

Versions: 00 01

   NSIS Working Group
   Internet Draft                                     Hannes Tschofenig
   Document: draft-tschofenig-nsis-threats-                  Siemens AG
   Expires: December 2002                                     July 2002

                               NSIS Threats

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance
   with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six

   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
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   As the work in the NSIS working has begun to describe requirements
   and the framework people started thinking about possible security
   implication. This document should provide a starting point for the
   discussion at the NSIS working group mailing list regarding the
   security issues that have to be addressed by a protocol or within
   the framework. This document does not describe vulnerabilities of a
   particular protocol or threats of published NSIS framework
   proposals. This memo is furthermore meant to create awareness for
   security issues within the NSIS group. Security requirements related
   to the threat scenarios are described in [1].

1  Introduction

   It is often argued that QoS signaling protocols are similar to other
   signaling protocols and one might re-use their security mechanisms
   for avoiding reengineering overhead. This is true up to some point:
   A QoS signaling protocol might borrow many security mechanisms from
   other protocols but different trust assumptions, and different
   protocol processing may demand different solutions or adaptations.
   This document tries to show threats that need to be addressed by the
   designers of a QoS signaling protocol. Although the base protocol
   might be sure, some extensions may cause problems when used in a
   particular environment. We think that it is necessary to investigate
   the context in which a QoS protocol is integrated and in which
   sequence protocols are executed (when combined together with other
   protocols). A particular focus of QoS signaling protocols should be
   given to the interaction with accounting and charging solutions:
   Without an appropriate integration of QoS and accounting protocols
   there is no good incentive for network operators to deploy them. The
   interaction between the protocols is subject of a framework. Some of
   these issues are therefore found in [5].

   Independent of the threat scenarios described in Section 3 we
   identify the following structural pieces, which require different
   security protection because of different trust relationships.  The
   sub-parts are: access network part, intra and inter-domain part, and
   finally end-to-end communication between the two signaling end-
   points. These parts are briefly described. The threat scenarios in
   Section 3 can be assigned to the individual parts.

   a) Access Network

   This section addresses threats that arise when the QoS Initiator
   (QI) is attached to access network and transmits and receives QoS
   signaling messages. In many mobility environments it is difficult to
   assume the existence of a pre-established trust relationship between
   a user and the access network.

   Threat scenarios dealing with initial QoS security association
   setup, replay attacks, lack of confidentiality, denial of service,
   integrity violation, identity spoofing and fraud are applicable.

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   From a security point of view this part of the network causes the
   most problems.

   b) Intra-Domain

   After receiving a QoS signaling message and verifying the request
   somewhere in the access network the signaling messages traverse the
   network within the same administrative domain. Since the request has
   already been authenticated and authorized threats might likely be
   different compared to those described in the previous section. To
   differentiate the end-node-to-access network interface with the
   intra-domain communication (i.e. communication internally within one
   administrative domain) we assume that no user hosts are attached to
   the core-network. (That is: the interface between any host and the
   first router is part of the access network). We furthermore assume
   that nodes within one administrative domain have a stronger trust
   relationship between each other.

   c) Inter-Domain

   The security protection between the borders of different
   administrative domains largely depends on how accounting is done. If
   one domain transmits forged QoS reservations (for example stating a
   higher QoS reservation than a aggregated number of user did) to next
   domain then it is likely that the originating network domain has
   also has to pay for the reservation. Hence in this case, there is no
   real benefit for the first network domain to forge a QoS
   reservation. But if an end-node is directly charged by intermediate
   domains then this kind of attack may be reasonable.  Security
   protection of messages transmitted between different administrative
   domains is still necessary to tackle attacks like spoofing,
   integrity violation, denial of service etc. The lower number of
   networks and higher trust relationship (compared in the access
   network case) usually causes fewer problems for the key management.

   d) End-to-End

   In our opinion end-to-end security for QoS signaling messages (in
   addition to hop-by-hop security) is rarely required if we assume
   that end-to-end issues like charging and the selection which user
   has to pay for a reservation is already securely negotiated by
   preceding upper layer protocols (for example SIP). Information
   carried within a QoS signaling protocol for the purpose of charging
   is therefore assumed opaque to the QoS protocol itself and
   appropriately protected as part of the AAA interaction. For
   accounting data, the QoS signaling protocol is therefore only used
   as a transport mechanism. Note however that this assumption strongly
   depends on the chosen solution of a protocol interaction with AAA,
   QoS and application layer protocol. It is however possible to select
   a charging solution that requires end-to-end protection of
   information delivered within the QoS signaling protocol. The
   following example requires some sort of end-to-end protection: Alice
   wants Bob to pay for the QoS reservation (reverse charging). Bob
   wants to be assured that the QoS signaling message he receives was

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   transmitted by Alice because he is only willing to pay for
   particular users and not for everyone. Hence Bob requires Alice to
   protect the reservation request.

