UTA Y. Sheffer Internet-Draft Porticor Intended status: Best Current Practice R. Holz Expires: April 17, 2015 TUM P. Saint-Andre &yet October 14, 2014 Recommendations for Secure Use of TLS and DTLS draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-05 Abstract Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Security Layer (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 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. 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 working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on April 17, 2015. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2014 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 Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 1] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must 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. Intended Audience and Applicability Statement . . . . . . . . 4 2.1. Security Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2. Unauthenticated TLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3. Conventions used in this document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. General Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.1. Protocol Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.1.1. SSL/TLS Protocol Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.1.2. DTLS Protocol Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.1.3. Fallback to Earlier Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.2. Strict TLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.3. Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4.4. TLS Session Resumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4.5. TLS Renegotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4.6. Server Name Indication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 5. Recommendations: Cipher Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 5.1. General Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 5.2. Recommended Cipher Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 5.3. Cipher Suite Negotiation Details . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 5.4. Public Key Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 5.5. Modular vs. Elliptic Curve DH Cipher Suites . . . . . . . 12 5.6. Truncated HMAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 7.1. Host Name Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 7.2. AES-GCM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 7.3. Forward Secrecy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 7.4. Diffie-Hellman Exponent Reuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 7.5. Certificate Revocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Appendix A. Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 A.1. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 A.2. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-04 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 A.3. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-03 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 A.4. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 A.5. draft-ietf-tls-bcp-01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 2] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 A.6. draft-ietf-tls-bcp-00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 A.7. draft-sheffer-tls-bcp-02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 A.8. draft-sheffer-tls-bcp-01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 A.9. draft-sheffer-tls-bcp-00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 1. Introduction Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Security Layer (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 modes of operation. For instance, both the AES-CBC and RC4 encryption algorithms, which together comprise most current usage, have been attacked in the context of TLS. A companion document [I-D.ietf-uta-tls-attacks] provides detailed information about these attacks. Because of these attacks, those who implement and deploy TLS and DTLS need updated guidance on how TLS can be used securely. Note that this document provides guidance for deployed services as well as software implementations, assuming the implementer expects his or her code to be deployed in environments defined in the following section. In fact, this document calls for the deployment of algorithms that are widely implemented but not yet widely deployed. Concerning deployment, this document targets a wide audience, namely all deployers who wish to add confidentiality and data integrity protection to their communications. In many (but not all) cases authentication is also desired. This document does not address the rare deployment scenarios where no confidentiality is desired. The recommendations herein take into consideration the security of various mechanisms, their technical maturity and interoperability, and their prevalence in implementations at the time of writing. Unless noted otherwise, these recommendations apply to both TLS and DTLS. TLS 1.3, when it is standardized and deployed in the field, should resolve the current vulnerabilities while providing significantly better functionality and will very likely obsolete this document. These are minimum recommendations for the use of TLS for the specified audience. Individual specifications may have stricter requirements related to one or more aspects of the protocol, based on their particular circumstances. When that is the case, implementers MUST adhere to those stricter requirements. