1 Network Working Group S. Josefsson
2 Internet-Draft November 13, 2004
7 Using Transport Layer Security (TLS) with Kerberos 5
8 draft-josefsson-kerberos5-starttls-00
14 This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions
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42 This Internet-Draft will expire on May 14, 2005.
48 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).
54 This document specify how the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol
55 is used in conjunction with the Kerberos 5 protocol.
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74 1. Introduction and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
75 2. Extension Mechanism for TCP/IP transport . . . . . . . . . . . 4
76 3. Kerberos 5 STARTTLS Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
77 3.1 STARTTLS requested by client (extension 1) . . . . . . . . 4
78 3.2 STARTTLS request accepted by server (extension 2) . . . . 5
79 3.3 Proceeding after successful TLS negotiation . . . . . . . 5
80 3.4 Proceeding after failed TLS negotiation . . . . . . . . . 5
81 3.5 STARTTLS aware KDC Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
82 3.6 Initial Authentication via TLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
83 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
84 5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
85 5.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
86 5.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
87 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
88 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 8
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129 1. Introduction and Background
132 This document describe how Shishi, a Kerberos 5 [1] implementation,
133 upgrade communication between clients and Key Distribution Centers
134 (KDCs) to use the Transport Layer Security (TLS) [2] protocol.
137 The TLS protocol offer integrity and privacy protected exchanges that
138 can be authentication using X.509 certificates, OpenPGP keys [6], and
139 user name and passwords via SRP [5].
142 An inconclusive list of the motivation for using TLS with Kerberos 5
146 o Explicit server authentication of the KDC to the client. In
147 traditional Kerberos 5, authentication of the KDC is proved as a
148 side effect that the KDC knows your encryption key (i.e., your
152 o Flexible authentication against KDC. Kerberos 5 assume the user
153 knows a key (usually in the form of a password). Sometimes
154 external factors make this hard to fulfill. In some situations,
155 users are equipped with smart cards with a RSA authentication key.
156 In others, users have a OpenPGP client on their desktop, with a
157 public OpenPGP key known to the server. In some situations, the
158 policy may be that password authentication may only be done
162 o Kerberos exchanges are privacy protected. Part of many Kerberos
163 packets are transfered without privacy protection (i.e.,
164 encryption). That part contains information, such as the client
165 principal name, the server principal name, the encryption types
166 supported by the client, the lifetime of tickets, etc. Revealing
167 such information is, in some threat models, considered a problem.
170 o Prevents downgrade attacks affecting encryption types. The
171 encryption type of the ticket in KDC-REQ are sent in the clear in
172 Kerberos 5. This allows an attacker to replace the encryption
173 type with a compromised mechanisms, e.g. 56-bit DES. Since
174 clients in general cannot know the encryption types other servers
175 support, it is difficult for the client to detect if there was a
176 man-in-the-middle or if the remote server simply did not support a
177 stronger mechanism. Clients could chose to refuse 56-bit DES
178 altogether, but in some environments this leads to operational
182 o The TLS protocol has been studied by many parties. In some threat
183 models, the designer prefer to reduce the number of protocols that
184 can hurt the overall system security if they are compromised.
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194 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
195 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
196 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [4].
199 2. Extension Mechanism for TCP/IP transport
202 Kerberos 5 require Key Distribution Centers (KDCs) to accept requests
203 over TCP. Each request and response is prefixed by 4 octets,
204 encoding an integer in network byte order, that indicate the length
205 of the packet. The high bit of the 4 octet length field was reserved
206 for future expansion. Servers that do not understand how to
207 interpret a set high bit are required to return a KRB-ERROR with the
208 KRB_ERR_FIELD_TOOLONG error code, and to close the TCP stream.
211 We will use the reserved bit to provide an extension mechanism. When
212 the reserved high bit is set, the remaining 31 bits of the 4 octets
213 are treated as an extensible typed hole, and thus form a 31 bit
214 integer enumerating various extensions. Each of the values indicate
215 a specific extended operation mode, two of which are used and defined
216 here, and the rest are left for others to use.
219 If the KDC do not understand a requested extension, it MUST return a
220 KRB-ERROR with a KRB_ERR_FIELD_TOOLONG value (prefixed by the 4 octet
221 length integer, with the high bit clear, as usual) and close the TCP
225 The following table specify the meaning of the 31 lower bits in the 4
226 octet field, when the high bit is set:
230 1 STARTTLS requested by client.
231 2 STARTTLS request accepted by server.
232 3...2147483647 AVAILABLE for registration (via bug-shishi@josefsson.org).
