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Chapter: Security in Computing : Security in Networks

Encryption - Security in Networks

Encryption is probably the most important and versatile tool for a network security expert. We have seen in earlier chapters that encryption is powerful for providing privacy, authenticity, integrity, and limited access to data. Because networks often involve even greater risks, they often secure data with encryption, perhaps in combination with other controls.

Encryption

 

Encryption is probably the most important and versatile tool for a network security expert. We have seen in earlier chapters that encryption is powerful for providing privacy, authenticity, integrity, and limited access to data. Because networks often involve even greater risks, they often secure data with encryption, perhaps in combination with other controls.

 

Before we begin to study the use of encryption to counter network security threats, let us consider these points. First, remember that encryption is not a panacea or silver bullet. A flawed system design with encryption is still a flawed system design. Second, notice that encryption protects only what is encrypted (which should be obvious but isn't). Data are exposed between a user's fingertips and the encryption process before they are transmitted, and they are exposed again once they have been decrypted on the remote end. The best encryption cannot protect against a malicious Trojan horse that intercepts data before the point of encryption. Finally, encryption is no more secure than its key management. If an attacker can guess or deduce a weak encryption key, the game is over. People who do not understand encryption sometimes mistake it for fairy dust to sprinkle on a system for magic protection. This book would not be needed if such fairy dust existed.

 

In network applications, encryption can be applied either between two hosts (called link encryption) or between two applications (called end-to-end encryption). We consider each below. With either form of encryption, key distribution is always a problem. Encryption keys must be delivered to the sender and receiver in a secure manner. In this section, we also investigate techniques for safe key distribution in networks. Finally, we study a cryptographic facility for a network computing environment.

 

Link Encryption

 

In link encryption, data are encrypted just before the system places them on the physical communications link. In this case, encryption occurs at layer 1 or 2 in the OSI model. (A similar situation occurs with TCP/IP protocols.) Similarly, decryption occurs just as the communication arrives at and enters the receiving computer. A model of link encryption is shown in Figure 7-20.


Encryption protects the message in transit between two computers, but the message is in plaintext inside the hosts. (A message in plaintext is said to be "in the clear.") Notice that because the encryption is added at the bottom protocol layer, the message is exposed in all other layers of the sender and receiver. If we have good physical security, we may not be too concerned about this exposure; the exposure occurs on the sender's or receiver's host or workstation, protected by alarms or locked doors, for example. Nevertheless, you should notice that the message is exposed in two layers of all intermediate hosts through which the message may pass. This exposure occurs because routing and addressing are not read at the bottom layer, but only at higher layers. The message is in the clear in the intermediate hosts, and one of these hosts may not be especially trustworthy.

 

Link encryption is invisible to the user. The encryption becomes a transmission service performed by a low-level network protocol layer, just like message routing or transmission error detection. Figure 7-21 shows a typical link encrypted message, with the shaded fields encrypted. Because some of the data link header and trailer is applied before the block is encrypted, part of each of those blocks is shaded. As the message M is handled at each layer, header and control information is added on the sending side and removed on the receiving side. Hardware encryption devices operate quickly and reliably; in this case, link encryption is invisible to the operating system as well as to the operator.


Link encryption is especially appropriate when the transmission line is the point of greatest vulnerability. If all hosts on a network are reasonably secure but the communications medium is shared with other users or is not secure, link encryption is an easy control to use.

End-to-End Encryption

 

As its name implies, end-to-end encryption provides security from one end of a transmission to the other. The encryption can be applied by a hardware device between the user and the host. Alternatively, the encryption can be done by software running on the host computer. In either case, the encryption is performed at the highest levels (layer 7, application, or perhaps at layer 6, presentation) of the OSI model. A model of end-to-end encryption is shown in Figure 7-22.


Since the encryption precedes all the routing and transmission processing of the layer, the message is transmitted in encrypted form throughout the network. The encryption addresses potential flaws in lower layers in the transfer model. If a lower layer should fail to preserve security and reveal data it has received, the data's confidentiality is not endangered. Figure 7-23 shows a typical message with end-to-end encryption, again with the encrypted field shaded.


When end-to-end encryption is used, messages sent through several hosts are protected. The data content of the message is still encrypted, as shown in Figure 7-24, and the message is encrypted (protected against disclosure) while in transit. Therefore, even though a message must pass through potentially insecure nodes (such as C through G) on the path between A and B, the message is protected against disclosure while in transit.


Comparison of Encryption Methods

 

Simply encrypting a message is not absolute assurance that it will not be revealed during or after transmission. In many instances, however, the strength of encryption is adequate protection, considering the likelihood of the interceptor's breaking the encryption and the timeliness of the message. As with many aspects of security, we must balance the strength of protection with the likelihood of attack. (You will learn more about managing these risks in Chapter 8.)

