Network Working Group                                        J. Peterson
Internet-Draft                                                   NeuStar
Intended status: Standards Track                               S. Turner
Expires: August 18, 2014                                            IECA
                                                       February 14, 2014


          Secure Telephone Identity Credentials: Certificates
                draft-peterson-stir-certificates-00.txt

Abstract

   In order to provide a means of proving ownership of telephone numbers
   on the Internet, some kind of public structure needs to exist that
   binds cryptographic keys to authority over telephone numbers.  This
   document describes a certificate-based credential system for
   telephone numbers, which could be used as a part of a broader
   architecture for managing telephone numbers as identities in
   protocols like SIP.

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 August 18, 2014.

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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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must



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   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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Enrollment and Authorization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Certificate Scope and Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Provisioning Private Keying Material  . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Acquiring Credentials to Verify Signatures  . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Verifying Certificate Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.2.  Certificate Freshness and Revocation  . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   As is discussed in the STIR problem statement [13], the primary
   enabler of robocalling, vishing, swatting and related attacks is the
   capability to impersonate a calling party number.  The starkest
   examples of these attacks are cases where automated callees on the
   PSTN rely on the calling number as a security measure, for example to
   access a voicemail system.  Robocallers use impersonation as a means
   of obscuring identity; while robocallers can, in the ordinary PSTN,
   block (that is, withhold) their caller identity, callees are less
   likely to pick up calls from blocked identities, and therefore
   appearing to calling from some number, any number, is preferable.
   Robocallers however prefer not to call from a number that can trace
   back to the robocaller, and therefore they impersonate numbers that
   are not assigned to them.

   One of the most important components of a system to prevent
   impersonation is an authority responsible for issuing credentials to
   parties who control telephone numbers.  With these credentials,
   parties can prove that they are in fact authorized to use telephony
   numbers, and thus distinguish themselves from impersonators unable to
   present credentials.  This document describes a credential system for
   telephone numbers based on X.509 version 3 certificates in accordance
   with [7].  While telephone numbers have long been a part of the X.509
   standard, the certificates described in this document may contain
   telephone number blocks or ranges, and accordingly it uses an
   alternate syntax.




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   In the STIR in-band architecture, two basic types of entities need
   access to these credentials: authentication services, and
   verification services (or verifiers); see [15].  An authentication
   service must be operated by an entity enrolled with the certificate
   authority (see Section 3), whereas a verifier need only trust the
   root certificate of the authority, and have a means to acquire and
   validate certificates.

   The STIR out-of-band architecture is not considered in this document.
   [TBD]

2.  Terminology

   In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT
   RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as
   described in RFC 2119 [1] and RFC 6919 [2].

3.  Enrollment and Authorization

   This document assumes a threefold model for certificate enrollment.

   The first enrollment model is one where the certificate authority
   acts in concert with national numbering authorities to issue
   credentials to those parties to whom numbers are assigned.  In the
   United States, for example, telephone number blocks are assigned to
   Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) by the North American Numbering Plan
   Administrator (NANPA), who is in turn directed by the national
   regulator.  LECs may also receive numbers in smaller allocations,
   through number pooling, or via an individual assignment through
   number portability.  LECs assign numbers to customers, who may be
   private individuals or organizations - and organizations take
   responsibility for assigning numbers within their own enterprise.

   The second enrollment model is one where a certificate authority
   requires that an entity prove control by means of some sort of test.
   For example, an authority might send a text message to a telephone
   number containing a URL (which might be deferenced by the recipient)
   as a means of verifying that a user has control of terminal
   corresponding to that number.  Checks of this form are frequently
   used in commercial systems today to validate telephone numbers
   provided by users.  This is comparable to existing enrollment systems
   used by some certificate authorities for issuing S/MIME credentials
   for email by verifying that the party applying for a credential
   receives mail at the email address in question.

   The third enrollment model is delegation: that is, the holder of a
   certificate (assigned by either of the two methods above) may



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   delegate some or all of their authority to another party.  In some
   cases, multiple levels of delegation could occur: a LEC, for example,
   might delegate authority to customer organization for a block of 100
   numbers, and the organization might in turn delegate authority for a
   particular number to an individual employee.  This is analogous to
   delegation of organizational identities in traditional hierarchical
   PKIs who use the name constraints extension [3]; the root CA
   delegates names in sales to the sales department CA, names in
   development to the development CA, etc.  As lengthy certificate
   delegation chains are brittle, however, and can cause delays in the
   verification process, this document considers optimizations to reduce
   the complexity of verification.

