Towards Remote Procedure Call Encryption by DefaultHammerspace Inc.4300 El Camino Real, Suite 105Los AltosCA94022United States of Americatrond.myklebust@hammerspace.comOracle CorporationUnited States of Americachuck.lever@oracle.com
Transport
Network File System Version 4network file systemremote procedure calltransport layer securityX.509
This document describes a mechanism that, through the use of opportunistic
Transport Layer Security (TLS), enables encryption of Remote Procedure Call
(RPC) transactions while they are in transit. The proposed mechanism
interoperates with Open Network Computing (ONC) RPC implementations that do
not support it. This document updates RFC 5531.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
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). Further
information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of
RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any
errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
. Introduction
. Requirements Language
. Terminology
. RPC-with-TLS in Operation
. Discovering Server-Side TLS Support
. Authentication
. Using TLS with RPCSEC_GSS
. TLS Requirements
. Base Transport Considerations
. Protected Operation on TCP
. Protected Operation on UDP
. Protected Operation on Other Transports
. TLS Peer Authentication
. X.509 Certificates Using PKIX Trust
. Extended Key Usage Values
. Pre-shared Keys
. Security Considerations
. The Limitations of Opportunistic Security
. STRIPTLS Attacks
. Privacy Leakage before Session Establishment
. TLS Identity Management on Clients
. Security Considerations for AUTH_SYS on TLS
. Best Security Policy Practices
. IANA Considerations
. RPC Authentication Flavor
. ALPN Identifier for SunRPC
. Object Identifier for PKIX Extended Key Usage
. Object Identifier for ASN.1 Module
. References
. Normative References
. Informative References
. Known Weaknesses of the AUTH_SYS Authentication Flavor
. ASN.1 Module
Acknowledgments
Authors' Addresses
Introduction
In 2014 the IETF published a document entitled "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
Attack" , which
recognized that unauthorized observation of network traffic had become
widespread and was a subversive threat to all who make use of the Internet at
large. It strongly recommended that newly defined Internet protocols should
make a genuine effort to mitigate monitoring attacks. Typically, this
mitigation includes encrypting data in transit.
The Remote Procedure Call version 2 protocol has been a Proposed Standard for
three decades (see
and its antecedents). Over twenty years ago, Eisler et al. first introduced
RPCSEC_GSS as an in-transit encryption mechanism for RPC . However, experience
has shown that RPCSEC_GSS with in-transit encryption can be challenging to use
in practice due to the following:
Parts of each RPC header remain in cleartext,
constituting a loss of metadata confidentiality.
Offloading the Generic Security Service (GSS) privacy service is not practical
in large multi-user deployments
since each message is encrypted using a key based
on the issuing RPC user.
However strong GSS-provided confidentiality is,
it cannot provide any security if the challenges
of using it result in choosing not to deploy it at all.
Moreover, the use of AUTH_SYS
remains common despite the adverse effects
that acceptance of User Identifiers (UIDs) and Group Identifiers (GIDs)
from unauthenticated clients brings with it.
Continued use is in part because:
Per-client deployment and administrative costs
for the only well-defined alternative to AUTH_SYS
are expensive at scale.
For instance, administrators must provide keying material
for each RPC client, including transient clients.
GSS host identity management and user identity management typically must be
enforced in the same security realm. However, cloud providers, for instance,
might prefer to remain authoritative for host identity but allow tenants to
manage user identities within their private networks.
In view of the challenges with the currently available mechanisms for
authenticating and protecting the confidentiality of RPC transactions, this
document specifies a transport-layer security mechanism that complements the
existing ones. The TLS and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)
protocols are well-established Internet building blocks that protect many
standard Internet protocols such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
.
Encrypting at the RPC transport layer accords several significant benefits:
Encryption by Default:
Transport encryption can be enabled
without additional administrative tasks such as
identifying client systems to a trust authority
and
providing each with keying material.
Encryption Offload:
Hardware support for the GSS privacy service has not appeared in the marketplace.
However, the use of a well-established transport encryption mechanism
that is employed by other ubiquitous network protocols
makes it more likely that encryption offload for RPC
is practicable.
Securing AUTH_SYS:
Most critically, transport encryption can
significantly reduce several security issues
inherent in the current widespread use of AUTH_SYS
(i.e., acceptance of UIDs and GIDs
generated by an unauthenticated client).
Decoupled User and Host Identities:
TLS can be used to authenticate peer hosts
while other security mechanisms can handle user authentication.
Compatibility:
The imposition of encryption at the transport layer
protects any upper-layer protocol that employs RPC,
without alteration of the upper-layer protocol.
Further,
of the current document defines policies in line with
that enable RPC-with-TLS to be deployed opportunistically in environments that
contain RPC implementations that do not support TLS. However, specifications
for RPC-based upper-layer protocols should choose to require even stricter
policies that guarantee encryption and host authentication are used for all RPC
transactions to mitigate against pervasive monitoring attacks . Enforcing the use of
RPC-with-TLS is of particular importance for existing upper-layer protocols
whose security infrastructure is weak.
The protocol specification in the current document assumes that support for
ONC RPC , TLS
, PKIX , DNSSEC/DNS-Based
Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) , and optionally RPCSEC_GSS
is available within the platform
where RPC-with-TLS support is to be added.
Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT",
"REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT",
"RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED",
"MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be
interpreted as described in BCP 14
when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
Terminology
This document adopts the terminology introduced in
and assumes a working knowledge of
the RPC version 2 protocol
and
the TLS version 1.3 protocol
.
Note also that the NFS community long ago adopted the
use of the term "privacy" from documents such as
.
In the current document, the authors use the term
"privacy" only when referring specifically
to the historic GSS privacy service defined in
.
Otherwise, the authors use the term "confidentiality",
following the practices of contemporary security communities.
We adhere to the convention that a "client"
is a network host that actively initiates an association,
and
a "server" is a network host that passively accepts an association request.
RPC documentation historically refers to
the authentication of a connecting host as "machine authentication"
or "host authentication".
TLS documentation refers to the same as "peer authentication".
In the current document, there is little distinction between these terms.
The term "user authentication" in the current document refers specifically to
the RPC caller's credential, provided in the "cred" and "verf" fields in each
RPC Call.
RPC-with-TLS in OperationDiscovering Server-Side TLS Support
The mechanism described in the current document
interoperates fully with RPC implementations
that do not support RPC-with-TLS.
When an RPC-with-TLS-enabled peer encounters a peer that
does not support RPC-with-TLS,
policy settings on the RPC-with-TLS-enabled peer determine
whether RPC operation continues without the use of TLS
or is discontinued altogether.
To achieve this interoperability,
we introduce a new RPC authentication flavor called AUTH_TLS.
The AUTH_TLS authentication flavor signals that the client wants
to initiate TLS negotiation if the server supports it.
Except for the modifications described in this section,
the RPC protocol is unaware of security encapsulation
at the transport layer.
The value of AUTH_TLS is defined in
.
An RPC client begins its communication with an RPC server
by selecting a transport and destination port.
The choice of transport and port is
typically based on the RPC program that is to be used.
The RPC client might query the RPC server's RPCBIND service
to make this selection
(The RPCBIND service is described in
).
The mechanism described in the current document
does not support RPC transports other than TCP and UDP.
In all cases, an RPC server MUST listen on the same ports
for (D)TLS-protected RPC programs
as the ports used when (D)TLS is not available.
To protect RPC traffic to a TCP port,
the RPC client opens a TCP connection to that port
and sends a NULL RPC procedure
with an auth_flavor of AUTH_TLS on that connection.
To protect RPC traffic to a UDP port,
the RPC client sends a UDP datagram to that port
containing a NULL RPC procedure with an auth_flavor of AUTH_TLS.
The client constructs this RPC procedure as follows:
The length of the opaque data constituting the credential
sent in the RPC Call message MUST be zero.
The verifier accompanying the credential MUST be an AUTH_NONE
verifier of length zero.
The flavor value of the verifier in the RPC Reply message
received from the server MUST be AUTH_NONE.
The length of the verifier's body field is eight.
The bytes of the verifier's body field encode the ASCII characters
"STARTTLS" as a fixed-length opaque.
The RPC server signals its corresponding support for RPC-with-TLS
by replying with
a reply_stat of MSG_ACCEPTED
and
an AUTH_NONE verifier containing the "STARTTLS" token.
The client SHOULD proceed with TLS session establishment,
even if the Reply's accept_stat is not SUCCESS.
If the AUTH_TLS probe was done via TCP,
the RPC client MUST send the "ClientHello" message
on the same connection.
If the AUTH_TLS probe was done via UDP,
the RPC client MUST send the "ClientHello" message
to the same UDP destination port.
Conversely,
if the Reply's reply_stat is not MSG_ACCEPTED,
if its verifier flavor is not AUTH_NONE,
or if its verifier does not contain the "STARTTLS" token,
the RPC client MUST NOT send a "ClientHello" message.
RPC operation may continue,
depending on local policy, but without
confidentiality,
integrity,
or
peer authentication protection
from (D)TLS.
If, after a successful RPC AUTH_TLS probe,
the subsequent (D)TLS handshake should fail for any reason,
the RPC client reports this failure
to the upper-layer application
the same way it reports an AUTH_ERROR rejection
from the RPC server.
If an RPC client uses the AUTH_TLS authentication flavor
on any procedure other than the NULL procedure,
or an RPC client sends an RPC AUTH_TLS probe within
an existing (D)TLS session,
the RPC server MUST reject that RPC Call
by returning a reply_stat of MSG_DENIED
with a reject_stat of AUTH_ERROR
and an auth_stat of AUTH_BADCRED.
Once the TLS session handshake is complete,
the RPC client and server have established
a secure channel for exchanging RPC transactions.
A successful AUTH_TLS probe on one particular port/transport tuple
does not imply that RPC-with-TLS is available on that same server
using a different port/transport tuple,
nor does it imply that
RPC-with-TLS will be available in the future
using the successfully probed port.
Authentication
There is some overlap between the authentication
capabilities of RPC and TLS.
The goal of interoperability with implementations
that do not support TLS requires
limiting the combinations that are allowed
and
precisely specifying the role that each layer plays.
