7 Kerberos Working Group K. Raeburn
8 Category: Informational MIT
9 Document: draft-raeburn-krb-gssapi-krb5-3des-01.txt November 24, 2000
12 Triple-DES Support for the Kerberos 5 GSSAPI Mechanism
16 This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
17 all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [1]. Internet-Drafts are
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26 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
27 http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
29 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
30 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
34 The GSSAPI Kerberos 5 mechanism definition [GSSAPI-KRB5] specifically
35 enumerates encryption and checksum types, independently of how such
36 schemes may be used in Kerberos. In the long run, a new Kerberos-
37 based mechanism, which does not require separately enumerating for
38 the GSSAPI mechanism each of the various encryption types defined by
39 Kerberos, is probably a better approach. Various people have
40 expressed interest in designing one, but the work has not yet been
43 The MIT Kerberos 5 release version 1.2 includes support for triple-
44 DES with key derivation [KrbRev]. Recent work by the EFF [EFF] has
45 demonstrated the vulnerability of single-DES mechanisms to brute-
46 force attacks by sufficiently motivated and well-funded parties. So,
47 in the interest of providing increased security in the near term, MIT
48 is adding support for triple-DES to the existing mechanism
49 implementation we ship, as an interim measure.
60 INTERNET DRAFT Triple-DES for GSSAPI Kerberos November 2000
63 2. New Algorithm Identifiers
65 One new sealing algorithm is defined, for use in Wrap tokens.
68 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
70 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
72 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
74 This algorithm uses triple-DES with key derivation, with a usage
75 value KG_USAGE_SEAL. (Unlike the EncryptedData definition in
76 [KrbRev], no integrity protection is needed, so this is "raw" triple-
77 DES, with no checksum attached to the encrypted data.) Padding is
78 still to 8-byte multiples, and the IV for encrypting application data
81 One new signing algorithm is defined, for use in MIC, Wrap, and
85 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
87 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
88 | HMAC SHA1 DES3-KD 04 00 |
89 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
91 This algorithm generates an HMAC using SHA-1 and a derived DES3 key
92 with usage KG_USAGE_SIGN, as described in [KrbRev].
94 [N.B.: The current [KrbRev] description refers to expired I-Ds from
95 Marc Horowitz. The text in [KrbRev] may be inadequate to produce an
96 interoperable implementation.]
98 The checksum size for this algorithm is 20 octets. See section 4.3
99 below for the use of checksum lengths of other than eight bytes.
116 INTERNET DRAFT Triple-DES for GSSAPI Kerberos November 2000
121 For purposes of key derivation, we add three new usage values to the
122 list defined in [KrbRev]; one for signing messages, one for sealing
123 messages, and one for encrypting sequence numbers:
126 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
128 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
132 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
134 4. Adjustments to Previous Definitions
136 4.1. Quality of Protection
138 The GSSAPI specification [GSSAPI] says that a zero QOP value
139 indicates the "default". The original specification for the Kerberos
140 5 mechanism says that a zero QOP value (or a QOP value with the
141 appropriate bits clear) means DES encryption.
143 Rather than forcing the use of plain DES when the application doesn't
144 use mechanism-specific QOP values, we redefine the explicit DES QOP
145 value as a non-zero value, and define a triple-DES value as well.
146 Then a zero value continues to imply the default, which would be
147 triple-DES protection when given a triple-DES session key.
151 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
152 | name value meaning |
153 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
154 | GSS_KRB5_INTEG_C_QOP_HMAC_SHA1 0x0004 SHA-1 HMAC, using |
157 | GSS_KRB5_CONF_C_QOP_DES 0x0100 plain DES encryption |
159 | GSS_KRB5_CONF_C_QOP_DES3_KD 0x0200 triple-DES with key |
161 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
163 Rather than attempt to specify a generic mechanism for deriving a key
164 of one type given a key of another type, and evaluate the security
165 implications of using a short key to generate a longer key to satisfy
166 the requested quality of protection, our implementation will simply
172 INTERNET DRAFT Triple-DES for GSSAPI Kerberos November 2000
175 return an error if the nonzero QOP value specified does not
176 correspond to the session key type.
178 4.2. MIC Sequence Number Encryption
180 The sequence numbers are encrypted in the context key (as defined in
181 [GSSAPI-KRB5] -- this will be either the Kerberos session key or
182 asubkey provided by the context initiator), using whatever encryption
183 system is designated by the type of that context key. The IV is
184 formed from the first N bytes of the SGN_CKSUM field, where N is the
185 number of bytes needed for the IV. (With all algorithms described
186 here and in [GSSAPI-KRB5], the checksum is at least as large as the
191 Both MIC and Wrap tokens, as defined in [GSSAPI-KRB5], contain an
192 checksum field SGN_CKSUM. In [GSSAPI-KRB5], this field was specified
193 as being 8 bytes long. We now change this size to be "defined by the
194 checksum algorithm", and retroactively amend the descriptions of all
195 the checksum algorithms described in [GSSAPI-KRB5] to explicitly
196 specify 8-byte output. Application data continues to immediately
197 follow the checksum field in the Wrap token.