 

With link encryption, encryption is invoked for all transmissions along a particular link. Typically, a given host has only one link into a network, meaning that all network traffic initiated on that host will be encrypted by that host. But this encryption scheme implies that every other host receiving these communications must also have a cryptographic facility to decrypt the messages. Furthermore, all hosts must share keys. A message may pass through one or more intermediate hosts on the way to its final destination. If the message is encrypted along some links of a network but not others, then part of the advantage of encryption is lost. Therefore, link encryption is usually performed on all links of a network if it is performed at all.

 

By contrast, end-to-end encryption is applied to "logical links," which are channels between two processes, at a level well above the physical path. Since the intermediate hosts along a transmission path do not need to encrypt or decrypt a message, they have no need for cryptographic facilities. Thus, encryption is used only for those messages and applications for which it is needed. Furthermore, the encryption can be done with software, so we can apply it selectively, one application at a time or even to one message within a given application.

 

The selective advantage of end-to-end encryption is also a disadvantage regarding encryption keys. Under end-to-end encryption, there is a virtual cryptographic channel between each pair of users. To provide proper security, each pair of users should share a unique cryptographic key. The number of keys required is thus equal to the number of pairs of users, which is n * (n - 1)/2 for n users. This number increases rapidly as the number of users increases. However, this count assumes that single key encryption is used. With a public key system, only one pair of keys is needed per recipient.

 

As shown in Table 7-5, link encryption is faster, easier for the user, and uses fewer keys. End-to-end encryption is more flexible, can be used selectively, is done at the user level, and can be integrated with the application. Neither form is right for all situations.



 

In some cases, both forms of encryption can be applied. A user who does not trust the quality of the link encryption provided by a system can apply end -to-end encryption as well. A system administrator who is concerned about the security of an end-to-end encryption scheme applied by an application program can also install a link encryption device. If both encryptions are relatively fast, this duplication of security has little negative effect.

 

Virtual Private Networks

 

Link encryption can be used to give a network's users the sense that they are on a private network, even when it is part of a public network. For this reason, the approach is called a virtual private network (or VPN).

 

Typically, physical security and administrative security are strong enough to protect transmission inside the perimeter of a network. Thus, the greatest exposure for a user is between the user's workstation or client and the perimeter of the host network or server.

 

A firewall is an access control device that sits between two networks or two network segments. It filters all traffic between the protected or "inside" network and a less trustworthy or "outside" network or segment. (We examine firewalls in detail later in this chapter.)

 

Many firewalls can be used to implement a VPN. When a user first establishes a communication with the firewall, the user can request a VPN session with the firewall. The user's client and the firewall negotiate a session encryption key, and the firewall and the client subsequently use that key to encrypt all traffic between the two. In this way, the larger network is restricted only to those given special access by the VPN. In other words, it feels to the user that the network is private, even though it is not. With the VPN, we say that the communication passes through an encrypted tunnel or tunnel. Establishment of a VPN is shown in Figure 7-25.


Virtual private networks are created when the firewall interacts with an authentication service inside the perimeter. The firewall may pass user authentication data to the authentication server and, upon confirmation of the authenticated identity, the firewall provides the user with appropriate security privileges. For example, a known trusted person, such as an employee or a system administrator, may be allowed to access resources not available to general users. The firewall implements this access control on the basis of the VPN. A VPN with privileged access is shown in Figure 7-26. In that figure, the firewall passes to the internal server the (privileged) identity of User 2.



PKI and Certificates

 

A public key infrastructure, or PKI, is a process created to enable users to implement public key cryptography, usually in a large (and frequently, distributed) setting. PKI offers each user a set of services, related to identification and access control, as follows:

 

·        Create certificates associating a user's identity with a (public) cryptographic key

 

·        Give out certificates from its database

 

·        Sign certificates, adding its credibility to the authenticity of the certificate

 

·        Confirm (or deny) that a certificate is valid

 

·        Invalidate certificates for users who no longer are allowed access or whose private key has been exposed

 

 

PKI is often considered to be a standard, but in fact it is a set of policies, products, and procedures that leave some room for interpretation. (Housley and Polk [HOU01b] describe both the technical parts and the procedural issues in developing a PKI.) The policies define the rules under which the cryptographic systems should operate. In particular, the policies specify how to handle keys and valuable information and how to match level of control to level of risk. The procedures dictate how the keys should be generated, managed, and used. Finally, the products actually implement the policies, and they generate, store, and manage the keys.

