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rfc:rfc6290

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Y. Nir, Ed. Request for Comments: 6290 Check Point Category: Standards Track D. Wierbowski ISSN: 2070-1721 IBM

                                                           F. Detienne
                                                              P. Sethi
                                                                 Cisco
                                                             June 2011
               A Quick Crash Detection Method for the
                Internet Key Exchange Protocol (IKE)

Abstract

 This document describes an extension to the Internet Key Exchange
 Protocol version 2 (IKEv2) that allows for faster detection of
 Security Association (SA) desynchronization using a saved token.
 When an IPsec tunnel between two IKEv2 peers is disconnected due to a
 restart of one peer, it can take as much as several minutes for the
 other peer to discover that the reboot has occurred, thus delaying
 recovery.  In this text, we propose an extension to the protocol that
 allows for recovery immediately following the restart.

Status of This Memo

 This is an Internet Standards Track document.
 This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
 (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
 received public review and has been approved for publication by the
 Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
 Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
 Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
 http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6290.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
 document authors.  All rights reserved.
 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
 publication of this document.  Please review these documents

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
 to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
 described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   1.1.  Conventions Used in This Document  . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
 2.  RFC 5996 Crash Recovery  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
 3.  Protocol Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
 4.  Formats and Exchanges  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.1.  Notification Format  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.2.  Passing a Token in the AUTH Exchange . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   4.3.  Replacing Tokens after Rekey or Resumption . . . . . . . .  8
   4.4.  Replacing the Token for an Existing SA . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.5.  Presenting the Token in an Unprotected Message . . . . . .  9
 5.  Token Generation and Verification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   5.1.  A Stateless Method of Token Generation . . . . . . . . . . 11
   5.2.  A Stateless Method with IP Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   5.3.  Token Lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
 6.  Backup Gateways  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
 7.  Interaction with Session Resumption  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
 8.  Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   8.1.  Who Should Implement This Specification  . . . . . . . . . 14
   8.2.  Response to Unknown Child SPI  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
 9.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   9.1.  QCD Token Generation and Handling  . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   9.2.  QCD Token Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   9.3.  QCD Token Enumeration  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
 10. IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
 11. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
 12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
 Appendix A.  The Path Not Taken  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   A.1.  Initiating a New IKE SA  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   A.2.  SIR  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   A.3.  Birth Certificates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   A.4.  Reducing Liveness Check Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

1. Introduction

 IKEv2, as described in [RFC5996] and its predecessor RFC 4306, has a
 method for recovering from a reboot of one peer.  As long as traffic
 flows in both directions, the rebooted peer should re-establish the
 tunnels immediately.  However, in many cases, the rebooted peer is a
 VPN gateway that protects only servers, so all traffic is inbound.
 In other cases, the non-rebooted peer has a dynamic IP address, so
 the rebooted peer cannot initiate IKE because its current IP address
 is unknown.  In such cases, the rebooted peer will not be able to
 re-establish the tunnels.  Section 2 describes how recovery works
 under RFC 5996, and explains why it may take several minutes.
 The method proposed here is to send an octet string, called a "QCD
 token", in the IKE_AUTH exchange that establishes the tunnel.  That
 token can be stored on the peer as part of the IKE SA.  After a
 reboot, the rebooted implementation can re-generate the token and
 send it to the peer, so as to delete the IKE SA.  Deleting the IKE SA
 results in a quick establishment of new IPsec tunnels.  This is
 described in Section 3.

1.1. Conventions Used in This Document

 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 [RFC2119].
 The term "token" refers to an octet string that an implementation can
 generate using only the properties of a protected IKE message (such
 as IKE Security Parameter Indexes (SPIs)) as input.  A conforming
 implementation MUST be able to generate the same token from the same
 input even after rebooting.
 The term "token maker" refers to an implementation that generates a
 token and sends it to the peer as specified in this document.
 The term "token taker" refers to an implementation that stores such a
 token or a digest thereof, in order to verify that a new token it
 receives is identical to the old token it has stored.
 The term "non-volatile storage" in this document refers to a data
 storage module that persists across restarts of the token maker.
 Examples of such a storage module include an internal disk, an
 internal flash memory module, an external disk, and an external
 database.  A small non-volatile storage module is required for a
 token maker, but a larger one can be used to enhance performance, as
 described in Section 8.2.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 3] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