199 The revised message descriptions are thus:
203 Byte # Name Description
204 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
205 0..1 TOK_ID Identification field.
206 2..3 SGN_ALG Integrity algorithm indicator.
207 4..7 Filler Contains ff ff ff ff
208 8..15 SND_SEQ Sequence number field.
209 16..s+15 SGN_CKSUM Checksum of "to-be-signed
210 data", calculated according to
211 algorithm specified in SGN_ALG
228 INTERNET DRAFT Triple-DES for GSSAPI Kerberos November 2000
233 Byte # Name Description
234 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
235 0..1 TOK_ID Identification field. Tokens
236 emitted by GSS_Wrap() contain the
237 hex value 02 01 in this field.
238 2..3 SGN_ALG Checksum algorithm indicator.
239 4..5 SEAL_ALG Sealing algorithm indicator.
240 6..7 Filler Contains ff ff
241 8..15 SND_SEQ Encrypted sequence number field.
242 16..s+15 SGN_CKSUM Checksum of plaintext padded data,
243 calculated according to algorithm
244 specified in SGN_ALG field.
245 s+16..last Data encrypted or plaintext padded data
248 Where "s" indicates the size of the checksum.
250 As indicated above in section 2, we define the HMAC SHA1 DES3-KD
251 checksum algorithm to produce a 20-byte output, so encrypted data
254 5. Backwards Compatibility Considerations
256 The context initiator should request of the KDC credentials using
257 session-key cryptosystem types supported by that implementation; if
258 the only types returned by the KDC are not supported by the mechanism
259 implementation, it should indicate a failure. This may seem obvious,
260 but early implementations of both Kerberos and the GSSAPI Kerberos
261 mechanism supported only DES keys, so the cryptosystem compatibility
262 question was easy to overlook.
264 Under the current mechanism, no negotiation of algorithm types
265 occurs, so server-side (acceptor) implementations cannot request that
266 clients not use algorithm types not understood by the server.
267 However, administration of the server's Kerberos data (e.g., the
268 service key) has to be done in communication with the KDC, and it is
269 from the KDC that the client will request credentials. The KDC could
270 therefore be tasked with limiting session keys for a given service to
271 types actually supported by the Kerberos and GSSAPI software on the
274 This does have a drawback for cases where a service principal name is
275 used both for GSSAPI-based and non-GSSAPI-based communication (most
276 notably the "host" service key), if the GSSAPI implementation does
277 not understand triple-DES but the Kerberos implementation does. It
278 means that triple-DES session keys cannot be issued for that service
284 INTERNET DRAFT Triple-DES for GSSAPI Kerberos November 2000
287 principal, which keeps the protection of non-GSSAPI services weaker
290 It would also be possible to have clients attempt to get single-DES
291 session keys before trying to get triple-DES session keys, and have
292 the KDC refuse to issue the single-DES keys only for the most
293 critical of services, for which single-DES protection is considered
294 inadequate. However, that would eliminate the possibility of
295 connecting with the more secure cryptosystem to any service that can
296 be accessed with the weaker cryptosystem.
298 For MIT's 1.2 release, we chose to go with the former approach,
299 putting the burden on the KDC administration and gaining the best
300 protection possible for GSSAPI services, possibly at the cost of
301 weaker protection of non-GSSAPI Kerberos services running earlier
302 versions of the software.
304 6. Security Considerations
306 Various tradeoffs arise regarding the mixing of new and old software,
307 or GSSAPI-based and non-GSSAPI Kerberos authentication. They are
308 discussed in section 5.
312 [EFF] Electronic Frontier Foundation, "Cracking DES: Secrets of
313 Encryption Research, Wiretap Politics, and Chip Design", O'Reilly &
314 Associates, Inc., May, 1998.
316 [GSSAPI] Linn, J., "Generic Security Service Application Program
317 Interface Version 2, Update 1", RFC 2743, January, 2000.
319 [GSSAPI-KRB5] Linn, J., "The Kerberos Version 5 GSS-API Mechanism",
320 RFC 1964, June, 1996.
322 [KrbRev] Neuman, C., Kohl, J., Ts'o, T., "The Kerberos Network
323 Authentication Service (V5)", draft-ietf-cat-kerberos-
324 revisions-06.txt, July 4, 2000.
328 Kenneth Raeburn Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77
329 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139
331 9. Full Copyright Statement
333 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
340 INTERNET DRAFT Triple-DES for GSSAPI Kerberos November 2000
343 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
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346 and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
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367 10. Document Change History
371 Converted master to GNU troff and tbl, rewriting tables in the
374 Specify informational category only. Modify some text to emphasize
375 that this document intends to describe MIT's extensions.
377 Point out that while EncryptedData for 3des-kd includes a checksum,
378 DES3-KD GSS encryption does not.
380 Shorten backwards-compatibility descriptions a little.
382 Submit to Kerberos working group rather than CAT.