Internet-Draft SFrame March 2023
Omara, et al. Expires 14 September 2023 [Page]
Workgroup:
Network Working Group
Internet-Draft:
draft-ietf-sframe-enc-01
Published:
Intended Status:
Standards Track
Expires:
Authors:
E. Omara
Apple
J. Uberti
Google
S. Murillo
CoSMo Software
R. L. Barnes, Ed.
Cisco
Y. Fablet
Apple

Secure Frame (SFrame)

Abstract

This document describes the Secure Frame (SFrame) end-to-end encryption and authentication mechanism for media frames in a multiparty conference call, in which central media servers (selective forwarding units or SFUs) can access the media metadata needed to make forwarding decisions without having access to the actual media.

The proposed mechanism differs from the Secure Real-Time Protocol (SRTP) in that it is independent of RTP (thus compatible with non-RTP media transport) and can be applied to whole media frames in order to be more bandwidth efficient.

About This Document

This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://sframe-wg.github.io/sframe/draft-ietf-sframe-enc.html. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-sframe-enc/.

Discussion of this document takes place on the Secure Media Frames Working Group mailing list (mailto:sframe@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/sframe/. Subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sframe/.

Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/sframe-wg/sframe.

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 https://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 14 September 2023.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Modern multi-party video call systems use Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) servers to efficiently route RTP streams to call endpoints based on factors such as available bandwidth, desired video size, codec support, and other factors. An SFU typically does not need access to the media content of the conference, allowing for the media to be "end-to-end" encrypted so that it cannot be decrypted by the SFU. In order for the SFU to work properly, though, it usually needs to be able to access RTP metadata and RTCP feedback messages, which is not possible if all RTP/RTCP traffic is end-to-end encrypted.

As such, two layers of encryptions and authentication are required:

  1. Hop-by-hop (HBH) encryption of media, metadata, and feedback messages between the the endpoints and SFU
  2. End-to-end (E2E) encryption of media between the endpoints

The Secure Real-Time Protocol (SRTP) is already widely used for HBH encryption [RFC3711]. The SRTP "double encryption" scheme defines a way to do E2E encryption in SRTP [RFC8723]. Unfortunately, this scheme has poor efficiency and high complexity, and its entanglement with RTP makes it unworkable in several realistic SFU scenarios.

This document proposes a new end-to-end encryption mechanism known as SFrame, specifically designed to work in group conference calls with SFUs. SFrame is a general encryption framing that can be used to protect payloads sent over SRTP

V=2 P X CC M PT sequence number timestamp synchronization source (SSRC) identifier contributing source (CSRC) identifiers .... RTP extension(s) (OPTIONAL) SFrame header SFrame encrypted and authenticated payload SRTP authentication tag SRTP Encrypted Portion SRTP Authenticated Portion
Figure 1: SRTP packet with SFrame-protected payload

2. Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

SFU:

Selective Forwarding Unit (AKA RTP Switch)

IV:

Initialization Vector

MAC:

Message Authentication Code

E2EE:

End to End Encryption

HBH:

Hop By Hop

3. Goals

SFrame is designed to be a suitable E2EE protection scheme for conference call media in a broad range of scenarios, as outlined by the following goals:

  1. Provide an secure E2EE mechanism for audio and video in conference calls that can be used with arbitrary SFU servers.
  2. Decouple media encryption from key management to allow SFrame to be used with an arbitrary key management system.
  3. Minimize packet expansion to allow successful conferencing in as many network conditions as possible.
  4. Independence from the underlying transport, including use in non-RTP transports, e.g., WebTransport.
  5. When used with RTP and its associated error resilience mechanisms, i.e., RTX and FEC, require no special handling for RTX and FEC packets.
  6. Minimize the changes needed in SFU servers.
  7. Minimize the changes needed in endpoints.
  8. Work with the most popular audio and video codecs used in conferencing scenarios.

4. SFrame

This document defines an encryption mechanism that provides effective end-to-end encryption, is simple to implement, has no dependencies on RTP, and minimizes encryption bandwidth overhead. Because SFrame can encrypt a full frame, rather than individual packets, bandwidth overhead can reduced by adding encryption overhead only once per media frame, instead of once per packet.

4.1. Application Context

SFrame is a general encryption framing, which is typically applied in one of two ways: Either to encrypt whole media frames (per-frame) or individual media payloads (per-packet). The scale at which SFrame encryption is applied to media determines the overall amount of overhead that SFrame adds to the media stream, as well as the engineering complexity involved in integrating SFrame into a particular environment.

For example, Figure 2 shows a typical media stack that takes media in from some source, encodes it into frames, divides those frames into media payloads, and then sends those payloads in SRTP packets. Arrows indicate the points where SFrame protection would be integrated into this media stack, when applied per-frame or per-packet.

Applying SFrame per-frame in this system offers higher efficiency, but may require a more complex integration in environments where depacketization relies on the content of media packets. Applying SFrame per-packet avoids this complexity, at the cost of higher bandwidth consumption. Some quantitative discussion of these trade-offs is provided in Appendix B.

As noted above, however, SFrame is a general media encapsulation, and can be applied in other scenarios. The precise efficiency and complexity trade-offs will depend on the environment in which SFrame is being integrated.