Each RPC server that supports RPC-with-TLS MUST possess a unique global identity
(e.g., a certificate that is signed by a well-known trust anchor).
Such an RPC server MUST request a TLS peer identity from each client
upon first contact.
There are two different modes of client deployment:
Server-Only Host Authentication
In this type of deployment,
the client can authenticate the server host
using the presented server peer TLS identity,
but the server cannot authenticate the client.
In this situation,
RPC-with-TLS clients are anonymous.
They present no globally unique identifier to the server peer.
Mutual Host Authentication
In this type of deployment, the client possesses an identity that is backed by
a trusted entity (e.g., a pre-shared key or a certificate validated with a
certification path). As part of the TLS handshake, both peers authenticate
using the presented TLS identities. If authentication of either peer fails,
or if authorization based on those identities blocks access to the server, the
peers MUST reject the association. Further explanation appears in .
In either of these modes, RPC user authentication is not affected by the use
of transport layer security. When a client presents a TLS peer identity to an
RPC server, the protocol extension described in the current document provides
no way for the server to know whether that identity represents one RPC user on
that client or is shared amongst many RPC users. Therefore, a server
implementation cannot utilize the remote TLS peer identity to authenticate RPC
users.
Using TLS with RPCSEC_GSS
To use GSS, an RPC server has to possess a GSS service principal.
On a TLS session, GSS mutual (peer) authentication occurs as usual,
but only after a TLS session has been established for communication.
Authentication of RPCSEC_GSS users is unchanged by the use of TLS.
RPCSEC_GSS can also perform per-request integrity or confidentiality
protection. When operating over a TLS session, these GSS services become
largely redundant. An RPC implementation capable of concurrently using TLS
and RPCSEC_GSS MUST use Generic Security Service Application
Program Interface (GSS-API) channel binding, as defined in , to determine when an
underlying transport provides a sufficient degree of confidentiality.
RPC-with-TLS implementations MUST provide the "tls-exporter"
channel binding type, as defined in .
TLS Requirements
When peers negotiate a TLS session that is to transport RPC,
the following restrictions apply:
Implementations MUST NOT negotiate TLS versions prior to 1.3
(for TLS
or DTLS ,
respectively). Support for mandatory-to-implement cipher suites for the
negotiated TLS version is REQUIRED.
Implementations MUST conform to the recommendations for TLS
usage specified in BCP 195 .
Although RFC 7525 permits the use of TLS 1.2, the
requirement to use TLS 1.3 or later for RPC-with-TLS takes precedence.
Further, because TLS 1.3 ciphers are qualitatively different than cipher
suites in previous versions of TLS, and RFC 7525 predates TLS 1.3, the cipher
suite recommendations in RFC 7525 do not apply to RPC-with-(D)TLS. A strict
TLS mode for RPC-with-TLS that protects against STRIPTLS attacks is discussed
in detail in .
Implementations MUST support certificate-based mutual
authentication. Support for Pre-Shared Key (PSK) mutual authentication is
OPTIONAL; see
for further details.
Negotiation of a cipher suite providing confidentiality as
well as integrity protection is REQUIRED.
Client implementations MUST include the
"application_layer_protocol_negotiation(16)" extension
in their "ClientHello" message
and MUST include the protocol identifier
defined in
in that message's ProtocolNameList value.
Similarly, in response to the "ClientHello" message,
server implementations MUST include the
"application_layer_protocol_negotiation(16)" extension
in their "ServerHello" message
and MUST include only the protocol identifier
defined in
in that message's ProtocolNameList value.
If the server responds incorrectly
(for instance, if the "ServerHello" message does not conform to the above requirements),
the client MUST NOT establish a TLS session for use with RPC
on this connection.
See
for further details about how to form these messages properly.
Base Transport Considerations
There is frequently a strong association between an RPC program and a
particular destination port number. The use of TLS or DTLS does not change that
association. Thus, it is frequently, though not always, the case that a
single TLS session carries traffic for only one RPC program.
Protected Operation on TCP
The use of the TLS protocol
protects RPC on TCP connections.
Typically,
once an RPC client completes the TCP handshake,
it uses the mechanism described in
to discover RPC-with-TLS support for that RPC program on that connection.
Until an AUTH_TLS probe is done on a connection,
the RPC server treats all traffic as RPC messages.
If spurious traffic appears on a TCP connection
between the initial cleartext AUTH_TLS probe
and
the TLS session handshake,
receivers MUST discard that data without response
and then SHOULD drop the connection.
The protocol convention specified in the current document
assumes there can be no more than one concurrent TLS session
per TCP connection.
This is true of current generations of TLS,
but might be different in a future version of TLS.
Once a TLS session is established on a TCP connection,
no further cleartext communication can occur on that connection
until the session is terminated.
The use of TLS does not alter RPC record framing used on TCP transports.
Furthermore,
if an RPC server responds with PROG_UNAVAIL
to an RPC Call within an established TLS session,
that does not imply that RPC server will subsequently
reject the same RPC program on a different TCP connection.
Reverse-direction operation occurs only on connected transports such as TCP
(see ). To protect reverse-direction RPC operations, the RPC
server does not establish a separate TLS session on the TCP connection but
instead uses the existing TLS session on that connection to protect these
operations.
