| Rfc | 5206 |
|---|
| Title | End-Host Mobility and Multihoming with the Host Identity Protocol |
|---|
| Author | P. Nikander, T. Henderson, Ed., C. Vogt, J. Arkko |
|---|
| Date | April 2008 |
|---|
| Format: | TXT, HTML |
|---|
| Obsoleted by | RFC8046 |
|---|
| Status: | EXPERIMENTAL |
|---|
|
Network Working Group P. Nikander
Request for Comments: 5206 Ericsson Research NomadicLab
Category: Experimental T. Henderson, Ed.
The Boeing Company
C. Vogt
J. Arkko
Ericsson Research NomadicLab
April 2008
End-Host Mobility and Multihoming with the Host Identity Protocol
Status of This Memo
This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This document defines mobility and multihoming extensions to the Host
Identity Protocol (HIP). Specifically, this document defines a
general "LOCATOR" parameter for HIP messages that allows for a HIP
host to notify peers about alternate addresses at which it may be
reached. This document also defines elements of procedure for
mobility of a HIP host -- the process by which a host dynamically
changes the primary locator that it uses to receive packets. While
the same LOCATOR parameter can also be used to support end-host
multihoming, detailed procedures are left for further study.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Protocol Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Operating Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.1. Locator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1.2. Mobility Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1.3. Multihoming Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Protocol Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2.1. Mobility with a Single SA Pair (No Rekeying) . . . . . 9
3.2.2. Mobility with a Single SA Pair (Mobile-Initiated
Rekey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2.3. Host Multihoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2.4. Site Multihoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.5. Dual host multihoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2.6. Combined Mobility and Multihoming . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2.7. Using LOCATORs across Addressing Realms . . . . . . . 14
3.2.8. Network Renumbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2.9. Initiating the Protocol in R1 or I2 . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3. Other Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3.1. Address Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3.2. Credit-Based Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.3.3. Preferred Locator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3.4. Interaction with Security Associations . . . . . . . . 18
4. LOCATOR Parameter Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.1. Traffic Type and Preferred Locator . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2. Locator Type and Locator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.3. UPDATE Packet with Included LOCATOR . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5. Processing Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.1. Locator Data Structure and Status . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.2. Sending LOCATORs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.3. Handling Received LOCATORs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.4. Verifying Address Reachability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.5. Changing the Preferred Locator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5.6. Credit-Based Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.6.1. Handling Payload Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.6.2. Credit Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.1. Impersonation Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.2. Denial-of-Service Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6.2.1. Flooding Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6.2.2. Memory/Computational-Exhaustion DoS Attacks . . . . . 36
6.3. Mixed Deployment Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
8. Authors and Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
9.1. Normative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
9.2. Informative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
1. Introduction and Scope
The Host Identity Protocol [RFC4423] (HIP) supports an architecture
that decouples the transport layer (TCP, UDP, etc.) from the
internetworking layer (IPv4 and IPv6) by using public/private key
pairs, instead of IP addresses, as host identities. When a host uses
HIP, the overlying protocol sublayers (e.g., transport layer sockets
and Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) Security Associations (SAs))
are instead bound to representations of these host identities, and
the IP addresses are only used for packet forwarding. However, each
host must also know at least one IP address at which its peers are
reachable. Initially, these IP addresses are the ones used during
the HIP base exchange [RFC5201].
One consequence of such a decoupling is that new solutions to
network-layer mobility and host multihoming are possible. There are
potentially many variations of mobility and multihoming possible.
The scope of this document encompasses messaging and elements of
procedure for basic network-level mobility and simple multihoming,
leaving more complicated scenarios and other variations for further
study. More specifically:
This document defines a generalized LOCATOR parameter for use in
HIP messages. The LOCATOR parameter allows a HIP host to notify a
peer about alternate addresses at which it is reachable. The
LOCATORs may be merely IP addresses, or they may have additional
multiplexing and demultiplexing context to aid the packet handling
in the lower layers. For instance, an IP address may need to be
paired with an ESP Security Parameter Index (SPI) so that packets
are sent on the correct SA for a given address.
This document also specifies the messaging and elements of
procedure for end-host mobility of a HIP host -- the sequential
change in the preferred IP address used to reach a host. In
particular, message flows to enable successful host mobility,
including address verification methods, are defined herein.
However, while the same LOCATOR parameter is intended to support
host multihoming (parallel support of a number of addresses), and
experimentation is encouraged, detailed elements of procedure for
host multihoming are left for further study.
While HIP can potentially be used with transports other than the ESP
transport format [RFC5202], this document largely assumes the use of
ESP and leaves other transport formats for further study.
There are a number of situations where the simple end-to-end
readdressing functionality is not sufficient. These include the
initial reachability of a mobile host, location privacy, simultaneous
mobility of both hosts, and some modes of NAT traversal. In these
situations, there is a need for some helper functionality in the
network, such as a HIP rendezvous server [RFC5204]. Such
functionality is out of the scope of this document. We also do not
consider localized mobility management extensions (i.e., mobility
management techniques that do not involve directly signaling the
correspondent node); this document is concerned with end-to-end
mobility. Finally, making underlying IP mobility transparent to the
transport layer has implications on the proper response of transport
congestion control, path MTU selection, and Quality of Service (QoS).
Transport-layer mobility triggers, and the proper transport response
to a HIP mobility or multihoming address change, are outside the
scope of this document.
2. Terminology and Conventions
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 [RFC2119].
LOCATOR. The name of a HIP parameter containing zero or more Locator
fields. This parameter's name is distinguished from the Locator
fields embedded within it by the use of all capital letters.
Locator. A name that controls how the packet is routed through the
network and demultiplexed by the end host. It may include a
concatenation of traditional network addresses such as an IPv6
address and end-to-end identifiers such as an ESP SPI. It may
also include transport port numbers or IPv6 Flow Labels as
demultiplexing context, or it may simply be a network address.
Address. A name that denotes a point-of-attachment to the network.
The two most common examples are an IPv4 address and an IPv6
address. The set of possible addresses is a subset of the set of
possible locators.
Preferred locator. A locator on which a host prefers to receive
data. With respect to a given peer, a host always has one active
Preferred locator, unless there are no active locators. By
default, the locators used in the HIP base exchange are the
Preferred locators.
Credit Based Authorization. A host must verify a mobile or
multihomed peer's reachability at a new locator. Credit-Based
Authorization authorizes the peer to receive a certain amount of
data at the new locator before the result of such verification is
known.
3. Protocol Model
This section is an overview; more detailed specification follows this
section.
3.1. Operating Environment
The Host Identity Protocol (HIP) [RFC5201] is a key establishment and
parameter negotiation protocol. Its primary applications are for
authenticating host messages based on host identities, and
establishing security associations (SAs) for the ESP transport format
[RFC5202] and possibly other protocols in the future.
+--------------------+ +--------------------+
| | | |
| +------------+ | | +------------+ |
| | Key | | HIP | | Key | |
| | Management | <-+-----------------------+-> | Management | |
| | Process | | | | Process | |
| +------------+ | | +------------+ |
| ^ | | ^ |
| | | | | |
| v | | v |
| +------------+ | | +------------+ |
| | IPsec | | ESP | | IPsec | |
| | Stack | <-+-----------------------+-> | Stack | |
| | | | | | | |
| +------------+ | | +------------+ |
| | | |
| | | |
| Initiator | | Responder |
+--------------------+ +--------------------+
Figure 1: HIP Deployment Model
The general deployment model for HIP is shown above, assuming
operation in an end-to-end fashion. This document specifies
extensions to the HIP protocol to enable end-host mobility and basic
multihoming. In summary, these extensions to the HIP base protocol
enable the signaling of new addressing information to the peer in HIP
messages. The messages are authenticated via a signature or keyed
hash message authentication code (HMAC) based on its Host Identity.
This document specifies the format of this new addressing (LOCATOR)
parameter, the procedures for sending and processing this parameter
to enable basic host mobility, and procedures for a concurrent
address verification mechanism.
---------
| TCP | (sockets bound to HITs)
---------
|
---------
----> | ESP | {HIT_s, HIT_d} <-> SPI
| ---------
| |
---- ---------
| MH |-> | HIP | {HIT_s, HIT_d, SPI} <-> {IP_s, IP_d, SPI}
---- ---------
|
---------
| IP |
---------
Figure 2: Architecture for HIP Mobility and Multihoming (MH)
Figure 2 depicts a layered architectural view of a HIP-enabled stack
using the ESP transport format. In HIP, upper-layer protocols
(including TCP and ESP in this figure) are bound to Host Identity
Tags (HITs) and not IP addresses. The HIP sublayer is responsible
for maintaining the binding between HITs and IP addresses. The SPI
is used to associate an incoming packet with the right HITs. The
block labeled "MH" is introduced below.
