Internet Draft Jesse Walker Expiration: April 2002 Amol Kulkarni File: draft-ietf-rap-cops-tls-02.txt Intel Corp. COPS Over TLS Last Updated: October 18, 2001 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 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 [RFC-2119]. Abstract This memo describes how to use TLS to secure COPS connections over the Internet. Please send comments on this document to the rap@ops.ietf.org mailing list. Walker et al. [Page 1] Internet Draft COPS Over TLS October 2001 Table Of Contents 1. Introduction...................................................3 2. COPS Over TLS..................................................3 2.1. Connection Initiation........................................3 2.2. Connection Closure...........................................4 2.2.1. PEP System Behavior........................................4 2.2.2. PDP System Behavior........................................4 2.3. Port Number..................................................5 3. Endpoint Identification and Access Control.....................5 3.1. PDP Identity.................................................5 3.2. PEP Identity.................................................6 4. IANA Considerations............................................6 5. Security Considerations........................................6 6. Acknowledgements...............................................6 7. References.....................................................7 8. Author Addresses...............................................7 Walker et al. Expires April 2002 [Page 2] Internet Draft COPS Over TLS October 2001 1. Introduction COPS [COPS] was designed to distribute clear-text policy information from a centralized Policy Decision Point (PDP) to a set of Policy Enforcement Points (PEP) in the Internet. COPS provides its own security mechanisms to protect the per-hop integrity of the deployed policy. However, the use of COPS for sensitive applications such as some types of security policy distribution requires additional security measures, such as data privacy. This is because some organizations find it necessary to hide some or all of their security policies, e.g., because policy distribution to devices such as mobile platforms can cross domain boundaries. TLS [TLS] was designed to provide channel-oriented security. TLS standardizes SSL and may be used with any connection-oriented service. TLS provides mechanisms for both one- and two-way authentication, dynamic session keying, and data stream privacy and integrity. This document describes how to use COPS over TLS. "COPS over TLS" is abbreviated COPS/TLS. 2. COPS Over TLS COPS/TLS is very simple: use COPS over TLS exactly as you would use COPS over TCP. 2.1. Connection Initiation The system acting as the PEP also acts as the TLS client. This system initiates a connection to the PDP to the secure COPS port. When this succeeds, the PEP system sends the TLS ClientHello to begin the TLS handshake. When the TLS handshake completes, the PEP MAY initiate the first COPS message. All COPS data MUST be sent as TLS "application data". Normal COPS behavior follows. All PEP implementations of COPS/TLS MUST support an access control mechanism to identify authorized PDPs. This requirement provides a level of assurance that the policy arriving at the PEP is actually valid. The access control mechanism implemented is outside the scope of this document. PEP implementations SHOULD require the use of this access control mechanism for operation of COPS over TLS. When access control is enabled, the PEP implementation MUST NOT initiate COPS/TLS connections to systems not authorized as PDPs by the access control mechanism. Similarly, PDP COPS/TLS implementations MUST support an access control mechanism permitting them to restrict their services to authorized PEP systems only. However, implementations MUST NOT require the use of an access control mechanism at the PDP, as organizations might not consider the types of policy being deployed as sensitive, and therefore do not need to incur the expense of Walker et al. Expires April 2002 [Page 3] Internet Draft COPS Over TLS October 2001 managing credentials for the PEP systems. If access controls are used, however, the PDP implementation MUST terminate COPS/TLS connections from unauthorized PEP systems and log an error if an auditable logging mechanism is present. 2.2. Connection Closure TLS provides facilities to securely close its connections. Reception of a valid closure alert assures an implementation that no further data will arrive on that connection. The TLS specification requires TLS implementations to initiate a closure alert exchange before closing a connection. It also permits TLS implementations to close connections without waiting to receive closure alerts from the peer, provided they send their own first. A connection closed in this way is known as an "incomplete close". TLS allows implementations to reuse the session in this case, but COPS/TLS makes no use of this capability. A connection closed without first sending a closure alert is known as a "premature close". Note that a premature close does not call into question the security of the data already received, but simply indicates that subsequent data might have been truncated. Because TLS is oblivious to COPS message boundaries, it is necessary to examine the COPS data itself (specifically the Message header) to determine whether truncation occurred. 2.2.1. PEP System Behavior PEP implementations MUST treat premature closes as errors and any data received as potentially truncated. The COPS protocol allows the PEP system to find out whether truncation took place. A PEP system detecting an incomplete close SHOULD recover gracefully. PEP systems MUST send a closure alert before closing the connection. Clients unprepared to receive any more data MAY choose not to wait for the PDP system's closure alert and simply close the connection, thus generating an incomplete close on the PDP side. 2.2.2. PDP System Behavior COPS permits a PEP to close the connection at any time, and requires PDPs to recover gracefully. In particular, PDPs SHOULD be prepared to receive an incomplete close from the PEP, since a PEP often shuts down for operational reasons unrelated to the transfer of policy information between the PEP and PDP. Implementation note: The PDP ordinarily expects to be able to signal end of data by closing the connection. However, the PEP may have already sent the closure alert and dropped the connection. PDP systems MUST attempt to initiate an exchange of closure alerts with the PEP system before closing the connection. PDP systems MAY Walker et al. Expires April 2002 [Page 4] Internet Draft COPS Over TLS October 2001 close the connection after sending the closure alert, thus generating an incomplete close on the PEP side. 2.3. Port Number The first data a PDP expects to receive from the PEP is a Client-Open message. The first data a TLS server (and hence a COPS/TLS server) expects to receive is the ClientHello. Consequently, COPS/TLS runs over a separate port in order to distinguish it from COPS alone. When COPS/TLS runs over a TCP/IP connection, the default TCP port at the PDP is TBD. The PEP may use any TCP port. This does not preclude COPS/TLS from running over another transport. TLS only presumes a reliable connection-oriented data stream. 