SRTP Encode Packetize Encrypt SFrame SFrame Protect Protect Alice (per-frame) (per-packet) E2E Key HBH Key Media Management Management Server SFrame SFrame Unprotect Unprotect (per-frame) (per-packet) SRTP Decode Depacketize Decrypt Bob
Figure 2

Like SRTP, SFrame does not define how the keys used for SFrame are exchanged by the parties in the conference. Keys for SFrame might be distributed over an existing E2E-secure channel (see Section 5.1), or derived from an E2E-secure shared secret (see Section 5.2). The key management system MUST ensure that each key used for encrypting media is used by exactly one media sender, in order to avoid reuse of IVs.

4.2. SFrame Ciphertext

An SFrame ciphertext comprises an SFrame header followed by the output of an AEAD encryption of the plaintext [RFC5116], with the header provided as additional authenticated data (AAD).

The SFrame header is a variable-length structure described in detail in Section 4.3. The structure of the encrypted data and authentication tag are determined by the AEAD algorithm in use.

^ S LEN X KID Frame Counter ^ Encrypted Data > < Authentication Tag Encrypted Portion Authenticated Portion

When SFrame is applied per-packet, the payload of each packet will be an SFrame ciphertext. When SFrame is applied per-frame, the SFrame ciphertext representing an encrypted frame will span several packets, with the header appearing in the first packet and the authentication tag in the last packet.

4.3. SFrame Header

The SFrame header specifies two values from which encryption parameters are derived:

  • A Key ID (KID) that determines which encryption key should be used
  • A counter (CTR) that is used to construct the IV for the encryption

Applications MUST ensure that each (KID, CTR) combination is used for exactly one encryption operation. Typically this is done by assigning each sender a KID or set of KIDs, then having each sender use the CTR field as a monotonic counter, incrementing for each plaintext that is encrypted. Note that in addition to its simplicity, this scheme minimizes overhead by keeping CTR values as small as possible.

Both the counter and the key id are encoded as integers in network (big-endian) byte order, in a variable length format to decrease the overhead. The length of each field is up to 8 bytes and is represented in 3 bits in the SFrame header: 000 represents a length of 1, 001 a length of 2, etc.

The first byte in the SFrame header has a fixed format and contains the header metadata:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R LEN X K
Figure 3: SFrame header metadata
Reserved (R, 1 bit):

This field MUST be set to zero on sending, and MUST be ignored by receivers.

Counter Length (LEN, 3 bits):

This field indicates the length of the CTR field in bytes, minus one (the range of possible values is thus 1-8).

Extended Key Id Flag (X, 1 bit):

Indicates if the key field contains the key id or the key length.

Key or Key Length (K, 3 bits):

This field contains the key id (KID) if the X flag is set to 0, or the key length (KLEN) if set to 1.

If X flag is 0, then the KID is in the range of 0-7 and the counter (CTR) is found in the next LEN bytes:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R LEN 0 KID CTR... (length=LEN)
Figure 4: SFrame header with short KID

If X flag is 1 then KLEN is the length of the key (KID) in bytes, minus one (the range of possible lengths is thus 1-8). The KID is encoded in the KLEN bytes following the metadata byte, and the counter (CTR) is encoded in the next LEN bytes:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R LEN 1 KLEN KID... (length=KLEN) CTR... (length=LEN)

4.4. Encryption Schema

SFrame encryption uses an AEAD encryption algorithm and hash function defined by the ciphersuite in use (see Section 4.5). We will refer to the following aspects of the AEAD algorithm below:

  • AEAD.Encrypt and AEAD.Decrypt - The encryption and decryption functions for the AEAD. We follow the convention of RFC 5116 [RFC5116] and consider the authentication tag part of the ciphertext produced by AEAD.Encrypt (as opposed to a separate field as in SRTP [RFC3711]).
  • AEAD.Nk - The size of a key for the encryption algorithm, in bytes
  • AEAD.Nn - The size of a nonce for the encryption algorithm, in bytes
  • AEAD.Nt - The overhead of the encryption algorithm, in bytes (typically the size of a "tag" that is added to the plaintext)

4.4.1. Key Selection

Each SFrame encryption or decryption operation is premised on a single secret base_key, which is labeled with an integer KID value signaled in the SFrame header.

The sender and receivers need to agree on which key should be used for a given KID. The process for provisioning keys and their KID values is beyond the scope of this specification, but its security properties will bound the assurances that SFrame provides. For example, if SFrame is used to provide E2E security against intermediary media nodes, then SFrame keys need to be negotiated in a way that does not make them accessible to these intermediaries.

For each known KID value, the client stores the corresponding symmetric key base_key. For keys that can be used for encryption, the client also stores the next counter value CTR to be used when encrypting (initially 0).

When encrypting a plaintext, the application specifies which KID is to be used, and the counter is incremented after successful encryption. When decrypting, the base_key for decryption is selected from the available keys using the KID value in the SFrame Header.

A given key MUST NOT be used for encryption by multiple senders. Such reuse would result in multiple encrypted frames being generated with the same (key, nonce) pair, which harms the protections provided by many AEAD algorithms. Implementations SHOULD mark each key as usable for encryption or decryption, never both.