   Regarding end-to-end security one additional issue needs to be
   clarified. Whenever a signaling protocol travels end-to-end and a
   node along the path acts on behalf of the other endpoint then
   further investigation is required how to solve this delegation

2  Terminology

   Some threat scenarios in this document use the entity user instead
   of the QoS Initiator (as introduced in [1]). This is mainly due to
   the fact that security protocols allow a differentiation between
   entities being hosts or users (based on the identities used). Since
   the QoS Initiator as used in [1] also allows to act on behalf of
   various entities including a network it is reasonable to distinguish
   between these identities.

   We use the term access network for a network to which a mobile node
   is attached. Other terms often used in this context are foreign or
   visited network. The missing direct trust relationship between the
   mobile node and the access network is characteristic for such an
   interface and complicates authentication and key agreement. Usually
   AAA protocols (like Radius or Diameter) are used to provide the
   initial authentication and key establishment. These protocols take
   advantage of the infrastructure (AAAL, AAAH, Broker, etc.) and trust
   relationships between the access network and the user's home
   network. This trust relationship is usually based on some sort of
   contract and hence it can be seen as symmetric whereas the
   dynamically established trust relationship between the mobile node
   and the access network is asymmetric. The mobile node has to trust
   the access network in many regards. The access network usually does
   not trust attached end-hosts.

   The term security association is used to describe established
   security-relevant data structure between two entities. This data
   structure consists of keys, algorithms including their parameters,
   values used for replay protection etc. Using this information two
   (or more) nodes are able to protect QoS signaling messages.

3  Threat Scenarios

   This section provides threat scenarios that are applicable to the
   quality of service signaling protocols.

3.1 Man-in-the-Middle Attacks

   This Section describes man-in-the-middle attacks of the following
   type: During the process of establishing a security association an
   adversary fools the QI with respect to the entity to which it has to
   authenticate. The man-in-the-middle adversary is able to modify
   signaling messages transmitted to the real network requesting

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   different QoS parameters. The QI wrongly believes that it talks to
   the ôrealö network whereas it is actually attached to an adversary.
   Note that a solution for protecting QoS signaling messages does not
   necessarily need to establish a "long-lasting" security association.
   Performance reasons may however require to create one.

   For this attack to be successful, pre-conditions have to hold which
   are described with the two scenarios below:

   a) No authentication

   The first case considers the case that no authentication between the
   QI and other entity (access network, other networks, a single node)
   takes places: Without authentication the QI is unable to detect an
   adversary. It may seem to be strange why someone does not consider
   to protect QoS signaling messages. However in some cases protection
   available might be difficult to accomplish in a practical
   environment either because the other end-point of the communication
   is unknown, because of a failure in the network configuration or
   because of misbelieved trust relationships in parts of the network.
   If one of the communication endpoints is unknown then for some
   security protocols it is not possible or difficult to select the
   appropriate key. Regarding an assumed trust relationship, which is
   not present in some environments, some network administrators refuse
   to consider security protection of intra-domain signaling messages
   because of various reasons. Such a configuration sometimes allows a
   compromised node in the network to interfere the communication of
   other nodes although it was never intended to actively participate
   in the signaling.

   b) Unilateral authentication

   In case of only unilateral authentication (that is, a missing
   authentication of the access network to the QI) the QI is not able
   to discover the man-in-the-middle adversary. In the
   telecommunication world this type of attack is known as the false
   base-station attacks (if the unilateral authentication is executed
   between a user and the access network).

   The two threats described above are a general problem of network
   access without appropriate authentication, not only for QoS
   signaling protocol. Still these issues need to be correctly
   addressed in a proposed protocol since the impacts may reach beyond
   the local network. No authentication or unilateral authentication is
   not only applicable for signaling messages transmitted between a QI
   and the access network but also between all other nodes.

3.2 Missing real-time notifications of QoS reservation costs (cost

   This type of threat is addresses a deployment problem when using QoS
   signaling in a real-world environment. It is not a particular
   attack. A large number of service providers with complex roaming
   agreements create a non-transparent cost-structure. Using AAA

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   protocols in a subscription-based scenario (i.e. user is registered
   with his home service provider) the user does not learn the identity
   of the network using a regular message exchange. The user is only
   authenticated to the home network (and possibly vice versa). The
   identity of the access network is possibly not revealed. When
   issuing a reservation request to the network the end-user does not
   know the cost of such a reservation. Furthermore due to mobility and
   route changes along the path the costs for a reservation and for
   transmitted data packets might not be acceptable for the end-user.
   However a missing protocol between the user and the network and
   without the possibility for the user to interact with the network to
   commit the credit withdrawal costs can reach unexpected amounts.