When operation is complete,
an RPC peer terminates a TLS session by sending a TLS closure alert.
It may then close the TCP connection.
Protected Operation on UDP
The use of the DTLS protocol
protects RPC carried in UDP datagrams.
As soon as a client initializes a UDP socket
for use with an RPC service,
it uses the mechanism described in
to discover RPC-with-DTLS support for that RPC program on that port.
If spurious traffic appears on a 5-tuple between
the initial cleartext AUTH_TLS probe
and
the DTLS association handshake,
receivers
MUST
discard that traffic without response.
Using DTLS does not introduce
reliable
or
in-order
semantics to RPC on UDP.
The use of DTLS record replay protection is REQUIRED
when transporting RPC traffic.
Each RPC message MUST fit in a single DTLS record.
DTLS encapsulation has overhead,
which reduces the Packetization Layer Path MTU (PLPMTU)
and thus the maximum RPC payload size.
A possible PLPMTU discovery mechanism is offered in
.
The current document does not specify a mechanism
that enables a server to distinguish between
DTLS traffic
and
unprotected RPC traffic
directed to the same port.
To make this distinction,
each peer matches ingress datagrams
that appear to be DTLS traffic to existing DTLS session state.
A peer treats any datagram that fails the matching process as an RPC message.
Multihomed RPC clients and servers may send protected RPC messages
via network interfaces that were not involved in the handshake that
established the DTLS session.
Therefore, when protecting RPC traffic,
each DTLS handshake MUST include the "connection_id(54)" extension
described in
,
and RPC-with-DTLS peer endpoints
MUST
provide a ConnectionID
with a nonzero length.
Endpoints implementing RPC programs
that expect a significant number of concurrent clients
SHOULD
employ ConnectionIDs of at least 4 bytes in length.
Sending a TLS closure alert terminates a DTLS session. Because neither DTLS
nor UDP provide in-order delivery, after session closure there can be
ambiguity as to whether a datagram should be interpreted as DTLS protected or
not. Therefore, receivers MUST discard datagrams exchanged
using the same 5-tuple that just terminated the DTLS session for a sufficient
length of time to ensure that retransmissions have ceased and packets already
in the network have been delivered. In the absence of more specific data, a
period of 60 seconds is expected to suffice.
Protected Operation on Other Transports
Transports that provide intrinsic TLS-level security
(e.g., QUIC)
need to be addressed separately from the current document.
In such cases, the use of TLS is not opportunistic
as it can be for TCP or UDP.
RPC-over-RDMA can make use of transport layer security
below the RDMA transport layer
.
The exact mechanism is not within the scope of the current document.
Because there might not be other provisions
to exchange client and server certificates,
authentication material exchange
needs to be provided by facilities
within a future version
of the RPC-over-RDMA transport protocol.
TLS Peer Authentication
TLS can perform peer authentication
using any of the following mechanisms.
X.509 Certificates Using PKIX Trust
X.509 certificates are specified in
.
provides a profile of Internet PKI X.509 public key infrastructure.
RPC-with-TLS implementations are
REQUIRED
to support the PKIX mechanism described in
.
The rules and guidelines defined in
apply to RPC-with-TLS certificates
with the following considerations:
The DNS-ID identifier type is a subjectAltName extension that contains a
dNSName, as defined in . Support for the DNS-ID identifier type
is REQUIRED in RPC-with-TLS client and server implementations.
Certification authorities that issue such certificates MUST
support the DNS-ID identifier type.
To specify the identity of an RPC peer as a domain name, the certificate
MUST contain a subjectAltName extension that contains a
dNSName. DNS domain names in RPC-with-TLS certificates MUST NOT
contain the wildcard character '*' within the identifier.
To specify the identity of an RPC peer as a network identifier (netid) or a universal network address (uaddr), the certificate MUST contain a subjectAltName extension that contains an iPAddress.
When validating a server certificate,
an RPC-with-TLS client implementation
takes the following into account:
Certificate validation
MUST
include the verification rules as per
and
.
Server certificate validation
MUST
include a check on whether
the locally configured expected
DNS-ID
or
iPAddress subjectAltName
of the server that is contacted
matches its presented certificate.
For RPC services accessed by their
netids
and
uaddrs,
the iPAddress subjectAltName
MUST
be present in the certificate
and
MUST
exactly match the address represented by the universal network address.
An RPC client's domain name and IP address are often assigned dynamically;
thus, RPC servers cannot rely on those to verify client certificates.
Therefore, when an RPC-with-TLS client presents a certificate to an
RPC-with-TLS server, the server takes the following into account:
The server MUST use a procedure conformant to to
validate the client certificate's certification path.
The tuple (serial number of the presented certificate; Issuer) uniquely
identifies the RPC client. The meaning and syntax of these fields is defined
in .
RPC-with-TLS implementations
MAY
allow the configuration
of a set of additional properties of the certificate
to check for a peer's authorization to communicate
(e.g.,
a set of allowed values in subjectAltName:URI,
a set of allowed X.509v3 Certificate Policies,
or
a set of extended key usages).