2. RFC 5996 Crash Recovery

 When one peer loses state or reboots, the other peer does not get any
 notification, so unidirectional IPsec traffic can still flow.  The
 rebooted peer will not be able to decrypt it, however, and the only
 remedy is to send an unprotected INVALID_SPI notification as
 described in Section 3.10.1 of [RFC5996].  That section also
 describes the processing of such a notification:
    If this Informational Message is sent outside the context of an
    IKE_SA, it should be used by the recipient only as a "hint" that
    something might be wrong (because it could easily be forged).
 Since the INVALID_SPI can only be used as a hint, the non-rebooted
 peer has to determine whether the IPsec SA and indeed the parent IKE
 SA are still valid.  The method of doing this is described in Section
 2.4 of [RFC5996].  This method, called "liveness check", involves
 sending a protected empty INFORMATIONAL message, and awaiting a
 response.  This procedure is sometimes referred to as "Dead Peer
 Detection" or DPD.
 Section 2.4 does not mandate how many times the liveness check
 message should be retransmitted, or for how long, but does recommend
 the following:
    It is suggested that messages be retransmitted at least a dozen
    times over a period of at least several minutes before giving up
    on an SA...
 Those "at least several minutes" are a time during part of which both
 peers are active, but IPsec cannot be used.
 Especially in the case of a reboot (rather than fail-over or
 administrative clearing of state), the peer does not recover
 immediately.  Reboot, depending on the system, may take from a few
 seconds to a few minutes.  This means that at first the peer just
 goes silent, i.e., does not send or respond to any messages.  IKEv2
 implementations can detect this situation and follow the rules given
 in Section 2.4:
    If there has only been outgoing traffic on all of the SAs
    associated with an IKE SA, it is essential to confirm liveness of
    the other endpoint to avoid black holes.  If no cryptographically
    protected messages have been received on an IKE SA or any of its
    Child SAs recently, the system needs to perform a liveness check
    in order to prevent sending messages to a dead peer.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 4] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 [RFC5996] does not mandate any time limits, but it is possible that
 the peer will start liveness checks even before the other end is
 sending INVALID_SPI notification, as it detected that the other end
 is not sending any packets anymore while it is still rebooting or
 recovering from the situation.
 This means that the several minutes recovery period is overlapping
 the actual recover time of the other peer; i.e., if the security
 gateway requires several minutes to boot up from the crash, then the
 other peers have already finished their liveness checks before the
 crashing peer even has a chance to send INVALID_SPI notifications.
 There are cases where the peer loses state and is able to recover
 immediately; in those cases it might take several minutes to recreate
 the IPsec SAs.
 Note that the IKEv2 specification specifically gives no guidance for
 the number of retries or the length of timeouts, as these do not
 affect interoperability.  This means that implementations are allowed
 to use the hints provided by the INVALID_SPI messages to shorten
 those timeouts (i.e., a different environment and situation requiring
 different rules).
 Some existing IKEv2 implementations already do that (i.e., shorten
 timeouts or limit number of retries) based on these kinds of hints
 and also start liveness checks quickly after the other end goes
 silent.  However, see Appendix A.4 for a discussion of why this may
 not be enough.

3. Protocol Outline

 Supporting implementations will send a notification, called a "QCD
 token", as described in Section 4.1 in the first IKE_AUTH exchange
 messages.  These are the first IKE_AUTH request and final IKE_AUTH
 response that contain the AUTH payloads.  The generation of these
 tokens is a local matter for implementations, but considerations are
 described in Section 5.  Implementations that send such a token will
 be called "token makers".
 A supporting implementation receiving such a token MUST store it (or
 a digest thereof) along with the IKE SA.  Implementations that
 support this part of the protocol will be called "token takers".
 Section 8.1 has considerations for which implementations need to be
 token takers, and which should be token makers.  Implementations that
 are not token takers will silently ignore QCD tokens.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 5] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 When a token maker receives a protected IKE request message with
 unknown IKE SPIs, it SHOULD generate a new token that is identical to
 the previous token, and send it to the requesting peer in an
 unprotected IKE message as described in Section 4.5.
 When a token taker receives the QCD token in an unprotected
 notification, it MUST verify that the TOKEN_SECRET_DATA matches the
 token stored with the matching IKE SA.  If the verification fails, or
 if the IKE SPIs in the message do not match any existing IKE SA, it
 SHOULD log the event.  If it succeeds, it MUST silently delete the
 IKE SA associated with the IKE_SPI fields and all dependent child
 SAs.  This event MAY also be logged.  The token taker MUST accept
 such tokens from any IP address and port combination, so as to allow
 different kinds of high-availability configurations of the token
 maker.
 A supporting token taker MAY immediately create new SAs using an
 Initial exchange, or it may wait for subsequent traffic to trigger
 the creation of new SAs.
 See Section 7 for a short discussion about this extension's
 interaction with IKEv2 Session Resumption ([RFC5723]).