  When selecting a new point of attachment in case of roaming the end-
  host does not currently have an option to query the network for a
  reservation cost. Some proposals which try to merge mobility
  protocols with QoS signaling probe the access network up to the
  cross-over router for the possibility making a QoS reservation
  (without actually making the reservation itself). Without such a
  mechanism to provide network providers a user cannot take reservation
  costs into consideration when choosing between different networks.
  Hence the user is unable to refuse the more expensive service
  provider. The choice for selecting different providers might be
  available not only because of overlapping frequency ranges but also
  because of different access technologies (either using a WLAN card to
  access the local network or to use UMTS/UTRAN based technology).

   Although real-time notifications of quality of service reservation
   costs (cost control) to the user are outside the scope of a quality
   of service signaling protocol itself some interactions might be

3.3 Eavesdropping and Traffic Analysis

   This Section covers two threats: The first scenario is related to
   privacy concerns whereas the second addresses problems caused by
   weak authentication mechanisms and the increased risk of
   eavesdropping on the wireless link in absence of appropriate
   confidentiality protection.

   The first threat case covers adversaries that are unable to actively
   participate in the QoS signaling (passive adversary) but eavesdrop
   messages. The collected signaling packets may serve for the purpose
   of traffic analysis or to later mount replay attacks as described in
   the next Section. By eavesdropping an adversary might violate a
   userÆs privacy preference. Especially QoS signaling messages provide
   information that may be interesting for an adversary since the
   messages include user and/or application identities, policy
   information, information about the desired QoS reservation, etc. The
   information gathered by an adversary can be to learn usage patterns
   of users requesting resources and track QoS reservations.

   An adversary who is able to actively participate in the signaling
   might be able to use the signaling protocol to discover the topology

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   of a network (e.g. using record route). Additionally it might be
   possible to obtain diagnostic information usually used for network
   monitoring and administration. Other options might allow an
   adversary to route signaling messages specifically along a
   particular route similar to source routing.

   The second threat case addresses weak authentication mechanisms
   whereby information transmitted within the QoS signaling protocol
   may leak passwords and may allow offline dictionary attacks. This
   threat is not specific to QoS signaling protocols by may also be
   applicable and countermeasures must be taken.

3.4 Adversary being able to replay signaling messages

   This threat scenario covers the case where an adversary eavesdrops
   and collects signaling messages and replays them at a latter point
   in time (or at a different place, or uses parts of them at a
   different place or in a different way û e.g. cut and paste attacks).
   The adversary may use this technique in absence of appropriately
   protected messages to mount denial of service attacks. Furthermore
   also theft of service is possible.

   A more difficult attack that may cause problems even in case of
   replay protection requires the adversary to crash a QoS aware node
   (router, broker, etc.) to lose synchronization and to be able to
   replay old QoS signaling messages.

   Additionally it should be mentioned that the interaction between
   different protocols based on authorization tokens requires some
   care. Using such an authorization token it is possible to link state
   information between different protocols. When returning an
   authorization token to the end-host based for example on a SIP
   message exchange eavesdropping an replay could allow an adversary to
   steal resources without proper protection of the token delivery and
   without verification of the hopefully protected content of the
   token. The functionality and structure of such an authorization
   token for RSVP is described in [3] and in [4].

3.5 Identity Spoofing

   An adversary with the capability to spoof the identity may mount the
   following attacks:

   Eve, acting as an adversary, claims to be the registered user Alice
   by spoofing the identity of Alice. Thereby Eve causes the network to
   charge Alice for the consumed network resources. Using unprotected
   signaling messages Eve may experience no particular problems in
   succeeding. This attack can be classified as theft of service.

   In case that the signaling request is properly protected the
   adversary has to spent considerable more effort. This threat tries
   to address possible problems with traffic classification based on
   some identifiers (IP addresses, transport protocol id, ports, flow
   label [6] and [7], etc.). Additionally concerns might occur if the

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   end-host performs the traffic marking for example by using a DSCP.
   When the ingress router uses the DSCP of the incoming data traffic
   then the situation might be worse since this field is not protected
   by IPSec AH (and also by IPSec ESP). Issues of DiffServ and IPSec
   protection are described in Section 6.2 of [RFC2745]. Other security
   issues related to denial of service attacks are described in Section
   6.1 of [RFC2745].

