", draft-wing-tram-turn-mobility-00
              (work in progress), June 2014.

   [RFC2104]  Krawczyk, H., Bellare, M., and R. Canetti, "HMAC: Keyed-
              Hashing for Message Authentication", RFC 2104, February
              1997.

   [RFC5128]  Srisuresh, P., Ford, B., and D. Kegel, "State of Peer-to-
              Peer (P2P) Communication across Network Address
              Translators (NATs)", RFC 5128, March 2008.

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

Authors' Addresses

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

   Email: tireddy@cisco.com

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   Ram Mohan Ravindranath
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   Cessna Business Park, Varthur Hobli
   Sarjapur Marathalli Outer Ring Road
   Bangalore, Karnataka  560103
   India

   Email: rmohanr@cisco.com

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

   Email: mperumal@cisco.com

   Alper Yegin
   Samsung
   Istanbul
   Turkey

   Email: alper.yegin@yegin.org

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