Note that the set of available keys might change over the lifetime of a real-time session. In such cases, the client will need to manage key usage to avoid media loss due to a key being used to encrypt before all receivers are able to use it to decrypt. For example, an application may make decryption-only keys available immediately, but delay the use of keys for encryption until (a) all receivers have acknowledged receipt of the new key or (b) a timeout expires.

4.4.2. Key Derivation

SFrame encrytion and decryption use a key and salt derived from the base_key associated to a KID. Given a base_key value, the key and salt are derived using HKDF [RFC5869] as follows:

sframe_secret = HKDF-Extract(base_key, 'SFrame10')
sframe_key = HKDF-Expand(sframe_secret, 'key', AEAD.Nk)
sframe_salt = HKDF-Expand(sframe_secret, 'salt', AEAD.Nn)

The hash function used for HKDF is determined by the ciphersuite in use.

4.4.3. Encryption

SFrame encryption uses the AEAD encryption algorithm for the ciphersuite in use. The key for the encryption is the sframe_key and the nonce is formed by XORing the sframe_salt with the current counter, encoded as a big-endian integer of length AEAD.Nn.

The encryptor forms an SFrame header using the CTR, and KID values provided. The encoded header is provided as AAD to the AEAD encryption operation, together with application-provided metadata about the encrypted media.

def encrypt(S, CTR, KID, metadata, plaintext):
  sframe_key, sframe_salt = key_store[KID]

  ctr = encode_big_endian(CTR, AEAD.Nn)
  nonce = xor(sframe_salt, CTR)

  header = encode_sframe_header(CTR, KID)
  aad = header + metadata

  ciphertext = AEAD.Encrypt(sframe_key, nonce, aad, plaintext)
  return header + ciphertext

The metadata input to encryption allows for frame metadata to be authenticated when SFrame is applied per-frame. After encoding the frame and before packetizing it, the necessary media metadata will be moved out of the encoded frame buffer, to be sent in some channel visibile to the SFU (e.g., an RTP header extension).

The encrypted payload is then passed to a generic RTP packetized to construct the RTP packets and encrypt it using SRTP keys for the HBH encryption to the media server.

frame metadata frame header AAD S KID sframe_key Key sframe_salt CTR Nonce AEAD Encrypt encrypted frame generic RTP packetize ... SFrame header payload 2/N ... payload N/N payload 1/N
Figure 5: Encryption flow with per-frame encryption

4.4.4. Decryption

Before decrypting, a client needs to assemble a full SFrame ciphertext. When SFrame is applied per-packet, this is done by extracting the payload of a decrypted SRTP packet. When SFrame is applied per-frame, the receiving client buffers all packets that belongs to the same frame using the frame beginning and ending marks in the generic RTP frame header extension. Once all packets are available and in order, the receiver forms an SFrame ciphertext by concatenating their payloads, then passes the ciphertext to SFrame for decryption.

The KID field in the SFrame header is used to find the right key and salt for the encrypted frame, and the CTR field is used to construct the nonce.

def decrypt(metadata, sframe):
  CTR, KID, ciphertext = parse_ciphertext(sframe)

  sframe_key, sframe_salt = key_store[KID]

  ctr = encode_big_endian(CTR, AEAD.Nn)
  nonce = xor(sframe_salt, ctr)
  aad = header + metadata

  return AEAD.Decrypt(sframe_key, nonce, aad, ciphertext)

If a ciphertext fails to decrypt because there is no key available for the KID in the SFrame header, the client MAY buffer the ciphertext and retry decryption once a key with that KID is received.

4.4.5. Duplicate Frames

Unlike messaging application, in video calls, receiving a duplicate frame doesn't necessary mean the client is under a replay attack, there are other reasons that might cause this, for example the sender might just be sending them in case of packet loss. SFrame decryptors use the highest received frame counter to protect against this. It allows only older frame pithing a short interval to support out of order delivery.

4.5. Ciphersuites

Each SFrame session uses a single ciphersuite that specifies the following primitives:

  • A hash function used for key derivation
  • An AEAD encryption algorithm [RFC5116] used for frame encryption, optionally with a truncated authentication tag

This document defines the following ciphersuites:

Table 1
Value Name Nh Nk Nn Nt Reference
0x0001 AES_CTR_128_HMAC_SHA256_80 32 16 12 10 RFC XXXX
0x0002 AES_CTR_128_HMAC_SHA256_64 32 16 12 8 RFC XXXX
0x0003 AES_CTR_128_HMAC_SHA256_32 32 16 12 4 RFC XXXX
0x0004 AES_GCM_128_SHA256_128 32 16 12 16 RFC XXXX
0x0005 AES_GCM_256_SHA512_128 64 32 12 16 RFC XXXX

In the suite names, the length of the authentication tag is indicated by the last value: "_128" indicates a hundred-twenty-eight-bit tag, "_80" indicates a eighty-bit tag, "_64" indicates a sixty-four-bit tag and "_32" indicates a thirty-two-bit tag.

In a session that uses multiple media streams, different ciphersuites might be configured for different media streams. For example, in order to conserve bandwidth, a session might use a ciphersuite with eighty-bit tags for video frames and another ciphersuite with thirty-two-bit tags for audio frames.