237 3. Kerberos 5 STARTTLS Extension
240 3.1 STARTTLS requested by client (extension 1)
243 When this message is sent by the client, the client is requesting the
244 server to start TLS negotiation on the TCP stream. The client MUST
245 NOT start TLS negotiation immediately. Instead, the client wait for
246 either a KRB-ERROR (sent normally, prefixed by a 4 octet length
247 integer) indicating the server do not understand the set high bit, or
248 4 octets which is to be interpreted as an integer in network byte
249 order, where the high bit is set and the remaining 31 bit are
250 interpreted as an integer specifying ``STARTTLS request accepted by
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260 server'' (extension 2). In the first case, the client infer that the
261 server do not understand (or wish to support) STARTTLS, and can
262 re-try using normal TCP, if unprotected Kerberos 5 exchanges are
263 acceptable to the client policy. In the latter case, it should
264 invoke TLS negotiation on the stream. If any other data is received,
265 the client MUST close the TCP stream.
268 3.2 STARTTLS request accepted by server (extension 2)
271 This message should be sent by the server when it has received the
272 extension 1 message. The message is an acknowledgment of the
273 client's request to initiate STARTTLS on the channel. The server
274 MUST then invoke a TLS negotiation.
277 3.3 Proceeding after successful TLS negotiation
280 If the TLS negotiation ended successfully, possibly also considering
281 client or server policies, the exchange within the TLS protected
282 stream is performed like normal UDP Kerberos 5 exchanges, i.e., there
283 is no TCP 4 octet length field before each packet. Instead each
284 Kerberos packet MUST be sent within one TLS record, so the
285 application can use the TLS record length as the Kerberos 5 packet
289 3.4 Proceeding after failed TLS negotiation
292 If the TLS negotiation fails, possibly due to client or server policy
293 (e.g., inadequate support of encryption types in TLS, or lack of
294 client or server authentication) the entity that detect the failure
295 MUST disconnected the connection. It is expected that any error
296 messages that explain the error condition is transfered by TLS.
299 3.5 STARTTLS aware KDC Discovery
302 Section 7.2.3 of Kerberos 5 [1] describe how Domain Name System (DNS)
303 SRV records [3] can be used to find the address of an KDC. To locate
304 a KDC that support the STARTTLS extension, we use the "_tls" domain.
308 _kerberos._tls._tcp.EXAMPLE.COM. IN SRV 0 0 88 kdc1.example.com.
309 _kerberos._tls._tcp.EXAMPLE.COM. IN SRV 1 0 88 kdc2.example.com.
313 3.6 Initial Authentication via TLS
316 The server MAY consider the authentication performed by the TLS
317 exchange as sufficient to issue Kerberos 5 tickets to the client,
318 without requiring, e.g., pre-authentication. However, it is not an
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328 error to require or use pre-authentication as well.
331 The client may also indicate that it wishes to use TLS both for
332 authentication and data protection by using the NULL encryption type
333 in its request. The server can decide from its local policy whether
334 or not issuing tickets based solely on TLS authentication, and
335 whether NULL encryption within TLS, is acceptable or not.
338 4. Security Considerations
341 Because the initial token is not protected, it is possible for an
342 active attacker to make it appear to the client that the server do
343 not support this extension. It is up to client configuration to
344 disallow non-TLS connections, if that vulnerability is deemed
345 unacceptable. For interoperability, we suggest the default behaviour
346 should be to allow automatic fall back to TCP or UDP.
349 The security considerations of both TLS and Kerberos 5 are inherited.
350 Using TLS for authentication and/or data protection together with
351 Kerberos alter the authentication logic fundamentally. Thus, it may
352 be that even if the TLS and Kerberos 5 protocols and implementations
353 were secure, the combination of TLS and Kerberos 5 described here
357 No channel bindings are provided in the Kerberos messages. It is an
358 open question whether, and how, this could be solved. One idea for
359 solving this may be to specify a new encryption algorithm in Kerberos
360 5 that is similar to the NULL encryption algorithm, but also include
361 the TLS session identifier.
367 5.1 Normative References
370 [1] Neuman, C., "The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5)",
371 draft-ietf-krb-wg-kerberos-clarifications-07 (work in progress),
375 [2] Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0", RFC
379 [3] Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P. and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for
380 specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782,
384 5.2 Informative References
387 [4] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
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397 Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
400 [5] Taylor, D., "Using SRP for TLS Authentication",
401 draft-ietf-tls-srp-08 (work in progress), August 2004.
404 [6] Mavroyanopoulos, N., "Using OpenPGP keys for TLS
405 authentication", draft-ietf-tls-openpgp-keys-05 (work in
406 progress), April 2004.
416 EMail: simon@josefsson.org
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