4. Formats and Exchanges

4.1. Notification Format

 The notification payload called "QCD token" is formatted as follows:
                          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
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     ! Next Payload  !C!  RESERVED   !         Payload Length        !
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     !  Protocol ID  !   SPI Size    ! QCD Token Notify Message Type !
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     !                                                               !
     ~                       TOKEN_SECRET_DATA                       ~
     !                                                               !
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 o  Protocol ID (1 octet) MUST be 1, as this message is related to an
    IKE SA.
 o  SPI Size (1 octet) MUST be zero, in conformance with Section 3.10
    of [RFC5996].

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 6] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 o  QCD Token Notify Message Type (2 octets) - MUST be 16419, the
    value assigned for QCD token notifications.
 o  TOKEN_SECRET_DATA (variable) contains a generated token as
    described in Section 5.

4.2. Passing a Token in the AUTH Exchange

 For brevity, only the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
 version of an AUTH exchange will be presented here.  The non-EAP
 version is very similar.  The figures below are based on Appendix C.3
 of [RFC5996].
  first request       --> IDi,
                          [N(INITIAL_CONTACT)],
                          [[N(HTTP_CERT_LOOKUP_SUPPORTED)], CERTREQ+],
                          [IDr],
                          [N(QCD_TOKEN)]
                          [CP(CFG_REQUEST)],
                          [N(IPCOMP_SUPPORTED)+],
                          [N(USE_TRANSPORT_MODE)],
                          [N(ESP_TFC_PADDING_NOT_SUPPORTED)],
                          [N(NON_FIRST_FRAGMENTS_ALSO)],
                          SA, TSi, TSr,
                          [V+]
  first response      <-- IDr, [CERT+], AUTH,
                          EAP,
                          [V+]
                    / --> EAP
  repeat 1..N times |
                    \ <-- EAP
  last request        --> AUTH
  last response       <-- AUTH,
                          [N(QCD_TOKEN)]
                          [CP(CFG_REPLY)],
                          [N(IPCOMP_SUPPORTED)],
                          [N(USE_TRANSPORT_MODE)],
                          [N(ESP_TFC_PADDING_NOT_SUPPORTED)],
                          [N(NON_FIRST_FRAGMENTS_ALSO)],
                          SA, TSi, TSr,
                          [N(ADDITIONAL_TS_POSSIBLE)],
                          [V+]

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 7] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 Note that the QCD_TOKEN notification is marked as optional because it
 is not required by this specification that every implementation be
 both token maker and token taker.  If only one peer sends the QCD
 token, then a reboot of the other peer will not be recoverable by
 this method.  This may be acceptable if traffic typically originates
 from the other peer.
 In any case, the lack of a QCD_TOKEN notification MUST NOT be taken
 as an indication that the peer does not support this standard.
 Conversely, if a peer does not understand this notification, it will
 simply ignore it.  Therefore, a peer may send this notification
 freely, even if it does not know whether the other side supports it.
 The QCD_TOKEN notification is related to the IKE SA and should follow
 the AUTH payload and precede the Configuration payload and all
 payloads related to the child SA.

4.3. Replacing Tokens after Rekey or Resumption

 After rekeying an IKE SA, the IKE SPIs are replaced, so the new SA
 also needs to have a token.  If only the responder in the rekey
 exchange is the token maker, this can be done within the
 CREATE_CHILD_SA exchange.  If the initiator is a token maker, then we
 need an extra informational exchange.
 The following figure shows the CREATE_CHILD_SA exchange for rekeying
 the IKE SA.  Only the responder sends a QCD token.
    request             --> SA, Ni, [KEi]
    response            <-- SA, Nr, [KEr], N(QCD_TOKEN)
 If the initiator is also a token maker, it SHOULD initiate an
 INFORMATIONAL exchange immediately after the CREATE_CHILD_SA exchange
 as follows:
    request             --> N(QCD_TOKEN)
    response            <--
 For session resumption, as specified in [RFC5723], the situation is
 similar.  The responder, which is necessarily the peer that has
 crashed, SHOULD send a new ticket within the protected payload of the
 IKE_SESSION_RESUME exchange.  If the Initiator is also a token maker,
 it needs to send a QCD_TOKEN in a separate INFORMATIONAL exchange.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 8] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 The INFORMATIONAL exchange described in this section can also be used
 if QCD tokens need to be replaced due to a key rollover.  However,
 since token takers are required to verify at least 4 QCD tokens, this
 is only necessary if secret QCD keys are rolled over more than four
 times as often as IKE SAs are rekeyed.  See Section 5.1 for an
 example method that uses secret keys that may require rollover.