4.5.1. AES-CTR with SHA2

In order to allow very short tag sizes, we define a synthetic AEAD function using the authenticated counter mode of AES together with HMAC for authentication. We use an encrypt-then-MAC approach as in SRTP [RFC3711].

Before encryption or decryption, encryption and authentication subkeys are derived from the single AEAD key using HKDF. The subkeys are derived as follows, where Nk represents the key size for the AES block cipher in use and Nh represents the output size of the hash function:

def derive_subkeys(sframe_key):
  aead_secret = HKDF-Extract(sframe_key, 'SFrame10 AES CTR AEAD')
  enc_key = HKDF-Expand(aead_secret, 'enc', Nk)
  auth_key = HKDF-Expand(aead_secret, 'auth', Nh)
  return enc_key, auth_key

The AEAD encryption and decryption functions are then composed of individual calls to the CTR encrypt function and HMAC. The resulting MAC value is truncated to a number of bytes tag_len fixed by the ciphersuite.

def compute_tag(auth_key, nonce, aad, ct):
  aad_len = encode_big_endian(len(aad), 8)
  ct_len = encode_big_endian(len(ct), 8)
  auth_data = aad_len + ct_len + nonce + aad + ct
  tag = HMAC(auth_key, auth_data)
  return truncate(tag, tag_len)

def AEAD.Encrypt(key, nonce, aad, pt):
  enc_key, auth_key = derive_subkeys(key)
  ct = AES-CTR.Encrypt(enc_key, nonce, pt)
  tag = compute_tag(auth_key, nonce, aad, ct)
  return ct + tag

def AEAD.Decrypt(key, nonce, aad, ct):
  inner_ct, tag = split_ct(ct, tag_len)

  enc_key, auth_key = derive_subkeys(key)
  candidate_tag = compute_tag(auth_key, nonce, aad, inner_ct)
  if !constant_time_equal(tag, candidate_tag):
    raise Exception("Authentication Failure")

  return AES-CTR.Decrypt(enc_key, nonce, inner_ct)

5. Key Management

SFrame must be integrated with an E2E key management framework to exchange and rotate the keys used for SFrame encryption. The key management framework provides the following functions:

It is up to the application to define a rotation schedule for keys. For example, one application might have an ephemeral group for every call and keep rotating key when end points joins or leave the call, while another application could have a persistent group that can be used for multiple calls and simply derives ephemeral symmetric keys for a specific call.

5.1. Sender Keys

If the participants in a call have a pre-existing E2E-secure channel, they can use it to distribute SFrame keys. Each client participating in a call generates a fresh encryption key. The client then uses the E2E-secure channel to send their encryption key to the other participants.

In this scheme, it is assumed that receivers have a signal outside of SFrame for which client has sent a given frame, for example the RTP SSRC. SFrame KID values are then used to distinguish generations of the sender's key. At the beginning of a call, each sender encrypts with KID=0. Thereafter, the sender can ratchet their key forward for forward secrecy:

sender_key[i+1] = HKDF-Expand(
                    HKDF-Extract(sender_key[i], 'SFrame10 ratchet'),
                      '', AEAD.Nk)

The sender signals such an update by incrementing their KID value. A receiver who receives from a sender with a new KID computes the new key as above. The old key may be kept for some time to allow for out-of-order delivery, but should be deleted promptly.

If a new participant joins mid-call, they will need to receive from each sender (a) the current sender key for that sender and (b) the current KID value for the sender. Evicting a participant requires each sender to send a fresh sender key to all receivers.

5.2. MLS

The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol provides group authenticated key exchange [I-D.ietf-mls-architecture] [I-D.ietf-mls-protocol]. In principle, it could be used to instantiate the sender key scheme above, but it can also be used more efficiently directly.

MLS creates a linear sequence of keys, each of which is shared among the members of a group at a given point in time. When a member joins or leaves the group, a new key is produced that is known only to the augmented or reduced group. Each step in the lifetime of the group is know as an "epoch", and each member of the group is assigned an "index" that is constant for the time they are in the group.

In SFrame, we derive per-sender base_key values from the group secret for an epoch, and use the KID field to signal the epoch and sender index. First, we use the MLS exporter to compute a shared SFrame secret for the epoch.

sframe_epoch_secret = MLS-Exporter("SFrame 10 MLS", "", AEAD.Nk)

sender_base_key[index] = HKDF-Expand(sframe_epoch_secret,
                           encode_big_endian(index, 4), AEAD.Nk)

For compactness, do not send the whole epoch number. Instead, we send only its low-order E bits. Note that E effectively defines a re-ordering window, since no more than 2^E epoch can be active at a given time. Receivers MUST be prepared for the epoch counter to roll over, removing an old epoch when a new epoch with the same E lower bits is introduced. (Sender indices cannot be similarly compressed.)

KID = (sender_index << E) + (epoch % (1 << E))

Once an SFrame stack has been provisioned with the sframe_epoch_secret for an epoch, it can compute the required KIDs and sender_base_key values on demand, as it needs to encrypt/decrypt for a given member.

... Epoch 17 index=33 KID = 0x211 index=51 KID = 0x331 Epoch 16 index=2 KID = 0x20 Epoch 15 index=3 KID = 0x3f index=5 KID = 0x5f Epoch 14 index=3 KID = 0x3e index=7 KID = 0x7e index=20 KID = 0x14e ...

