Internet Engineering Task Force C. Tjhai
Internet-Draft M. Tomlinson
Intended status: Informational Post-Quantum
Expires: January 2, 2019 G. Bartlett
S. Fluhrer
Cisco Systems
D. Van Geest
ISARA Corporation
Z. Zhang
Onboard Security
O. Garcia-Morchon
Philips
July 1, 2018
Framework to Integrate Post-quantum Key Exchanges into Internet Key
Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)
draft-tjhai-ipsecme-hybrid-qske-ikev2-02
Abstract
This document describes how to extend Internet Key Exchange Protocol
Version 2 (IKEv2) so that the shared secret exchanged between peers
has resistance against quantum computer attacks. The basic idea is
to exchange one or more post-quantum key exchange payloads in
conjunction with the existing (Elliptic Curve) Diffie-Hellman
payload.
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
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 2, 2019.
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Copyright Notice
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Problem Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. Proposed Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4. Document organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Design criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. The Framework of Hybrid Post-quantum Key Exchange . . . . . . 6
3.1. Overall design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Overall Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2.1. First Protocol Round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.2. IKE_AUX round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2.3. IKE_AUX exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3. Post-quantum Group Transform Type and Group Identifiers . 11
3.4. Hybrid Group Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5. Child SAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4. Alternative Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1. Introduction
1.1. Problem Description
Internet Key Exchange Protocol (IKEv2) as specified in RFC 7296
[RFC7296] uses the Diffie-Hellman (DH) or Elliptic Curve Diffie-
Hellman (ECDH) algorithm to establish a shared secret between an
initiator and a responder. The security of the DH and ECDH
algorithms relies on the difficulty to solve a discrete logarithm
problem in multiplicative and elliptic curve groups respectively when
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the order of the group parameter is large enough. While solving such
a problem remains difficult with current computing power, it is
believed that general purpose quantum computers will be able to solve
this problem, implying that the security of IKEv2 is compromised.
There are, however, a number of cryptosystems that are conjectured to
be resistant against quantum computer attack. This family of
cryptosystems are known as post-quantum cryptography (PQC). It is
ometime also referred to as quantum-safe cryptography (QSC) or
quantum-resistant cryptography (QRC).
1.2. Proposed Extension
This document describes a framework to integrate QSC for IKEv2, while
maintaining backwards compatibility, to derive a set of IKE keys that
have resistance to quantum computer attacks. Our framework allows
the negotiation of one or more QSC algorithm to exchange data, in
addition to the existing DH or ECDH key exchange data. We believe
that the feature of using more than one post-quantum algorithm is
important as many of these algorithms are relatively new and there
may be a need to hedge the security risk with multiple key exchange
data from several distinct QSC algorithms.
The secrets established from each key exchange are combined in a way
such that should the post-quantum secrets not be present, the derived
shared secret is equivalent to that of the standard IKEv2; on the
other hand, a post-quantum shared secret is obtained if both
classical and post-quantum key exchange data are present. This
framework also applies to key exchanges in IKE Security Associations
(SAs) for Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) [ESP] or
Authentication Header (AH) [AH], i.e. Child SAs, in order to provide
a stronger guarantee of forward security.
Some post-quantum key exchange payloads may have size larger than the
standard MTU size, and therefore there could be issues with
fragmentation at IP layer. IKE does allow transmission over TCP
where fragmentation is not an issue [RFC8229]; however, we believe
that a UDP-based solution will be required too. IKE does have a
mechanism to handle fragmentation within UDP [RFC7383], however that
is only applicable to messages exchanged after the IKE_SA_INIT. To
use this mechanism, we use the IKE_AUX exchange as outlined in
[I-D.smyslov-ipsecme-ikev2-aux]. With this mechanism, we do an
initial key exchange, using a smaller, possibly non-quantum resistant
primitive, such as ECDH. Then, before we do the IKE_AUTH exchange,
we perform one or more IKE_AUX exchanges, each of which includes a
secondary key exchange. As the IKE_AUX exchange is encrypted, the
IKE fragmentation protocol RFC7383 can be used. The IKE SK values
will be updated after each exchange, and so the final IKE SK values
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will depend on all the key exchanges, hence they are secure if any of
the key exchanges are secure.
