[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
RE: draft-ietf-ipsec-dhcp-01.txt
Howdy ()
In the "Dynamic configuration of IPSEC VPN host using DHCP" draft,
it is suggested in section 2.3.1 that a roaming client with a some
Internet address who is attempting to acquire a 'virtual ip address' for
intranet use should send a DHCP DISCOVER message to the cooperate
Security Gateway and that in this message a 'unique indentifier' should
be included. The section suggests that the unique identifier might be
the:
IPSEC identity of the client (as specified
in the IPSEC architecture document, and in DOI), or any other
information that is unique to the client.
The draft says that the gateway does not interpret this field, but
allows the bootp relay agent (running on the gateway) to interpret this
field for the purpose of identifying which SA to forward this request
through.
My question is, how is the Security Gateway to authenticate the request
then? I understand that the very next section of the draft (2.3.2)
discusses the establishment of a DHCP SA between the cooperate Security
Gateway and the roaming user's host. This imposes the requirement that
the roaming users host knows a secret key. But if this is the only
authentication available then it is classic 'weak authentication'. Could
we work in the ability to step up to a two factor authentication method?
IPSEC Working Group Baiju V. Patel,
INTERNET-DRAFT Intel Corporation
draft-ietf-ipsec-dhcp-01.txt December 29, 1998
Dynamic configuration of IPSEC VPN host using DHCP
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet Draft. 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. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or made obsolete
by other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use
Internet Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as
a "working draft" or "work in progress".
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
1id-abstracts.txt listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
Directories on ds.internic.net, nic.nordu.net, ftp.isi.edu, or
munnari.oz.au.
A revision of this draft document will be submitted to the RFC
editor as a Proposed Standard for the Internet Community.
Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. This
document will expire February 1998. Distribution of this draft is
unlimited.
1. Introduction
IPSEC [2] is a protocol suite defined by IETF working group on IP
security to secure communication at the network layer between
communicating peers. Among many applications enabled by IPSEC, an
interesting and useful application is connect a remote host (e.g.,
roaming user) to the intranet through SNG (or secure network
gateway) using IPSEC tunnels. A remote host on the public internet
would connect to a secure network gateway and then establish an
IPSEC tunnel between itself and SNG. All the traffic between the
remote host and the intranet will be carried over the IPSEC tunnel
via SNG as shown in the figure.
Patel 1
draft-ietf-ipsec-dhcp-01.txt 12/29/98
--------------- |----------| |---------| |----------|
| Remote Host |----|Internet |----|SNG |---| Intranet |
--------------- |----------| |---------- |----------|
|
|<--IPSEC Tunnel ----> |
|-------------|
| DHCP Server |
|-------------|
A typical configuration of the remote host in this application would
use two addresses: 1) an interface to connect to the Internet
(internet interface), and 2) a virtual interface to connect to the
intranet (intranet interface). The IP address of the Internet and
intranet interfaces are used in the outer and inner headers of the
IPSEC respectively. The mechanisms for automatic configuration of
the remote host's address for the Internet interface are well
defined; i.e., PPP IP control protocol (IPCP) and DHCP. The
mechanisms for auto-configuration of the intranet are standardized.
The two obvious choices for auto-configuration of the intranet
interface are: 1) use DHCP [3], 2) define a DOI to be used with
ISAKMP/Oakley to implement functionality similar to PPP IP Control
protocol[4]. In this draft, we propose to standardize on the use of
DHCP protocol as a mechanisms for configuration of the intranet
interface of a IPSEC tunnel for the following reasons.
1) PPP IP Control protocol is fairly limiting because it primarily
focuses on assigning IP address and does not provide all the
necessary configuration parameters.
2) Defining a new DOI for this purpose unnecessarily makes
ISAKMP/Oakley protocols and negotiations complex.
3) DHCP based mechanisms are already in place and well understood.
4) DHCP protocol provides most of the necessary configuration
parameters and allows vendor extensions when necessary.
This draft outlines the details of how DHCP protocol can be used to
auto-configure the intranet interface of an IPSEC tunnel. The
details of DHCP protocol are provided in . The details of IPSEC
protocol are provided in and the references included in those
documents.
2. Outline of the protocol
2.1. Notations
The key words, MUST, SHOULD, MAY etc. are defined in [1]. The IPSEC
related concepts and notations are defined in [2] and DHCP related
notations are defined in [3].
2.2. The protocol overview
The protocol described here assumes that the remote host already has
internet connectivity and the internet interface is appropriately
Patel 2
draft-ietf-ipsec-dhcp-01.txt 12/29/98
configured using PPP or DHCP protocols, or using out of band
mechanisms (i.e., static configuration). The remote host also has
the knowledge of the SNG.
The protocol for auto-configuration of the intranet interface of
IPSEC tunnel mode consists of three steps:
1) The remote host establishes a DHCP SA. The DHCP SA is an IPSEC
tunnel mode SA established to protect initial DHCP traffic
between the Secure Network Gateway (SNG) and the remote host.
2) Execute DHCP protocol between the remote hosts intranet interface
and the SNG. This traffic is protected using the DHCP SA
established in step 1. Therefore, all the DHCP packets between
the SNG and the remote host are tunneled using DHCP SA
established in step 1. At the end of the DHCP protocol, the
remote host is configured with address obtained by it and other
relevant parameters (e.g., DNS server name). The DHCP SA SHOULD
be deleted at this point since future DHCP messages will be
carried over VPN tunnel.