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 3] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 Community knowledge about the strength of various algorithms and feasible attacks can change quickly, and experience shows that a security BCP is a point-in-time statement. Readers are advised to seek out any errata or updates that apply to this document. 2. Intended Audience and Applicability Statement The deployment recommendations address the operators of application layer services that are most commonly used on the Internet, including, but not limited to: o Operators of WWW servers that wish to protect HTTP with TLS. o Operators of email servers who wish to protect the application- layer protocols with TLS (e.g., IMAP, POP3 or SMTP). o Operators of instant-messaging services who wish to protect their application-layer protocols with TLS (e.g. XMPP or IRC). 2.1. Security Services This document provides recommendations for an audience that wishes to secure their communication with TLS to achieve the following: o Confidentiality: all (payload) communication is encrypted with the goal that no party should be able to decrypt it except the intended receiver. o Data integrity: any changes made to the communication in transit are detectable by the receiver. o Authentication: this means that an end-point of the TLS communication is authenticated as the intended entity to communicate with. TLS allows to authenticate one or both end- points in the communication. Some TLS usage scenarios do not require authentication, and are further discussed in Section 2.2. Deployers MUST verify that they do not need one of the above security services if they deviate from the recommendations given in this document. This document applies only to environments where confidentiality is required. It recommends algorithms and configuration options that enforce secrecy of the data-in-transit. While this includes the majority of the TLS use cases, there are some notable exceptions. This document assumes that data integrity protection is always one of the goals of a deployment. In cases when integrity is not required, Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 4] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 it does not make sense to employ TLS in the first place. There are attacks against confidentiality-only protection that utilize the lack of integrity to also break confidentiality (see e.g. [DegabrieleP07] in the context of IPsec). The intended audience covers those services that are most commonly used on the Internet. Typically, all communication between clients and servers requires all three of the above security services. This is particularly true where clients are user agents like Web browsers or email software. This document does not address the rare deployment scenarios where one of the above three properties is not desired, with the exception of the use case described in Section 2.2 below. An example of an audience not needing confidentiality is the following: a monitored network where the authorities in charge of the respective traffic domain require full access to unencrypted (plaintext) traffic, and where users collaborate and send their traffic in the clear. 2.2. Unauthenticated TLS Several important applications use TLS to protect data between a client and a server, but do so without the client verifying the server's certificate. The reader is referred to [I-D.dukhovni-smtp-opportunistic-tls] for additional details and an explanation why this insecure practice is still common and likely to remain so for a while. In many of these scenarios the actual use of TLS is optional, i.e. the client decides dynamically ("opportunistically") whether to use TLS with a particular server or to connect in the clear. Opportunistic encryption is described at length in Sec. 2 of [I-D.farrelll-mpls-opportunistic-encrypt]. Despite the threat model differing from "standard" authenticated usage of TLS, the recommendations in this document are applicable to unauthenticated uses of TLS, with the obvious exception of peer authentication. 3. Conventions used in this document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 5] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 4. General Recommendations This section provides general recommendations on the secure use of TLS. Recommendations related to cipher suites are discussed in the following section. 