Re: Compound authentication "issue"
Stephen Farrell <[email protected]> Thu, 19 Dec 2002 13:13:57 +0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.ietf.sacred |
|---|---|
| Organization | Baltimore Technologies Ltd. |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
I'm trying to figure out what text we need from this thread. My current guess is that I ought add the following to the security considerations: "Various operations in the SACRED protocol depend upon server authentication being provided by server authenticated TLS. SACRED clients SHOULD take care that the correct server is at the far end of the TLS "pipe" by performing the checks which are listed in section 3.1 of RFC2818 [RFC2818]. Clients SHOULD also include the optional BEEP serverName field in their "start" message and SHOULD then ensure that the BEEP serverName is consistent with the checks on the TLS server described in RFC2818. Failure to carry out these checks could allow a spoof server access a user's credential. If the SACRED account password were to be used in some other, less secure protocol using DIGEST-MD5, then it might appear to be the case that a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack could be mounted. However, this is not the case since the DIGEST-MD5 client hash includes a client-selected "digest-uri-value" which in SACRED's case will be "sacred/<serverName>". In a MITM attack, those values will be something else. A MITM attack as described is therefore thwarted because digest-uri-value wouldn't match what the SACRED server is expecting." I've also changed the example in appendix B so it includes the severName attribute and therefore (partly) reads: I: MSG 0 1 . 52 158 I: Content-Type: application/beep+xml I: I: <start number='1' serverName="sacred.example.org"> I: <profile uri='http://iana.org/beep/TLS'> I: <![CDATA[<ready />]]>]]><![CDATA[ I: </profile> I: </start> I: END And finally, I added RFC2818 as an informational reference (on the somewhat dubious basis that its an informational RFC and a standards track RFC oughtn't reference such a beastie as normative). This is something the IESG might hit us over the head with later on. Since I hope to submit the -05 version today, I'd love to get comments on this, and hopefully before 4pm GMT! Cheers, Stephen. -- ____________________________________________________________ Stephen Farrell Baltimore Technologies, tel: (direct line) +353 1 881 6716 39 Parkgate Street, fax: +353 1 881 7000 Dublin 8. mailto:[email protected] Ireland http://www.baltimore.com