Note that readers should consider the approach in this document as
providing a long term solution in upgrading the IKEv2 protocol to
support post-quantum algorithms. A short term solution to make IKEv2
key exchange quantum secure is to use post-quantum pre-shared keys as
discussed in [I-D.ietf-ipsecme-qr-ikev2].
1.3. Changes
Changes in this draft in each version iterations.
draft-tjhai-ipsecme-hybrid-qske-ikev2-01
o Use IKE_AUX to perform multiple key exchanges in succession.
o Handle fragmentation by keeping the first key exchange (a standard
IKE_SA_INIT with a few extra notifies) small, and encrypting the
rest of the key exchanges.
o Simplify the negotiation of the 'extra' key exchanges.
draft-tjhai-ipsecme-hybrid-qske-ikev2-00
o We added a feature to allow more than one post-quantum key
exchange algorithms to be negotiated and used to exchange a post-
quantum shared secret.
o Instead of relying on TCP encapsulation to deal with IP level
fragmentation, we introduced a new key exchange payload that can
be sent as multiple fragments within IKE_SA_INIT message.
1.4. Document organization
The remainder of this document is organized as follows. Section 2
summarizes design criteria. Section 3 describes how post-quantum key
exchange is performed between two IKE peers and how keying materials
are derived. The rationale behind the approach of this extension is
described in Section 3. Section 4 discusses security considerations
an lastly, Section 5 discusses IANA considerations for the name
spaces introduced in this document.
The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD,
SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this
document, are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
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2. Design criteria
The design of the proposed post-quantum IKEv2 is driven by the
following criteria:
1) Need for post-quantum cryptography in IPsec. Quantum computers
might become feasible in the next 5-10 years. If current
Internet communications are monitored and recorded today (D),
the communications could be decrypted as soon as a quantum-
computer is available (e.g., year Q) if key negotiation only
relies on non post-quantum primitives. This is a high threat
for any information that must remain confidential for a long
period of time T > Q-D. The need is obvious if we assume that Q
is 2040, D is 2020, and T is 30 years. Such a value of T is
typical in classified or healthcare data.
2) Hybrid. Currently, there does not exist a post-quantum key
exchange that is trusted at the level that ECDH is trusted
against conventional (non-quantum) adversaries. A hybrid
approach allows introducing promising post-quantum candidates
next to well-established primitives, since the overall security
is at least as strong as each individual primitive.
3) Focus on quantum-resistant confidentiality. A passive attacker
can eavesdrop on IPsec communication today and decrypt it once a
quantum computer is available in the future. This is a very
serious attack for which we do not have a solution. An attacker
can only perform active attacks such as impersonation of the
communicating peers once a quantum computer is available,
sometime in the future. Thus, our design focuses on quantum-
resistant confidentiality due to the urgency of this problem.
This document does not address quantum-resistant authentication
since it is less urgent at this stage.
4) Limit amount of exchanged data. The protocol design should be
such that the amount of exchanged data, such as public-keys, is
kept as small as possible even if initiator and responder need
to agree on a hybrid group or multiple public-keys need to be
exchanged.
5) Future proof. Any cryptographic algorithm could be potentially
broken in the future by currently unknown or impractical
attacks: quantum computers are merely the most concrete example
of this. The design does not categorize algorithms as "post-
quantum" or "non post-quantum" and does not create assumptions
about the properties of the algorithms, meaning that if
algorithms with different properties become necessary in the
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future, this framework can be used unchanged to facilitate
migration to those algorithms.
6) Limited amount of changes. A key goal is to limit the number of
changes required when enabling a post-quantum handshake. This
ensures easier and quicker adoption in existing implementations.
7) Localized changes. Another key requirement is that changes to
the protocol are limited in scope, in particular, limiting
changes in the exchanged messages and in the state machine, so
that they can be easily implemented.