When the configured set of trust anchors changes (e.g., removal of a
Certification Authority (CA) from the list of trusted CAs; issuance of a new Certificate Revocation List (CRL)
for a given CA), implementations SHOULD reevaluate the
certificate originally presented in the context of the new configuration and
terminate the TLS session if the certificate is no longer trustworthy.
Extended Key Usage Values
specifies the extended key usage X.509 certificate extension.
This extension, which may appear in end-entity certificates,
indicates one or more purposes for which the certified public key may be used
in addition to or in place of the basic purposes indicated in the key usage extension.
The current document defines two new KeyPurposeId values:
one that identifies the RPC-with-TLS peer as an RPC client,
and
one that identifies the RPC-with-TLS peer as an RPC server.
The inclusion of the RPC server value (id-kp-rpcTLSServer)
indicates that the certificate has been issued
for allowing the holder to process RPC transactions.
The inclusion of the RPC client value (id-kp-rpcTLSClient)
indicates that the certificate has been issued
for allowing the holder to request RPC transactions.
Pre-shared Keys
This mechanism is OPTIONAL to implement. In this mode, the RPC
peer can be uniquely identified by keying material that has been shared
out of band (see ). The PSK Identifier SHOULD be exposed at the RPC layer.
Security Considerations
One purpose of the mechanism described in the current document
is to protect RPC-based applications against threats
to the confidentiality of RPC transactions
and
RPC user identities.
A taxonomy of these threats appears in
.
Also,
contains a detailed discussion
of technologies used in conjunction with TLS.
covers important considerations about handling certificate material securely.
Implementers should familiarize themselves with these materials.
Once a TLS session is established,
the RPC payload carried on TLS version 1.3 is forward secure.
However, implementers need to be aware that replay attacks
can occur during session establishment.
Remedies for such attacks are discussed in detail in
.
Further, the current document does not
provide a profile that defines the use of 0-RTT data
(see
).
Therefore, RPC-with-TLS implementations MUST NOT
use 0-RTT data.
The Limitations of Opportunistic Security
Readers can find the definition of Opportunistic Security in
.
A discussion of its underlying principles
appears in Section of that document.
The purpose of using an explicitly opportunistic approach
is to enable interoperation
with implementations that do not support RPC-with-TLS.
A range of options is allowed by this approach,
from "no peer authentication or encryption"
to
"server-only authentication with encryption"
to
"mutual authentication with encryption".
The actual security level may indeed
be selected based on policy and without user intervention.
In environments where interoperability is a priority,
the security benefits of TLS are partially or entirely waived.
Implementations of the mechanism described in the current document
must take care to accurately represent to all RPC consumers
the level of security that is actually in effect,
and are REQUIRED to provide an audit log
of RPC-with-TLS security mode selection.
In all other cases,
the adoption, implementation, and deployment of
RPC-based upper-layer protocols that enforce the use of
TLS authentication and encryption
(when similar RPCSEC_GSS services are not in use)
is strongly encouraged.
STRIPTLS Attacks
The initial AUTH_TLS probe occurs in cleartext.
An on-path attacker can alter a cleartext handshake to make it
appear as though TLS support is not available on one or both peers.
Client implementers can choose from the following to mitigate
STRIPTLS attacks:
A TLSA record
can alert clients that TLS is expected to work, and provide a binding of
a hostname to the X.509 identity. If TLS cannot be negotiated or authentication
fails, the client disconnects and reports the problem. When an opportunistic
security policy is in place, a client SHOULD check for the
existence of a TLSA record for the target server before initiating an
RPC-with-TLS association.
Client security policy can require
that a TLS session is established on every connection.
If an attacker spoofs the handshake,
the client disconnects and reports the problem.
This policy prevents an attacker from causing the association to
fall back to cleartext silently.
If TLSA records are not available, this approach is strongly encouraged.
Privacy Leakage before Session Establishment
As mentioned earlier,
communication between an RPC client and server
appears in the clear on the network
prior to the establishment of a TLS session.
This cleartext information usually includes
transport connection handshake exchanges,
the RPC NULL procedure probing support for TLS,
and the initial parts of TLS session establishment.
discusses precautions that can mitigate exposure during the exchange of
connection handshake information and TLS certificate material that might
enable attackers to track the RPC client. Note that when PSK authentication
is used, the PSK identifier is exposed during the TLS handshake and can be
used to track the RPC client.
Any RPC traffic that appears on the network before
a TLS session has been established is vulnerable to
monitoring or undetected modification.
A secure client implementation limits or prevents
any RPC exchanges that are not protected.
The exception to this edict is
the initial RPC NULL procedure that acts as a STARTTLS message,
which cannot be protected.
This RPC NULL procedure contains no arguments or results,
and the AUTH_TLS authentication flavor it uses
does not contain user information,
so there is negligible privacy impact from this exception.
TLS Identity Management on Clients
The goal of RPC-with-TLS is to hide the content of RPC requests while they are
in transit. RPC-with-TLS protocol by itself cannot protect against
exposure of a user's RPC requests to other users on the same client.
Moreover, client implementations are free to transmit RPC requests
for more than one RPC user using the same TLS session.
Depending on the details of the client RPC implementation,
this means that the client's TLS credentials
are potentially visible to every RPC user that shares a TLS session.
Privileged users may also be able to access this TLS identity.