4.1. Protocol Versions 4.1.1. SSL/TLS Protocol Versions It is important both to stop using old, less secure versions of SSL/ TLS and to start using modern, more secure versions; therefore, the following are the recommendations concerning TLS/SSL protocol versions: o Implementations MUST NOT negotiate SSL version 2. Rationale: Today, SSLv2 is considered insecure [RFC6176]. o Implementations MUST NOT negotiate SSL version 3. Rationale: SSLv3 [RFC6101] was an improvement over SSLv2 and plugged some significant security holes, but did not support strong cipher suites. In addition, SSLv3 does not support TLS extensions, some of which (e.g. renegotiation_info) are security- critical. o Implementations SHOULD NOT negotiate TLS version 1.0 [RFC2246]. Rationale: TLS 1.0 (published in 1999) does not support many modern, strong cipher suites. o Implementations MAY negotiate TLS version 1.1 [RFC4346]. Rationale: TLS 1.1 (published in 2006) is a security improvement over TLS 1.0, but still does not support certain stronger cipher suites. o Implementations MUST support, and prefer to negotiate, TLS version 1.2 [RFC5246]. Rationale: Several stronger cipher suites are available only with TLS 1.2 (published in 2008). In fact, the cipher suites recommended by this document (Section 5.2 below) are only available in TLS 1.2. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 6] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 This BCP applies to TLS 1.2. It is not safe for readers to assume that the recommendations in this BCP apply to any future version of TLS. 4.1.2. DTLS Protocol Versions DTLS is an adaptation of TLS for UDP datagrams. The following are the recommendations with respect to DTLS: o Implementations MAY negotiate DTLS version 1.0 [RFC4347]. o Implementations MUST negotiate DTLS version 1.2 [RFC6347]. Rationale: DTLS is an adaptation of TLS for UDP that was introduced when TLS 1.1 was published. Version 1.0 correlates to TLS 1.1 and Version 1.2 correlates to TLS 1.2. There is no Version 1.1. Note: DTLS and TLS are nearly identical. The most notable exception is that RC4, which is a stream-based bulk encryption algorithm, cannot be supported by DTLS. 4.1.3. Fallback to Earlier Versions Clients that "fallback" to lower versions of the protocol after the server rejects higher versions of the protocol MUST NOT fallback to SSLv3. Rationale: Some client implementations revert to lower versions of TLS or even to SSLv3 if the server rejected higher versions of the protocol. This fallback can be forced by a man in the middle (MITM) attacker. TLS 1.0 and SSLv3 are significantly less secure than TLS 1.2, the version recommended by this document. While TLS 1.0-only servers are still quite common, IP scans show that SSLv3-only servers amount to only about 3% of the current Web server population. 4.2. Strict TLS To prevent SSL Stripping: o In cases where an application protocol allows implementations or deployments a choice between strict TLS configuration and dynamic upgrade from unencrypted to TLS-protected traffic (such as STARTTLS), clients and servers SHOULD prefer strict TLS configuration. o In many application protocols, clients can be configured to use TLS even if the server has not advertised that TLS is mandatory or Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 7] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 even supported (e.g., this is often the case in messaging protocols such as IMAP and XMPP). Application clients SHOULD use TLS by default, and disable this default only through explicit configration by the user. o HTTP client and server implementations MUST support the HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) header [RFC6797], in order to allow Web servers to advertise that they are willing to accept TLS-only clients. o When applicable, Web servers SHOULD use HSTS to indicate that they are willing to accept TLS-only clients. Rationale: Combining unprotected and TLS-protected communication opens the way to SSL Stripping and similar attacks, since an initial part of the communication is not integrity protected and therefore can be manipulated by an attacker whose goal is to keep the communication in the clear. 4.3. Compression Implementations and deployments SHOULD disable TLS-level compression ([RFC5246], Sec. 6.2.2). Rationale: TLS compression has been subject to security attacks, such as the CRIME attack. Implementers should note that compression at higher protocol levels can allow an active attacker to extract cleartext information from the connection. The BREACH attack is one such case. These issues can only be mitigated outside of TLS and are thus out of scope of the current document. See Sec. 2.5 of [I-D.ietf-uta-tls-attacks] for further details. 4.4. TLS Session Resumption If TLS session resumption is used, care ought to be taken to do so safely. In particular, when using session tickets [RFC5077], the resumption information MUST be authenticated and encrypted to prevent modification or eavesdropping by an attacker. Further recommendations apply to session tickets: o A strong cipher suite MUST be used when encrypting the ticket (as least as strong as the main TLS cipher suite). o Ticket keys MUST be changed regularly, e.g. once every week, so as not to negate the benefits of forward secrecy (see Section 7.3 for details on forward secrecy). Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 8] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 o Session ticket validity SHOULD be limited to a reasonable duration (e.g. 1 day), for similar reasons. Rationale: session resumption is another kind of TLS handshake, and therefore must be as secure as the initial handshake. This document (Section 5) recommends the use of cipher suites that provide forward secrecy, i.e. that prevent an attacker who gains momentary access to the TLS endpoint (either client or server) and its secrets from reading either past or future communication. The tickets must be managed so as not to negate this security property. 4.5. TLS Renegotiation Where handshake renegotiation is implemented, both clients and servers MUST implement the renegotiation_info extension, as defined in [RFC5746]. To counter the Triple Handshake attack, we adopt the recommendation from [triple-handshake]: TLS clients SHOULD ensure that all certificates received over a connection are valid for the current server endpoint, and abort the handshake if they are not. In some usages, it may be simplest to refuse any change of certificates during renegotiation. 4.6. Server Name Indication TLS implementations MUST support the Server Name Indication (SNI) extension for those higher level protocols which would benefit from it, including HTTPS. However, unlike implementation, the use of SNI in particular circumstances is a matter of local policy. Rationale: SNI supports deployment of multiple TLS-protected virtual servers on a single address, and therefore enables fine grain security for these virtual servers, by allowing each one to have its own certificate. 5. Recommendations: Cipher Suites TLS and its implementations provide considerable flexibility in the selection of cipher suites. Unfortunately many available cipher suites are insecure, and so misconfiguration can easily result in reduced security. This section includes recommendations on the selection and negotiation of cipher suites. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 9] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 5.1. General Guidelines Cryptographic algorithms weaken over time as cryptanalysis improves. In other words, as time progresses, algorithms that were once considered strong but are now weak, need to be phased out over time and replaced with more secure cipher suites to ensure that desired security properties still hold. SSL/TLS has been in existence for almost 20 years at this point and this section provides some much needed recommendations concerning cipher suite selection: o Implementations MUST NOT negotiate the cipher suites with NULL encryption. Rationale: The NULL cipher suites do not encrypt traffic and so provide no confidentiality services. Any entity in the network with access to the connection can view the plaintext of contents being exchanged by the client and server. o Implementations MUST NOT negotiate RC4 cipher suites. Rationale: The RC4 stream cipher has a variety of cryptographic weaknesses, as documented in [I-D.ietf-tls-prohibiting-rc4]. We note that this guideline does not apply to DTLS, which specifically forbids the use of RC4. o Implementations MUST NOT negotiate cipher suites offering only so- called "export-level" encryption (including algorithms with 40 bits or 56 bits of security). Rationale: These cipher suites are deliberately "dumbed down" and are very easy to break. o Applications MUST NOT negotiate cipher suites of less than 112 bits of security. o Implementations SHOULD NOT negotiate cipher suites that use algorithms offering less than 128 bits of security. Rationale: Cipher suites that offer between 112-bits and 128-bits of security are not considered weak at this time, however it is expected that their useful lifespan is short enough to justify supporting stronger cipher suites at this time. 128-bit ciphers are expected to remain secure for at least several years, and 256-bit ciphers "until the next fundamental technology breakthrough". Note that some legacy cipher suites (e.g. 168-bit 3DES) have an effective key length which is smaller than their nominal key length (112 bits in the case of 3DES). Such cipher Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 10] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 suites should be evaluated according to their effective key length. o Implementations MUST support, and SHOULD prefer to negotiate, cipher suites offering forward secrecy, such as those in the Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman and Elliptic Curve Ephemeral Diffie- Hellman ("DHE" and "ECDHE") families. Rationale: Forward secrecy (sometimes called "perfect forward secrecy") prevents the recovery of information that was encrypted with older session keys, thus limiting the amount of time during which attacks can be successful. 