   [TBD] Future versions of this specification will also discuss methods
   of partial delegation, where certificate holders delegate only part
   of their authority.  For example, an individual assignee may want to
   delegate authority to an entity for text messages associated with
   their telephone number, but not for other functions.

3.1.  Certificate Scope and Structure

   The subjects of telephone number certificates are the administrative
   entities to whom numbers are assigned or delegated.  For example, a
   LEC might hold a certificate for a range of telephone numbers.

   This specification places no limits on the number of telephone
   numbers that can be associated with any given certificate.  Some
   service providers may be assigned millions of numbers, and may wish
   to have a single certificate that is capable of signing for any one
   of those numbers.  Others may wish to compartmentalize authority over
   subsets of the numbers they control.

   Moreover, service providers may wish to have multiple certificates
   with the same scope of authority.  For example, a service provider
   with several regional gateway systems may want each system to be
   capable of signing for each of their numbers, but not want to have
   each system share the same private key.

   The set of telephone numbers for which a particular certificate is
   valid is expressed in the certificate through a certificate
   extension; the certificate's extensibility mechanism is defined in
   RFC 5280 but the telephone number authorization extension is defined
   in this document.








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3.2.  Provisioning Private Keying Material

   In order for authentication services to sign calls via the procedures
   described in [15], they must possess a private key corresponding to a
   certificate with authority over the calling number.  This
   specification does not require that any particular entity sign
   requests, only that it be an entity with an appropriate private key;
   the authentication service role may be instantiated by any entity in
   a SIP network.  For a certificate granting authority only over a
   particular number which has been issued to an end user, for example,
   an end user device might hold the private key and generate the
   signature.  In the case of a service provider with authority over
   large blocks of numbers, an intermediary might old the private key
   and sign calls.

   The specification recommends distribution of private keys through
   PKCS#8 objects signed by a trusted entity, for example through the
   CMS package specified in [8].

4.  Acquiring Credentials to Verify Signatures

   This specification documents multiple ways that a verifier can gain
   access to the credentials needed to verify a request.  As the
   validity of certificates does not depend on the circumstances of
   their acquistion, there is no need to standardize any single
   mechanism for this purpose.  All entities that comply with [15]
   necessarily support SIP, and consequently SIP itself can serve as a
   way to acquire certificates.  This specific does allow delivery
   through alternate means as well.

   The simplest way for a verifier to acquire the certificate needed to
   verify a signature is for the certificate be conveyed along with the
   signature itself.  In SIP, for example, a certificate could be
   carried in a multipart MIME body [9], and the URI in the Identity-
   Info header could specify that body with a CID URI [10].  However, in
   many environments this is not feasible due to message size
   restrictions or lack of necessary support for multipart MIME.

   Alternatively, the Identity-Info header of a SIP request may contain
   a URI that the verifier dereferences with a network call.
   Implementations of this specification are required to support the use
   of SIP for this function (via the SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY mechanism), as
   well as HTTP, via the Enrollment over Secure Transport mechanisms
   described in RFC 7030 [11].

   A verifier can however have access to a service that grants access to
   certificates for a particular telephone number.  Note however that
   there may be multiple valid certificates that can sign a call setup



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   request for a telephone number, and that as a consequence, there
   needs to be some discriminator that the signer uses to identify their
   credentials.  The Identity-Info header itself can serve just such a
   discriminator.

4.1.  Verifying Certificate Scope

   The subjects of these certificates are the administrative entities to
   whom numbers are assigned or delegated.  When a verifier is
   validating a caller's identity, local policy always determines the
   circumstances under which any particular subject may be trusted, but
   for the purpose of validating a caller's identity, this certificate
   extension establishes whether or not a signer is authorized to sign
   for a particular number.