8) Deterministic operation. This requirement means that the hybrid
post-quantum exchange, and thus, the computed key, will be based
on algorithms that both client and server wish to support.
9) Fragmentation support. Some PQC algorithms could be relatively
bulky and they might require fragmentation. Thus, a design goal
is the adaptation and adoption of an existing fragmentation
method or the design of a new method that allows for the
fragmentation of the key shares.
10) Backwards compatibility and interoperability. This is a
fundamental requirement to ensure that hybrid post-quantum IKEv2
and a non-post-quantum IKEv2 implementations are interoperable.
11) FIPS compliance. IPsec is widely used in Federal Information
Systems and FIPS certification is an important requirement.
However, algorithms that are believed to be post-quantum are not
FIPS compliant yet. Still, the goal is that the overall hybrid
post-quantum IKEv2 design can be FIPS compliant.
3. The Framework of Hybrid Post-quantum Key Exchange
3.1. Overall design
This design assigns new group identifiers (Transform Type 4) to the
various post-quantum key exchanges (which will be defined later). We
specifically do not make a distinction between classical (DH and
ECDH) and post-quantum key exchanges, nor post-quantum algorithms
which are true key exchanges versus post-quantum algorithms that act
as key transport mechanisms; all are treated equivalently by the
protocol. In order to support both hybrid key exchanges (that is,
relying on distinct key exchanges) and fragmentation, the proposed
hybrid post-quantum IKEv2 protocol extends IKE [RFC7296] by adding
additional key exchange messages (IKE_AUX) between the IKE_SA_INIT
and the IKE_AUTH exchanges. In order to minimize communication
overhead, only the key shares that are agreed to be used are actually
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exchanged. In order to achieve this, the IKE_SA_INIT exchange now
includes notify payloads that negotiate the extra key exchanges to be
used. The initiator IKE_SA_INIT message includes a notify that lists
the extra key exchange policy required by the initiator; the
responder selects one of the listed policies, and includes that as a
notify in the response IKE_SA_INIT message. Then, the initiator and
the responder perform one (or possibly more) IKE_AUX exchange; each
such exchange includes a KE payload for the key exchange that was
negotiated.
Here is an overview of the initial exchanges:
Initiator Responder
--------------------------------------------------------
<-- IKE_SA_INIT (and extra key exchange negotiation) -->
<-- {IKE_AUX (hybrid post-quantum key exchange)} -->
...
<-- {IKE_AUX (hybrid post-quantum key exchange)} -->
<-- {IKE_AUTH} -->
The extra post-quantum key exchanges can use algorithms that are
currently considered to be resistant to quantum computer attacks.
These algorithms are collectively referred to as post-quantum
algorithms in this document.
3.2. Overall Protocol
In the simplest case, the initiator is happy with a single key
exchange (and has no interest in supporting multiple), and he is not
concerned with possible fragmentation of the IKE_SA_INIT messages
(either because the key exchange he selects is small enough not to
fragment, or he is confident that fragmentation will be handled
either by IP fragmentation, or transport via TCP). In the following
we overview the two protocol rounds involved in the hybrid post-
quantum protocol.
In this case, the initiator performs the IKE_SA_INIT as standard,
inserting this prefered key exchange (which is possibly a post-
quantum algorithm) as the listed Transform Type 4, and including the
initiator KE payload. If the responder accepts the policy, he
responds with an IKE_SA_INIT response, and IKE continues as usual.
If the initiator desires to negotiate multiple key exchanges, or he
needs IKE to handle any possible fragmentation, then he uses the
protocol listed below.
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3.2.1. First Protocol Round
In the first round, the IKE_SA_INIT request and response messages
negotiate the initial IKE SAs (as currently), as well as the key
exchanges that will be used within the IKE_AUX phase below.
The initiator negotiates cryptographic suites as per RFC7296, with
the listed Transform Type 4 (and KE payload) being either the first
key exchange on his desired list of key exchanges, or alternatively a
small classical one (in order to enable fragmentation support of the
later key exchanges). In addition, the initial IKE_SA_INIT message
will include the following two Notify payloads:
o The N(AUX_EXCHANGE_SUPPORTED) notify, as specified in
[I-D.smyslov-ipsecme-ikev2-aux]. This draft makes no requirements
about the included data.
o An N(EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_POLICY) notify, which has a Protocol ID
and SPI Size of 0, and includes the below data.