5.2. Recommended Cipher Suites Given the foregoing considerations, implementation and deployment of the following cipher suites is RECOMMENDED: o TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 o TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 o TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 o TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 It is noted that those cipher suites are supported only in TLS 1.2 since they are authenticated encryption (AEAD) algorithms [RFC5116]. [RFC4492] allows clients and servers to negotiate ECDH parameters (curves). Both clients and servers SHOULD include the "Supported Elliptic Curves" extension [RFC4492]. For interoperability, clients and servers SHOULD support the NIST P-256 (secp256r1) curve [RFC4492]. In addition, clients SHOULD send an ec_point_formats extension with a single element, "uncompressed". 5.3. Cipher Suite Negotiation Details Clients SHOULD include TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 as the first proposal to any server, unless they have prior knowledge that the server cannot respond to a TLS 1.2 client_hello message. Servers SHOULD prefer this cipher suite whenever it is proposed, even if it is not the first proposal. Clients are of course free to offer stronger cipher suites, e.g. using AES-256; when they do, the server SHOULD prefer the stronger Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 11] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 cipher suite unless there are compelling reasons (e.g., seriously degraded performance) to choose otherwise. Note that other profiles of TLS 1.2 exist that use different cipher suites. For example, [RFC6460] defines a profile that uses the TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 and TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 cipher suites. This document is not an application profile standard, in the sense of Sec. 9 of [RFC5246]. As a result, clients and servers are still REQUIRED to support the mandatory TLS cipher suite, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA. 5.4. Public Key Length When using the cipher suites recommended in this document, two public keys are normally used in the TLS handshake: one for the Diffie- Hellman key agreement and one for server authentication. Where a client certificate is used, a third one is added. With a key exchange based on modular Diffie-Hellman ("DHE" cipher suites), DH key lengths of at least 2048 bits are RECOMMENDED. Rationale: because Diffie-Hellman keys of 1024 bits are estimated to be roughly equivalent to 80-bit symmetric keys, it is better to use longer keys for the "DHE" family of cipher suites. Key lengths of at least 2048 bits are estimated to be roughly equivalent to 112-bit symmetric keys and might be sufficient for at least the next 10 years. See Section 5.5 for additional information on the use of modular Diffie-Hellman in TLS. Servers SHOULD authenticate using 2048-bit certificates. In addition, the use of SHA-256 fingerprints is RECOMMENDED (see [CAB-Baseline] for more details). Clients SHOULD indicate to servers that they request SHA-256, by using the "Signature Algorithms" extension defined in TLS 1.2. 5.5. Modular vs. Elliptic Curve DH Cipher Suites Not all TLS implementations support both modular and EC Diffie- Hellman groups, as required by Section 5.2. Some implementations are severely limited in the length of DH values. When such implementations need to be accommodated, we recommend using (in priority order): 1. Elliptic Curve DHE with negotiated parameters [RFC5289] Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 12] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 2. TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 [RFC5288], with 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman parameters 3. TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, with 1024-bit parameters. Rationale: Elliptic Curve Cryptography is not universally deployed for several reasons, including its complexity compared to modular arithmetic and longstanding IPR concerns. On the other hand, there are two related issues hindering effective use of modular Diffie- Hellman cipher suites in TLS: o There are no protocol mechanisms to negotiate the DH groups or parameter lengths supported by client and server. o There are widely deployed client implementations that reject received DH parameters if they are longer than 1024 bits. We note that with DHE and ECDHE cipher suites, the TLS master key only depends on the Diffie-Hellman parameters and not on the strength of the RSA certificate; moreover, 1024 bit modular DH parameters are generally considered insufficient at this time. With modular ephemeral DH, deployers SHOULD carefully evaluate interoperability vs. security considerations when configuring their TLS endpoints. 5.6. Truncated HMAC Implementations MUST NOT use the Truncated HMAC extension, defined in Sec. 7 of [RFC6066]. Rationale: the extension does not apply to the AEAD cipher suites recommended above. However it does apply to most other TLS cipher suites. Its use has been shown to be insecure in [PatersonRS11]. 