   The following paragraph describes a possible threat caused by
   identity spoofing of transmitted data traffic. After the network
   receives a properly protected reservation request, transmitted by
   the legitimate user Alice, traffic filters are installed at edge
   devices. These traffic filters allow data traffic originated from a
   given address to be assigned to a particular QoS class. The
   adversary Eve now spoofs the IP address of the Alice (or whatever
   identifier is used in the flow classification). Additionally AliceÆs
   host may be crashed by the adversary as a result of a denial of
   service attack or lost connectivity for a variety of other reasons.
   If both nodes are located at the same link and use the same IP
   address then obviously the usage of a duplicate IP address will be
   detected. Assuming that only Eve is available at the link then she
   is now able to receive and transmit data (for example RTP data
   traffic), that receives preferential QoS treatment, using AliceÆs IP
   address (or whatever identifier is used in the flow classification).
   Assuming the soft state paradigm where periodical refresh messages
   are required the absence of Alice will not be detected until the
   next signaling message appears and forces Eve to respond with a
   protected signaling message. Again this issue is not only applicable
   to QoS traffic but the existence of QoS reservation causes more
   difficulties since this type of traffic is more expensive.

3.6 Adversary being able to inject/modify messages

   The next type of threat is caused by an integrity violation: An
   adversary modifies signaling messages (e.g. by acting as a man-in-
   the-middle) to achieve an unexpected network behavior with the bogus
   request. Possible actions are reordering, delaying, dropping,
   injecting and modifying.

   Using a different identity the adversary may forward a modified a
   QoS signaling message requesting a large amount of resources (using
   a different identity). If granted it causes other user's resource-
   request not to be successful and a different initiator (for example
   a user) to pay for the QoS reservation. This attack is only
   successful in absence of signaling message protection.

3.7 Missing Non-Repudiation Property

   Repudiation in this context refers to a problem where one party
   later denies to have made a reservation. This issue comes in two

   From a service provider point-of-view the following threat may be
   worth an investigation because a user may deny to have issued

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   reservation requests for which it was charged. A service provider
   may then like to prove that a particular user issued the reservation

   The same threat can be interpreted from the users point-of-view. A
   service provider claims to have received a number of reservation
   requests. The user in question thinks that he never issued those
   requests and wants to have a proof for correct service usage for a
   given set of QoS parameters.

   In todayÆs telecommunication networks non-repudiation is not
   provided. The user has to trust the network operator to correctly
   meter the traffic, collect and merge accounting data and that no
   unforeseen problems occur. If a signaling protocol is used to
   establish QoS reservations with a higher volume (for example service
   level agreements) then this issue might have a major impact on the
   design of a protocol.

3.8 Malicious Edge-Router

   Network elements within a domain (intra-domain) experience a
   different trust relationship with regard to the security protection
   of signaling messages compared to edge routers. We assume that edge
   routers have the responsibility to perform cryptographic processing
   (authentication, integrity and replay protection, authorization and
   accounting). If however an adversary manages to take over an edge
   router then the security of the entire network is affected. An
   adversary is then able to launch a number of attacks including
   denial of service, integrity violation, replay attacks etc. Note
   that this problem is not only restricted to QoS signaling protocols.
   The chain-of-trust principle applied in the hop-by-hop security
   protection does not prevent the network from being vulnerable. An
   adversary with full access to the edge router is then also able to
   access the keys used to secure messages to other nodes.

   Thus the edge router is a critical component that requires strong
   security protection. This does not necessarily imply that all
   routers within the core network do not need to cryptographically
   verify signaling messages and that these routers cannot cause
   security problems when acting maliciously. If the chain-of-trust
   principle is deployed then the security protection of the path (in
   this case within the network of a single administrative domain) is
   as strong as the weakest link. In our case the edge router is the
   most critical component of this network that may also act as a
   security gateway/firewall for incoming/outgoing traffic. For
   outgoing traffic this device has to act according to the security
   policy of the local domain to apply the appropriate security

3.9 Denial of Service in a two phase reservation

   This threat tries to address potential denial of service attacks
   when the reservation setup is split into two phases i.e. path and
   reservation (as for example used in receiver based reservation

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   setup). For this example we assume that the node transmitting the
   path message is not charged for the path message itself (only for a
   reservation) and is able to issue a high number of reservation
   request (possibly in a distributed fashion). The reservations are
   however never intended to be successful because of various reasons:
   the destination node cannot be reached; it is not responding node or
   simply rejects the reservation. An adversary can benefit from the
   fact that resources are already consumed along the path for various
   processing tasks including path pinning.