4.4. Replacing the Token for an Existing SA

 With some token generation methods, such as that described in
 Section 5.2, a QCD token may sometimes become invalid, although the
 IKE SA is still perfectly valid.
 In such a case, the token maker MUST send the new token in a
 protected message under that IKE SA.  That exchange could be a simple
 INFORMATIONAL, such as in the last figure in the previous section, or
 else it can be part of a MOBIKE INFORMATIONAL exchange such as in the
 following figure taken from Section 2.2 of [RFC4555] and modified by
 adding a QCD_TOKEN notification:
   (IP_I2:4500 -> IP_R1:4500)
   HDR, SK { N(UPDATE_SA_ADDRESSES),
             N(NAT_DETECTION_SOURCE_IP),
             N(NAT_DETECTION_DESTINATION_IP) }  -->
                         <-- (IP_R1:4500 -> IP_I2:4500)
                             HDR, SK { N(NAT_DETECTION_SOURCE_IP),
                                  N(NAT_DETECTION_DESTINATION_IP) }
                         <-- (IP_R1:4500 -> IP_I2:4500)
                             HDR, SK { N(COOKIE2), [N(QCD_TOKEN)] }
   (IP_I2:4500 -> IP_R1:4500)
   HDR, SK { N(COOKIE2), [N(QCD_TOKEN)] }  -->
 A token taker MUST accept such gratuitous QCD_TOKEN notifications as
 long as they are carried in protected exchanges.  A token maker
 SHOULD NOT generate them unless it is no longer able to generate the
 old QCD_TOKEN.

4.5. Presenting the Token in an Unprotected Message

 This QCD_TOKEN notification is unprotected, and is sent as a response
 to a protected IKE request, which uses an IKE SA that is unknown.
          message             --> N(INVALID_IKE_SPI), N(QCD_TOKEN)+

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 9] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 If child SPIs are persistently mapped to IKE SPIs as described in
 Section 8.2, a token taker may get the following unprotected message
 in response to an Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) or
 Authentication Header (AH) packet.
          message             --> N(INVALID_SPI), N(QCD_TOKEN)+
 The QCD_TOKEN and INVALID_IKE_SPI notifications are sent together to
 support both implementations that conform to this specification and
 implementations that don't.  Similar to the description in Section
 2.21 of [RFC5996], the IKE SPI and message ID fields in the packet
 headers are taken from the protected IKE request.
 To support a periodic rollover of the secret used for token
 generation, the token taker MUST support at least four QCD_TOKEN
 notifications in a single packet.  The token is considered verified
 if any of the QCD_TOKEN notifications matches.  The token maker MAY
 generate up to four QCD_TOKEN notifications, based on several
 generations of keys.
 If the QCD_TOKEN verifies OK, the receiver MUST silently discard the
 IKE SA and all associated child SAs.  If the QCD_TOKEN cannot be
 validated, a response MUST NOT be sent, and the event may be logged.
 Section 5 defines token verification.

5. Token Generation and Verification

 No token generation method is mandated by this document.  Two methods
 are documented in the following sub-sections, but they only serve as
 examples.
 The following lists the requirements for a token generation
 mechanism:
 o  Tokens MUST be at least 16 octets long, and no more than 128
    octets long, to facilitate storage and transmission.  Tokens
    SHOULD be indistinguishable from random data.
 o  It should not be possible for an external attacker to guess the
    QCD token generated by an implementation.  Cryptographic
    mechanisms such as a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) and
    hash functions are RECOMMENDED.
 o  The token maker MUST be able to re-generate or retrieve the token
    based on the IKE SPIs even after it reboots.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 10] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 o  The method of token generation MUST be such that a collision of
    QCD tokens between different pairs of IKE SPI will be highly
    unlikely.
 For verification, the token taker makes a bitwise comparison of the
 token stored along with the IKE SA with the token sent in the
 unprotected message.  Multihomed takers might flip back-and-forth
 between several addresses, and have their tokens replaced as
 described in Section 4.4.  To help avoid the case where the latest
 stored token does not match the address used after the maker lost
 state, the token taker MAY store several earlier tokens associated
 with the IKE SA, and silently discard the SA if any of them matches.

5.1. A Stateless Method of Token Generation

 The following describes a stateless method of generating a token.  In
 this case, 'stateless' means not maintaining any per-tunnel state,
 although there is a small amount of non-volatile storage required.
 o  At installation or immediately after the first boot of the token
    maker, 32 random octets are generated using a secure random number
    generator or a PRNG.
 o  Those 32 bytes, called the "QCD_SECRET", are stored in non-
    volatile storage on the machine, and kept indefinitely.
 o  If key rollover is required by policy, the implementation MAY
    periodically generate a new QCD_SECRET and keep up to 3 previous
    generations.  When sending an unprotected QCD_TOKEN, as many as 4
    notification payloads may be sent, each from a different
    QCD_SECRET.
 o  The TOKEN_SECRET_DATA is calculated as follows:
          TOKEN_SECRET_DATA = HASH(QCD_SECRET | SPI-I | SPI-R)