6. Media Considerations

6.1. SFU

Selective Forwarding Units (SFUs) as described in Section 3.7 of [RFC7667] receives the RTP streams from each participant and selects which ones should be forwarded to each of the other participants. There are several approaches about how to do this stream selection but in general, in order to do so, the SFU needs to access metadata associated to each frame and modify the RTP information of the incoming packets when they are transmitted to the received participants.

This section describes how this normal SFU modes of operation interacts with the E2EE provided by SFrame

6.1.1. LastN and RTP stream reuse

The SFU may choose to send only a certain number of streams based on the voice activity of the participants. To reduce the number of SDP O/A required to establish a new RTP stream, the SFU may decide to reuse previously existing RTP sessions or even pre-allocate a predefined number of RTP streams and choose in each moment in time which participant media will be sending through it.

This means that in the same RTP stream (defined by either SSRC or MID) may carry media from different streams of different participants. As different keys are used by each participant for encoding their media, the receiver will be able to verify which is the sender of the media coming within the RTP stream at any given point if time, preventing the SFU trying to impersonate any of the participants with another participant's media.

Note that in order to prevent impersonation by a malicious participant (not the SFU), a mechanism based on digital signature would be required. SFrame does not protect against such attacks.

6.1.2. Simulcast

When using simulcast, the same input image will produce N different encoded frames (one per simulcast layer) which would be processed independently by the frame encryptor and assigned an unique counter for each.

6.1.3. SVC

In both temporal and spatial scalability, the SFU may choose to drop layers in order to match a certain bitrate or forward specific media sizes or frames per second. In order to support it, the sender MUST encode each spatial layer of a given picture in a different frame. That is, an RTP frame may contain more than one SFrame encrypted frame with an incrementing frame counter.

6.2. Video Key Frames

Forward and Post-Compromise Security requires that the e2ee keys are updated anytime a participant joins/leave the call.

The key exchange happens async and on a different path than the SFU signaling and media. So it may happen that when a new participant joins the call and the SFU side requests a key frame, the sender generates the e2ee encrypted frame with a key not known by the receiver, so it will be discarded. When the sender updates his sending key with the new key, it will send it in a non-key frame, so the receiver will be able to decrypt it, but not decode it.

Receiver will re-request an key frame then, but due to sender and sfu policies, that new key frame could take some time to be generated.

If the sender sends a key frame when the new e2ee key is in use, the time required for the new participant to display the video is minimized.

6.3. Partial Decoding

Some codes support partial decoding, where it can decrypt individual packets without waiting for the full frame to arrive, with SFrame this won't be possible because the decoder will not access the packets until the entire frame is arrived and decrypted.

7. Security Considerations

7.1. No Per-Sender Authentication

SFrame does not provide per-sender authentication of media data. Any sender in a session can send media that will be associated with any other sender. This is because SFrame uses symmetric encryption to protect media data, so that any receiver also has the keys required to encrypt packets for the sender.

7.2. Key Management

Key exchange mechanism is out of scope of this document, however every client MUST change their keys when new clients joins or leaves the call for "Forward Secrecy" and "Post Compromise Security".

7.3. Authentication tag length

The cipher suites defined in this draft use short authentication tags for encryption, however it can easily support other ciphers with full authentication tag if the short ones are proved insecure.

8. IANA Considerations

This document makes no requests of IANA.

9. References

9.1. Normative References

[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC5116]
McGrew, D., "An Interface and Algorithms for Authenticated Encryption", RFC 5116, DOI 10.17487/RFC5116, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5116>.
[RFC5869]
Krawczyk, H. and P. Eronen, "HMAC-based Extract-and-Expand Key Derivation Function (HKDF)", RFC 5869, DOI 10.17487/RFC5869, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5869>.
[RFC8174]
Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

9.2. Informative References

[I-D.ietf-mls-architecture]
Beurdouche, B., Rescorla, E., Omara, E., Inguva, S., and A. Duric, "The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) Architecture", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-mls-architecture-10, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-mls-architecture-10>.
[I-D.ietf-mls-protocol]
Barnes, R., Beurdouche, B., Robert, R., Millican, J., Omara, E., and K. Cohn-Gordon, "The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) Protocol", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-mls-protocol-17, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-mls-protocol-17>.
[I-D.murillo-perc-lite]
Murillo, S. G. and A. Gouaillard, "End to End Media Encryption Procedures", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-murillo-perc-lite-01, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-murillo-perc-lite-01>.
[RFC3711]
Baugher, M., McGrew, D., Naslund, M., Carrara, E., and K. Norrman, "The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)", RFC 3711, DOI 10.17487/RFC3711, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3711>.
[RFC7667]
Westerlund, M. and S. Wenger, "RTP Topologies", RFC 7667, DOI 10.17487/RFC7667, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7667>.
[RFC8723]
Jennings, C., Jones, P., Barnes, R., and A.B. Roach, "Double Encryption Procedures for the Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP)", RFC 8723, DOI 10.17487/RFC8723, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8723>.
[TestVectors]
"SFrame Test Vectors", , <https://github.com/eomara/sframe/blob/master/test-vectors.json>.

