IPv6 Operations                                                  M. Gysi
Internet-Draft                                                  Swisscom
Intended status: Informational                              G. Leclanche
Expires: June 8, 2014                                           Viagenie
                                                          E. Vyncke, Ed.
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                             R. Anfinsen
                                                                 Altibox
                                                       December 05, 2013


               Balanced Security for IPv6 Residential CPE
               draft-ietf-v6ops-balanced-ipv6-security-01

Abstract

   This document describes how an IPv6 residential Customer Premise
   Equipment (CPE) can have a balanced security policy that allows for a
   mostly end-to-end connectivity while keeping the major threats
   outside of the home.  It is documenting an existing IPv6 deployment
   by Swisscom and allows all packets inbound/outbound EXCEPT for some
   layer-4 ports where attacks and vulnerabilities (such as weak
   passwords) are well-known.  The policy is a proposed set of rules
   that can be used as a default setting.  The set of blocked inbound
   and outbound ports is expected to be updated as threats come and go.

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
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on June 8, 2014.









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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
   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.  Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Rules for Balanced Security Policy  . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Rules Example for Layer-4 Protection: Swisscom
           Implementation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   Internet access in residential IPv4 deployments generally consists of
   a single IPv4 address provided by the service provider for each home.
   The residential CPE then translates the single address into multiple
   private IPv4 addresses allowing more than one device in the home, but
   at the cost of losing end-to-end reachability.  IPv6 allows all
   devices to have a globally unique IP address, restoring end-to-end
   reachability directly between any device.  Such reachability is very
   powerful for ubiquitous global connectivity, and is often heralded as
   one of the significant advantages to IPv6 over IPv4.  Despite this,
   concern about exposure to inbound packets from the IPv6 Internet
   (which would otherwise be dropped by the address translation function
   if they had been sent from the IPv4 Internet) remain.

   This difference in residential default internet protection between
   IPv4 and IPv6 is a major concern to a sizable number of ISPs and the
   security policy described in this document addresses this concern
   without damaging IPv6 end-to-end connectivity.



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   The security model provided in this document is meant to be used as a
   pre-registered setting and potentially default one for IPv6 security
   in CPEs.  The model departs from the "simple security" model
   described in [RFC6092] . It allows most traffic, including incoming
   unsolicited packets and connections, to traverse the CPE unless the
   CPE identifies the traffic as potentially harmful based on a set of
   rules.  This policy has been deployed as a default setting in
   Switzerland by Swisscom for residential CPEs.

   This document can be applicable to off-the-shelves CPE as well as to
   managed Service Provider CPE or for mobile Service Providers (where
   it can be centrally implemented).

2.  Threats

   For a typical residential network connected to the Internet over a
   broadband or mobile connection, the threats can be classified into:

   o  denial of service by packet flooding: overwhelming either the
      access bandwidth or the bandwidth of a slower link in the
      residential network (like a slow home automation network) or the
      CPU power of a slow IPv6 host (like networked thermostat or any
      other sensor type nodes);

   o  denial of service by Neighbor Discovery cache exhaustion
      [RFC6583]: the outside attacker floods the inside prefix(es) with
      packets with a random destination address forcing the CPE to
      exhaust its memory and its CPU in useless Neighbor Solicitations;

   o  denial of service by service requests: like sending print jobs
      from the Internet to an ink jet printer until the ink cartridge is
      empty or like filing some file server with junk data;

   o  unauthorized use of services: like accessing a webcam or a file
      server which are open to anonymous access within the residential
      network but should not be accessed from outside of the home
      network or accessing to remote desktop or SSH with weak password
      protection;

   o  exploiting a vulnerability in the host in order to get access to
      data or to execute some arbitrary code in the attacked host;

   o  trojanized host (belonging to a Botnet) can communicate via a
      covert channel to its master and launch attacks to Internet
      targets.

3.  Overview




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   The basic goal is to provide a pre-defined security policy which aims
   to block known harmful traffic and allow the rest, restoring as much
   of end-to-end communication as possible.  This pre-defined policy
   should be centrally updated, as threats are changing over time.  It
   could also be a member of a list of pre-defined security policies
   available to an end-customer, for example together with "simple
   security" from [RFC6092] and a "strict security" policy denying
   access to all unexpected input packets.

3.1.  Rules for Balanced Security Policy

   These are an example set of generic rules to be applied.  Each would
   normally be configurable, either by the user directly or on behalf of
   the user by a subscription service.  This document does not address
   the statefulness of the filtering rules as its main objective is to
   present an approach where some protocols (identified by layer-4
   ports) are assumed weak or malevolent and therefore are blocked while
   all other protocols are assumed benevolent and are permitted.

