Network Security

Essentials
Chapter 8
Fourth Edition
by William Stallings
 Chapter 8 – IP Security

If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy

before the time is ripe, he must be put to
death, together with the man to whom the
secret was told.
—The Art of War, Sun Tzu
 IP Security
 have a range of application specific
security mechanisms
 eg. S/MIME, PGP, Kerberos, SSL/HTTPS
 however there are security concerns that
cut across protocol layers
 would like security implemented by the
network for all applications
 IP Security
 general IP Security mechanisms
 provides
 authentication
 confidentiality
 key management
 applicable to use over LANs, across public
& private WANs, & for the Internet
 need identified in 1994 report
 need authentication, encryption in IPv4 & IPv6
IP Security Uses
 Benefits of IPSec
 in a firewall/router provides strong security
to all traffic crossing the perimeter
 in a firewall/router is resistant to bypass
 is below transport layer, hence transparent
to applications
 can be transparent to end users
 can provide security for individual users
 secures routing architecture
 IP Security Architecture
 specification is quite complex, with groups:
 Architecture
• RFC4301 Security Architecture for Internet Protocol
 Authentication Header (AH)
• RFC4302 IP Authentication Header
 Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
• RFC4303 IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
 Internet Key Exchange (IKE)
• RFC4306 Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) Protocol
 Cryptographic algorithms
 Other
 IPSec Services
 Access control
 Connectionless integrity
 Data origin authentication
 Rejection of replayed packets
 a form of partial sequence integrity
 Confidentiality (encryption)
 Limited traffic flow confidentiality
 Transport and Tunnel Modes
 Transport Mode
 to encrypt & optionally authenticate IP data
 can do traffic analysis but is efficient
 good for ESP host to host traffic
 Tunnel Mode
 encrypts entire IP packet
 add new header for next hop
 no routers on way can examine inner IP header
 good for VPNs, gateway to gateway security
Transport
and
Tunnel
Modes
Transport
and
Tunnel
Mode
Protocols
 Security Associations
 a one-way relationship between sender &
receiver that affords security for traffic flow
 defined by 3 parameters:
 Security Parameters Index (SPI)
 IP Destination Address
 Security Protocol Identifier
 has a number of other parameters
 seq no, AH & EH info, lifetime etc
 have a database of Security Associations
 Security Policy Database
 relates IP traffic to specific SAs
 match subset of IP traffic to relevant SA
 use selectors to filter outgoing traffic to map
 based on: local & remote IP addresses, next
layer protocol, name, local & remote ports
Encapsulating Security Payload
(ESP)
 provides message content confidentiality, data
origin authentication, connectionless integrity, an
anti-replay service, limited traffic flow
confidentiality
 services depend on options selected when
establish Security Association (SA), net location
 can use a variety of encryption & authentication
algorithms
Encapsulating Security
Payload
 Encryption & Authentication
Algorithms & Padding
 ESP can encrypt payload data, padding,
pad length, and next header fields
 if needed have IV at start of payload data
 ESP can have optional ICV for integrity
 is computed after encryption is performed
 ESP uses padding
 to expand plaintext to required length
 to align pad length and next header fields
 to provide partial traffic flow confidentiality
 Anti-Replay Service
 replay is when attacker resends a copy of
an authenticated packet
 use sequence number to thwart this attack
 sender initializes sequence number to 0
when a new SA is established
 increment for each packet
 must not exceed limit of 232 – 1
 receiver then accepts packets with seq no
within window of (N –W+1)
 Combining Security
Associations
 SA’s can implement either AH or ESP
 to implement both need to combine SA’s
 form a security association bundle
 may terminate at different or same endpoints
 combined by
• transport adjacency
• iterated tunneling
 combining authentication & encryption
 ESP with authentication, bundled inner ESP &
outer AH, bundled inner transport & outer ESP
Combining Security
Associations
 IPSec Key Management
 handles key generation & distribution
 typically need 2 pairs of keys
 2 per direction for AH & ESP
 manual key management
 sysadmin manually configures every system
 automated key management
 automated system for on demand creation of
keys for SA’s in large systems
 has Oakley & ISAKMP elements
 Oakley
 a key exchange protocol
 based on Diffie-Hellman key exchange
 adds features to address weaknesses
 no info on parties, man-in-middle attack, cost
 so adds cookies, groups (global params),
nonces, DH key exchange with authentication
 can use arithmetic in prime fields or elliptic
curve fields
 ISAKMP
 Internet Security Association and Key
Management Protocol
 provides framework for key management
 defines procedures and packet formats to
establish, negotiate, modify, & delete SAs
 independent of key exchange protocol,
encryption alg, & authentication method
 IKEv2 no longer uses Oakley & ISAKMP
terms, but basic functionality is same
IKEV2 Exchanges
ISAKMP
 IKE Payloads & Exchanges
 have a number of ISAKMP payload types:
 Security Association, Key Exchange,
Identification, Certificate, Certificate Request,
Authentication, Nonce, Notify, Delete, Vendor
ID, Traffic Selector, Encrypted, Configuration,
Extensible Authentication Protocol
 payload has complex hierarchical structure
 may contain multiple proposals, with
multiple protocols & multiple transforms
 Cryptographic Suites
 variety of cryptographic algorithm types
 to promote interoperability have
 RFC4308 defines VPN cryptographic suites
• VPN-A matches common corporate VPN security
using 3DES & HMAC
• VPN-B has stronger security for new VPNs
implementing IPsecv3 and IKEv2 using AES
 RFC4869 defines four cryptographic suites
compatible with US NSA specs
• provide choices for ESP & IKE
• AES-GCM, AES-CBC, HMAC-SHA, ECP, ECDSA
 Summary
 have considered:
 IPSec security framework
 IPSec security policy
 ESP
 combining security associations
 internet key exchange
 cryptographic suites used