Internet Engineering Task Force M. Badra INTERNET DRAFT LIMOS Laboratory November 29, 2006 Expires: April 2007 NETCONF over TLS Status By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. 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 This Internet-Draft will expire on April 29, 2007. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). Abstract The NETCONF configuration protocol provides mechanisms to install, manipulate, and delete the configuration of network devices. This document describes how to use TLS to secure NETCONF exchanges. Badra Expires April 2007 [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT NETCONF over TLS November 2006 1 Introduction The NETCONF protocol [NETCONF] defines a simple mechanism through which a network device can be managed. NETCONF is connection- oriented, requiring a persistent connection between peers. This connection must provide reliable, sequenced data delivery, integrity and confidentiality and peers authentication. This document describes how to use TLS [TLS] to secure NETCONF connections. 1.2 Requirements language and Terminologies 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 [KEYWORDS]. 1.3 Terminology This document uses the following terms: manager It refers to the end initiating the NETCONF connection. It issues the NETCONF RPC commands. agent It refers to the end replying to the manager's commands during the NETCONF connection. 2. NETCONF over TLS Since TLS is application protocol-independent, NETCONF can operate on top of the TLS protocol transparently. This document defines how NETCONF can be used within a Transport Layer Security (TLS) session. 2.1. Connection Initiation The peer acting as the NETCONF manager SHOULD also act as the TLS client. It SHOULD connect to the server that passively listens for the incoming TLS connection on the IANA-to-be-assigned TCP port . It SHOULD therefore send the TLS ClientHello to begin the TLS handshake. Once the TLS handshake has been finished, the manager and the agent MAY then send their NETCONF exchanges. In particular, the manager will send complete XML documents to the server containing elements, and the agent will respond with complete XML documents containing elements. All these exchanges are encapsulated into TLS records of type "application data". These records are protected using the TLS material keys. Badra Expires April 2007 [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT NETCONF over TLS November 2006 Current NETCONF messages don't include a message's length. This document uses consequently the same delimiter sequence defined in [NETSSH] and therefore the special character sequence, ]]>]]>, to delimit XML documents. 2.2. Connection Closure Either NETCONF peer MAY stop the NETCONF connection at any time and therefore notify the other NETCONF peer that no more data on this channel will be sent and that any data received after a closure request will be ignored. This MAY happen when no data is received from a connection for a long time, where the application decides what "long" means. TLS has the ability for secure connection closure using the Alert protocol. When the NETCONF peer processes a closure request of the NETCONF connection, it MUST send a TLS close_notify alert before closing the connection. Any data received after a closure alert is ignored. The party that sends a close_notify MAY choose not to wait for the other party's close_notify alert and simply close the connection, thus generating an incomplete close on the other party's side. Once the other party gets the close_notify alert, it MUST reply with a close_notify unless it becomes aware that the connection has already been closed. When a party has received the close_notify alert from the other party and still has pending data to send, it SHOULD send the pending data before sending the close_notify alert. 3. Endpoint Authentication and Identification Usually, TLS uses public keys, Kerberos [TLSKERB], or preshared keys [TLSPSK] for authentication. When public key is used for authentication, TLS supports three authentication modes: authentication of both parties, server authentication with an unauthenticated client, and total anonymity. User authentication in unauthenticated or authenticated client mode is outside the scope of this document. User authentication should be handled by either an extension of TLS (such as the TLS Inner Application Extension [IATLS]) or an authentication extension of NETCONF. Badra Expires April 2007 [Page 3] INTERNET-DRAFT NETCONF over TLS November 2006 3.1. Server Identity During the TLS negotiation, the client MUST carefully examine the certificate presented by the server to determine if it meets their expectations. Particularly, the client MUST check its understanding of the server hostname against the server's identity as presented in the server Certificate message, in order to prevent man-in-the- middle attacks. Matching is performed according to these rules [RFC4642]: - The client MUST use the server hostname it used to open the connection (or the hostname specified in TLS "server_name" extension [TLSEXT]) as the value to compare against the server name as expressed in the server certificate. The client MUST NOT use any form of the server hostname derived from an insecure remote source (e.g., insecure DNS lookup). CNAME canonicalization is not done. - If a subjectAltName extension of type dNSName is present in the certificate, it SHOULD be used as the source of the server's identity. - Matching is case-insensitive. - A "*" wildcard character MAY be used as the left-most name component in the certificate. For example, *.example.com would match a.example.com, foo.example.com, etc., but would not match example.com. - If the certificate contains multiple names (e.g., more than one dNSName field), then a match with any one of the fields is considered acceptable. If the match fails, the client SHOULD either ask for explicit user confirmation or terminate the connection and indicate the server's identity is suspect. Additionally, clients MUST verify the binding between the identity of the servers to which they connect and the public keys presented by those servers. Clients SHOULD implement the algorithm in Section 6 of [PKICERT] for general certificate validation, but MAY supplement that algorithm with other validation methods that achieve equivalent levels of verification (such as comparing the server certificate against a local store of already-verified certificates and identity bindings). Badra Expires April 2007 [Page 4] INTERNET-DRAFT NETCONF over TLS November 2006 If the client has external information as to the expected identity of the server, the hostname check MAY be omitted. 3.2. Client Identity Typically, the server has no external knowledge of what the client's identity ought to be and so checks (other than that the client has a certificate chain rooted in an appropriate CA) are not possible. If a server has such knowledge (typically from some source external to NETCONF or TLS) it SHOULD check the identity as described above. 4. Security Considerations The security considerations described throughout [TLS] apply here as well. 5. IANA Considerations IANA is requested to assign a TCP port number that will be the default port for NETCONF over TLS sessions as defined in this document. IANA has assigned port for this purpose. 6. Acknowledgment The author would like to acknowledge Juergen Schoenwaelder for his detailed reviews of the content of the document. The author appreciates also David Harrington and Miao Fuyou for their effort on issues resolving discussion. 7. References 7.1. Normative References [NETCONF] Enns, R., "NETCONF Configuration Protocol", draft-ietf-netconf-prot-12.txt, (work in progress), February 2006. [TLS] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.1", RFC 4346, April 2005. [TLSEXT] Blake-Wilson, S., et. al., "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions", RFC 4346, April 2006. [TLSPSK] Eronen, P., et. al., "Pre-Shared Key Ciphersuites for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 4279, December 2005. Badra Expires April 2007 [Page 5] INTERNET-DRAFT NETCONF over TLS November 2006 [RFC4642] Murchison, K., Vinocur, J., Newman, C., "Using Transport Layer Security (TLS) with Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)", RFC 4642, October 2006 [KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, March 1997. [PKICERT] Housley, R., Polk, W., Ford, W., and D. Solo, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 3280, April 2002. [NETSSH] Wasserman, M. and T. Goddard, "Using the NETCONF Configuration Protocol over Secure Shell (SSH)", draft-ietf-netconf-ssh-06.txt (work in progress), March 2006. 7.1. Informative References [TLSKERB] Medvinsky, A. and M. Hur, "Addition of Kerberos Cipher Suites to Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 2712, October 1999. [IATLS] Funk, P., et. al., "TLS Inner Application Extension (TLS/IA)", draft-funk-tls-inner-application-extension- 03.txt (work in progress), June 2006. Author's Addresses Mohamad Badra LIMOS Laboratory - UMR (6158), CNRS France Email: badra@isima.fr Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in IETF Documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. 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Disclaimer of Validity This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Badra Expires April 2007 [Page 7]