   If we name all nodes on the residential side of the CPE as 'inside'
   and all nodes on the Internet as 'outside', and any packet sent from
   outside to inside as being 'inbound' and 'outbound' in the other
   direction, then the behavior of the CPE is described by a small set
   or rules:

   1.  Rule RejectBogon: apply ingress filtering in both directions per
       [RFC3704] and [RFC2827] for example with unicast reverse path
       forwarding (uRPF) checks (anti-spoofing) for all inbound and
       outbound traffic (implicitly blocking link-local and ULA in the
       same shot), as described in Section 2.1 Basic Sanitation and
       Section 3.1 Stateless Filters of [RFC6092];

   2.  Rule AllowManagement: if the CPE is managed by the SP, then allow
       the management protocols (SSH, SNMP, syslog, TR-069, IPfix, ...)
       from/to the SP Network Operation Center;

   3.  Rule ProtectWeakServices: drop all inbound and outbound packets
       whose layer-4 destination is part of a limited set (see
       Section 3.2), the intent is to protect against the most common
       unauthorized access and avoid propagation of worms; an advanced
       residential user should be able to modify this pre-defined list;










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   4.  Rule Openess: allow all unsolicited inbound packets with rate
       limiting the initial packet of a new connection (such as TCP SYN,
       SCTP INIT or DCCP-request, not applicable to UDP) to provide very
       basic protection against SYN port and address scanning attacks.
       All transport protocols and all non-deprecated extension headers
       are accepted.  This is a the major deviation from REC-11, REC-17
       and REC-33 of [RFC6092].

   5.  All requirements of [RFC6092] except REC-11, REC-18 and REC-33
       must be supported.

3.2.  Rules Example for Layer-4 Protection: Swisscom Implementation

   As of 2013, Swisscom has implemented the rule ProtectWeakService as
   described below.  This is meant as an example and must not be
   followed blindly: each implementer has specific needs and
   requirements.  Furthermore, the example below will not be updated as
   time passes, whereas threats will evolve.

         +-----------+------+-----------------------------------+
         | Transport | Port |            Description            |
         +-----------+------+-----------------------------------+
         |    tcp    |  22  |         Secure Shell (SSH)        |
         |    tcp    |  23  |               Telnet              |
         |    tcp    |  80  |                HTTP               |
         |    tcp    | 3389 | Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol |
         |    tcp    | 5900 |    VNC remote desktop protocol    |
         +-----------+------+-----------------------------------+

                           Table 1: Drop Inbound

         +-----------+------+-----------------------------------+
         | Transport | Port |            Description            |
         +-----------+------+-----------------------------------+
         |  tcp-udp  |  88  |              Kerberos             |
         |    tcp    | 111  |     SUN Remote Procedure Call     |
         |    tcp    | 135  |      MS Remote Procedure Call     |
         |    tcp    | 139  |      NetBIOS Session Service      |
         |    tcp    | 445  |    Microsoft SMB Domain Server    |
         |    tcp    | 513  |            Remote Login           |
         |    tcp    | 514  |            Remote Shell           |
         |    tcp    | 548  |   Apple Filing Protocol over TCP  |
         |    tcp    | 631  |     Internet Printing Protocol    |
         |    udp    | 1900 | Simple Service Discovery Protocol |
         |    tcp    | 2869 | Simple Service Discovery Protocol |
         |    udp    | 3702 |   Web Services Dynamic Discovery  |
         |    udp    | 5353 |           Multicast DNS           |
         |    udp    | 5355 |   Link-Lcl Mcast Name Resolution  |



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         +-----------+------+-----------------------------------+

                    Table 2: Drop Inbound and Outbound

   Choosing services to protect is not an easy task, and as of 2013
   there is no public service proposing a list of ports to use in such a
   policy.  The Swisscom approach was to think in terms of services, by
   defining a list of services that are LAN-Only (ex: Multicast DNS)
   whose communication is denied by the policy both inbound and
   outbound, and a list of services that are known to be weak or
   vulnerable like management protocols that could be activated
   unbeknownst to the user.

   The process used to set-up and later update the filters is out of
   scope of this document.  The update of the specific rules could be
   done together with a firmware upgrade or by a policy update (for
   example using Broadband Forum TR-069).

   Among other sources, [DSHIELD] was used by Swisscom to set-up their
   filters.  Another source of information could be the appendix A of
   [TR124].  The L4-filter as described does not block GRE tunnels
   ([RFC2473]) so this is a deviation from [RFC6092].