As a result,
client implementations need to carefully segregate
TLS credentials so that local access to it
is restricted to only the local users that are authorized
to perform operations on the remote RPC server.
Security Considerations for AUTH_SYS on TLS
Using a TLS-protected transport
when the AUTH_SYS authentication flavor is in use
addresses several longstanding weaknesses in AUTH_SYS
(as detailed in
).
TLS augments AUTH_SYS by providing both
integrity protection and confidentiality
that AUTH_SYS lacks.
TLS protects
data payloads,
RPC headers,
and
user identities
against monitoring and alteration while in transit.
TLS guards against in-transit insertion and deletion of RPC messages, thus
ensuring the integrity of the message stream between RPC client and server.
DTLS does not provide full message stream protection, but it does enable
receivers to reject nonparticipant messages. In particular, transport-layer
encryption plus peer authentication protects receiving eXternal Data
Representation (XDR) decoders from deserializing untrusted data, a common
coding vulnerability. However, these decoders would still be exposed to
untrusted input in the case of the compromise of a trusted peer or Certification
Authority.
The use of TLS enables strong authentication
of the communicating RPC peers,
providing a degree of non-repudiation.
When AUTH_SYS is used with TLS,
but the RPC client is unauthenticated,
the RPC server still acts on RPC requests
for which there is no trustworthy authentication.
In-transit traffic is protected, but the RPC client itself
can still misrepresent user identity without server detection.
TLS without authentication is an improvement
from AUTH_SYS without encryption,
but it leaves a critical security exposure.
In light of the above, when AUTH_SYS is used,
the use of a TLS mutual authentication mechanism is
RECOMMENDED
to prove that the RPC client is known to the RPC server.
The server can then determine whether the UIDs and GIDs
in AUTH_SYS requests from that client can be accepted,
based on the authenticated identity of the client.
The use of TLS does not enable RPC clients to detect compromise
that leads to the impersonation of RPC users.
Also, there continues to be a requirement
that the mapping of 32-bit user and group ID values
to user identities
is the same on both the RPC client and server.
Best Security Policy Practices
RPC-with-TLS implementations and deployments
are strongly encouraged to adhere to the following policies
to achieve the strongest possible security with RPC-with-TLS.
When using AUTH_NULL or AUTH_SYS, both peers are
RECOMMENDED
to have DNSSEC TLSA records,
keys with which to perform mutual peer authentication
using one of the methods described in
,
and
a security policy that requires mutual peer authentication
and
rejection of a connection when host authentication fails.
RPCSEC_GSS provides integrity and privacy services that are largely redundant
when TLS is in use. These services SHOULD be disabled in that
case.
IANA ConsiderationsRPC Authentication Flavor
Following , an entry has been added to the "RPC
Authentication Flavor Numbers" registry. The purpose of the new authentication
flavor is to signal the use of TLS with RPC. This new flavor is not a
pseudo-flavor.
The fields in the new entry have been assigned as follows:
Identifier String:
AUTH_TLS
Flavor Name:
TLS
Value:
7
Description:
Indicates support for RPC-with-TLS
Reference:
RFC 9289
ALPN Identifier for SunRPC
Following
,
the following value has been allocated
in the "TLS Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) Protocol IDs" registry.
The "sunrpc" string identifies SunRPC when used over TLS.
Protocol:
SunRPC
Identification Sequence:
0x73 0x75 0x6e 0x72 0x70 0x63 ("sunrpc")
Reference:
RFC 9289
Object Identifier for PKIX Extended Key Usage
Per the Specification Required policy defined in , the following new values
have been registered in the "SMI Security for PKIX Extended Key Purpose"
registry (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3) (see
and
).
Decimal
Description
Reference
33
id-kp-rpcTLSClient
RFC 9289
34
id-kp-rpcTLSServer
RFC 9289
Object Identifier for ASN.1 Module
Per the Specification Required policy defined in , the following new value has been registered in the "SMI Security for PKIX Module Identifier" registry (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.0) (see ).