5.2. A Stateless Method with IP Addresses

 This method is similar to the one in the previous section, except
 that the IP address of the token taker is also added to the block
 being hashed.  This has the disadvantage that the token needs to be
 replaced (as described in Section 4.4) whenever the token taker
 changes its address.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 11] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 See Section 9.2 for a discussion of a use-case for this method.  When
 using this method, the TOKEN_SECRET_DATA field is calculated as
 follows:
       TOKEN_SECRET_DATA = HASH(QCD_SECRET | SPI-I | SPI-R | IPaddr-T)
 The IPaddr-T field specifies the IP address of the token taker.
 Secret rollover considerations are similar to those in the previous
 section.
 Note that with a multihomed token taker, the QCD token matches just
 one of the token taker IP addresses.  Usually this is not a problem,
 as packets sent to the token maker come out the same IP address.  If
 for some reason this changes, then the token maker can replace the
 token as described in Section 4.4.  If IKEv2 Mobility and Multihoming
 (MOBIKE) is used, replacing the tokens SHOULD be piggybacked on the
 INFORMATIONAL exchange with the UPDATE_SA_ADDRESSES notifications.
 There is a corner case where the token taker begins using a new IP
 address (because of multihoming, roaming, or normal network
 operations) and the token maker loses state before replacing the
 token.  In that case, it will send a correct QCD token, but the token
 taker will still have the old token.  In that case, the extension
 will not work, and the peers will revert to RFC 5996 recovery.

5.3. Token Lifetime

 The token is associated with a single IKE SA and SHOULD be deleted by
 the token taker when the SA is deleted or expires.  More formally,
 the token is associated with the pair (SPI-I, SPI-R).

6. Backup Gateways

 Making crash detection and recovery quick is a worthy goal, but since
 rebooting a gateway takes a non-zero amount of time, many
 implementations choose to have a standby gateway ready to take over
 as soon as the primary gateway fails for any reason.  [RFC6027]
 describes considerations for such clusters of gateways with
 synchronized state, but the rest of this section is relevant even
 when there is no synchronized state.
 If such a configuration is available, it is RECOMMENDED that the
 standby gateway be able to generate the same token as the active
 gateway.  If the method described in Section 5.1 is used, this means
 that the QCD_SECRET field is identical in both gateways.  This has
 the effect of having the crash recovery available immediately.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 12] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 Note that this refers to "high-availability" configurations, where
 only one gateway is active at any given moment.  This is different
 from "load sharing" configurations where more than one gateway is
 active at the same time.  For load sharing configurations, please see
 Section 9.2 for security considerations.

7. Interaction with Session Resumption

 Session resumption, specified in [RFC5723], allows the setting up of
 a new IKE SA to consume less computing resources.  This is
 particularly useful in the case of a remote access gateway that has
 many tunnels.  A failure of such a gateway requires all these many
 remote access clients to establish an IKE SA either with the rebooted
 gateway or with a backup.  This tunnel re-establishment occurs within
 a short period of time, creating a burden on the remote access
 gateway.  Session resumption addresses this problem by having the
 clients store an encrypted derivative of the IKE SA for quick
 re-establishment.
 What Session Resumption does not help is the problem of detecting
 that the peer gateway has failed.  A failed gateway may go undetected
 for an arbitrarily long time, because IPsec does not have packet
 acknowledgement, and applications cannot signal the IPsec layer that
 the tunnel "does not work".  Section 2.4 of RFC 5996 does not specify
 how long an implementation needs to wait before beginning a liveness
 check, and only says "not recently" (see full quote in Section 2).
 In practice, some mobile devices wait a very long time before
 beginning a liveness check, in order to extend battery life by
 allowing parts of the device to remain in low-power modes.
 QCD tokens provide a way to detect the failure of the peer in the
 case where a liveness check has not yet ended (or begun).
 A remote access client conforming to both specifications will store
 QCD tokens, as well as the Session Resumption ticket, if provided by
 the gateway.  A remote access gateway conforming to both
 specifications will generate a QCD token for the client.  When the
 gateway reboots, the client will discover this in either of two ways:
 1.  The client does regular liveness checks, or else the time for
     some other IKE exchange has come.  Since the gateway is still
     down, the IKE exchange times out after several minutes.  In this
     case, QCD does not help.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 13] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 2.  Either the primary gateway or a backup gateway (see Section 6) is
     ready and sends a QCD token to the client.  In that case, the
     client will quickly re-establish the IPsec tunnel, either with
     the rebooted primary gateway or the backup gateway as described
     in this document.
 The full combined protocol looks like this:
      Initiator                Responder
      -----------              -----------
     HDR, SAi1, KEi, Ni  -->
                         <--    HDR, SAr1, KEr, Nr, [CERTREQ]
     HDR, SK {IDi, [CERT,]
     [CERTREQ,] [IDr,]
     AUTH, N(QCD_TOKEN)
     SAi2, TSi, TSr,
     N(TICKET_REQUEST)}  -->
                         <--    HDR, SK {IDr, [CERT,] AUTH,
                                N(QCD_TOKEN), SAr2, TSi, TSr,
                                N(TICKET_LT_OPAQUE) }
  1. — Reboot —–
     HDR, {}             -->
                         <--  HDR, N(QCD_TOKEN)
     HDR, [N(COOKIE),]
     Ni, N(TICKET_OPAQUE)
     [,N+]               -->
                         <--  HDR, Nr [,N+]