Consider first the case in which there is no mobility or multihoming,
as specified in the base protocol specification [RFC5201]. The HIP
base exchange establishes the HITs in use between the hosts, the SPIs
to use for ESP, and the IP addresses (used in both the HIP signaling
packets and ESP data packets). Note that there can only be one such
set of bindings in the outbound direction for any given packet, and
the only fields used for the binding at the HIP layer are the fields
exposed by ESP (the SPI and HITs). For the inbound direction, the
SPI is all that is required to find the right host context. ESP
rekeying events change the mapping between the HIT pair and SPI, but
do not change the IP addresses.
Consider next a mobility event, in which a host is still single-homed
but moves to another IP address. Two things must occur in this case.
First, the peer must be notified of the address change using a HIP
UPDATE message. Second, each host must change its local bindings at
the HIP sublayer (new IP addresses). It may be that both the SPIs
and IP addresses are changed simultaneously in a single UPDATE; the
protocol described herein supports this. However, simultaneous
movement of both hosts, notification of transport layer protocols of
the path change, and procedures for possibly traversing middleboxes
are not covered by this document.
Finally, consider the case when a host is multihomed (has more than
one globally routable address) and has multiple addresses available
at the HIP layer as alternative locators for fault tolerance.
Examples include the use of (possibly multiple) IPv4 and IPv6
addresses on the same interface, or the use of multiple interfaces
attached to different service providers. Such host multihoming
generally necessitates that a separate ESP SA is maintained for each
interface in order to prevent packets that arrive over different
paths from falling outside of the ESP anti-replay window [RFC4303].
Multihoming thus makes it possible that the bindings shown on the
right side of Figure 2 are one to many (in the outbound direction,
one HIT pair to multiple SPIs, and possibly then to multiple IP
addresses). However, only one SPI and address pair can be used for
any given packet, so the job of the "MH" block depicted above is to
dynamically manipulate these bindings. Beyond locally managing such
multiple bindings, the peer-to-peer HIP signaling protocol needs to
be flexible enough to define the desired mappings between HITs, SPIs,
and addresses, and needs to ensure that UPDATE messages are sent
along the right network paths so that any HIP-aware middleboxes can
observe the SPIs. This document does not specify the "MH" block, nor
does it specify detailed elements of procedure for how to handle
various multihoming (perhaps combined with mobility) scenarios. The
"MH" block may apply to more general problems outside of HIP.
However, this document does describe a basic multihoming case (one
host adds one address to its initial address and notifies the peer)
and leave more complicated scenarios for experimentation and future
documents.
3.1.1. Locator
This document defines a generalization of an address called a
"locator". A locator specifies a point-of-attachment to the network
but may also include additional end-to-end tunneling or per-host
demultiplexing context that affects how packets are handled below the
logical HIP sublayer of the stack. This generalization is useful
because IP addresses alone may not be sufficient to describe how
packets should be handled below HIP. For example, in a host
multihoming context, certain IP addresses may need to be associated
with certain ESP SPIs to avoid violating the ESP anti-replay window.
Addresses may also be affiliated with transport ports in certain
tunneling scenarios. Locators may simply be traditional network
addresses. The format of the locator fields in the LOCATOR parameter
is defined in Section 4.
3.1.2. Mobility Overview
When a host moves to another address, it notifies its peer of the new
address by sending a HIP UPDATE packet containing a LOCATOR
parameter. This UPDATE packet is acknowledged by the peer. For
reliability in the presence of packet loss, the UPDATE packet is
retransmitted as defined in the HIP protocol specification [RFC5201].
The peer can authenticate the contents of the UPDATE packet based on
the signature and keyed hash of the packet.
When using ESP Transport Format [RFC5202], the host may at the same
time decide to rekey its security association and possibly generate a
new Diffie-Hellman key; all of these actions are triggered by
including additional parameters in the UPDATE packet, as defined in
the base protocol specification [RFC5201] and ESP extension
[RFC5202].
When using ESP (and possibly other transport modes in the future),
the host is able to receive packets that are protected using a HIP
created ESP SA from any address. Thus, a host can change its IP
address and continue to send packets to its peers without necessarily
rekeying. However, the peers are not able to send packets to these
new addresses before they can reliably and securely update the set of
addresses that they associate with the sending host. Furthermore,
mobility may change the path characteristics in such a manner that
reordering occurs and packets fall outside the ESP anti-replay window
for the SA, thereby requiring rekeying.
3.1.3. Multihoming Overview
A related operational configuration is host multihoming, in which a
host has multiple locators simultaneously rather than sequentially,
as in the case of mobility. By using the LOCATOR parameter defined
herein, a host can inform its peers of additional (multiple) locators
at which it can be reached, and can declare a particular locator as a
"preferred" locator. Although this document defines a basic
mechanism for multihoming, it does not define detailed policies and
procedures, such as which locators to choose when more than one pair
is available, the operation of simultaneous mobility and multihoming,
source address selection policies (beyond those specified in
[RFC3484]), and the implications of multihoming on transport
protocols and ESP anti-replay windows. Additional definitions of
HIP-based multihoming are expected to be part of future documents.
3.2. Protocol Overview
In this section, we briefly introduce a number of usage scenarios for
HIP mobility and multihoming. These scenarios assume that HIP is
being used with the ESP transform [RFC5202], although other scenarios
may be defined in the future. To understand these usage scenarios,
the reader should be at least minimally familiar with the HIP
protocol specification [RFC5201]. However, for the (relatively)
uninitiated reader, it is most important to keep in mind that in HIP
the actual payload traffic is protected with ESP, and that the ESP
SPI acts as an index to the right host-to-host context. More
specification details are found later in Section 4 and Section 5.
The scenarios below assume that the two hosts have completed a single
HIP base exchange with each other. Both of the hosts therefore have
one incoming and one outgoing SA. Further, each SA uses the same
pair of IP addresses, which are the ones used in the base exchange.
The readdressing protocol is an asymmetric protocol where a mobile or
multihomed host informs a peer host about changes of IP addresses on
affected SPIs. The readdressing exchange is designed to be
piggybacked on existing HIP exchanges. The majority of the packets
on which the LOCATOR parameters are expected to be carried are UPDATE
packets. However, some implementations may want to experiment with
sending LOCATOR parameters also on other packets, such as R1, I2, and
NOTIFY.
The scenarios below at times describe addresses as being in either an
ACTIVE, VERIFIED, or DEPRECATED state. From the perspective of a
host, newly-learned addresses of the peer must be verified before put
into active service, and addresses removed by the peer are put into a
deprecated state. Under limited conditions described below
(Section 5.6), an UNVERIFIED address may be used. The addressing
states are defined more formally in Section 5.1.
Hosts that use link-local addresses as source addresses in their HIP
handshakes may not be reachable by a mobile peer. Such hosts SHOULD
provide a globally routable address either in the initial handshake
or via the LOCATOR parameter.
3.2.1. Mobility with a Single SA Pair (No Rekeying)
A mobile host must sometimes change an IP address bound to an
interface. The change of an IP address might be needed due to a
change in the advertised IPv6 prefixes on the link, a reconnected PPP
link, a new DHCP lease, or an actual movement to another subnet. In
order to maintain its communication context, the host must inform its
peers about the new IP address. This first example considers the
case in which the mobile host has only one interface, IP address, a
single pair of SAs (one inbound, one outbound), and no rekeying
occurs on the SAs. We also assume that the new IP addresses are
within the same address family (IPv4 or IPv6) as the first address.
This is the simplest scenario, depicted in Figure 3.
Mobile Host Peer Host
UPDATE(ESP_INFO, LOCATOR, SEQ)
----------------------------------->
UPDATE(ESP_INFO, SEQ, ACK, ECHO_REQUEST)
<-----------------------------------
UPDATE(ACK, ECHO_RESPONSE)
----------------------------------->
Figure 3: Readdress without Rekeying, but with Address Check
The steps of the packet processing are as follows:
1. The mobile host is disconnected from the peer host for a brief
period of time while it switches from one IP address to another.