   The TN Authorization List certificate extension is identified by the
   following object identifier:

          id-ce-TNAuthList OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { TBD }

   The TN Authorization List certificate extension has the following
   syntax:





























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      TNAuthorizationList ::= SEQUENCE SIZE (1..MAX) OF TNAuthorization

      TNAuthorization ::= SEQUENCE SIZE (1..MAX) OF TNEntry


      TNEntry ::= CHOICE {

         spid  ServiceProviderIdentifierList,

         range TelephoneNumberRange,

         one   E164Number }


      ServiceProviderIdentifierList ::= SEQUENCE SIZE (1..3) OF

                   OCTET STRING

        -- When all three are present: SPID, Alt SPID, and Last Alt SPID


      TelephoneNumberRange ::= SEQUENCE {

         start E164Number,

         count INTEGER }



      E164Number ::= IA5String (SIZE (1..15)) (FROM ("0123456789"))


   [TBD- do we really need to do IA5String?  The alternative would be
   UTF8String, e.g.: UTF8String (SIZE (1..15)) (FROM ("0123456789")) ]

   The TN Authorization List certificate extension indicates the
   authorized phone numbers for the call setup signer.  It indicates one
   or more blocks of telephone number entries that have been authorized
   for use by the call setup signer.  There are three ways to identify
   the block: 1) a Service Provider Identifier (SPID) can be used to
   indirectly name all of the telephone numbers associated with that
   service provider, 2) telephone numbers can be listed in a range, and
   3) a single telephone number can be listed.

   Note that because large-scale service providers may want to associate
   many numbers, possibly millions of numbers, with a particular
   certificate, optimizations are required for those cases to prevent
   certificate size from becoming unmanageable.  In these cases, the TN



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   Authorization List may be given by reference rather than by value,
   through the presence of a separate certificate extension that permits
   verifiers to either securely download the list of numbers associated
   with a certificate, or to verify that a single number is under the
   authority of this certificate.  This optimization will be detailed in
   future version of this specification.

4.2.  Certificate Freshness and Revocation

   The problem of certificate freshness gains a new wrinkle in the
   telephone number context, because verifiers must establish not only
   that a certificate remains valid, but also that the certificate's
   scope contains the telephone number that the verifier is validating.
   Dynamic changes to number assignments can occur due to number
   portability, for example.  So even if a verifier has a valid cached
   certificate for a telephone number (or a range containing the
   number), the verifier must determine that the entity that the signer
   is still a proper authority for that number.

   This document therefore recommends the use of OCSP in high-volume
   environments for validating the freshness of certificates, per [12].
   [TBD - depending on our algorithm choices this profile may need to be
   further profiled.]

5.  Acknowledgments

   Russ Housley, Brian Rosen, Cullen Jennings and Eric Rescorla provided
   key input to the discussions leading to this document.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.

7.  Security Considerations

   This document is entirely about security.  For further information on
   certificate security and practices, see RFC 3280 [5], in particular
   its Security Considerations.

8.  Informative References

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

   [2]        Barnes, R., Kent, S., and E. Rescorla, "Further Key Words
              for Use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 6919,
              April 1 2013.




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   [3]        Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
              A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
              Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
              June 2002.

   [4]        Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "Session Initiation
              Protocol (SIP): Locating SIP Servers", RFC 3263, June
              2002.

   [5]        Housley, R., Polk, W., Ford, W., and D. Solo, "Internet
              X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and
              Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 3280,
              April 2002.

   [6]        Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000.

   [7]        Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
              Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
              Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
              (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008.

   [8]        Turner, S., "Asymmetric Key Packages", RFC 5958, August
              2010.

   [9]        Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
              Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
              November 1996.

   [10]       Levinson, E., "Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource
              Locators", RFC 2392, August 1998.

   [11]       Pritikin, M., Yee, P., and D. Harkins, "Enrollment over
              Secure Transport", RFC 7030, October 2013.

   [12]       Deacon, A. and R. Hurst, "The Lightweight Online
              Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) Profile for High-Volume
              Environments", RFC 5019, September 2007.

   [13]       Peterson, J., Schulzrinne, H., and H. Tschofenig, "Secure
              Telephone Identity Problem Statement", draft-ietf-stir-
              problem-statement-03 (work in progress), January 2014.

   [14]       Peterson, J., "Retargeting and Security in SIP: A
              Framework and Requirements", draft-peterson-sipping-
              retarget-00 (work in progress), February 2005.






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   [15]       Peterson, J., Jennings, C., and E. Rescorla,
              "Authenticated Identity Management in the Session
              Initiation Protocol (SIP)", draft-jennings-stir-
              rfc4474bis-00 (work in progress), October 2013.

Authors' Addresses

   Jon Peterson
   Neustar, Inc.
   1800 Sutter St Suite 570
   Concord, CA  94520
   US

   Email: jon.peterson@neustar.biz


   Sean Turner
   IECA, Inc.
   3057 Nutley Street, Suite 106
   Farifax, VA  22031
   US

   Email: turners@ieca.com




























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