3) Establish a VPN SA between the remote host and the SNG. The VPN
SA is a tunnel mode SA. Note that this is a quick mode exchange.
At the end of step 3, the remote host is ready to communicate with
the intranet using IPSEC tunnel. All the IP traffic (including
future DHCP messages) between the remote host, and the intranet are
now tunneled over VPN SA. In many cases, DHCP SA and VPN SA may be
the same.
2.3. Detailed operation
Once the Internet interface of the remote host is already
configured, and the connectivity exists between the internet
interface of the remote host and the SNG, exchanges of the following
messages complete the configuration of the intranet interface and
the IPSEC tunnel. The security parameters used for different SA's is
based on the security requirements between the remote host and the
SNG and therefore, is not subject of this document. The mechanisms
described here work best when VPN is implemented using virtual
interface (called intranet interface in this document). Thus, the
objective is to get intranet interface configured using DHCP
protocol.
The exchanges are:
1) The intranet interface generates DHCP DISCOVER message and sends
it to the intranet interface. The chaddr field of the DHCP
message should include a unique identifier to that gateway.
Therefore, it can be IPSEC identity of the client (as specified
in the IPSEC architecture document, and in DOI), or any other
information that is unique to the client. Note that this field
not interpreted by the gateway or DHCP server, but is used by the
gateway (bootp relay agent) to forward DHCP reply to the
Patel 3
draft-ietf-ipsec-dhcp-01.txt 12/29/98
appropriate tunnel. The client must use the same chaddr field in
all subsequent messages of the same DHCP exchange.
2) Since there is traffic on the intranet interface, and intranet
interface is not configured yet, an IPSEC tunnel over the
Internet interface needs to be established (DHCP SA) for the
intranet interface. Remark: the DHCP SA may be established before
of after receiving DHCP DISCOVER message from the intranet
interface.
- Establish a Phase 1 ISAKMP/Oakley SA between the Internet
interface and the SNG.
- Establish DHCP SA using phase 2 (quick mode) of
ISAKMP/Oakley. The key lifetime for the DHCP SA SHOULD be in
order of minutes since it is only used at the beginning of DHCP
protocol. All the future DHCP communication, including DHCP
INFORM, DHCP RENEW and DHCP Terminate use VPN SA. The IDUi
payload for the quick mode SHOULD use address 0.0.0.0.
- Setup the routing tables such that all the traffic from
intranet interface is forwarded over the IPSEC tunnel based on
DHCP SA. At this point, a filtering table may also be
established to drop all non-DHCP traffic. Similarly, all the
packets received over the Internet interface based on IPSEC
tunnel using DHCP SA are to be forwarded to the intranet
interface.
3) The DHCP DISCOVER message is tunneled to SNG using DHCP SA. The
SNG must store the chaddr field of the DHCP DISCOVER message and
the information (possibly interface) over which the DHCP DISCOVER
message was received in a table.
4) The SNG sends back DHCP RESPONSE message over IPSEC tunnel based
on DHCP SA.
- If the SNG itself is a DHCP server, it can generate the DHCP
response message.
- If the SNG is not the DHCP server, it MUST relay the DHCP
DISCOVER message to a DHCP server and forward the response. The
SNG MUST forward the replay back to the DHCP/VPN client over the
tunnel associated with the DHCP DISCOVER message.
5) The Internet Interface forwards the DHCP response message to the
intranet interface after IPSEC processing.
6) The Intranet Interface sends out DHCP REQUEST message.
7) The DHCP REQUEST message is tunneled to the wall by the Internet
Interface using DHCP SA.
8) The SNG tunnels DHCP ACK message to the Internet Interface of the
remote host.
9) The Internet interface of the remote host forwards DHCP ACK
message to the intranet Interface.
At this point, the intranet interface has all the parameters
supplied by the DHCP protocol to complete its configuration. The
internet interface can establishes a IPSEC tunnel mode SA for VPN
(VPN SA) with the SNG. Note that IDui of the quick mode message
should be the virtual address of the intranet interface (as obtained
earlier using DHCP). DHCP SA SHOULD now be deleted, and associated
routing information must be discarded. All the future IP traffic,
including DHCP TERMINATE, RENEW, and INFORM messages MAY use VPN
traffic for communication to the intranet and the SNG.
Patel 4
draft-ietf-ipsec-dhcp-01.txt 12/29/98
2.4. DHCP Considerations
Since the SNG needs to keep track of interfaces over with the DHCP
protocol messages are to be communicated. The DHCP client MUST
supply client identifier option with its DNS name or the IP address
of its Internet Interface concatenated with the interface name. The
interface name is an ASCII null terminated string.
3. Security Considerations
This protocol is secured using IPSEC.
4. References
[1]. Bradner, S, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997.
[2]. S. Kent and R. Atkinson, Security architecture for Internet
Protocol, RFC 2401
[3]. R. Droms, "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol", RFC 2131.
[4]. G. McGregor, The PPP Internet Protocol Control Protocol
(IPCP), RFC 1172.
5. Acknowledgments
This draft has been enriched by comments from John Richardson and
Prakash Iyer of Intel, Gurdeep Pall and Peter Ford of Microsoft, and
Scott Kelley of Red Creek Communications.
6. Author's Addresses
Baiju V. Patel
Intel Corp, JF3-206
2511 NE 25th Ave
Hillsboro, OR 97124
Phone: 503 264 2422
Email: baiju.v.patel@intel.com
Patel 5