Summarizing Known Attacks on Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram TLS (DTLS)
RFC 7457

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                        Y. Sheffer
Request for Comments: 7457                                      Porticor
Category: Informational                                          R. Holz
ISSN: 2070-1721                         Technische Universitaet Muenchen
                                                          P. Saint-Andre
                                                                    &yet
                                                           February 2015

      Summarizing Known Attacks on Transport Layer Security (TLS)
                        and Datagram TLS (DTLS)

Abstract

   Over the last few years, there have been several serious attacks on
   Transport Layer Security (TLS), including attacks on its most
   commonly used ciphers and modes of operation.  This document
   summarizes these attacks, with the goal of motivating generic and
   protocol-specific recommendations on the usage of TLS and Datagram
   TLS (DTLS).

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7457.

Sheffer, et al.               Informational                     [Page 1]
RFC 7457                       TLS Attacks                 February 2015

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 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
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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 ....................................................3
   2. Attacks on TLS ..................................................3
      2.1. SSL Stripping ..............................................3
      2.2. STARTTLS Command Injection Attack (CVE-2011-0411) ..........4
      2.3. BEAST (CVE-2011-3389) ......................................4
      2.4. Padding Oracle Attacks .....................................4
      2.5. Attacks on RC4 .............................................5
      2.6. Compression Attacks: CRIME, TIME, and BREACH ...............5
      2.7. Certificate and RSA-Related Attacks ........................5
      2.8. Theft of RSA Private Keys ..................................6
      2.9. Diffie-Hellman Parameters ..................................6
      2.10. Renegotiation (CVE-2009-3555) .............................6
      2.11. Triple Handshake (CVE-2014-1295) ..........................6
      2.12. Virtual Host Confusion ....................................7
      2.13. Denial of Service .........................................7
      2.14. Implementation Issues .....................................7
      2.15. Usability .................................................8
   3. Applicability to DTLS ...........................................8
   4. Security Considerations .........................................8
   5. Informative References ..........................................8
   Acknowledgements ..................................................13
   Authors' Addresses ................................................13

Sheffer, et al.               Informational                     [Page 2]
RFC 7457                       TLS Attacks                 February 2015

1.  Introduction

   Over the last few years, there have been several major attacks on TLS
   [RFC5246], including attacks on its most commonly used ciphers and
   modes of operation.  Details are given in Section 2, but a quick
   summary is that both AES-CBC and RC4, which together make up for most
   current usage, have been seriously attacked in the context of TLS.

   This situation was one of the motivations for the creation of the UTA
   working group, which was tasked with the creation of generic and
   protocol-specific recommendations for the use of TLS and DTLS
   [RFC6347] (unless otherwise noted under Section 3, all of the
   information provided in this document applies to DTLS).