Security - mechanisms used by SCTP
Security based on protocol design by using
- a four way handshake instead of a three way handshake
- explicit verification tags instead of reusing the sequence number like in TCP
- explicit procedures for handling "out of the blue" SCTP datagrams
Security based on the usage of IP Sec
- gives data integrity with the IP Authentication Header (AH)
- gives data confidentiality with the IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
- requires a lot of security associations for one SCTP association due to the current lack of multihoming support of IPSec.