Appendix A. Acknowledgements

The authors wish to specially thank Dr. Alex Gouaillard as one of the early contributors to the document. His passion and energy were key to the design and development of SFrame.

Appendix B. Overhead

The encryption overhead will vary between audio and video streams, because in audio each packet is considered a separate frame, so it will always have extra MAC and IV, however a video frame usually consists of multiple RTP packets.

The number of bytes overhead per frame is calculated as the following

1 + FrameCounter length + 4

The constant 1 is the SFrame header byte and 4 bytes for the HBH authentication tag for both audio and video packets.

B.1. Audio

Using three different audio frame durations

  • 20ms (50 packets/s)
  • 40ms (25 packets/s)
  • 100ms (10 packets/s)

Up to 3 bytes frame counter (3.8 days of data for 20ms frame duration) and 4 bytes fixed MAC length.

Table 2
Counter len Packets Overhead Overhead Overhead
    bps@20ms bps@40ms bps@100ms
1 0-255 2400 1200 480
2 255 - 65K 2800 1400 560
3 65K - 16M 3200 1600 640

B.2. Video

The per-stream overhead bits per second as calculated for the following video encodings:

  • 30fps @ 1000Kbps (4 packets per frame)
  • 30fps @ 512Kbps (2 packets per frame)
  • 15fps @ 200Kbps (2 packets per frame)
  • 7.5fps @ 30Kbps (1 packet per frame)

Overhead bps = (Counter length + 1 + 4 ) * 8 * fps

Table 3
Counter len Frames Overhead Overhead Overhead
    bps@30fps bps@15fps bps@7.5fps
1 0-255 1440 1440 720
2 256 - 65K 1680 1680 840
3 56K - 16M 1920 1920 960
4 16M - 4B 2160 2160 1080

B.3. SFrame vs PERC-lite

[RFC8723] has significant overhead over SFrame because the overhead is per packet, not per frame, and OHB (Original Header Block) which duplicates any RTP header/extension field modified by the SFU.

[I-D.murillo-perc-lite] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/perc/SB0qMHWz6EsDtz3yIEX0HWp5IEY/ is slightly better because it doesn’t use the OHB anymore, however it still does per packet encryption using SRTP.

Below the the overheard in [I-D.murillo-perc-lite] implemented by Cosmos Software which uses extra 11 bytes per packet to preserve the PT, SEQ_NUM, TIME_STAMP and SSRC fields in addition to the extra MAC tag per packet.

OverheadPerPacket = 11 + MAC length Overhead bps = PacketPerSecond * OverHeadPerPacket * 8

Similar to SFrame, we will assume the HBH authentication tag length will always be 4 bytes for audio and video even though it is not the case in this [I-D.murillo-perc-lite] implementation

B.3.1. Audio

Table 4
Overhead bps@20ms Overhead bps@40ms Overhead bps@100ms
6000 3000 1200

B.3.2. Video

Table 5
Overhead bps@30fps Overhead bps@15fps Overhead bps@7.5fps
(4 packets per frame) (2 packets per frame) (1 packet per frame)
14400 7200 3600

For a conference with a single incoming audio stream (@ 50 pps) and 4 incoming video streams (@200 Kbps), the savings in overhead is 34800 - 9600 = ~25 Kbps, or ~3%.

Appendix C. Test Vectors

This section provides a set of test vectors that implementations can use to verify that they correctly implement SFrame encryption and decryption. For each ciphersuite, we provide:

An implementation should reproduce the output values given the input values:

Line breaks and whitespace within values are inserted to conform to the width requirements of the RFC format. They should be removed before use. These test vectors are also available in JSON format at [TestVectors].

C.1. AES_CTR_128_HMAC_SHA256_4

CipherSuite:    0x01
Base Key:       101112131415161718191a1b1c1d1e1f
Key:            343d3290f5c0b936415bea9a43c6f5a2
Salt:           42d662fbad5cd81eb3aad79a
Plaintext:      46726f6d2068656176656e6c79206861
                726d6f6e79202f2f205468697320756e
                6976657273616c206672616d65206265
                67616e
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x0
Header:         1700
Nonce:          42d662fbad5cd81eb3aad79a
Ciphertext:     1700c5095af9dbbbed6a952de114ea7b
                42768509f1ffc9749abb1e95bf4514d8
                d82a0eef4b5ecac16fa193977fa1aa1c
                9fa5c7e73093ab2a43
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x1
Header:         1701
Nonce:          42d662fbad5cd81eb3aad79b
Ciphertext:     1701559e262525382885c6c93be8f61a
                9064db2dd1e1e96ab1dbd829ca4af4f4
                5f2b97a4889217a3f8a2159fb8201b7d
                71db01702bd4bab5c7
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x2
Header:         1702
Nonce:          42d662fbad5cd81eb3aad798
Ciphertext:     17020a8f21e052eaa09e50da0a909d15
                6cc55b9ef2f2abbcca765f7af3cfb1af
                234e3eac1dbc376631c83cf1ff1f8ab3
                39dbc41044cc930d87
KID:            0xf
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         190faa
Nonce:          42d662fbad5cd81eb3aad730
Ciphertext:     190faa9c65aa5b167873f25827f17bc3
                4879a4aaa6b38dd9584472e1849d5da5
                1555f288d08f03166a5f26af01794006
                255c88b58986246287c9
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         1a01ffaa
Nonce:          42d662fbad5cd81eb3aad730
Ciphertext:     1a01ffaa9c65aa5b167873f25827f17b
                c34879a4aaa6b38dd9584472e1849d5d
                a51555f288d08f03166a5f26af017940
                06255c88b589863003872e
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaaaa
Header:         2a01ffaaaa
Nonce:          42d662fbad5cd81eb3aa7d30
Ciphertext:     2a01ffaaaa990cbeb4ae2e3a76be8bb9
                54b62591e791d0fa53c0553bc1d1e021
                d270b1a10688cd89195203b019789253
                73b04f9c08c3a4e5fb0173ef
KID:            0xffffffffffffff
CTR:            0xffffffffffffff
Header:         7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Nonce:          42d662fbada327e14c552865
Ciphertext:     7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff41
                2c43c8077c286f7df3dd9988d1bd033f
                1067493e09421e5bfc363e50a3c803b4
                da9239514cb924dbcb5f33e33112083e
                99103ef272e8