This data will be the list of groups that the initiator is willing to
negotiate during the IKE_AUX phase below. The initiator signifies
this by specifying the specific list of the sets of key exchanges
that he will allow. The list MUST be ordered from most prefered to
least prefered. This is encoded as a series of 2 byte values; a
specified list of acceptable groups is given as the specific
Transform IDs, followed by a 0x00 value. For example, if the NewHope
post-quantum key exchange is 0x40, Round2 is 0x42, and SIKE is 0x47,
then the data payload:
0040 0000
0042 0047 0000
0042 0000
will signify that the initiator is willing to perform IKE_AUX with
either NewHope, Round2 followed by SIKE, or only Round2.
If the initiator is willing to skip the IKE_AUX phase, he can signify
that by including a 0000 value as a list; for example:
0040 0000
0042 0047 0000
0042 0000
0000
would signify either (NewHope), (Round2, SIKE), (Round2) or skipping
the IKE_AUX entirely.
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When the responder that supports the hybrid exchange receives an
IKE_SA_INIT message with the AUX_EXHANGE_SUPPORTED and
EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_POLICY notifies, then (after processing the IKE
message as normal), it scans through the policy listed within the
EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_POLICY Notify payload. If the responder finds a
list of key exchanges that is consistent with its own policy, it
includes N(AUX_EXCHANGE_SUPPORTED) and N(EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_LIST)
notifies, which both have 0 Protocol IDs and SPI sizes. The data for
the EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_LIST notify would have data specifying the
list of acceptable Transform IDs as a series of 2 byte values. If
the responder's policy requires it to perform the extra key exchange,
but none of the key exchange lists are acceptable, it returns an
error in a notification with type NO_PROPOSAL_CHOSEN.
For example, if the single transform Round2 is accepted, then the
data payload will consist of:
0042
If the set Round2 and SIKE is accepted, then the data payload will
consist of:
0042 0047
If no IKE_AUX transforms is desired, then the data payload will be
empty (or alternatively no such notification is included, which
implies the same thing).
On success, the responder will create the IKE SA and SK values based
on SAi1, SAr1 and KE payloads as normal.
When the initiator receives the reply IKE_SA_INIT message, it checks
for the existence of the AUX_EXCHANGE_SUPPORTED and
EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_LIST notifies. If those notifies are not present,
then the initiator treats it as if no extra key exchanges were chosen
(and then can proceed by either rejecting the exchange, or proceed
using the single negotiated key exchange, depending on local policy).
If those notifies are present, then the responder verifies that the
key exchanges listed within the EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_LIST are one of
the options within its local policy; if so, it processes the
IKE_SA_INIT message as normal, and then proceeds to the IKE_AUX
round.
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3.2.1.1. Note on responder policy check
One reason that the initiator may select the initial key exchange
(the type 4 transform within the SAi1 payload) is not for security,
but instead to simply establish keys to allow fragmentation of the
IKE_AUX message. Because of this possibility, if the receiver sees a
list of key exchanges listed within the EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_LIST that
satisfies its policies, it SHOULD accept it (assuming that the SAi1
payload is otherwise acceptable), even if the key payload within the
SAi1 is not necessary according to its policy.
3.2.2. IKE_AUX round
For each extra key exchange agreed to in the IKE_SA_INIT exchange,
the initiator and the responder perform an IKE_SA_AUX exchange, as
described in [I-D.smyslov-ipsecme-ikev2-aux].
This exchange is as follows:
Initiator Responder
-------------------------------------------------
HDR, SK {Ni2, KEi2} -->
<-- HDR, SK {Nr2, KEr2}
The initiator sends a nonce in the Ni2 payload, and the key exchange
payload in the KEi2; the group id of the KEi2 payload MUST match the
negotiated extra key exchange. This packet is encrypted with the
current IKE SK keys.