6. IANA Considerations This document requests no actions of IANA. [Note to RFC Editor: please remove this whole section before publication.] 7. Security Considerations This entire document discusses the security practices directly affecting applications using the TLS protocol. This section contains broader security considerations related to technologies used in conjunction with or by TLS. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 13] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 7.1. Host Name Validation Application authors should take note that TLS implementations frequently do not validate host names and must therefore determine if the TLS implementation they are using does and, if not, write their own validation code or consider changing the TLS implementation. It is noted that the requirements regarding host name validation (and in general, binding between the TLS layer and the protocol that runs above it) vary between different protocols. For HTTPS, these requirements are defined by Sec. 3 of [RFC2818]. Readers are referred to [RFC6125] for further details regarding generic host name validation in the TLS context. In addition, the RFC contains a long list of example protocols, some of which implement a policy very different from HTTPS. If the host name is discovered indirectly and in an insecure manner (e.g., by an insecure DNS query for an MX or SRV record), it SHOULD NOT be used as a reference identifier [RFC6125] even when it matches the presented certificate. This proviso does not apply if the host name is discovered securely (for further discussion, see for example [I-D.ietf-dane-srv] and [I-D.ietf-dane-smtp]). 7.2. AES-GCM Section 5.2 above recommends the use of the AES-GCM authenticated encryption algorithm. Please refer to [RFC5246], Sec. 11 for general security considerations when using TLS 1.2, and to [RFC5288], Sec. 6 for security considerations that apply specifically to AES-GCM when used with TLS. 7.3. Forward Secrecy Forward secrecy (also often called Perfect Forward Secrecy or "PFS" and defined in [RFC4949]) is a defense against an attacker who records encrypted conversations where the session keys are only encrypted with the communicating parties' long-term keys. Should the attacker be able to obtain these long-term keys at some point later in time, he will be able to decrypt the session keys and thus the entire conversation. In the context of TLS and DTLS, such compromise of long-term keys is not entirely implausible. It can happen, for example, due to: o A client or server being attacked by some other attack vector, and the private key retrieved. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 14] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 o A long-term key retrieved from a device that has been sold or otherwise decommissioned without prior wiping. o A long-term key used on a device as a default key [Heninger2012]. o A key generated by a Trusted Third Party like a CA, and later retrieved from it either by extortion or compromise [Soghoian2011]. o A cryptographic break-through, or the use of asymmetric keys with insufficient length [Kleinjung2010]. PFS ensures in such cases that the session keys cannot be determined even by an attacker who obtains the long-term keys some time after the conversation. It also protects against an attacker who is in possession of the long-term keys, but remains passive during the conversation. PFS is generally achieved by using the Diffie-Hellman scheme to derive session keys. The Diffie-Hellman scheme has both parties maintain private secrets and send parameters over the network as modular powers over certain cyclic groups. The properties of the so- called Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) allow to derive the session keys without an eavesdropper being able to do so. There is currently no known attack against DLP if sufficiently large parameters are chosen. A variant of the Diffie-Hellman scheme uses Elliptic Curves instead of the originally proposed modular arithmetics. Unfortunately, many TLS/DTLS cipher suites were defined that do not feature PFS, e.g. TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256. We thus advocate strict use of PFS-only ciphers. 7.4. Diffie-Hellman Exponent Reuse For performance reasons, many TLS implementations reuse Diffie- Hellman and Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman exponents across multiple connections. Such reuse can result in major security issues: o If exponents are reused for a long time (e.g., more than a few hours), an attacker who gains access to the host can decrypt previous connections. In other words, exponent reuse negates the effects of forward secrecy. o TLS implementations that reuse exponents should test the DH public key they receive, in order to avoid some known attacks. These tests are not standardized in TLS at the time of writing. See [RFC6989] for recipient tests required of IKEv2 implementations that reuse DH exponents. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 15] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 7.5. Certificate Revocation Unfortunately there is currently no effective, Internet-scale mechanism to effect certificate revocation: o Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) are non-scalable and therefore rarely used. o The On-Line Certification Status Protocol (OCSP) presents both scaling and privacy issues when used for heavy traffic Web servers. In addition, clients typically "soft-fail", meaning they do not abort the TLS connection if the OCSP server does not respond. o OCSP stapling (Sec. 8 of [RFC6066]) resolves the operational issues with OCSP, but is still ineffective in the presence of a MITM attacker because the attacker can simply ignore the client's request for a stapled OCSP response. o OCSP stapling as defined in [RFC6066] does not extend to intermediate certificates used in a certificate chain. [RFC6961] addresses this shortcoming, but is a recent addition without much deployment. o Proprietary mechanisms that embed revocation lists in the Web browser's configuration database cannot scale beyond a small number of the most heavily used Web servers. The current consensus appears to be that OCSP stapling, combined with a "must staple" mechanism similar to HSTS, would finally resolve this problem; in particular when used together with the extension defined in [RFC6961]. But such a mechanism has not been standardized yet. 8. Acknowledgments We would like to thank Uri Blumenthal, Viktor Dukhovni, Stephen Farrell, Simon Josefsson, Watson Ladd, Orit Levin, Johannes Merkle, Bodo Moeller, Yoav Nir, Kenny Paterson, Patrick Pelletier, Tom Ritter, Rich Salz, Sean Turner, Aaron Zauner for their review and improvements. Thanks to Brian Smith whose "browser cipher suites" page is a great resource. Finally, thanks to all others who commented on the TLS, UTA and other lists and are not mentioned here by name. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 16] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 9. References 9.1. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2818] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000. [RFC4492] Blake-Wilson, S., Bolyard, N., Gupta, V., Hawk, C., and B. Moeller, "Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Cipher Suites for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 4492, May 2006. [RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008. [RFC5288] Salowey, J., Choudhury, A., and D. McGrew, "AES Galois Counter Mode (GCM) Cipher Suites for TLS", RFC 5288, August 2008. [RFC5289] Rescorla, E., "TLS Elliptic Curve Cipher Suites with SHA- 256/384 and AES Galois Counter Mode (GCM)", RFC 5289, August 2008. [RFC5746] Rescorla, E., Ray, M., Dispensa, S., and N. Oskov, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Renegotiation Indication Extension", RFC 5746, February 2010. [RFC6125] Saint-Andre, P. and J. Hodges, "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)", RFC 6125, March 2011. [RFC6176] Turner, S. and T. Polk, "Prohibiting Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Version 2.0", RFC 6176, March 2011. [RFC6347] Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, January 2012. 9.2. Informative References [CAB-Baseline] CA/Browser Forum, , "Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates Version 1.1.6", 2013, . Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 17] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 [DegabrieleP07] Degabriele, J. and K. Paterson, "Attacking the IPsec standards in encryption-only configurations", 2007, . [Heninger2012] Heninger, N., Durumeric, Z., Wustrow, E., and J. Halderman, "Mining Your Ps and Qs: Detection of Widespread Weak Keys in Network Devices", Usenix Security Symposium 2012, 2012. [I-D.dukhovni-smtp-opportunistic-tls] Dukhovni, V. and W. Hardaker, "SMTP security via opportunistic DANE TLS", draft-dukhovni-smtp- opportunistic-tls-01 (work in progress), July 2013. [I-D.farrelll-mpls-opportunistic-encrypt] Farrel, A. and S. Farrell, "Opportunistic Encryption in MPLS Networks", draft-farrelll-mpls-opportunistic- encrypt-02 (work in progress), February 2014. [I-D.ietf-dane-smtp] Finch, T., "Secure SMTP using DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) TLSA records.", draft-ietf-dane- smtp-01 (work in progress), February 2013. [I-D.ietf-dane-srv] Finch, T., Miller, M., and P. Saint-Andre, "Using DNS- Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) TLSA Records with SRV Records", draft-ietf-dane-srv-07 (work in progress), July 2014. [I-D.ietf-tls-prohibiting-rc4] Popov, A., "Prohibiting RC4 Cipher Suites", draft-ietf- tls-prohibiting-rc4-00 (work in progress), July 2014. [I-D.ietf-uta-tls-attacks] Sheffer, Y., Holz, R., and P. Saint-Andre, "Summarizing Current Attacks on TLS and DTLS", draft-ietf-uta-tls- attacks-04 (work in progress), September 2014. [Kleinjung2010] Kleinjung, T., "Factorization of a 768-Bit RSA Modulus", CRYPTO 10, 2010, . Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 18] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 [PatersonRS11] Paterson, K., Ristenpart, T., and T. Shrimpton, "Tag size does matter: attacks and proofs for the TLS record protocol", 2011, . [RFC2246] Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0", RFC 2246, January 1999. [RFC4346] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1", RFC 4346, April 2006. [RFC4347] Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer Security", RFC 4347, April 2006. [RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2", RFC 4949, August 2007. [RFC5077] Salowey, J., Zhou, H., Eronen, P., and H. Tschofenig, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Session Resumption without Server-Side State", RFC 5077, January 2008. [RFC5116] McGrew, D., "An Interface and Algorithms for Authenticated Encryption", RFC 5116, January 2008. [RFC6066] Eastlake, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066, January 2011. [RFC6101] Freier, A., Karlton, P., and P. Kocher, "The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Protocol Version 3.0", RFC 6101, August 2011. [RFC6460] Salter, M. and R. Housley, "Suite B Profile for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 6460, January 2012. [RFC6797] Hodges, J., Jackson, C., and A. Barth, "HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)", RFC 6797, November 2012. [RFC6961] Pettersen, Y., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Multiple Certificate Status Request Extension", RFC 6961, June 2013. [RFC6989] Sheffer, Y. and S. Fluhrer, "Additional Diffie-Hellman Tests for the Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)", RFC 6989, July 2013. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 19] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 [Soghoian2011] Soghoian, C. and S. Stamm, "Certified lies: Detecting and defeating government interception attacks against SSL.", Proc. 15th Int. Conf. Financial Cryptography and Data Security , 2011. [triple-handshake] Delignat-Lavaud, A., Bhargavan, K., and A. Pironti, "Triple Handshakes Considered Harmful: Breaking and Fixing Authentication over TLS", 2014, . Appendix A. Change Log Note to RFC Editor: please remove this section before publication. A.1. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-05 o Lots of comments by Sean Turner. o Unauthenticated TLS, following a long thread on the list. A.2. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-04 o Some cleanup, and input from TLS WG discussion on applicability. A.3. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-03 o Disallow truncated HMAC. o Applicability to DTLS. o Some more text restructuring. o Host name validation is sometimes irrelevant. o HSTS: MUST implement, SHOULD deploy. o Session identities are not protected, only tickets are. o Clarified the target audience. A.4. draft-ietf-uta-tls-bcp-02 o Rearranged some sections for clarity and re-styled the text so that normative text is followed by rationale where possible. o Removed the recommendation to use Brainpool curves. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 20] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 o Triple Handshake mitigation. o MUST NOT negotiate algorithms lower than 112 bits of security. o MUST implement SNI, but use per local policy. o Changed SHOULD NOT negotiate or fall back to SSLv3 to MUST NOT. o Added hostname validation. o Non-normative discussion of DH exponent reuse. A.5. draft-ietf-tls-bcp-01 o Clarified that specific TLS-using protocols may have stricter requirements. o Changed TLS 1.0 from MAY to SHOULD NOT. o Added discussion of "optional TLS" and HSTS. o Recommended use of the Signature Algorithm and Renegotiation Info extensions. o Use of a strong cipher for a resumption ticket: changed SHOULD to MUST. o Added an informational discussion of certificate revocation, but no recommendations. A.6. draft-ietf-tls-bcp-00 o Initial WG version, with only updated references. A.7. draft-sheffer-tls-bcp-02 o Reorganized the content to focus on recommendations. o Moved description of attacks to a separate document (draft- sheffer-uta-tls-attacks). o Strengthened recommendations regarding session resumption. A.8. draft-sheffer-tls-bcp-01 o Clarified our motivation in the introduction. o Added a section justifying the need for PFS. Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 21] Internet-Draft TLS Recommendations October 2014 o Added recommendations for RSA and DH parameter lengths. Moved from DHE to ECDHE, with a discussion on whether/when DHE is appropriate. o Recommendation to avoid fallback to SSLv3. o Initial information about browser support - more still needed! o More clarity on compression. o Client can offer stronger cipher suites. o Discussion of the regular TLS mandatory cipher suite. A.9. draft-sheffer-tls-bcp-00 o Initial version. Authors' Addresses Yaron Sheffer Porticor 29 HaHarash St. Hod HaSharon 4501303 Israel Email: yaronf.ietf@gmail.com Ralph Holz Technische Universitaet Muenchen Boltzmannstr. 3 Garching 85748 Germany Email: ralph.ietf@gmail.com Peter Saint-Andre &yet Email: peter@andyet.com URI: https://andyet.com/ Sheffer, et al. Expires April 17, 2015 [Page 22]