8. Operational Considerations

8.1. Who Should Implement This Specification

 Throughout this document, we have referred to reboot time
 alternatingly as the time that the implementation crashes and the
 time when it is ready to process IPsec packets and IKE exchanges.
 Depending on the hardware and software platforms and the cause of the
 reboot, rebooting may take anywhere from a few seconds to several
 minutes.  If the implementation is down for a long time, the benefit
 of this protocol extension is reduced.  For this reason, critical
 systems should implement backup gateways as described in Section 6.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 14] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 Implementing the "token maker" side of QCD makes sense for IKE
 implementation where protected connections originate from the peer,
 such as inter-domain VPNs and remote access gateways.  Implementing
 the "token taker" side of QCD makes sense for IKE implementations
 where protected connections originate, such as inter-domain VPNs and
 remote access clients.
 To clarify this discussion:
 o  For remote-access clients it makes sense to implement the token
    taker role.
 o  For remote-access gateways it makes sense to implement the token
    maker role.
 o  For inter-domain VPN gateways it makes sense to implement both
    roles, because it can't be known in advance where the traffic
    originates.
 o  It is perfectly valid to implement both roles in any case, for
    example, when using a single library or a single gateway to
    perform several roles.
 In order to limit the effects of Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, a
 token taker SHOULD limit the rate of QCD_TOKENs verified from a
 particular source.
 If excessive amounts of IKE requests protected with unknown IKE SPIs
 arrive at a token maker, the IKE module SHOULD revert to the behavior
 described in Section 2.21 of [RFC5996] and either send an
 INVALID_IKE_SPI notification or ignore it entirely.
 Section 9.2 requires that token makers never send a QCD token in the
 clear for a valid IKE SA and describes some configurations where this
 could occur.  Implementations that may be installed in such
 configurations SHOULD automatically detect this and disable this
 extension in unsafe configurations and MUST allow the user to control
 whether the extension is enabled or disabled.

8.2. Response to Unknown Child SPI

 After a reboot, it is more likely that an implementation will receive
 IPsec packets than IKE packets.  In that case, the rebooted
 implementation will send an INVALID_SPI notification, triggering a
 liveness check.  The token will only be sent in a response to the
 liveness check, thus requiring an extra round trip.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 15] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 To avoid this, an implementation that has access to enough non-
 volatile storage MAY store a mapping of child SPIs to owning IKE
 SPIs, or to generated tokens.  If such a mapping is available and
 persistent across reboots, the rebooted implementation SHOULD respond
 to the IPsec packet with an INVALID_SPI notification, along with the
 appropriate QCD_TOKEN notifications.  A token taker SHOULD verify the
 QCD token that arrives with an INVALID_SPI notification the same as
 if it arrived with the IKE SPIs of the parent IKE SA.
 However, a persistent storage module might not be updated in a timely
 manner and could be populated with tokens relating to IKE SPIs that
 have already been rekeyed.  A token taker MUST NOT take an invalid
 QCD token sent along with an INVALID_SPI notification as evidence
 that the peer is either malfunctioning or attacking, but it SHOULD
 limit the rate at which such notifications are processed.

9. Security Considerations

 The extension described in this document must not reduce the security
 of IKEv2 or IPsec.  Specifically, an eavesdropper must not learn any
 non-public information about the peers.
 The proposed mechanism should be secure against attacks by a passive
 man in the middle (MITM) (eavesdropper).  Such an attacker must not
 be able to disrupt an existing IKE session, either by resetting the
 session or by introducing significant delays.  This requirement is
 especially significant, because this document introduces a new way to
 reset an IKE SA.
 The mechanism need not be similarly secure against an active MITM,
 since this type of attacker is already able to disrupt IKE sessions.