Upon obtaining a new IP address, the mobile host sends a LOCATOR
parameter to the peer host in an UPDATE message. The UPDATE
message also contains an ESP_INFO parameter containing the values
of the old and new SPIs for a security association. In this
case, the OLD SPI and NEW SPI parameters both are set to the
value of the preexisting incoming SPI; this ESP_INFO does not
trigger a rekeying event but is instead included for possible
parameter-inspecting middleboxes on the path. The LOCATOR
parameter contains the new IP address (Locator Type of "1",
defined below) and a locator lifetime. The mobile host waits for
this UPDATE to be acknowledged, and retransmits if necessary, as
specified in the base specification [RFC5201].
2. The peer host receives the UPDATE, validates it, and updates any
local bindings between the HIP association and the mobile host's
destination address. The peer host MUST perform an address
verification by placing a nonce in the ECHO_REQUEST parameter of
the UPDATE message sent back to the mobile host. It also
includes an ESP_INFO parameter with the OLD SPI and NEW SPI
parameters both set to the value of the preexisting incoming SPI,
and sends this UPDATE (with piggybacked acknowledgment) to the
mobile host at its new address. The peer MAY use the new address
immediately, but it MUST limit the amount of data it sends to the
address until address verification completes.
3. The mobile host completes the readdress by processing the UPDATE
ACK and echoing the nonce in an ECHO_RESPONSE. Once the peer
host receives this ECHO_RESPONSE, it considers the new address to
be verified and can put the address into full use.
While the peer host is verifying the new address, the new address is
marked as UNVERIFIED in the interim, and the old address is
DEPRECATED. Once the peer host has received a correct reply to its
UPDATE challenge, it marks the new address as ACTIVE and removes the
old address.
3.2.2. Mobility with a Single SA Pair (Mobile-Initiated Rekey)
The mobile host may decide to rekey the SAs at the same time that it
notifies the peer of the new address. In this case, the above
procedure described in Figure 3 is slightly modified. The UPDATE
message sent from the mobile host includes an ESP_INFO with the OLD
SPI set to the previous SPI, the NEW SPI set to the desired new SPI
value for the incoming SA, and the KEYMAT Index desired. Optionally,
the host may include a DIFFIE_HELLMAN parameter for a new Diffie-
Hellman key. The peer completes the request for a rekey as is
normally done for HIP rekeying, except that the new address is kept
as UNVERIFIED until the UPDATE nonce challenge is received as
described above. Figure 4 illustrates this scenario.
Mobile Host Peer Host
UPDATE(ESP_INFO, LOCATOR, SEQ, [DIFFIE_HELLMAN])
----------------------------------->
UPDATE(ESP_INFO, SEQ, ACK, [DIFFIE_HELLMAN,] ECHO_REQUEST)
<-----------------------------------
UPDATE(ACK, ECHO_RESPONSE)
----------------------------------->
Figure 4: Readdress with Mobile-Initiated Rekey
3.2.3. Host Multihoming
A (mobile or stationary) host may sometimes have more than one
interface or global address. The host may notify the peer host of
the additional interface or address by using the LOCATOR parameter.
To avoid problems with the ESP anti-replay window, a host SHOULD use
a different SA for each interface or address used to receive packets
from the peer host when multiple locator pairs are being used
simultaneously rather than sequentially.
When more than one locator is provided to the peer host, the host
SHOULD indicate which locator is preferred (the locator on which the
host prefers to receive traffic). By default, the addresses used in
the base exchange are preferred until indicated otherwise.
In the multihoming case, the sender may also have multiple valid
locators from which to source traffic. In practice, a HIP
association in a multihoming configuration may have both a preferred
peer locator and a preferred local locator, although rules for source
address selection should ultimately govern the selection of the
source locator based on the destination locator.
Although the protocol may allow for configurations in which there is
an asymmetric number of SAs between the hosts (e.g., one host has two
interfaces and two inbound SAs, while the peer has one interface and
one inbound SA), it is RECOMMENDED that inbound and outbound SAs be
created pairwise between hosts. When an ESP_INFO arrives to rekey a
particular outbound SA, the corresponding inbound SA should be also
rekeyed at that time. Although asymmetric SA configurations might be
experimented with, their usage may constrain interoperability at this
time. However, it is recommended that implementations attempt to
support peers that prefer to use non-paired SAs. It is expected that
this section and behavior will be modified in future revisions of
this protocol, once the issue and its implications are better
understood.
Consider the case between two hosts, one single-homed and one
multihomed. The multihomed host may decide to inform the single-
homed host about its other address. It is RECOMMENDED that the
multihomed host set up a new SA pair for use on this new address. To
do this, the multihomed host sends a LOCATOR with an ESP_INFO,
indicating the request for a new SA by setting the OLD SPI value to
zero, and the NEW SPI value to the newly created incoming SPI. A
Locator Type of "1" is used to associate the new address with the new
SPI. The LOCATOR parameter also contains a second Type "1" locator,
that of the original address and SPI. To simplify parameter
processing and avoid explicit protocol extensions to remove locators,
each LOCATOR parameter MUST list all locators in use on a connection
(a complete listing of inbound locators and SPIs for the host). The
multihomed host waits for an ESP_INFO (new outbound SA) from the peer
and an ACK of its own UPDATE. As in the mobility case, the peer host
must perform an address verification before actively using the new
address. Figure 5 illustrates this scenario.
Multi-homed Host Peer Host
UPDATE(ESP_INFO, LOCATOR, SEQ, [DIFFIE_HELLMAN])
----------------------------------->
UPDATE(ESP_INFO, SEQ, ACK, [DIFFIE_HELLMAN,] ECHO_REQUEST)
<-----------------------------------
UPDATE(ACK, ECHO_RESPONSE)
----------------------------------->
Figure 5: Basic Multihoming Scenario
In multihoming scenarios, it is important that hosts receiving
UPDATEs associate them correctly with the destination address used in
the packet carrying the UPDATE. When processing inbound LOCATORs
that establish new security associations on an interface with
multiple addresses, a host uses the destination address of the UPDATE
containing the LOCATOR as the local address to which the LOCATOR plus
ESP_INFO is targeted. This is because hosts may send UPDATEs with
the same (locator) IP address to different peer addresses -- this has
the effect of creating multiple inbound SAs implicitly affiliated
with different peer source addresses.
3.2.4. Site Multihoming
A host may have an interface that has multiple globally routable IP
addresses. Such a situation may be a result of the site having
multiple upper Internet Service Providers, or just because the site
provides all hosts with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. The host
should stay reachable at all or any subset of the currently available
global routable addresses, independent of how they are provided.
This case is handled the same as if there were different IP
addresses, described above in Section 3.2.3. Note that a single
interface may experience site multihoming while the host itself may
have multiple interfaces.
Note that a host may be multihomed and mobile simultaneously, and
that a multihomed host may want to protect the location of some of
its interfaces while revealing the real IP address of some others.
This document does not presently specify additional site multihoming
extensions to HIP; further alignment with the IETF shim6 working
group may be considered in the future.
3.2.5. Dual host multihoming
Consider the case in which both hosts would like to add an additional
address after the base exchange completes. In Figure 6, consider
that host1, which used address addr1a in the base exchange to set up
SPI1a and SPI2a, wants to add address addr1b. It would send an
UPDATE with LOCATOR (containing the address addr1b) to host2, using
destination address addr2a, and a new set of SPIs would be added
between hosts 1 and 2 (call them SPI1b and SPI2b -- not shown in the
figure). Next, consider host2 deciding to add addr2b to the
relationship. Host2 must select one of host1's addresses towards
which to initiate an UPDATE. It may choose to initiate an UPDATE to
addr1a, addr1b, or both. If it chooses to send to both, then a full
mesh (four SA pairs) of SAs would exist between the two hosts. This
is the most general case; it often may be the case that hosts
primarily establish new SAs only with the peer's Preferred locator.
The readdressing protocol is flexible enough to accommodate this
choice.
-<- SPI1a -- -- SPI2a ->-
host1 < > addr1a <---> addr2a < > host2
->- SPI2a -- -- SPI1a -<-
addr1b <---> addr2a (second SA pair)
addr1a <---> addr2b (third SA pair)
addr1b <---> addr2b (fourth SA pair)
Figure 6: Dual Multihoming Case in Which Each Host Uses LOCATOR to
Add a Second Address
3.2.6. Combined Mobility and Multihoming
It looks likely that in the future, many mobile hosts will be
simultaneously mobile and multihomed, i.e., have multiple mobile
interfaces. Furthermore, if the interfaces use different access
technologies, it is fairly likely that one of the interfaces may
appear stable (retain its current IP address) while some other(s) may
experience mobility (undergo IP address change).
The use of LOCATOR plus ESP_INFO should be flexible enough to handle
most such scenarios, although more complicated scenarios have not
been studied so far.