3.10    Denial of Service with a bogus signaling request

   With a resource reservation request received at a network element
   (for example by the first QoS aware router) processing is required
   for authentication and authorization. Processing by other nodes
   including policy servers, LDAP servers, etc. is also possible
   depending on the network configuration. The verification of the
   provided credentials requires computations and resources to be
   allocated for state maintenance, setting timers, additional messages
   transmitted to other nodes, cryptographic computations). If an
   adversary is able to transmit a large number of reservation request
   (flooding) with bogus credentials and assuming that the verification
   is expensive in terms of resource consumption then the verifying
   node may not be able to process further reservation messages by
   legitimate user.

3.11    Disclosing the networking structure

   In some architectural environments there is a desire by the network
   provider not to reveal the internal network structure (or other
   related information) to the outside world. An adversary might be
   able to use NSIS messages for network mapping (e.g. discovering
   allocated, capabilities of nodes along a paths etc.). This
   requirement might conflict with a protocol solution that provides a
   mean to automatically discover NSIS aware nodes and their identity.

3.12    Modification of subsequent reservation request

   An adversary might be able to modify an existing reservation which
   had already been established within the network as a result of a
   previous QoS signaling message. This means that a QoS signaling
   message that modifies established state must be subject to security
   protection comparable to the original signaling message setting up
   the reservation.

   Furthermore it might be necessary to provide assurance for a correct
   binding to a specific reservation state. Such a property can be
   designated as reservation ownership. This threat addresses
   operations for the reservation state established along the path. The
   reservation state at routers which is created by signaling messages
   is identified by a Reservation ID. The concept of the Reservation ID
   is described in [5]. Whenever a signaling message has to refresh,
   modify or delete a reservation it is necessary to process previously

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   created state. Therefore the newly transmitted signaling messages
   have to be associated with an existing reservation. Hence there is a
   requirement that it must not be possible for someone to use an
   arbitrary Reservation ID to modify state where no ownership exits.
   Especially in a roaming scenario where a mobile node retransmits
   signaling messages from a different point of attachment it must be
   assured that the routers along the path are able to verify whether
   the entity transmitting the signaling messages is allowed to modify
   the established state.

   Potential problems caused by this threat are denial of service,
   theft of service, service disruption, etc.

3.13    Faked Error/Response messages

  An adversary may be able to use false error/response messages as part
  of a denial of service attack. This could be either at the
  reservation level or at the protocol level.

4  Security Considerations

   This entire memo discusses security issues. Some additional threats
   are applicable for a framework where a NSIS protocol is used. Some
   of these threats are described in [2].

5  References

   [1]  Brunner, M., "Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols", draft-
   ietf-nsis-req-02.txt, Work In Progress, May 2002.

   [2]  Kempf, J., Nordmark, E.: ôThreat Analysis for IPv6 Public
   Multi-Access Linksö, <draft-kempf-ipng-netaccess-threats-01.txt>,
   (work in progress), December, 2002.

   [3]  Hamer, L-N., Gage, B., Broda, M., Kosinski, B., Shieh, H.:
   ôSession Authorization for RSVPö, <draft-ietf-rap-rsvp-authsession-
   02.txt>, (work in progress), February, 2002.

   [4]  Hamer, L-N., Gage, B., Shieh, H.: ôFramework for session set-up
   with media authorizationö, <draft-ietf-rap-session-auth-03.txt>,
   (work in progress), February, 2002.

   [5]  Freytsis, I., Hancock, R., Karagiannis, G., Loughney, J., Van
   den Bosch, S.: ôNext Steps in Signaling: A Framework Proposalö,
   <draft-hancock-nsis-fw-00.txt>, (work in progress), June, 2002.

   [6]   Partridge, C.: "Using the Flow Label Field in IPv6", RFC
   1809, June, 1995.

   [7]  Rajahalme, J., Conta, A., Carpenter, B., Deering, S.: "IPv6
   Flow Label Specification", <draft-ietf-ipv6-flow-label-02.txt>, (work
   in progress), June, 2002.

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6  Acknowledgments

   I would like to thank (in alphabetical order) Marcus Brunner, Jorge
   Cuellar, Mehmet Ersue, Xiaoming Fu and Robert Hancock for their
   comments to this draft. Jorge and Robert gave me an extensive list
   of comments and provided information on additional threats.

7  Author's Addresses

   Hannes Tschofenig
   Siemens AG
   Otto-Hahn-Ring 6
   81739 Munich
   Email: Hannes.Tschofenig@mchp.siemens.de

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