Network Working Group S. Bellovin
Internet-Draft Columbia University
Intended status: Standards Track R. Bush
Expires: October 14, 2013 Internet Initiative Japan
D. Ward
Cisco Systems
April 12, 2013
Security Requirements for BGP Path Validation
draft-ietf-sidr-bgpsec-reqs-07
Abstract
This document describes requirements for a BGP security protocol
design to provide cryptographic assurance that the origin AS had the
right to announce the prefix and to provide assurance of the AS Path
of the announcement.
Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to
be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119] only when they
appear in all upper case. They may also appear in lower or mixed
case as English words, without normative meaning.
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 October 14, 2013.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Recommended Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. General Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. BGP UPDATE Security Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
RPKI-based Origin Validation, [RFC6811], provides a measure of
resilience to accidental mis-origination of prefixes. But it
provides neither cryptographic assurance (announcements are not
signed), nor assurance of the AS Path of the announcement.
This document describes requirements to be placed on a BGP security
protocol, herein termed BGPsec, intended to rectify these gaps.
The threat model assumed here is documented in [RFC4593] and
[I-D.ietf-sidr-bgpsec-threats].
As noted in the threat model, [I-D.ietf-sidr-bgpsec-threats], this
work is limited to threats to the BGP protocol. Issues of business
relationship conformance, of which routing 'leaks' are a subset,
while quite important to operators (as are many other things), are
not security issues per se, and are outside the scope of this
document. It is hoped that these issues will be better understood in
the future.
2. Recommended Reading
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This document assumes knowledge of the RPKI see [RFC6480], the RPKI
Repository Structure, see [RFC6481].
This document assumes ongoing incremental deployment of ROAs, see
[RFC6482], the RPKI to Router Protocol, see [RFC6810], and RPKI-based
Prefix Validation, see [RFC6811].
And, of course, a knowledge of BGP [RFC4271] is required.
3. General Requirements
The following are general requirements for a BGPsec protocol:
3.1 A BGPsec design must allow the receiver of a BGP announcement
to determine, to a strong level of certainty, that the originating
AS in the received PATH attribute posessed the authority to
announce the prefix in the announcement.
3.2 A BGPsec design must allow the receiver of a BGP announcement
to determine, to a strong level of certainty, that the received
PATH attribute accurately represents the sequence of eBGP
exchanges that propagated the prefix from the origin AS to the
receiver, particularly if an AS has added or deleted any AS number
other than its own in the path attribute. This includes
modification to the number of AS prepends.
3.3 A BGPsec design MUST be amenable to incremental deployment.
This implies that incompatible protocol capabilities MUST be
negotiated.
3.4 A BGPsec design MUST provide analysis of the operational
considerations for deployment and particularly of incremental
deployment, e.g, contiguous islands, non-contiguous islands,
universal deployment, etc.
3.5 As proofs of possession and authentication may require
cryptographic payloads and/or storage and computation, likely
increasing processing and memory requirements on routers, a BGPsec
design MAY require use of new hardware. I.e. compatibility with
current hardware abilities is not a requirement that this document
imposes on a solution.
3.6 A BGPsec design need not prevent attacks on data plane traffic.
It need not provide assurance that the data plane even follows the
control plane.
3.7 A BGPsec design MUST resist attacks by an enemy who has access
to the inter-router link layer, per Section 3.1.1.2 of [RFC4593].
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In particular, such a design must provide mechanisms for
authentication of all data, including protecting against message
insertion, deletion, modification, or replay. Mechanisms that
suffice include TCP sessions authenticated with TCP-AO [RFC5925],
IPsec [RFC4301], or TLS [RFC5246].
3.8 It is assumed that a BGPsec design will require information
about holdings of address space and ASNs, and assertions about
binding of address space to ASNs. A BGPsec design MAY make use of
a security infrastructure (e.g., a PKI) to distribute such
authenticated data.
3.9 It is entirely OPTIONAL to secure AS SETs and prefix
aggregation. The long range solution to this is the deprecation
of AS-SETs, see [RFC6472].
3.10 If a BGPsec design uses signed prefixes, given the difficulty
of splitting a signed message while preserving the signature, it
need NOT handle multiple prefixes in a single UPDATE PDU.
3.11 A BGPsec design MUST enable each BGPsec speaker to configure
use of the security mechanism on a per-peer basis.
3.12 A BGPsec design MUST provide backward compatibility in the
message formatting, transmission, and processing of routing
information carried through a mixed security environment. Message
formatting in a fully secured environment MAY be handled in a non-
backward compatible manner.
3.13 While the trust level of a route should be determined by the
BGPsec protocol, local routing preference and policy MUST then be
applied to best path and other routing decisions. Such mechanisms
SHOULD conform with [I-D.ietf-sidr-ltamgmt].
3.14 A BGPsec design MUST support 'transparent' route servers,
meaning that the AS of the route server is not counted in
downstream BGP AS-path-length tie-breaking decisions.
3.15 A BGPsec design MUST support AS aliasing. This technique is
not well-defined or universally implemented, but is being
documented in [I-D.ga-idr-as-migration]. A BGPsec design SHOULD
accommodate AS 'migration' techniques such as common proprietary
and non-standard methods which allow a router to have two AS
identities, without lengthening the effective AS Path.
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3.16 If a BGPsec design makes use of a security infrastructure, that
infrastructure SHOULD enable each network operator to select the
entities it will trust when authenticating data in the security
infrastructure. See, for example, [I-D.ietf-sidr-ltamgmt].
3.17 A BGPsec design MUST NOT require operators to reveal more than
is currently revealed in the operational inter-domain routing
environment, other than the inclusion of necessary security
credentials to allow others to ascertain for themselves the
necessary degree of assurance regarding the validity of NLRI
received via BGPsec. This includes peering, customer, and
provider relationships, an ISP's internal infrastructure, etc. It
is understood that some data are revealed to the savvy seeker by
BGP, traceroute, etc. today.