3.2.7. Using LOCATORs across Addressing Realms
It is possible for HIP associations to migrate to a state in which
both parties are only using locators in different addressing realms.
For example, the two hosts may initiate the HIP association when both
are using IPv6 locators, then one host may loose its IPv6
connectivity and obtain an IPv4 address. In such a case, some type
of mechanism for interworking between the different realms must be
employed; such techniques are outside the scope of the present text.
The basic problem in this example is that the host readdressing to
IPv4 does not know a corresponding IPv4 address of the peer. This
may be handled (experimentally) by possibly configuring this address
information manually or in the DNS, or the hosts exchange both IPv4
and IPv6 addresses in the locator.
3.2.8. Network Renumbering
It is expected that IPv6 networks will be renumbered much more often
than most IPv4 networks. From an end-host point of view, network
renumbering is similar to mobility.
3.2.9. Initiating the Protocol in R1 or I2
A Responder host MAY include a LOCATOR parameter in the R1 packet
that it sends to the Initiator. This parameter MUST be protected by
the R1 signature. If the R1 packet contains LOCATOR parameters with
a new Preferred locator, the Initiator SHOULD directly set the new
Preferred locator to status ACTIVE without performing address
verification first, and MUST send the I2 packet to the new Preferred
locator. The I1 destination address and the new Preferred locator
may be identical. All new non-preferred locators must still undergo
address verification once the base exchange completes.
Initiator Responder
R1 with LOCATOR
<-----------------------------------
record additional addresses
change responder address
I2 sent to newly indicated preferred address
----------------------------------->
(process normally)
R2
<-----------------------------------
(process normally, later verification of non-preferred locators)
Figure 7: LOCATOR Inclusion in R1
An Initiator MAY include one or more LOCATOR parameters in the I2
packet, independent of whether or not there was a LOCATOR parameter
in the R1. These parameters MUST be protected by the I2 signature.
Even if the I2 packet contains LOCATOR parameters, the Responder MUST
still send the R2 packet to the source address of the I2. The new
Preferred locator SHOULD be identical to the I2 source address. If
the I2 packet contains LOCATOR parameters, all new locators must
undergo address verification as usual, and the ESP traffic that
subsequently follows should use the Preferred locator.
Initiator Responder
I2 with LOCATOR
----------------------------------->
(process normally)
record additional addresses
R2 sent to source address of I2
<-----------------------------------
(process normally)
Figure 8: LOCATOR Inclusion in I2
The I1 and I2 may be arriving from different source addresses if the
LOCATOR parameter is present in R1. In this case, implementations
simultaneously using multiple pre-created R1s, indexed by Initiator
IP addresses, may inadvertently fail the puzzle solution of I2
packets due to a perceived puzzle mismatch. See, for instance, the
example in Appendix A of [RFC5201]. As a solution, the Responder's
puzzle indexing mechanism must be flexible enough to accommodate the
situation when R1 includes a LOCATOR parameter.
3.3. Other Considerations
3.3.1. Address Verification
When a HIP host receives a set of locators from another HIP host in a
LOCATOR, it does not necessarily know whether the other host is
actually reachable at the claimed addresses. In fact, a malicious
peer host may be intentionally giving bogus addresses in order to
cause a packet flood towards the target addresses [RFC4225].
Likewise, viral software may have compromised the peer host,
programming it to redirect packets to the target addresses. Thus,
the HIP host must first check that the peer is reachable at the new
address.
An additional potential benefit of performing address verification is
to allow middleboxes in the network along the new path to obtain the
peer host's inbound SPI.
Address verification is implemented by the challenger sending some
piece of unguessable information to the new address, and waiting for
some acknowledgment from the Responder that indicates reception of
the information at the new address. This may include the exchange of
a nonce, or the generation of a new SPI and observation of data
arriving on the new SPI.
3.3.2. Credit-Based Authorization
Credit-Based Authorization (CBA) allows a host to securely use a new
locator even though the peer's reachability at the address embedded
in the locator has not yet been verified. This is accomplished based
on the following three hypotheses:
1. A flooding attacker typically seeks to somehow multiply the
packets it generates for the purpose of its attack because
bandwidth is an ample resource for many victims.
2. An attacker can often cause unamplified flooding by sending
packets to its victim, either by directly addressing the victim
in the packets, or by guiding the packets along a specific path
by means of an IPv6 Routing header, if Routing headers are not
filtered by firewalls.
3. Consequently, the additional effort required to set up a
redirection-based flooding attack (without CBA and return
routability checks) would pay off for the attacker only if
amplification could be obtained this way.
On this basis, rather than eliminating malicious packet redirection
in the first place, Credit-Based Authorization prevents
amplifications. This is accomplished by limiting the data a host can
send to an unverified address of a peer by the data recently received
from that peer. Redirection-based flooding attacks thus become less
attractive than, for example, pure direct flooding, where the
attacker itself sends bogus packets to the victim.
Figure 9 illustrates Credit-Based Authorization: Host B measures the
amount of data recently received from peer A and, when A readdresses,
sends packets to A's new, unverified address as long as the sum of
the packet sizes does not exceed the measured, received data volume.
When insufficient credit is left, B stops sending further packets to
A until A's address becomes ACTIVE. The address changes may be due
to mobility, multihoming, or any other reason. Not shown in Figure 9
are the results of credit aging (Section 5.6.2), a mechanism used to
dampen possible time-shifting attacks.
+-------+ +-------+
| A | | B |
+-------+ +-------+
| |
address |------------------------------->| credit += size(packet)
ACTIVE | |
|------------------------------->| credit += size(packet)
|<-------------------------------| do not change credit
| |
+ address change |
+ address verification starts |
address |<-------------------------------| credit -= size(packet)
UNVERIFIED |------------------------------->| credit += size(packet)
|<-------------------------------| credit -= size(packet)
| |
|<-------------------------------| credit -= size(packet)
| X credit < size(packet)
| | => do not send packet!
+ address verification concludes |
address | |
ACTIVE |<-------------------------------| do not change credit
| |
Figure 9: Readdressing Scenario
3.3.3. Preferred Locator
When a host has multiple locators, the peer host must decide which to
use for outbound packets. It may be that a host would prefer to
receive data on a particular inbound interface. HIP allows a
particular locator to be designated as a Preferred locator and
communicated to the peer (see Section 4).
In general, when multiple locators are used for a session, there is
the question of using multiple locators for failover only or for
load-balancing. Due to the implications of load-balancing on the
transport layer that still need to be worked out, this document
assumes that multiple locators are used primarily for failover. An
implementation may use ICMP interactions, reachability checks, or
other means to detect the failure of a locator.
3.3.4. Interaction with Security Associations
This document specifies a new HIP protocol parameter, the LOCATOR
parameter (see Section 4), that allows the hosts to exchange
information about their locator(s) and any changes in their
locator(s). The logical structure created with LOCATOR parameters
has three levels: hosts, Security Associations (SAs) indexed by
Security Parameter Indices (SPIs), and addresses.
The relation between these levels for an association constructed as
defined in the base specification [RFC5201] and ESP transform
[RFC5202] is illustrated in Figure 10.
-<- SPI1a -- -- SPI2a ->-
host1 < > addr1a <---> addr2a < > host2
->- SPI2a -- -- SPI1a -<-
Figure 10: Relation between Hosts, SPIs,
and Addresses (Base Specification)
In Figure 10, host1 and host2 negotiate two unidirectional SAs, and
each host selects the SPI value for its inbound SA. The addresses
addr1a and addr2a are the source addresses that the hosts use in the
base HIP exchange. These are the "preferred" (and only) addresses
conveyed to the peer for use on each SA. That is, although packets
sent to any of the hosts' interfaces may be accepted on the inbound
SA, the peer host in general knows of only the single destination
address learned in the base exchange (e.g., for host1, it sends a
packet on SPI2a to addr2a to reach host2), unless other mechanisms
exist to learn of new addresses.
In general, the bindings that exist in an implementation
corresponding to this document can be depicted as shown in Figure 11.
In this figure, a host can have multiple inbound SPIs (and, not
shown, multiple outbound SPIs) associated with another host.
Furthermore, each SPI may have multiple addresses associated with it.