On receiving this, the responder sends a nonce in the Nr2 payload,
and the key exchange payload KEr2; again, this packet is encrypted
with the current IKE SA keys.
Once this exchange is done, then both sides compute an updated keying
material:
SKEYSEED = prf(SK_d(old), KE2result | Ni2 | Nr2)
where KE2result is the shared secret of the key exchange. Then,
SK_d, SK_ai, SK_ar, SK_ei, SK_er, SK_pi, SK_pr are updated as:
{SK_d | SK_ai | SK_ar | SK_ei | SK_er | SK_pi | SK_pr}
= prf+ (SKEYSEED, Ni2 | Nr2 | SPIi | SPIr)
Note that the negotiated transform types (the encryption type, hash
type, prf type) are not modified.
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Both the initiator and the responder will use this updated key values
for the next message.
If the EXTRA_KEY_EXCHANGE_LIST has negotiated more than one key
exchange, then this exchange is performed once for every key exchange
on the list.
3.2.3. IKE_AUX exchange
After the IKE_AUX exchanges have completed, then the initiator and
the responder will perform an IKE_AUTH exchange. This exchange is
the standard IKE exchange, except that the initiator and responder
signed octets are modified as described in
[I-D.smyslov-ipsecme-ikev2-aux].
3.3. Post-quantum Group Transform Type and Group Identifiers
In generating keying material within IKEv2, both initiator and
responder negotiate up to four cryptographic algorithms in the SA
payload of an IKE_SA_INIT or a CREATE_CHILD_SA exchange. One of the
negotiated algorithms is a Diffie-Hellman algorithm, which is used
for key exchange. This negotiation is done using the Transform Type
4 (Diffie-Hellman Group) where each Diffie-Hellman group is assigned
a unique value.
We expect that in the future, IANA will assign permanent values to
these transforms. Until it does, we will use the following values
for the below key exchanges (which will need to be specified in more
detail elsewhere). Official identifiers will be maintained by IANA
and updated during the NIST standardization process.
Name Number Key exchange
--------------------------------------------------
NIST_CANDIDATE_1 0x9100 The 1st candidate of
NIST PQC submission
NIST_CANDIDATE_2 0x9101 The 2nd candidate of
NIST PQC submission
Because we are using transforms in the private use space, both the
initiator and responder must include a vendor id with this payload:
d4 48 11 94 c0 c3 4c 9d d1 22 76 aa 9a 4e 80 d5
This payload is the MD5 hash of "IKEv2 Quantum Safe Key Exchange
v1"). If the other side does not include this vendor id, an
implementation MUST NOT process these private use transforms as
listed in this draft.
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3.4. Hybrid Group Negotiation
Most post-quantum key agreement algorithms are relatively new, and
thus are not fully trusted. There are also many proposed algorithms,
with different trade-offs and relying on different hard problems.
The concern is that some of these hard problems may turn out to be
easier to solve than anticipated (and thus the key agreement
algorithm not be as secure as expected). A hybrid solution allows us
to deal with this uncertainty by combining a classical key exchanges
with a post-quantum one, as well as leaving open the possibility of
multiple post-quantum key exchanges.
The method that we use to perform hybrid key exchange also addresses
the fragmentation issue. The initial IKE_INIT messages do not have
any inherent fragmentation support within IKE; however that can
include a relatively short KE payload (e.g. one for group 14, 19 or
31). The rest of the KE payloads are encrypted within IKE_AUX
messages; because they are encrypted, the standard IKE fragmentation
solution [RFC7383] is available.
3.5. Child SAs
This method of performing hybrid key exchanges, by performing
multiple exchanges in series, solves the issue by making the IKE SK
values be a function of all the key exchanges performed. Hence, we
achieve the goal of making the IKE exchange secure if any of the key
exchanges are secure.
This proposal allows the support of multiple post-quantum algorithms
(in case we don't have full confidence in any one); this is
implemented by having the initiator list all the combinations of
extra key exchanges he finds acceptable. It is not anticipated that
there will be a need for a large number of different combinations of
key exchanges, hence this relatively simple encoding method was
selected as a reasonable compromise between simplicity and
functionality.