Decimal
Description
Reference
105
id-mod-rpcWithTLS-2021
RFC 9289
ReferencesNormative ReferencesKey words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement LevelsIn many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.On the Use of Channel Bindings to Secure ChannelsThe concept of channel binding allows applications to establish that the two end-points of a secure channel at one network layer are the same as at a higher layer by binding authentication at the higher layer to the channel at the lower layer. This allows applications to delegate session protection to lower layers, which has various performance benefits.This document discusses and formalizes the concept of channel binding to secure channels. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) ProfileThis memo profiles the X.509 v3 certificate and X.509 v2 certificate revocation list (CRL) for use in the Internet. An overview of this approach and model is provided as an introduction. The X.509 v3 certificate format is described in detail, with additional information regarding the format and semantics of Internet name forms. Standard certificate extensions are described and two Internet-specific extensions are defined. A set of required certificate extensions is specified. The X.509 v2 CRL format is described in detail along with standard and Internet-specific extensions. An algorithm for X.509 certification path validation is described. An ASN.1 module and examples are provided in the appendices. [STANDARDS-TRACK]RPC: Remote Procedure Call Protocol Specification Version 2This document describes the Open Network Computing (ONC) Remote Procedure Call (RPC) version 2 protocol as it is currently deployed and accepted. This document obsoletes RFC 1831. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Representation and Verification of Domain-Based Application Service Identity within Internet Public Key Infrastructure Using X.509 (PKIX) Certificates in the Context of Transport Layer Security (TLS)Many application technologies enable secure communication between two entities by means of Internet Public Key Infrastructure Using X.509 (PKIX) certificates in the context of Transport Layer Security (TLS). This document specifies procedures for representing and verifying the identity of application services in such interactions. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Transport Layer Security (TLS) Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation ExtensionThis document describes a Transport Layer Security (TLS) extension for application-layer protocol negotiation within the TLS handshake. For instances in which multiple application protocols are supported on the same TCP or UDP port, this extension allows the application layer to negotiate which protocol will be used within the TLS connection.Recommendations for Secure Use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) are widely used to protect data exchanged over application protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, IMAP, POP, SIP, and XMPP. Over the last few years, several serious attacks on TLS have emerged, including attacks on its most commonly used cipher suites and their modes of operation. This document provides recommendations for improving the security of deployed services that use TLS and DTLS. The recommendations are applicable to the majority of use cases.Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCsMany protocols make use of points of extensibility that use constants to identify various protocol parameters. To ensure that the values in these fields do not have conflicting uses and to promote interoperability, their allocations are often coordinated by a central record keeper. For IETF protocols, that role is filled by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).To make assignments in a given registry prudently, guidance describing the conditions under which new values should be assigned, as well as when and how modifications to existing values can be made, is needed. This document defines a framework for the documentation of these guidelines by specification authors, in order to assure that the provided guidance for the IANA Considerations is clear and addresses the various issues that are likely in the operation of a registry.This is the third edition of this document; it obsoletes RFC 5226.Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key WordsRFC 2119 specifies common key words that may be used in protocol specifications. This document aims to reduce the ambiguity by clarifying that only UPPERCASE usage of the key words have the defined special meanings.The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3This document specifies version 1.3 of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. TLS allows client/server applications to communicate over the Internet in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery.This document updates RFCs 5705 and 6066, and obsoletes RFCs 5077, 5246, and 6961. This document also specifies new requirements for TLS 1.2 implementations.The Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) Protocol Version 1.3This document specifies version 1.3 of the Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol. DTLS 1.3 allows client/server applications to communicate over the Internet in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery.The DTLS 1.3 protocol is based on the Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 protocol and provides equivalent security guarantees with the exception of order protection / non-replayability. Datagram semantics of the underlying transport are preserved by the DTLS protocol.This document obsoletes RFC 6347.Channel Bindings for TLS 1.3This document defines a channel binding type, tls-exporter, that is compatible with TLS 1.3 in accordance with RFC 5056, "On the Use of Channel Bindings to Secure Channels". Furthermore, it updates the default channel binding to the new binding for versions of TLS greater than 1.2. This document updates RFCs 5801, 5802, 5929, and 7677.Information technology - Open Systems Interconnection - The Directory: Public-key and attribute certificate frameworksInternational Telecommunication UnionInformation technology - Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Specification of basic notationITU-TInformation technology - ASN.1 encoding rules: Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER)ITU-TInformative ReferencesBinding Protocols for ONC RPC Version 2This document describes the binding protocols used in conjunction with the ONC Remote Procedure Call (ONC RPC Version 2) protocols. [STANDARDS-TRACK]RPCSEC_GSS Protocol SpecificationThis memo describes an ONC/RPC security flavor that allows RPC protocols to access the Generic Security Services Application Programming Interface (referred to henceforth as GSS-API). [STANDARDS-TRACK]The DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol: TLSAEncrypted communication on the Internet often uses Transport Layer Security (TLS), which depends on third parties to certify the keys used. This document improves on that situation by enabling the administrators of domain names to specify the keys used in that domain's TLS servers. This requires matching improvements in TLS client software, but no change in TLS server software. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Privacy Considerations for Internet ProtocolsThis document offers guidance for developing privacy considerations for inclusion in protocol specifications. It aims to make designers, implementers, and users of Internet protocols aware of privacy-related design choices. It suggests that whether any individual RFC warrants a specific privacy considerations section will depend on the document's content.Pervasive Monitoring Is an AttackPervasive monitoring is a technical attack that should be mitigated in the design of IETF protocols, where possible.Opportunistic Security: Some Protection Most of the TimeThis document defines the concept "Opportunistic Security" in the context of communications protocols. Protocol designs based on Opportunistic Security use encryption even when authentication is not available, and use authentication when possible, thereby removing barriers to the widespread use of encryption on the Internet.Remote Direct Memory Access Transport for Remote Procedure Call Version 1This document specifies a protocol for conveying Remote Procedure Call (RPC) messages on physical transports capable of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA). This protocol is referred to as the RPC-over- RDMA version 1 protocol in this document. It requires no revision to application RPC protocols or the RPC protocol itself. This document obsoletes RFC 5666.Bidirectional Remote Procedure Call on RPC-over-RDMA TransportsMinor versions of Network File System (NFS) version 4 newer than minor version 0 work best when Remote Procedure Call (RPC) transports can send RPC transactions in both directions on the same connection. This document describes how RPC transport endpoints capable of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) convey RPCs in both directions on a single connection.Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery for Datagram TransportsThis document specifies Datagram Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery (DPLPMTUD). This is a robust method for Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD) for datagram Packetization Layers (PLs). It allows a PL, or a datagram application that uses a PL, to discover whether a network path can support the current size of datagram. This can be used to detect and reduce the message size when a sender encounters a packet black hole. It can also probe a network path to discover whether the maximum packet size can be increased. This provides functionality for datagram transports that is equivalent to the PLPMTUD specification for TCP, specified in RFC 4821, which it updates. It also updates the UDP Usage Guidelines to refer to this method for use with UDP datagrams and updates SCTP.The document provides implementation notes for incorporating Datagram PMTUD into IETF datagram transports or applications that use datagram transports.This specification updates RFC 4960, RFC 4821, RFC 6951, RFC 8085, and RFC 8261.HTTP SemanticsThe Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypertext information systems. This document describes the overall architecture of HTTP, establishes common terminology, and defines aspects of the protocol that are shared by all versions. In this definition are core protocol elements, extensibility mechanisms, and the "http" and "https" Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) schemes.This document updates RFC 3864 and obsoletes RFCs 2818, 7231, 7232, 7233, 7235, 7538, 7615, 7694, and portions of 7230.Known Weaknesses of the AUTH_SYS Authentication Flavor
The ONC RPC protocol, as specified in ,
provides several modes of security, commonly
referred to as "authentication flavors". Some of these flavors provide much
more than an authentication service. We refer to these as authentication
flavors, security flavors, or simply, flavors. One of the earliest and most
basic flavors is AUTH_SYS, also known as AUTH_UNIX.
specifies AUTH_SYS.
AUTH_SYS assumes that the RPC client and server
both use POSIX-style user and group identifiers
(each user and group can be distinctly represented
as a 32-bit unsigned integer).
It also assumes that the client and server
both use the same mapping of user and group to an integer.
One user ID, one primary group ID, and up to 16 supplemental group IDs
are associated with each RPC request.
The combination of these identifies the entity on the client
that is making the request.
A string identifies peers (hosts) in each RPC request.
does not specify any requirements for this string
other than that it is no longer than 255 octets.
It does not have to be the same from request to request.
Also, it does not have to match the DNS hostname of the sending host.
For these reasons,
even though most implementations fill in their hostname in this field,
receivers typically ignore its content.
contains a brief explanation of security considerations:
It should be noted that use of this flavor of authentication does not
guarantee any security for the users or providers of a service, in
itself. The authentication provided by this scheme can be considered
legitimate only when applications using this scheme and the network
can be secured externally, and privileged transport addresses are
used for the communicating end-points (an example of this is the use
of privileged TCP/UDP ports in UNIX systems -- note that not all
systems enforce privileged transport address mechanisms).
It should be clear, therefore, that AUTH_SYS by itself
(i.e., without strong client authentication)
offers little to no communication security:
It does not protect the confidentiality or integrity of
RPC requests,
users,
or
payloads,
relying instead on "external" security.
It does not provide authentication of RPC peer machines,
other than inclusion of an unprotected domain name.
The use of 32-bit unsigned integers as user and group identifiers
is problematic because these data types are
not cryptographically signed or otherwise verified by any authority.
In addition, the mapping of these integers to users and groups
has to be consistent amongst a server and its cohort of clients.
Because the user and group ID fields are not integrity protected,
AUTH_SYS does not provide non-repudiation.
ASN.1 Module
The following module adheres to ASN.1 specifications and .
RPCwithTLS-2021
{ iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1)
security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) id-mod(0)
id-mod-rpcWithTLS-2021(105) }
DEFINITIONS IMPLICIT TAGS ::=
BEGIN
-- OID Arc
id-kp OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::=
{ iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1)
security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) kp(3) }
-- Extended Key Usage Values
id-kp-rpcTLSClient OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-kp 33 }
id-kp-rpcTLSServer OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-kp 34 }
END
Acknowledgments
Special mention goes to
,
author of
"Encrypting NFSv4 with Stunnel TLS". His article inspired the
mechanism described in the current document.
Many thanks to
,
,
and
for their work on prototype implementations and feedback on the current document.
Also, thanks to
for his expert guidance on the use of PKIX and TLS
and to for his ASN.1 expertise and for providing other proper finishing touches.
In addition, the authors thank the other members of the IESG for
their astute review comments. These contributors made this a significantly better document.
Thanks to
for numerous suggestions that improved both
this simple mechanism
and
the current document's security-related discussion.
Many thanks to
Transport Area Director
for his sharp questions and careful reading
of the final revisions of the current document.
The text of
is mostly his contribution.
The authors are additionally grateful to
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
and
for their input and support of this work.
Finally, special thanks to
NFSV4 Working Group Chair and document shepherd
,
NFSV4 Working Group Chairs
and , and NFSV4 Working Group Secretary
for their guidance and oversight.
Authors' AddressesHammerspace Inc.4300 El Camino Real, Suite 105Los AltosCA94022United States of Americatrond.myklebust@hammerspace.comOracle CorporationUnited States of Americachuck.lever@oracle.com