These addresses that are bound to an SPI are not used to lookup the
incoming SA. Rather, the addresses are those that are provided to
the peer host, as hints for which addresses to use to reach the host
on that SPI. The LOCATOR parameter is used to change the set of
addresses that a peer associates with a particular SPI.
address11
/
SPI1 - address12
/
/ address21
host -- SPI2 <
\ address22
\
SPI3 - address31
\
address32
Figure 11: Relation between Hosts, SPIs, and Addresses (General Case)
A host may establish any number of security associations (or SPIs)
with a peer. The main purpose of having multiple SPIs with a peer is
to group the addresses into collections that are likely to experience
fate sharing. For example, if the host needs to change its addresses
on SPI2, it is likely that both address21 and address22 will
simultaneously become obsolete. In a typical case, such SPIs may
correspond with physical interfaces; see below. Note, however, that
especially in the case of site multihoming, one of the addresses may
become unreachable while the other one still works. In the typical
case, however, this does not require the host to inform its peers
about the situation, since even the non-working address still
logically exists.
A basic property of HIP SAs is that the inbound IP address is not
used to lookup the incoming SA. Therefore, in Figure 11, it may seem
unnecessary for address31, for example, to be associated only with
SPI3 -- in practice, a packet may arrive to SPI1 via destination
address address31 as well. However, the use of different source and
destination addresses typically leads to different paths, with
different latencies in the network, and if packets were to arrive via
an arbitrary destination IP address (or path) for a given SPI, the
reordering due to different latencies may cause some packets to fall
outside of the ESP anti-replay window. For this reason, HIP provides
a mechanism to affiliate destination addresses with inbound SPIs,
when there is a concern that anti-replay windows might be violated.
In this sense, we can say that a given inbound SPI has an "affinity"
for certain inbound IP addresses, and this affinity is communicated
to the peer host. Each physical interface SHOULD have a separate SA,
unless the ESP anti-replay window is loose.
Moreover, even when the destination addresses used for a particular
SPI are held constant, the use of different source interfaces may
also cause packets to fall outside of the ESP anti-replay window,
since the path traversed is often affected by the source address or
interface used. A host has no way to influence the source interface
on which a peer sends its packets on a given SPI. A host SHOULD
consistently use the same source interface and address when sending
to a particular destination IP address and SPI. For this reason, a
host may find it useful to change its SPI or at least reset its ESP
anti-replay window when the peer host readdresses.
An address may appear on more than one SPI. This creates no
ambiguity since the receiver will ignore the IP addresses during SA
lookup anyway. However, this document does not specify such cases.
When the LOCATOR parameter is sent in an UPDATE packet, then the
receiver will respond with an UPDATE acknowledgment. When the
LOCATOR parameter is sent in an R1 or I2 packet, the base exchange
retransmission mechanism will confirm its successful delivery.
LOCATORs may experimentally be used in NOTIFY packets; in this case,
the recipient MUST consider the LOCATOR as informational and not
immediately change the current preferred address, but can test the
additional locators when the need arises. The use of the LOCATOR in
a NOTIFY message may not be compatible with middleboxes.
4. LOCATOR Parameter Format
The LOCATOR parameter is a critical parameter as defined by
[RFC5201]. It consists of the standard HIP parameter Type and Length
fields, plus zero or more Locator sub-parameters. Each Locator sub-
parameter contains a Traffic Type, Locator Type, Locator Length,
Preferred locator bit, Locator Lifetime, and a Locator encoding. A
LOCATOR containing zero Locator fields is permitted but has the
effect of deprecating all addresses.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type | Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Traffic Type | Locator Type | Locator Length | Reserved |P|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Locator Lifetime |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Locator |
| |
| |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
. .
. .
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Traffic Type | Locator Type | Locator Length | Reserved |P|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Locator Lifetime |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Locator |
| |
| |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 12: LOCATOR Parameter Format
Type: 193
Length: Length in octets, excluding Type and Length fields, and
excluding padding.
Traffic Type: Defines whether the locator pertains to HIP signaling,
user data, or both.
Locator Type: Defines the semantics of the Locator field.
Locator Length: Defines the length of the Locator field, in units of
4-byte words (Locators up to a maximum of 4*255 octets are
supported).
Reserved: Zero when sent, ignored when received.
P: Preferred locator. Set to one if the locator is preferred for
that Traffic Type; otherwise, set to zero.
Locator Lifetime: Locator lifetime, in seconds.
Locator: The locator whose semantics and encoding are indicated by
the Locator Type field. All Locator sub-fields are integral
multiples of four octets in length.
The Locator Lifetime indicates how long the following locator is
expected to be valid. The lifetime is expressed in seconds. Each
locator MUST have a non-zero lifetime. The address is expected to
become deprecated when the specified number of seconds has passed
since the reception of the message. A deprecated address SHOULD NOT
be used as a destination address if an alternate (non-deprecated) is
available and has sufficient scope.
4.1. Traffic Type and Preferred Locator
The following Traffic Type values are defined:
0: Both signaling (HIP control packets) and user data.
1: Signaling packets only.
2: Data packets only.
The "P" bit, when set, has scope over the corresponding Traffic Type.
That is, when a "P" bit is set for Traffic Type "2", for example, it
means that the locator is preferred for data packets. If there is a
conflict (for example, if the "P" bit is set for an address of Type
"0" and a different address of Type "2"), the more specific Traffic
Type rule applies (in this case, "2"). By default, the IP addresses
used in the base exchange are Preferred locators for both signaling
and user data, unless a new Preferred locator supersedes them. If no
locators are indicated as preferred for a given Traffic Type, the
implementation may use an arbitrary locator from the set of active
locators.
4.2. Locator Type and Locator
The following Locator Type values are defined, along with the
associated semantics of the Locator field:
0: An IPv6 address or an IPv4-in-IPv6 format IPv4 address [RFC4291]
(128 bits long). This locator type is defined primarily for non-
ESP-based usage.
1: The concatenation of an ESP SPI (first 32 bits) followed by an
IPv6 address or an IPv4-in-IPv6 format IPv4 address (an
additional 128 bits). This IP address is defined primarily for
ESP-based usage.
4.3. UPDATE Packet with Included LOCATOR
A number of combinations of parameters in an UPDATE packet are
possible (e.g., see Section 3.2). In this document, procedures are
defined only for the case in which one LOCATOR and one ESP_INFO
parameter is used in any HIP packet. Furthermore, the LOCATOR SHOULD
list all of the locators that are active on the HIP association
(including those on SAs not covered by the ESP_INFO parameter). Any
UPDATE packet that includes a LOCATOR parameter SHOULD include both
an HMAC and a HIP_SIGNATURE parameter. The relationship between the
announced Locators and any ESP_INFO parameters present in the packet
is defined in Section 5.2. The sending of multiple LOCATOR and/or
ESP_INFO parameters is for further study; receivers may wish to
experiment with supporting such a possibility.
5. Processing Rules
This section describes rules for sending and receiving the LOCATOR
parameter, testing address reachability, and using Credit-Based
Authorization (CBA) on UNVERIFIED locators.
5.1. Locator Data Structure and Status
In a typical implementation, each outgoing locator is represented by
a piece of state that contains the following data:
o the actual bit pattern representing the locator,
o the lifetime (seconds),
o the status (UNVERIFIED, ACTIVE, DEPRECATED),
o the Traffic Type scope of the locator, and
o whether the locator is preferred for any particular scope.
The status is used to track the reachability of the address embedded
within the LOCATOR parameter:
UNVERIFIED indicates that the reachability of the address has not
been verified yet,
ACTIVE indicates that the reachability of the address has been
verified and the address has not been deprecated,
DEPRECATED indicates that the locator lifetime has expired.
The following state changes are allowed:
UNVERIFIED to ACTIVE The reachability procedure completes
successfully.
UNVERIFIED to DEPRECATED The locator lifetime expires while the
locator is UNVERIFIED.
ACTIVE to DEPRECATED The locator lifetime expires while the locator
is ACTIVE.
ACTIVE to UNVERIFIED There has been no traffic on the address for
some time, and the local policy mandates that the address
reachability must be verified again before starting to use it
again.
DEPRECATED to UNVERIFIED The host receives a new lifetime for the
locator.
A DEPRECATED address MUST NOT be changed to ACTIVE without first
verifying its reachability.
Note that the state of whether or not a locator is preferred is not
necessarily the same as the value of the Preferred bit in the Locator
sub-parameter received from the peer. Peers may recommend certain
locators to be preferred, but the decision on whether to actually use
a locator as a preferred locator is a local decision, possibly
influenced by local policy.
5.2. Sending LOCATORs
The decision of when to send LOCATORs is basically a local policy
issue. However, it is RECOMMENDED that a host send a LOCATOR
whenever it recognizes a change of its IP addresses in use on an
active HIP association, and assumes that the change is going to last
at least for a few seconds. Rapidly sending LOCATORs that force the
peer to change the preferred address SHOULD be avoided.