This method also allows us to fragment large post-quantum key
exchanges; all the initiator needs to assure is that the initial key
exchange (which has the KE payloads exchanged during IKE_SA_INIT) is
small enough not to cause fragmentation.
4. Alternative Design
This section gives an overview on a number of alternative approaches
that we have considered, but later discarded. These approaches are:
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o Sending the classical and post-quantum key exchanges as a single
transform
We considered combining the various key exchanges into a single
large KE payload; this effort is documented in a previous version
of this draft (draft-tjhai-ipsecme-hybrid-qske-ikev2-01). This
does allow us to cleanly apply hybrid key exchanges during the
child SA; however it does add considerable complexity, and
requires an independant fragmentation solution.
o Sending post-quantum proposals and policies in KE payload only
With the objective of not introducing unnecessary notify payloads,
we considered communicating the hybrid post-quantum proposal in
the KE payload during the first pass of the protocol exchange.
Unfortunately, this design is susceptible to the following
downgrade attack. Consider the scenario where there is an MitM
attacker sitting between an initiator and a responder. The
initiator proposes, through SAi payload, to use a hybrid post-
quantum group and as a backup a Diffie-Hellman group, and through
KEi payload, the initiator proposes a list of hybrid post-quantum
proposals and policies. The MitM attacker intercepts this traffic
and replies with N(INVALID_KE_PAYLOAD) suggesting to downgrade to
the backup Diffie-Hellman group instead. The initiator then
resends the same SAi payload and the KEi payload containing the
public value of the backup Diffie-Hellman group. Note that the
attacker may forward the second IKE_SA_INIT message only to the
responder, and therefore at this point in time, the responder will
not have the information that the initiator prefers the hybrid
group. Of course, it is possible for the responder to have a
policy to reject an IKE_SA_INIT message that (a) offers a hybrid
group but not offering the corresponding public value in the KEi
payload; and (b) the responder has not specifically acknowledged
that it does not supported the requested hybrid group. However,
the checking of this policy introduces unnecessary protocol
complexity. Therefore, in order to fully prevent any downgrade
attacks, using KE payload alone is not sufficient and that the
initiator MUST always indicate its preferred post-quantum
proposals and policies in a notify payload in the subsequent
IKE_SA_INIT messages following a N(INVALID_KE_PAYLOAD) response.
o New payload types to negotiate hybrid proposal and to carry post-
quantum public values
Semantically, it makes sense to use a new payload type, which
mimics the SA payload, to carry a hybrid proposal. Likewise,
another new payload type that mimics the KE payload, could be used
to transport hybrid public value. Although, in theory a new
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payload type could be made backwards compatible by not setting its
critical flag as per Section 2.5 of RFC7296, we believe that it
may not be that simple in practice. Since the original release of
IKEv2 in RFC4306, no new payload type has ever been proposed and
therefore, this creates a potential risk of having a backward
compatibility issue from non-conforming RFC IKEv2 implementations.
Since we could not see any other compelling advantages apart from
a semantic one, we use the existing transform type and notify
payloads instead. In fact, as described above, we use the KE
payload in the first IKE_SA_INIT request round and the notify
payload to carry the post-quantum proposals and policies. We use
one or more of the existing KE payloads to carry the hybrid public
values.
o Hybrid public value payload
One way to transport the negotiated hybrid public payload, which
contains one classical Diffie-Hellman public value and one or more
post-quantum public values, is to bundle these into a single KE
payload. Alternatively, these could also be transported in a
single new hybrid public value payload, but following the same
reasoning as above, this may not be a good idea from a backward
compatibility perspective. Using a single KE payload would
require an encoding or formatting to be defined so that both peers
are able to compose and extract the individual public values.
However, we believe that it is cleaner to send the hybrid public
values in multiple KE payloads--one for each group or algorithm.