9.1. QCD Token Generation and Handling

 Tokens MUST be hard to guess.  This is critical, because if an
 attacker can guess the token associated with an IKE SA, they can tear
 down the IKE SA and associated tunnels at will.  When the token is
 delivered in the IKE_AUTH exchange, it is encrypted.  When it is sent
 again in an unprotected notification, it is not, but that is the last
 time this token is ever used.
 An aggregation of some tokens generated by one maker together with
 the related IKE SPIs MUST NOT give an attacker the ability to guess
 other tokens.  Specifically, if one taker does not properly secure
 the QCD tokens and an attacker gains access to them, this attacker
 MUST NOT be able to guess other tokens generated by the same maker.
 This is the reason that the QCD_SECRET in Section 5.1 needs to be
 sufficiently long.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 16] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 The token taker MUST store the token in a secure manner.  No attacker
 should be able to gain access to a stored token.
 The QCD_SECRET MUST be protected from access by other parties.
 Anyone gaining access to this value will be able to delete all the
 IKE SAs for this token maker.
 The QCD token is sent by the rebooted peer in an unprotected message.
 A message like that is subject to modification, deletion, and replay
 by an attacker.  However, these attacks will not compromise the
 security of either side.  Modification is meaningless because a
 modified token is simply an invalid token.  Deletion will only cause
 the protocol not to work, resulting in a delay in tunnel
 re-establishment as described in Section 2.  Replay is also
 meaningless, because the IKE SA has been deleted after the first
 transmission.

9.2. QCD Token Transmission

 A token maker MUST NOT send a valid QCD token in an unprotected
 message for an existing IKE SA.
 This requirement is obvious and easy in the case of a single gateway.
 However, some implementations use a load balancer to divide the load
 between several physical gateways.  It MUST NOT be possible even in
 such a configuration to trick one gateway into sending a valid QCD
 token for an IKE SA that is valid on another gateway.  This is true
 whether the attempt to trick the gateway uses the token taker's IP
 address or a different IP address.
 IPsec failure detection is not applicable to deployments where the
 QCD secret is shared by multiple gateways and the gateways cannot
 assess whether the token can be legitimately sent in the clear while
 another gateway may actually still own the SA's.  Load balancing
 configurations typically fall in this category.  In order for a load
 balancing configuration of IPsec gateways to support this
 specification, all members MUST be able to tell whether a particular
 IKE SA is active anywhere in the cluster.  One way to do this is to
 synchronize a list of active IKE SPIs among all the cluster members.
 Because it includes the token taker's IP address in the token
 generation, the method in Section 5.2 can (under certain conditions)
 prevent revealing the QCD token for an existing pair of IKE SPIs to
 an attacker who is using a different IP address, even in a load-
 sharing cluster without state synchronization.  That method does not
 prevent revealing the QCD token to an active attacker who is spoofing
 the token taker's IP address.  Such an attacker may attempt to direct
 messages to a cluster member other than the member responsible for

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 17] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 the IKE SA in an attempt to trick that gateway into sending a QCD
 token for a valid IKE SA.  That method should not be used unless the
 load balancer guarantees that IKE packets from the same source IP
 address always go to the same cluster member.

9.3. QCD Token Enumeration

 An attacker may try to attack QCD if the generation algorithm
 described in Section 5.1 is used.  The attacker will send several
 fake IKE requests to the gateway under attack, receiving and
 recording the QCD tokens in the responses.  This will allow the
 attacker to create a dictionary of IKE SPIs to QCD tokens, which can
 later be used to tear down any IKE SA.
 Three factors mitigate this threat:
 o  The space of all possible IKE SPI pairs is huge: 2^128, so making
    such a dictionary is impractical.  Even if we assume that one
    implementation always generates predictable IKE SPIs, the space is
    still at least 2^64 entries, so making the dictionary is extremely
    hard.  To ensure this, token makers MUST generate unpredictable
    IKE SPIs by using a cryptographically strong pseudo-random number
    generator.
 o  Throttling the amount of QCD_TOKEN notifications sent out, as
    discussed in Section 8.1, especially when not soon after a crash
    will limit the attacker's ability to construct a dictionary.
 o  The methods in Section 5.1 and Section 5.2 allow for a periodic
    change of the QCD_SECRET.  Any such change invalidates the entire
    dictionary.

10. IANA Considerations

 IANA has assigned a notify message type (16419) from the status types
 range (16406-40959) of the "IKEv2 Notify Message Types" registry with
 the name "QUICK_CRASH_DETECTION".