When a host decides to inform its peers about changes in its IP
addresses, it has to decide how to group the various addresses with
SPIs. The grouping should consider also whether middlebox
interaction requires sending the same LOCATOR in separate UPDATEs on
different paths. Since each SPI is associated with a different
Security Association, the grouping policy may also be based on ESP
anti-replay protection considerations. In the typical case, simply
basing the grouping on actual kernel level physical and logical
interfaces may be the best policy. Grouping policy is outside of the
scope of this document.
Note that the purpose of announcing IP addresses in a LOCATOR is to
provide connectivity between the communicating hosts. In most cases,
tunnels or virtual interfaces such as IPsec tunnel interfaces or
Mobile IP home addresses provide sub-optimal connectivity.
Furthermore, it should be possible to replace most tunnels with HIP
based "non-tunneling", therefore making most virtual interfaces
fairly unnecessary in the future. Therefore, virtual interfaces
SHOULD NOT be announced in general. On the other hand, there are
clearly situations where tunnels are used for diagnostic and/or
testing purposes. In such and other similar cases announcing the IP
addresses of virtual interfaces may be appropriate.
Hosts MUST NOT announce broadcast or multicast addresses in LOCATORs.
Link-local addresses MAY be announced to peers that are known to be
neighbors on the same link, such as when the IP destination address
of a peer is also link-local. The announcement of link-local
addresses in this case is a policy decision; link-local addresses
used as Preferred locators will create reachability problems when the
host moves to another link. In any case, link-local addresses MUST
NOT be announced to a peer unless that peer is known to be on the
same link.
Once the host has decided on the groups and assignment of addresses
to the SPIs, it creates a LOCATOR parameter that serves as a complete
representation of the addresses and affiliated SPIs intended for
active use. We now describe a few cases introduced in Section 3.2.
We assume that the Traffic Type for each locator is set to "0" (other
values for Traffic Type may be specified in documents that separate
the HIP control plane from data plane traffic). Other mobility and
multihoming cases are possible but are left for further
experimentation.
1. Host mobility with no multihoming and no rekeying. The mobile
host creates a single UPDATE containing a single ESP_INFO with a
single LOCATOR parameter. The ESP_INFO contains the current
value of the SPI in both the OLD SPI and NEW SPI fields. The
LOCATOR contains a single Locator with a "Locator Type" of "1";
the SPI must match that of the ESP_INFO. The Preferred bit
SHOULD be set and the "Locator Lifetime" is set according to
local policy. The UPDATE also contains a SEQ parameter as usual.
This packet is retransmitted as defined in the HIP protocol
specification [RFC5201]. The UPDATE should be sent to the peer's
preferred IP address with an IP source address corresponding to
the address in the LOCATOR parameter.
2. Host mobility with no multihoming but with rekeying. The mobile
host creates a single UPDATE containing a single ESP_INFO with a
single LOCATOR parameter (with a single address). The ESP_INFO
contains the current value of the SPI in the OLD SPI and the new
value of the SPI in the NEW SPI, and a KEYMAT Index as selected
by local policy. Optionally, the host may choose to initiate a
Diffie Hellman rekey by including a DIFFIE_HELLMAN parameter.
The LOCATOR contains a single Locator with "Locator Type" of "1";
the SPI must match that of the NEW SPI in the ESP_INFO.
Otherwise, the steps are identical to the case in which no
rekeying is initiated.
3. Host multihoming (addition of an address). We only describe the
simple case of adding an additional address to a (previously)
single-homed, non-mobile host. The host SHOULD set up a new SA
pair between this new address and the preferred address of the
peer host. To do this, the multihomed host creates a new inbound
SA and creates a new SPI. For the outgoing UPDATE message, it
inserts an ESP_INFO parameter with an OLD SPI field of "0", a NEW
SPI field corresponding to the new SPI, and a KEYMAT Index as
selected by local policy. The host adds to the UPDATE message a
LOCATOR with two Type "1" Locators: the original address and SPI
active on the association, and the new address and new SPI being
added (with the SPI matching the NEW SPI contained in the
ESP_INFO). The Preferred bit SHOULD be set depending on the
policy to tell the peer host which of the two locators is
preferred. The UPDATE also contains a SEQ parameter and
optionally a DIFFIE_HELLMAN parameter, and follows rekeying
procedures with respect to this new address. The UPDATE message
SHOULD be sent to the peer's Preferred address with a source
address corresponding to the new locator.
The sending of multiple LOCATORs, locators with Locator Type "0", and
multiple ESP_INFO parameters is for further study. Note that the
inclusion of LOCATOR in an R1 packet requires the use of Type "0"
locators since no SAs are set up at that point.
5.3. Handling Received LOCATORs
A host SHOULD be prepared to receive a LOCATOR parameter in the
following HIP packets: R1, I2, UPDATE, and NOTIFY.
This document describes sending both ESP_INFO and LOCATOR parameters
in an UPDATE. The ESP_INFO parameter is included when there is a
need to rekey or key a new SPI, and is otherwise included for the
possible benefit of HIP-aware middleboxes. The LOCATOR parameter
contains a complete map of the locators that the host wishes to make
or keep active for the HIP association.
In general, the processing of a LOCATOR depends upon the packet type
in which it is included. Here, we describe only the case in which
ESP_INFO is present and a single LOCATOR and ESP_INFO are sent in an
UPDATE message; other cases are for further study. The steps below
cover each of the cases described in Section 5.2.
The processing of ESP_INFO and LOCATOR parameters is intended to be
modular and support future generalization to the inclusion of
multiple ESP_INFO and/or multiple LOCATOR parameters. A host SHOULD
first process the ESP_INFO before the LOCATOR, since the ESP_INFO may
contain a new SPI value mapped to an existing SPI, while a Type "1"
locator will only contain a reference to the new SPI.
When a host receives a validated HIP UPDATE with a LOCATOR and
ESP_INFO parameter, it processes the ESP_INFO as follows. The
ESP_INFO parameter indicates whether an SA is being rekeyed, created,
deprecated, or just identified for the benefit of middleboxes. The
host examines the OLD SPI and NEW SPI values in the ESP_INFO
parameter:
1. (no rekeying) If the OLD SPI is equal to the NEW SPI and both
correspond to an existing SPI, the ESP_INFO is gratuitous
(provided for middleboxes) and no rekeying is necessary.
2. (rekeying) If the OLD SPI indicates an existing SPI and the NEW
SPI is a different non-zero value, the existing SA is being
rekeyed and the host follows HIP ESP rekeying procedures by
creating a new outbound SA with an SPI corresponding to the NEW
SPI, with no addresses bound to this SPI. Note that locators in
the LOCATOR parameter will reference this new SPI instead of the
old SPI.
3. (new SA) If the OLD SPI value is zero and the NEW SPI is a new
non-zero value, then a new SA is being requested by the peer.
This case is also treated like a rekeying event; the receiving
host must create a new SA and respond with an UPDATE ACK.
4. (deprecating the SA) If the OLD SPI indicates an existing SPI and
the NEW SPI is zero, the SA is being deprecated and all locators
uniquely bound to the SPI are put into the DEPRECATED state.
If none of the above cases apply, a protocol error has occurred and
the processing of the UPDATE is stopped.
Next, the locators in the LOCATOR parameter are processed. For each
locator listed in the LOCATOR parameter, check that the address
therein is a legal unicast or anycast address. That is, the address
MUST NOT be a broadcast or multicast address. Note that some
implementations MAY accept addresses that indicate the local host,
since it may be allowed that the host runs HIP with itself.
The below assumes that all locators are of Type "1" with a Traffic
Type of "0"; other cases are for further study.
For each Type "1" address listed in the LOCATOR parameter, the host
checks whether the address is already bound to the SPI indicated. If
the address is already bound, its lifetime is updated. If the status
of the address is DEPRECATED, the status is changed to UNVERIFIED.
If the address is not already bound, the address is added, and its
status is set to UNVERIFIED. Mark all addresses corresponding to the
SPI that were NOT listed in the LOCATOR parameter as DEPRECATED.
As a result, at the end of processing, the addresses listed in the
LOCATOR parameter have either a state of UNVERIFIED or ACTIVE, and
any old addresses on the old SA not listed in the LOCATOR parameter
have a state of DEPRECATED.