Furthermore, at this point in the protocol exchange, both peers
should have indicated support of handling multiple KE payloads.
o Fragmentation
Handling of large IKE_SA_INIT messages has been one of the most
challenging tasks. A number of approaches have been considered
and the two prominent ones that we have discarded are outlined as
follows.
The first approach was to treat the entire IKE_SA_INIT message as
a stream of bytes, which we then split it into a number of
fragments, each of which is wrapped onto a payload that would fit
into the size of the network MTU. The payload that wraps each
fragment is a new payload type and it was envisaged that this new
payload type will not cause a backward compatibility issue because
at this stage of the protocol, both peers should have indicated
support of fragmentation in the first pass of the IKE_SA_INIT
exchange. The negotiation of fragmentation is performed using a
notify payload, which also defines supporting parameters such as
the size of fragment in octets and the fragment identifier. The
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new payload that wraps each fragment of the messages in this
exchange is assigned the same fragment identifier. Furthermore,
it also has other parameters such as a fragment index and total
number of fragments. We decided to discard this approach due to
its blanket approach to fragmentation. In cases where only a few
payloads need to be fragmented, we felt that this approach is
overly complicated.
Another idea that was discarded was fragmenting an individual
payload without introducing a new payload type. The idea was to
use the 9-th bit (the bit after the critical flag in the RESERVED
field) in the generic payload header as a flag to mark that this
payload is fragmented. As an example, if a KE payload is to be
fragmented, it may look as follows.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Next Payload |C|F| RESERVED | Payload Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Diffie-Hellman Group Number | Fragment Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Fragment Index | Total Fragments |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Total KE Payload Data Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
~ Fragmented KE Payload ~
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
When the flag F is set, this means the current KE payload is a
fragment of a larger KE payload. The Payload Length field denotes
the size of this payload fragment in octets--including the size of
the generic payload header. The two-octet RESERVED field
following Diffie-Hellman Group Number was to be used as a fragment
identifier to help assembly and disassembly of fragments. The
Fragment Index and Total Fragments fields are self-explanatory.
The Total KE Payload Data Length indicates the size of the
assembled KE payload data in octets. Finally, the actual fragment
is carried in Fragment KE Payload field.
We discarded this approach because we believe that the working
group may not be happy using the RESERVED field to change the
format of a packet and that implementers may not like the
complexity added from checking the fragmentation flag in each
received payload. More importantly, fragmenting the messages in
this way may leave the system to be more prone to denial of
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service (DoS) attacks. By using IKE_AUX to transport the large
post-quantum key exchange payloads, there is no longer any issue
with fragmentation.
o Group sub-identifier
As discussed in Section 3.3, each group identifier is used to
distinguish a post-quantum algorithm. Further classification
could be made on a particular post-quantum algorithm by assigning
additional value alongside the group identifier. This sub-
identifier value may be used to assign different security
parameter sets to a given post-quantum algorithm. However, this
level of details does not fit the principles of the document where
it should deal with generic hybrid key exchange protocol, not a
specific ciphersuite. Furthermore, there are enough Diffie-
Hellman group identifiers should this be required in the future.
5. Security considerations
The key length of the Encryption Algorithm (Transform Type 1), the
Pseudorandom Function (Transform Type 2) and the Integrity Algorithm
(Transform Type 3), all have to be of sufficient length to prevent
attacks using Grover's algorithm [GROVER]. In order to use the
extension proposed in this document, the key lengths of these
transforms SHALL be at least 256 bits long in order to provide
sufficient resistance to quantum attacks. Accordingly the post-
quantum security level achieved is at least 128 bits.
SKEYSEED is calculated from shared, KEx, using an algorithm defined
in Transform Type 2. While a quantum attacker may learn the value of
KEx', if this value is obtained by means of a classical key exchange,
other KEx values generated by means of a quantum-resistant algorithm
ensure that the final SKEYSEED is not compromised. This assumes that
the algorithm defined in the Transform Type 2 is post-quantum.
The main focus of this document is to prevent a passive attacker
performing a "harvest and decrypt" attack. In other words, an
attacker that records messages exchanges today and proceeds to
decrypt them once he owns a quantum computer. This attack is
prevented due to the hybrid nature of the key exchange. Other
attacks involving an active attacker using a quantum-computer are not
completely solved by this document. This is for two reasons.