C.2. AES_CTR_128_HMAC_SHA256_8

CipherSuite:    0x02
Base Key:       202122232425262728292a2b2c2d2e2f
Key:            3fce747d505e46ec9b92d9f58ee7a5d4
Salt:           77fbf5f1d82c73f6d2b353c9
Plaintext:      46726f6d2068656176656e6c79206861
                726d6f6e79202f2f205468697320756e
                6976657273616c206672616d65206265
                67616e
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x0
Header:         1700
Nonce:          77fbf5f1d82c73f6d2b353c9
Ciphertext:     17009d89e5753e06edf3025f1ccd70b0
                95ebaf10c250e11da740f50f57b6ce86
                0d7321dfa49688a2cd6c6d9a71ae9d5c
                14ad0978efe0216ae5f6788ffe
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x1
Header:         1701
Nonce:          77fbf5f1d82c73f6d2b353c8
Ciphertext:     1701becd2e9d10e3eed586491b3e0ece
                dba89407ae2151787c5117b55707d6b8
                a0754f4dc937e30ebdf7cafbd3769d65
                85d7991b1aa6f36e418fdec6fa
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x2
Header:         1702
Nonce:          77fbf5f1d82c73f6d2b353cb
Ciphertext:     170298508be6b16d034f15b504ced45a
                86d1bb43ed7cd3a62bf25557d1b082b0
                4e8e6ba6fe76160835dd8953e1be9640
                c988627ea4f1bb846e87523f8b
KID:            0xf
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         190faa
Nonce:          77fbf5f1d82c73f6d2b35363
Ciphertext:     190faae7eec4b0556ddfb8068998351c
                d670ce95f0ce9cd4c6dca2eeee73fb14
                d20a0d0fd487337ed43fa7f98dad0995
                b8b870325aa349ac0590c2745d5d
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         1a01ffaa
Nonce:          77fbf5f1d82c73f6d2b35363
Ciphertext:     1a01ffaae7eec4b0556ddfb806899835
                1cd670ce95f0ce9cd4c6dca2eeee73fb
                14d20a0d0fd487337ed43fa7f98dad09
                95b8b870325aa31d576e8a34093320
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaaaa
Header:         2a01ffaaaa
Nonce:          77fbf5f1d82c73f6d2b3f963
Ciphertext:     2a01ffaaaa8c1789aa0abcd6abc27006
                aae4df5cba4ba07f8113080e9726baac
                d16c18539974a6204a36b9dc3dcd36ed
                9ab48e590d95d4ad1b05f8375508c55d
KID:            0xffffffffffffff
CTR:            0xffffffffffffff
Header:         7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Nonce:          77fbf5f1d8d38c092d4cac36
Ciphertext:     7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffa9
                bc6c7edde0fdfd13255a5b145c5ce84d
                b8f8960858eb998b8ea8f3e770160150
                813c5806441b64251bdd2be9e8cec138
                6b6f5e73eaa6c19e6555