3. Endpoint Identification and Access Control Implementations of COPS/TLS MUST use X.509 v3 certificates conforming to [PKIX] to identify PDP and PEP systems. COPS/TLS systems MUST perform certificate verification processing conforming to [PKIX]. If a subjectAltName extension of type dNSName or iPAddress is present in the PDP's certificate, that MUST be used as the PDP identity. Otherwise, the most specific Common Name field in the Subject field of the certificate MUST be used. Matching is performed using the matching rules specified by [PKIX]. If more than one identity of a given type is present in the certificate (e.g. more than one dNSName name, a match in any one of the set is considered acceptable.), the COPS system uses the first name to match, except as noted below in the IP address checking requirements. Names may contain the wildcard character * which is considered to match any single domain name component or component fragment. For example, *.a.com matches foo.a.com but not bar.foo.a.com. f*.com matches foo.com but not foo.bar.com. 3.1. PDP Identity Generally, COPS/TLS requests are generated by the PEP consulting bootstrap policy information identifying authorized PDPs. As a consequence, the hostname or IP address for the PDP is known to the PEP. How this bootstrap policy information arrives at the PEP is outside the scope of this document. However, all PEP implementations MUST provide a mechanism to securely deliver or configure the bootstrap policy. In particular, all PEP implementations MUST support a mechanism to securely acquire the signing certificate of the authorized certificate authorities issuing PDP certificates, and MUST support a mechanism to securely acquire an access control list or filter identifying its set of authorized PDPs. PEP implementations that participate in multiple domains, such as those on mobile platforms, MAY use different certificate authorities and access control lists in each domain. Walker et al. Expires April 2002 [Page 5] Internet Draft COPS Over TLS October 2001 Organizations may choose to deliver some or all of the bootstrap policy configuration from an untrusted source, such as DHCP. In this circumstance, COPS over TLS provides no protection from attack when this untrusted source is compromised. If the PDP hostname or IP address is available via the access control mechanism, the PEP MUST check it against the PDP's identity as presented in the PDP's TLS Certificate message. In some cases the bootstrap policy will identify the authorized PDP only by an IP address of the PDP system. In this case, the subjectAltName MUST be present in the certificate, and it MUST include an iPAdress format matching the expected name of the policy server. If the hostname of the PDP does not match the identity in the certificate, a PEP on a user oriented system MUST either notify the user (PEP systems MAY afford the user the opportunity to continue with the connection in any case) or terminate the connection with a bad certificate error. PEPs on unattended systems MUST log the error to an appropriate audit log (if available) and MUST terminate the connection (with a bad certificate error). Unattended PEP systems MAY provide a configuration setting that disables this check, but then MUST provide a setting which enables it. 3.2. PEP Identity When PEP systems are not access controlled, the PDP need have no external knowledge of what the PEP's identity ought to be and so checks are neither possible nor necessary. In this case, there is no requirement for PEP systems to register with a certificate authority, and COPS over TLS uses one-way authentication, of the PDP to the PEP. When PEP systems are access controlled, PEPs must be PKI clients in the sense of [PKIX]. In this case, COPS over TLS uses two-way authentication, and the PDP MUST perform the same identity checks for the PEPs as described above for the PDP. When access controls are in effect at the PDP, PDP implementations MUST have a mechanism to securely acquire the signing certificates of the certificate authorities issuing certificates to any of the PEPs they support. 4. IANA Considerations COPS over TLS uses a separate TCP port from COPS. IANA should assign the value TBD to this port. 5. Security Considerations This entire document concerns security. 6. Acknowledgements Walker et al. Expires April 2002 [Page 6] Internet Draft COPS Over TLS October 2001 This document freely plagiarizes and adapts Eric Rescorla's similar document RFC2818 that specifies how HTTP runs over TLS. Discussions with David Durham and Ylian Sainte-Hillaire also lead to improvements in this document. 7. References [COPS] Durham, D., Boyle, J., Cohen, R., Herzog, R., Rajan, R., Sastry, A., "The COPS (Common Open Policy Service) Protocol", RFC 2748, January 200. [PKIX] Housley, R., Ford, W., Polk, W., Solo, D., "Internet Public Key Infrastructure: Part I: X.509 Certificate and CRL Profile", RFC 2459, January 1999. [RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process - Revision 3", RFC 2026, October 1996 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key Words for use in RFCs to indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, March 1997. [TLS] Dierks, T., Allen, C., "The TLS Protocol", RFC2246, January 1999. [RFC2818] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC2818, May 2000. 8. Author Addresses Jesse R. Walker Intel Corporation 2111 N.E. 25th Avenue Hillsboro, OR 97214 USA jesse.walker@intel.com Amol Kulkarni Intel Corporation JF3-206 2111 N.E. 25th Avenue Hillsboro, OR 97214 USA amol.kulkarni@intel.com Walker et al. Expires April 2002 [Page 7]