3.18 A BGPsec design MUST signal (logging, SNMP, ...) security
exceptions which are significant to the operator. The specific
data to be signaled are an implementation matter.
3.19 Any routing information database MUST be re-authenticated
periodically or in an event-driven manner, especially in response
to events such as, for example, PKI updates.
3.20 Any inter-AS use of cryptographic hashes or signatures, MUST
provide mechanisms for algorithm agility.
3.21 A BGPsec design SHOULD NOT presume to know the intent of the
originator of a NLRI, nor that of any AS on the AS Path, other
than that they intended to pass it to the next AS in the Path.
3.22 A BGPsec listener SHOULD NOT trust non-BGPsec markings, such as
communities, across trust boundaries.
4. BGP UPDATE Security Requirements
The following requirements MUST be met in the processing of BGP
UPDATE messages:
4.1 A BGPsec design MUST enable each recipient of an UPDATE to
formally validate that the origin AS in the message is authorized
to originate a route to the prefix(es) in the message.
4.2 A BGPsec design MUST enable the recipient of an UPDATE to
formally determine that the NLRI has traversed the AS path
indicated in the UPDATE. Note that this is more stringent than
showing that the path is merely not impossible.
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4.3 Replay of BGP UPDATE messages need not be completely prevented,
but a BGPsec design SHOULD provide a mechanism to control the
window of exposure to replay attacks.
4.4 A BGPsec design SHOULD provide some level of assurance that the
origin of a prefix is still 'alive', i.e. that a monkey in the
middle has not withheld a WITHDRAW message or the effects thereof.
4.5 The AS Path of an UPDATE message SHOULD be able to be
authenticated as the message is processed.
4.6 Normal sanity checks of received announcements MUST be done,
e.g. verification that the first element of the AS_PATH list
corresponds to the locally configured AS of the peer from which
the UPDATE was received.
4.7 The output of a router applying BGPsec validation to a received
UPDATE MUST be unequivocal and conform to a fully specified state
in the design.
5. IANA Considerations
This document asks nothing of the IANA.
6. Security Considerations
The data plane might not follow the control plane.
Security for subscriber traffic is outside the scope of this
document, and of BGP security in general. IETF standards for payload
data security should be employed. While adoption of BGP security
measures may ameliorate some classes of attacks on traffic, these
measures are not a substitute for use of subscriber-based security.
7. Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the authors of [I-D.ietf-rpsec-bgpsecrec]
from whom we liberally stole, Russ Housley, Geoff Huston, Steve Kent,
Sandy Murphy, Eric Osterweil, John Scudder, Kotikalapudi Sriram, Sam
Weiler, and a number of others.
8. References
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8.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-sidr-bgpsec-threats]
Kent, S. and A. Chi, "Threat Model for BGP Path Security",
draft-ietf-sidr-bgpsec-threats-05 (work in progress),
March 2013.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4593] Barbir, A., Murphy, S., and Y. Yang, "Generic Threats to
Routing Protocols", RFC 4593, October 2006.
[RFC5925] Touch, J., Mankin, A., and R. Bonica, "The TCP
Authentication Option", RFC 5925, June 2010.
8.2. Informative References
[I-D.ga-idr-as-migration]
George, W. and S. Amante, "Autonomous System (AS)
Migration Features and Their Effects on the BGP AS_PATH
Attribute", draft-ga-idr-as-migration-01 (work in
progress), February 2013.
[I-D.ietf-idr-bgp-extended-messages]
Patel, K., Ward, D., and R. Bush, "Extended Message
support for BGP", draft-ietf-idr-bgp-extended-messages-05
(work in progress), December 2012.
[I-D.ietf-rpsec-bgpsecrec]
Christian, B. and T. Tauber, "BGP Security Requirements",
draft-ietf-rpsec-bgpsecrec-10 (work in progress), November
2008.
[I-D.ietf-sidr-ltamgmt]
Reynolds, M., Kent, S., and M. Lepinski, "Local Trust
Anchor Management for the Resource Public Key
Infrastructure", draft-ietf-sidr-ltamgmt-08 (work in
progress), April 2013.
[RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.
[RFC4301] Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the
Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005.
[RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.
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[RFC6472] Kumari, W. and K. Sriram, "Recommendation for Not Using
AS_SET and AS_CONFED_SET in BGP", BCP 172, RFC 6472,
December 2011.
[RFC6480] Lepinski, M. and S. Kent, "An Infrastructure to Support
Secure Internet Routing", RFC 6480, February 2012.
[RFC6481] Huston, G., Loomans, R., and G. Michaelson, "A Profile for
Resource Certificate Repository Structure", RFC 6481,
February 2012.
[RFC6482] Lepinski, M., Kent, S., and D. Kong, "A Profile for Route
Origin Authorizations (ROAs)", RFC 6482, February 2012.
[RFC6810] Bush, R. and R. Austein, "The Resource Public Key
Infrastructure (RPKI) to Router Protocol", RFC 6810,
January 2013.
[RFC6811] Mohapatra, P., Scudder, J., Ward, D., Bush, R., and R.
Austein, "BGP Prefix Origin Validation", RFC 6811, January
2013.
Authors' Addresses
Steven M. Bellovin
Columbia University
1214 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 0401
New York, New York 10027
US
Phone: +1 212 939 7149
Email: bellovin@acm.org
Randy Bush
Internet Initiative Japan
5147 Crystal Springs
Bainbridge Island, Washington 98110
US
Email: randy@psg.com
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David Ward
Cisco Systems
170 W. Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
USA
Email: dward@cisco.com
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