11. Acknowledgements

 We would like to thank Hannes Tschofenig and Yaron Sheffer for their
 comments about Session Resumption.
 Others who have contributed valuable comments are, in alphabetical
 order, Lakshminath Dondeti, Paul Hoffman, Tero Kivinen, Scott C
 Moonen, Magnus Nystrom, and Keith Welter.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 18] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

12. References

12.1. Normative References

 [RFC2119]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
             Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
 [RFC4555]   Eronen, P., "IKEv2 Mobility and Multihoming Protocol
             (MOBIKE)", RFC 4555, June 2006.
 [RFC5996]   Kaufman, C., Hoffman, P., Nir, Y., and P. Eronen,
             "Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)",
             RFC 5996, September 2010.

12.2. Informative References

 [RFC5723]   Sheffer, Y. and H. Tschofenig, "Internet Key Exchange
             Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2) Session Resumption", RFC 5723,
             January 2010.
 [RFC6027]   Nir, Y., "IPsec Cluster Problem Statement", RFC 6027,
             October 2010.
 [recovery]  Detienne, F., Sethi, P., and Y. Nir, "Safe IKE Recovery",
             Work in Progress, July 2009.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 19] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

Appendix A. The Path Not Taken

A.1. Initiating a New IKE SA

 Instead of sending a QCD token, we could have the rebooted
 implementation start an Initial exchange with the peer, including the
 INITIAL_CONTACT notification.  This would have the same effect,
 instructing the peer to erase the old IKE SA, as well as establishing
 a new IKE SA with fewer rounds.
 The disadvantage here is that in IKEv2, an authentication exchange
 MUST have a piggybacked Child SA set up.  Since our use-case is such
 that the rebooted implementation does not have traffic flowing to the
 peer, there are no good selectors for such a Child SA.
 Additionally, when authentication is asymmetric, such as when EAP is
 used, it is not possible for the rebooted implementation to initiate
 IKE.

A.2. SIR

 Another proposal that was considered for this work item is the SIR
 extension, which is described in [recovery].  Under that proposal,
 the non-rebooted peer sends a non-protected query to the possibly
 rebooted peer, asking whether the IKE SA exists.  The peer replies
 with either a positive or negative response, and the absence of a
 positive response, along with the existence of a negative response,
 is taken as proof that the IKE SA has really been lost.
 The working group preferred the QCD proposal to this one.

A.3. Birth Certificates

 Birth Certificates is a method of crash detection that has never been
 formally defined.  Bill Sommerfeld suggested this idea in a mail to
 the IPsec mailing list on August 7, 2000, in a thread discussing
 methods of crash detection:
     If we have the system sign a "birth certificate" when it
     reboots (including a reboot time or boot sequence number),
     we could include that with a "bad spi" ICMP error and in
     the negotiation of the IKE SA.
 We believe that this method would have some problems.  First, it
 requires Alice to store the certificate, so as to be able to compare
 the public keys.  That requires more storage than does a QCD token.
 Additionally, the public key operations needed to verify the self-
 signed certificates are more expensive for Alice.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 20] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

 We believe that a symmetric-key operation such as proposed here is
 more light-weight and simple than that implied by the Birth
 Certificate idea.

A.4. Reducing Liveness Check Length

 Some implementations require fewer retransmissions over a shorter
 period of time for cases of liveness check started because of an
 INVALID_SPI or INVALID_IKE_SPI notification.
 We believe that the default retransmission policy should represent a
 good balance between the need for a timely discovery of a dead peer,
 and a low probability of false detection.  We expect the policy to be
 set to take the shortest time such that this probability achieves a
 certain target.  Therefore, we believe that reducing the elapsed time
 and retransmission count may create an unacceptably high probability
 of false detection, and this can be triggered by a single
 INVALID_IKE_SPI notification.
 Additionally, even if the retransmission policy is reduced to, say,
 one minute, it is still a very noticeable delay from a human
 perspective, from the time that the gateway has come up (i.e., is
 able to respond with an INVALID_SPI or INVALID_IKE_SPI notification)
 and until the tunnels are active, or from the time the backup gateway
 has taken over until the tunnels are active.  The use of QCD tokens
 can reduce this delay.

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 21] RFC 6290 Quick Crash Detection June 2011

Authors' Addresses

 Yoav Nir (editor)
 Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd.
 5 Hasolelim st.
 Tel Aviv  67897
 Israel
 EMail: ynir@checkpoint.com
 David Wierbowski
 International Business Machines
 1701 North Street
 Endicott, New York  13760
 United States
 EMail: wierbows@us.ibm.com
 Frederic Detienne
 Cisco Systems, Inc.
 De Kleetlaan, 7
 Diegem  B-1831
 Belgium
 Phone: +32 2 704 5681
 EMail: fd@cisco.com
 Pratima Sethi
 Cisco Systems, Inc.
 O'Shaugnessy Road, 11
 Bangalore, Karnataka  560027
 India
 Phone: +91 80 4154 1654
 EMail: psethi@cisco.com

Nir, et al. Standards Track [Page 22]

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