Once the host has processed the locators, if the LOCATOR parameter
contains a new Preferred locator, the host SHOULD initiate a change
of the Preferred locator. This requires that the host first verifies
reachability of the associated address, and only then changes the
Preferred locator; see Section 5.5.
If a host receives a locator with an unsupported Locator Type, and
when such a locator is also declared to be the Preferred locator for
the peer, the host SHOULD send a NOTIFY error with a Notify Message
Type of LOCATOR_TYPE_UNSUPPORTED, with the Notification Data field
containing the locator(s) that the receiver failed to process.
Otherwise, a host MAY send a NOTIFY error if a (non-preferred)
locator with an unsupported Locator Type is received in a LOCATOR
parameter.
5.4. Verifying Address Reachability
A host MUST verify the reachability of an UNVERIFIED address. The
status of a newly learned address MUST initially be set to UNVERIFIED
unless the new address is advertised in a R1 packet as a new
Preferred locator. A host MAY also want to verify the reachability
of an ACTIVE address again after some time, in which case it would
set the status of the address to UNVERIFIED and reinitiate address
verification.
A host typically starts the address-verification procedure by sending
a nonce to the new address. For example, when the host is changing
its SPI and sending an ESP_INFO to the peer, the NEW SPI value SHOULD
be random and the value MAY be copied into an ECHO_REQUEST sent in
the rekeying UPDATE. However, if the host is not changing its SPI,
it MAY still use the ECHO_REQUEST parameter in an UPDATE message sent
to the new address. A host MAY also use other message exchanges as
confirmation of the address reachability.
Note that in the case of receiving a LOCATOR in an R1 and replying
with an I2 to the new address in the LOCATOR, receiving the
corresponding R2 is sufficient proof of reachability for the
Responder's preferred address. Since further address verification of
such an address can impede the HIP-base exchange, a host MUST NOT
separately verify reachability of a new Preferred locator that was
received on an R1.
In some cases, it MAY be sufficient to use the arrival of data on a
newly advertised SA as implicit address reachability verification as
depicted in Figure 13, instead of waiting for the confirmation via a
HIP packet. In this case, a host advertising a new SPI as part of
its address reachability check SHOULD be prepared to receive traffic
on the new SA.
Mobile host Peer host
prepare incoming SA
NEW SPI in ESP_INFO (UPDATE)
<-----------------------------------
switch to new outgoing SA
data on new SA
----------------------------------->
mark address ACTIVE
Figure 13: Address Activation Via Use of a New SA
When address verification is in progress for a new Preferred locator,
the host SHOULD select a different locator listed as ACTIVE, if one
such locator is available, to continue communications until address
verification completes. Alternatively, the host MAY use the new
Preferred locator while in UNVERIFIED status to the extent Credit-
Based Authorization permits. Credit-Based Authorization is explained
in Section 5.6. Once address verification succeeds, the status of
the new Preferred locator changes to ACTIVE.
5.5. Changing the Preferred Locator
A host MAY want to change the Preferred outgoing locator for
different reasons, e.g., because traffic information or ICMP error
messages indicate that the currently used preferred address may have
become unreachable. Another reason may be due to receiving a LOCATOR
parameter that has the "P" bit set.
To change the Preferred locator, the host initiates the following
procedure:
1. If the new Preferred locator has ACTIVE status, the Preferred
locator is changed and the procedure succeeds.
2. If the new Preferred locator has UNVERIFIED status, the host
starts to verify its reachability. The host SHOULD use a
different locator listed as ACTIVE until address verification
completes if one such locator is available. Alternatively, the
host MAY use the new Preferred locator, even though in UNVERIFIED
status, to the extent Credit-Based Authorization permits. Once
address verification succeeds, the status of the new Preferred
locator changes to ACTIVE and its use is no longer governed by
Credit-Based Authorization.
3. If the peer host has not indicated a preference for any address,
then the host picks one of the peer's ACTIVE addresses randomly
or according to policy. This case may arise if, for example,
ICMP error messages that deprecate the Preferred locator arrive,
but the peer has not yet indicated a new Preferred locator.
4. If the new Preferred locator has DEPRECATED status and there is
at least one non-deprecated address, the host selects one of the
non-deprecated addresses as a new Preferred locator and
continues. If the selected address is UNVERIFIED, the address
verification procedure described above will apply.
5.6. Credit-Based Authorization
To prevent redirection-based flooding attacks, the use of a Credit-
Based Authorization (CBA) approach is mandatory when a host sends
data to an UNVERIFIED locator. The following algorithm meets the
security considerations for prevention of amplification and time-
shifting attacks. Other forms of credit aging, and other values for
the CreditAgingFactor and CreditAgingInterval parameters in
particular, are for further study, and so are the advanced CBA
techniques specified in [CBA-MIPv6].
5.6.1. Handling Payload Packets
A host maintains a "credit counter" for each of its peers. Whenever
a packet arrives from a peer, the host SHOULD increase that peer's
credit counter by the size of the received packet. When the host has
a packet to be sent to the peer, and when the peer's Preferred
locator is listed as UNVERIFIED and no alternative locator with
status ACTIVE is available, the host checks whether it can send the
packet to the UNVERIFIED locator. The packet SHOULD be sent if the
value of the credit counter is higher than the size of the outbound
packet. If the credit counter is too low, the packet MUST be
discarded or buffered until address verification succeeds. When a
packet is sent to a peer at an UNVERIFIED locator, the peer's credit
counter MUST be reduced by the size of the packet. The peer's credit
counter is not affected by packets that the host sends to an ACTIVE
locator of that peer.
Figure 14 depicts the actions taken by the host when a packet is
received. Figure 15 shows the decision chain in the event a packet
is sent.
Inbound
packet
|
| +----------------+ +---------------+
| | Increase | | Deliver |
+-----> | credit counter |-------------> | packet to |
| by packet size | | application |
+----------------+ +---------------+
Figure 14: Receiving Packets with Credit-Based Authorization
Outbound
packet
| _________________
| / \ +---------------+
| / Is the preferred \ No | Send packet |
+-----> | destination address |-------------> | to preferred |
\ UNVERIFIED? / | address |
\_________________/ +---------------+
|
| Yes
|
v
_________________
/ \ +---------------+
/ Does an ACTIVE \ Yes | Send packet |
| destination address |-------------> | to ACTIVE |
\ exist? / | address |
\_________________/ +---------------+
|
| No
|
v
_________________
/ \ +---------------+
/ Credit counter \ No | |
| >= |-------------> | Drop packet |
\ packet size? / | |
\_________________/ +---------------+
|
| Yes
|
v
+---------------+ +---------------+
| Reduce credit | | Send packet |
| counter by |----------------> | to preferred |
| packet size | | address |
+---------------+ +---------------+
Figure 15: Sending Packets with Credit-Based Authorization
5.6.2. Credit Aging
A host ensures that the credit counters it maintains for its peers
gradually decrease over time. Such "credit aging" prevents a
malicious peer from building up credit at a very slow speed and using
this, all at once, for a severe burst of redirected packets.
Credit aging may be implemented by multiplying credit counters with a
factor, CreditAgingFactor (a fractional value less than one), in
fixed time intervals of CreditAgingInterval length. Choosing
appropriate values for CreditAgingFactor and CreditAgingInterval is
important to ensure that a host can send packets to an address in
state UNVERIFIED even when the peer sends at a lower rate than the
host itself. When CreditAgingFactor or CreditAgingInterval are too
small, the peer's credit counter might be too low to continue sending
packets until address verification concludes.
The parameter values proposed in this document are as follows:
CreditAgingFactor 7/8
CreditAgingInterval 5 seconds
These parameter values work well when the host transfers a file to
the peer via a TCP connection and the end-to-end round-trip time does
not exceed 500 milliseconds. Alternative credit-aging algorithms may
use other parameter values or different parameters, which may even be
dynamically established.
6. Security Considerations
The HIP mobility mechanism provides a secure means of updating a
host's IP address via HIP UPDATE packets. Upon receipt, a HIP host
cryptographically verifies the sender of an UPDATE, so forging or
replaying a HIP UPDATE packet is very difficult (see [RFC5201]).
Therefore, security issues reside in other attack domains. The two
we consider are malicious redirection of legitimate connections as
well as redirection-based flooding attacks using this protocol. This
can be broken down into the following:
Impersonation attacks
- direct conversation with the misled victim
- man-in-the-middle attack
DoS attacks
- flooding attacks (== bandwidth-exhaustion attacks)
* tool 1: direct flooding
* tool 2: flooding by zombies
* tool 3: redirection-based flooding
- memory-exhaustion attacks
- computational-exhaustion attacks
We consider these in more detail in the following sections.