   Note: the authors believe that with a dozen of rules only, a naive
   and unaware residential subscriber would be reasonably protected.  Of
   course, technically-aware susbcribers should be able to open other
   applications (identified by their layer-4 ports or IP protocol
   numbers) through their CPE using some kind of user interface or even
   to select a completely different security policy such as the open or
   'closed' policies defined by [RFC6092].  This is the case in the
   Swisscom deployment.

   It is worth mentioning that PCP ([RFC6887]), UPnP ([IGD]) and similar
   protocols can also be used to dynamically override the default rules.

4.  IANA Considerations

   There are no extra IANA consideration for this document.

5.  Security Considerations

   The security policy protects from the following type of attacks:

   o  Unauthorized access because vulnerable ports are blocked

   Depending on the extensivity of the filters, certain vulnerabilities
   could be protected or not.  It does not preclude the need for end-
   devices to have proper host-protection as most of those devices



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   (smartphones, laptops, etc.) would anyway be exposed to completely
   unfiltered internet at some point of time.  The policy addresses the
   major concerns related to the loss of stateful filtering imposed by
   IPV4 NAPT when enabling public globally reachable IPv6 in the home.

   To the authors' knowledge, there has not been any incident related to
   this deployment in Swisscom network, and no customer complaints have
   been registered.

   This set of rules cannot help with the following attacks:

   o  Flooding of the CPE access link;

   o  Malware which is fetched by inside hosts on a hostile web site
      (which is in 2013 the majority of infection sources).

6.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank several people who initiated the
   discussion on the ipv6-ops@lists.cluenet.de mailing list and others
   who provided us valuable feedback and comments, notably: Tore
   Anderson, Rajiv Asati, Fred Baker, Lorenzo Colitti, Paul Hoffman,
   Merike Kaeo, Simon Leinen, Eduard Metz, Martin Millnert, Benedikt
   Stockebrand.  Thanks as well to the following SP that discussed with
   the authors about this technique: Altibox, Swisscom and Telenor.

7.  Informative References

   [DSHIELD]  DShield, "Port report: DShield", <https://
              secure.dshield.org/portreport.html?sort=records>.

   [IGD]      UPnP Forum, "WANIPConnection:2 Service", December 20110,
              <http://upnp.org/specs/gw/UPnP-gw-
              WANIPConnection-v2-Service.pdf>.

   [RFC2473]  Conta, A. and S. Deering, "Generic Packet Tunneling in
              IPv6 Specification", RFC 2473, December 1998.

   [RFC2827]  Ferguson, P. and D. Senie, "Network Ingress Filtering:
              Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source
              Address Spoofing", BCP 38, RFC 2827, May 2000.

   [RFC3704]  Baker, F. and P. Savola, "Ingress Filtering for Multihomed
              Networks", BCP 84, RFC 3704, March 2004.







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   [RFC6092]  Woodyatt, J., "Recommended Simple Security Capabilities in
              Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) for Providing
              Residential IPv6 Internet Service", RFC 6092, January
              2011.

   [RFC6583]  Gashinsky, I., Jaeggli, J., and W. Kumari, "Operational
              Neighbor Discovery Problems", RFC 6583, March 2012.

   [RFC6887]  Wing, D., Cheshire, S., Boucadair, M., Penno, R., and P.
              Selkirk, "Port Control Protocol (PCP)", RFC 6887, April
              2013.

   [TR124]    Broadband Forum, "Functional Requirements for Broadband
              Residential Gateway Devices", December 2006, <http://www
              .broadband-forum.org/technical/download/TR-124.pdf>.

Authors' Addresses

   Martin Gysi
   Swisscom
   Binzring 17
   Zuerich  8045
   Switzerland

   Phone: +41 58 223 57 24
   Email: Martin.Gysi@swisscom.com


   Guillaume Leclanche
   Viagenie
   246 Aberdeen
   Quebec, QC  G1R 2E1
   Canada

   Phone: +1 418 656 9254
   Email: guillaume.leclanche@viagenie.ca


   Eric Vyncke (editor)
   Cisco Systems
   De Kleetlaan 6a
   Diegem  1831
   Belgium

   Phone: +32 2 778 4677
   Email: evyncke@cisco.com





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   Ragnar Anfinsen
   Altibox
   Breiflaatveien 18
   Stavanger  4069
   Norway

   Phone: +47 93488235
   Email: Ragnar.Anfinsen@altibox.no











































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