C.3. AES_GCM_128_SHA256

CipherSuite:    0x03
Base Key:       303132333435363738393a3b3c3d3e3f
Key:            2ea2e8163ff56c0613e6fa9f20a213da
Salt:           a80478b3f6fba19983d540d5
Plaintext:      46726f6d2068656176656e6c79206861
                726d6f6e79202f2f205468697320756e
                6976657273616c206672616d65206265
                67616e
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x0
Header:         1700
Nonce:          a80478b3f6fba19983d540d5
Ciphertext:     17000e426255e47ed70dd7d15d69d759
                bf459032ca15f5e8b2a91e7d348aa7c1
                86d403f620801c495b1717a35097411a
                a97cbb140671eb3b49ac3775926db74d
                57b91e8e6c
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x1
Header:         1701
Nonce:          a80478b3f6fba19983d540d4
Ciphertext:     170103bbafa34ada8a6b9f2066bc34a1
                959d87384c9f4b1ce34fed58e938bde1
                43393910b1aeb55b48d91d5b0db3ea67
                e3d0e02b843afd41630c940b1948e72d
                d45396a43a
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x2
Header:         1702
Nonce:          a80478b3f6fba19983d540d7
Ciphertext:     170258d58adebd8bf6f3cc0c1fcacf34
                ba4d7a763b2683fe302a57f1be7f2a27
                4bf81b2236995fec1203cadb146cd402
                e1c52d5e6a10989dfe0f4116da1ee4c2
                fad0d21f8f
KID:            0xf
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         190faa
Nonce:          a80478b3f6fba19983d5407f
Ciphertext:     190faad0b1743bf5248f90869c945636
                6d55724d16bbe08060875815565e90b1
                14f9ccbdba192422b33848a1ae1e3bd2
                66a001b2f5bb727112772e0072ea8679
                ca1850cf11d8
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         1a01ffaa
Nonce:          a80478b3f6fba19983d5407f
Ciphertext:     1a01ffaad0b1743bf5248f90869c9456
                366d55724d16bbe08060875815565e90
                b114f9ccbdba192422b33848a1ae1e3b
                d266a001b2f5bbc9c63bd3973c19bd57
                127f565380ed4a
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaaaa
Header:         2a01ffaaaa
Nonce:          a80478b3f6fba19983d5ea7f
Ciphertext:     2a01ffaaaa9de65e21e4f1ca2247b879
                43c03c5cb7b182090e93d508dcfb76e0
                8174c6397356e682d2eaddabc0b3c101
                8d2c13c3570f61c1beaab805f27b565e
                1329a823a7a649b6
KID:            0xffffffffffffff
CTR:            0xffffffffffffff
Header:         7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Nonce:          a80478b3f6045e667c2abf2a
Ciphertext:     7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff09
                981bdcdad80e380b6f74cf6afdbce946
                839bedadd57578bfcd809dbcea535546
                cc24660613d2761adea852155785011e
                633534f4ecc3b8257c8d34321c27854a
                1422

C.4. AES_GCM_256_SHA512

CipherSuite:    0x04
Base Key:       404142434445464748494a4b4c4d4e4f
                505152535455565758595a5b5c5d5e5f
Key:            436774b0b5ae45633d96547f8f3cb06c
                8e6628eff2e4255b5c4d77e721aa3355
Salt:           31ed26f90a072e6aee646298
Plaintext:      46726f6d2068656176656e6c79206861
                726d6f6e79202f2f205468697320756e
                6976657273616c206672616d65206265
                67616e
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x0
Header:         1700
Nonce:          31ed26f90a072e6aee646298
Ciphertext:     1700f3e297c1e95207710bd31ccc4ba3
                96fbef7b257440bde638ff0f3c891154
                0136df61b26220249d6c432c245ae8d5
                5ef45bfccf32530a15aeaaf313a03838
                e51bd45652
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x1
Header:         1701
Nonce:          31ed26f90a072e6aee646299
Ciphertext:     170193268b0bf030071bff443bb6b447
                1bdfb1cc81bc9625f4697b0336ff4665
                d15f152f02169448d8a967fb06359a87
                d2145398de0ce3fbe257b0992a3da153
                7590459f3c
KID:            0x7
CTR:            0x2
Header:         1702
Nonce:          31ed26f90a072e6aee64629a
Ciphertext:     1702649691ba27c4c01a41280fba4657
                c03fa7fe21c8f5c862e9094227c3ca3e
                c0d9468b1a2cb060ff0978f25a24e6b1
                06f5a6e1053c1b8f5fce794d88a0e481
                8c081e18ea
KID:            0xf
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         190faa
Nonce:          31ed26f90a072e6aee646232
Ciphertext:     190faa2858c10b5ddd231c1f26819490
                521678603a050448d563c503b1fd890d
                02ead01d754f074ecb6f32da9b2f3859
                f380b4f47d4edd1e15f42f9a2d7ecfac
                99067e238321
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaa
Header:         1a01ffaa
Nonce:          31ed26f90a072e6aee646232
Ciphertext:     1a01ffaa2858c10b5ddd231c1f268194
                90521678603a050448d563c503b1fd89
                0d02ead01d754f074ecb6f32da9b2f38
                59f380b4f47d4e3bf7040eb10ec25b81
                26b2ce7b1d9d31
KID:            0x1ff
CTR:            0xaaaa
Header:         2a01ffaaaa
Nonce:          31ed26f90a072e6aee64c832
Ciphertext:     2a01ffaaaad9bc6a258a07d210a814d5
                45eca70321c0e87498ada6e5c708b7ea
                d162ffcf4fbaba1eb82650590a87122b
                4d95fe36bd88b278812166d26e046ed0
                a530b7ee232ee0f2
KID:            0xffffffffffffff
CTR:            0xffffffffffffff
Header:         7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Nonce:          31ed26f90af8d195119b9d67
Ciphertext:     7fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffaf
                480d4779ce0c02b5137ee6a61e026c04
                ac999cb0c97319feceeb258d58df23bc
                e14979e5c67a431777b34498062e72f9
                39ca42ec84ffbc7b50eff923f515a2df
                760c

Authors' Addresses

Emad Omara
Apple
Justin Uberti
Google
Sergio Garcia Murillo
CoSMo Software
Richard L. Barnes (editor)
Cisco
Youenn Fablet
Apple