In Section 6.1 and Section 6.2, we assume that all users are using
HIP. In Section 6.3 we consider the security ramifications when we
have both HIP and non-HIP users. Security considerations for Credit-
Based Authorization are discussed in [SIMPLE-CBA].
6.1. Impersonation Attacks
An attacker wishing to impersonate another host will try to mislead
its victim into directly communicating with them, or carry out a man-
in-the-middle (MitM) attack between the victim and the victim's
desired communication peer. Without mobility support, both attack
types are possible only if the attacker resides on the routing path
between its victim and the victim's desired communication peer, or if
the attacker tricks its victim into initiating the connection over an
incorrect routing path (e.g., by acting as a router or using spoofed
DNS entries).
The HIP extensions defined in this specification change the situation
in that they introduce an ability to redirect a connection (like
IPv6), both before and after establishment. If no precautionary
measures are taken, an attacker could misuse the redirection feature
to impersonate a victim's peer from any arbitrary location. The
authentication and authorization mechanisms of the HIP base exchange
[RFC5201] and the signatures in the UPDATE message prevent this
attack. Furthermore, ownership of a HIP association is securely
linked to a HIP HI/HIT. If an attacker somehow uses a bug in the
implementation or weakness in some protocol to redirect a HIP
connection, the original owner can always reclaim their connection
(they can always prove ownership of the private key associated with
their public HI).
MitM attacks are always possible if the attacker is present during
the initial HIP base exchange and if the hosts do not authenticate
each other's identities. However, once the opportunistic base
exchange has taken place, even a MitM cannot steal the HIP connection
anymore because it is very difficult for an attacker to create an
UPDATE packet (or any HIP packet) that will be accepted as a
legitimate update. UPDATE packets use HMAC and are signed. Even
when an attacker can snoop packets to obtain the SPI and HIT/HI, they
still cannot forge an UPDATE packet without knowledge of the secret
keys.
6.2. Denial-of-Service Attacks
6.2.1. Flooding Attacks
The purpose of a denial-of-service attack is to exhaust some resource
of the victim such that the victim ceases to operate correctly. A
denial-of-service attack can aim at the victim's network attachment
(flooding attack), its memory, or its processing capacity. In a
flooding attack, the attacker causes an excessive number of bogus or
unwanted packets to be sent to the victim, which fills their
available bandwidth. Note that the victim does not necessarily need
to be a node; it can also be an entire network. The attack basically
functions the same way in either case.
An effective DoS strategy is distributed denial of service (DDoS).
Here, the attacker conventionally distributes some viral software to
as many nodes as possible. Under the control of the attacker, the
infected nodes, or "zombies", jointly send packets to the victim.
With such an 'army', an attacker can take down even very high
bandwidth networks/victims.
With the ability to redirect connections, an attacker could realize a
DDoS attack without having to distribute viral code. Here, the
attacker initiates a large download from a server, and subsequently
redirects this download to its victim. The attacker can repeat this
with multiple servers. This threat is mitigated through reachability
checks and credit-based authorization. Both strategies do not
eliminate flooding attacks per se, but they preclude: (i) their use
from a location off the path towards the flooded victim; and (ii) any
amplification in the number and size of the redirected packets. As a
result, the combination of a reachability check and credit-based
authorization lowers a HIP redirection-based flooding attack to the
level of a direct flooding attack in which the attacker itself sends
the flooding traffic to the victim.
6.2.2. Memory/Computational-Exhaustion DoS Attacks
We now consider whether or not the proposed extensions to HIP add any
new DoS attacks (consideration of DoS attacks using the base HIP
exchange and updates is discussed in [RFC5201]). A simple attack is
to send many UPDATE packets containing many IP addresses that are not
flagged as preferred. The attacker continues to send such packets
until the number of IP addresses associated with the attacker's HI
crashes the system. Therefore, there SHOULD be a limit to the number
of IP addresses that can be associated with any HI. Other forms of
memory/computationally exhausting attacks via the HIP UPDATE packet
are handled in the base HIP document [RFC5201].
A central server that has to deal with a large number of mobile
clients may consider increasing the SA lifetimes to try to slow down
the rate of rekeying UPDATEs or increasing the cookie difficulty to
slow down the rate of attack-oriented connections.
6.3. Mixed Deployment Environment
We now assume an environment with both HIP and non-HIP aware hosts.
Four cases exist.
1. A HIP host redirects its connection onto a non-HIP host. The
non-HIP host will drop the reachability packet, so this is not a
threat unless the HIP host is a MitM that could somehow respond
successfully to the reachability check.
2. A non-HIP host attempts to redirect their connection onto a HIP
host. This falls into IPv4 and IPv6 security concerns, which are
outside the scope of this document.
3. A non-HIP host attempts to steal a HIP host's session (assume
that Secure Neighbor Discovery is not active for the following).
The non-HIP host contacts the service that a HIP host has a
connection with and then attempts to change its IP address to
steal the HIP host's connection. What will happen in this case
is implementation dependent but such a request should fail by
being ignored or dropped. Even if the attack were successful,
the HIP host could reclaim its connection via HIP.
4. A HIP host attempts to steal a non-HIP host's session. A HIP
host could spoof the non-HIP host's IP address during the base
exchange or set the non-HIP host's IP address as its preferred
address via an UPDATE. Other possibilities exist, but a simple
solution is to prevent the use of HIP address check information
to influence non-HIP sessions.
7. IANA Considerations
This document defines a LOCATOR parameter for the Host Identity
Protocol [RFC5201]. This parameter is defined in Section 4 with a
Type of 193.
This document also defines a LOCATOR_TYPE_UNSUPPORTED Notify Message
Type as defined in the Host Identity Protocol specification
[RFC5201]. This parameter is defined in Section 5.3 with a value of
46.
8. Authors and Acknowledgments
Pekka Nikander and Jari Arkko originated this document, and Christian
Vogt and Thomas Henderson (editor) later joined as co-authors. Greg
Perkins contributed the initial draft of the security section. Petri
Jokela was a co-author of the initial individual submission.
The authors thank Miika Komu, Mika Kousa, Jeff Ahrenholz, and Jan
Melen for many improvements to the document.
9. References
9.1. Normative references
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3484] Draves, R., "Default Address Selection for Internet
Protocol version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 3484, February 2003.
[RFC4291] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture", RFC 4291, February 2006.
[RFC4303] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
RFC 4303, December 2005.
[RFC4423] Moskowitz, R. and P. Nikander, "Host Identity Protocol
(HIP) Architecture", RFC 4423, May 2006.
[RFC5201] Moskowitz, R., Nikander, P., Jokela, P., Ed., and T.
Henderson, "Host Identity Protocol", RFC 5201,
April 2008.
[RFC5202] Jokela, P., Moskowitz, R., and P. Nikander, "Using the
ESP Transport Format with the Host Identity Protocol
(HIP)", RFC 5202, April 2008.
[RFC5204] Laganier, J. and L. Eggert, "Host Identity Protocol
(HIP) Rendezvous Extension", RFC 5204, April 2008.
9.2. Informative references
[CBA-MIPv6] Vogt, C. and J. Arkko, "Credit-Based Authorization for
Mobile IPv6 Early Binding Updates", Work in Progress,
February 2005.
[RFC4225] Nikander, P., Arkko, J., Aura, T., Montenegro, G., and
E. Nordmark, "Mobile IP Version 6 Route Optimization
Security Design Background", RFC 4225, December 2005.
[SIMPLE-CBA] Vogt, C. and J. Arkko, "Credit-Based Authorization for
Concurrent Reachability Verification", Work
in Progress, February 2006.
Authors' Addresses
Pekka Nikander
Ericsson Research NomadicLab
JORVAS FIN-02420
FINLAND
Phone: +358 9 299 1
EMail: pekka.nikander@nomadiclab.com
Thomas R. Henderson (editor)
The Boeing Company
P.O. Box 3707
Seattle, WA
USA
EMail: thomas.r.henderson@boeing.com
Christian Vogt
Ericsson Research NomadicLab
Hirsalantie 11
JORVAS FIN-02420
FINLAND
Phone:
EMail: christian.vogt@ericsson.com
Jari Arkko
Ericsson Research NomadicLab
JORVAS FIN-02420
FINLAND
Phone: +358 40 5079256
EMail: jari.arkko@ericsson.com
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).
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.
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, THE IETF TRUST 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.
Intellectual Property
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 procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
ietf-ipr@ietf.org.