The first reason is because the authentication step remains
classical. In particular, the authenticity of the SAs established
under IKEv2 is protected using a pre-shared key, RSA, DSA, or ECDSA
algorithms. Whilst the pre-shared key option, provided the key is
long enough, is post-quantum, the other algorithms are not.
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Moreover, in implementations where scalability is a requirement, the
pre-shared key method may not be suitable. Quantum-safe authenticity
may be provided by using a quantum-safe digital signature and several
quantum-safe digital signature methods are being explored by IETF.
For example, if the implementation is able to reliably track state,
the hash based method, XMSS has the status of an RFC, see [RFC8391].
Currently, quantum-safe authentication methods are not specified in
this document, but are planned to be incorporated in due course.
It should be noted that the purpose of post-quantum algorithms is to
provide resistance to attacks mounted in the future. The current
threat is that encrypted sessions are subject to eavesdropping and
archived with decryption by quantum computers taking place at some
point in the future. Until quantum computers become available there
is no point in attacking the authenticity of a connection because
there are no possibilities for exploitation. These only occur at the
time of the connection, for example by mounting a MitM attack.
Consequently there is not such a pressing need for quantum-safe
authenticity.
This draft does not attempt to address key exchanges with KE payloads
longer than 64k; the current IKE payload format does not allow that
as a possibility. If such huge KE payloads are required, a work
around (such as making the KE payload a URL and a hash of the real
payload) would be needed. At the current time, it appears likely
that there will be plenty of key exchanges available that would not
require such a workaround.
6. References
[AH] Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302, December
2005, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4302>.
[ESP] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
RFC 4303, December 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4303>.
[GROVER] Grover, L., "A Fast Quantum Mechanical Algorithm for
Database Search", Proc. of the Twenty-Eighth Annual ACM
Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC 1996), 1996.
[I-D.ietf-ipsecme-qr-ikev2]
Fluhrer, S., McGrew, D., Kampanakis, P., and V. Smyslov,
"Postquantum Preshared Keys for IKEv2", draft-ietf-
ipsecme-qr-ikev2-03 (work in progress), June 2018.
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[I-D.smyslov-ipsecme-ikev2-aux]
Smyslov, V., "Auxiliary Exchange in the IKEv2 Protocol",
draft-smyslov-ipsecme-ikev2-aux-00 (work in progress),
January 2018.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC7296] Kaufman, C., Hoffman, P., Nir, Y., Eronen, P., and T.
Kivinen, "Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2
(IKEv2)", STD 79, RFC 7296, DOI 10.17487/RFC7296, October
2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7296>.
[RFC7383] Smyslov, V., "Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2
(IKEv2) Message Fragmentation", RFC 7383,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7383, November 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7383>.
[RFC8229] Pauly, T., Touati, S., and R. Mantha, "TCP Encapsulation
of IKE and IPsec Packets", RFC 8229, DOI 10.17487/RFC8229,
August 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8229>.
[RFC8391] Huelsing, A., Butin, D., Gazdag, S., Rijneveld, J., and A.
Mohaisen, "XMSS: eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme",
RFC 8391, DOI 10.17487/RFC8391, May 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8391>.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thanks Frederic Detienne and Olivier
Pelerin for their comments and suggestions, including the idea to
negotiate the post-quantum algorithms using the existing KE payload.
Authors' Addresses
C. Tjhai
Post-Quantum
Email: cjt@post-quantum.com
M. Tomlinson
Post-Quantum
Email: mt@post-quantum.com
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G. Bartlett
Cisco Systems
Email: grbartle@cisco.com
S. Fluhrer
Cisco Systems
Email: sfluhrer@cisco.com
D. Van Geest
ISARA Corporation
Email: daniel.vangeest@isara.com
Z. Zhang
Onboard Security
Email: zzhang@onboardsecurity.com
O. Garcia-Morchon
Philips
Email: oscar.garcia-morchon@philips.com
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