 

PKI sets up entities, called certificate authorities, that implement the PKI policy on certificates. The general idea is that a certificate authority is trusted, so users can delegate the construction, issuance, acceptance, and revocation of certificates to the authority, much as one would use a trusted bouncer to allow only some people to enter a restricted nightclub. The specific actions of a certificate authority include the following:

 

·      managing public key certificates for their whole life cycle

 

·      issuing certificates by binding a user's or system's identity to a public key with a digital signature

 

·      scheduling expiration dates for certificates

 

·      ensuring that certificates are revoked when necessary by publishing certificate revocation lists

 

The functions of a certificate authority can be done in-house or by a commercial service or a trusted third party.

 

PKI also involves a registration authority that acts as an interface between a user and a certificate authority. The registration authority captures and authenticates the identity of a user and then submits a certificate request to the appropriate certificate authority. In this sense, the registration authority is much like the U.S. Postal Service; the postal service acts as an agent of the U.S. State Department to enable U.S. citizens to obtain passports (official U.S. authentication) by providing the appropriate forms, verifying identity, and requesting the actual passport (akin to a certificate) from the appropriate passport-issuing office (the certificate authority). As with passports, the quality of registration authority determines the level of trust that can be placed in the certificates that are issued. PKI fits most naturally in a hierarchically organized, centrally controlled organization, such as a government agency.

 

PKI efforts are under way in many countries to enable companies and government agencies to implement PKI and interoperate. For example, a Federal PKI Initiative in the United States will eventually allow any U.S. government agency to send secure communication to any other U.S. government agency, when appropriate. The initiative also specifies how commercial PKI-enabled tools should operate, so agencies can buy ready-made PKI products rather than build their own. The European Union has a similar initiative (see www.europepki.org for more information.) Sidebar 7-8 describes the commercial use of PKI in a major U.K. bank. Major PKI solutions vendors include Baltimore Technologies, Northern Telecom/Entrust, and Identrus.

 

Sidebar 7-8: Using PKI at Lloyd's Bank

 

Lloyd's TSB is a savings bank based in the United Kingdom. With 16 million customers and over 2,000 branches, Lloyd's has 1.2 million registered Internet customers. In fact, lloydstsb.com is the most visited financial web site in the United Kingdom [ACT02]. In 2002, Lloyd's implemented a pilot project using smart cards for online banking services. Called the Key Online Banking (KOB) program, it is the first large-scale deployment of smart-card-based PKI for Internet banking. Market research revealed that 75 percent of the bank's clients found appealing the enhanced security offered by KOB.

 

To use KOB, customers insert the smart card into an ATM-like device and then supply a unique PIN. Thus, authentication is a two-step approach required before any financial transaction can be conducted. The smart card contains PKI key pairs and digital certificates. When the customer is finished, he or she logs out and removes the smart card to end the banking session.

 

According to Alan Woods, Lloyd's TSB's business banking director of distribution, "The beauty of the Key Online Banking solution is that it reduces the risk of a business' digital identity credentials from being exposed. This is becauseunlike standard PKI systemsthe user's private key is not kept on their desktop but is issued, stored, and revoked on the smart card itself. This Key Online Banking smart card is kept with the user at all times."

 

The benefits of this system are clear to customers, who can transact their business more securely. But the bank has an added benefit as well. The use of PKI protects issuing banks and financial institutions against liability under U.K. law.

 

Most PKI processes use certificates that bind identity to a key. But research is being done to expand the notion of certificate to a broader characterization of credentials. For instance, a credit card company may be more interested in verifying your financial status than your identity; a PKI scheme may involve a certificate that is based on binding the financial status with a key. The Simple Distributed Security Infrastructure (SDSI) takes this approach, including identity certificates, group membership certificates, and name-binding certificates. As of this writing, there are drafts of two related standards: ANSI standard X9.45 and the Simple Public Key Infrastructure (SPKI); the latter has only a set of requirements and a certificate format.

 

PKI is close to but not yet a mature process. Many issues must be resolved, especially since PKI has yet to be implemented commercially on a large scale. Table 7-6 lists several issues to be addressed as we learn more about PKI. However, some things have become clear. First, the certificate authority should be approved and verified by an independent body. The certificate authority's private key should be stored in a tamper-resistant security module. Then, access to the certificate and registration authorities should be tightly controlled, by means of strong user authentication such as smart cards.




 

The security involved in protecting the certificates involves administrative procedures. For example, more than one operator should be required to authorize certification requests. Controls should be put in place to detect hackers and prevent them from issuing bogus certificate requests. These controls might include digital signatures and strong encryption. Finally, a secure audit trail is necessary for reconstructing certificate information should the system fail and for recovering if a hacking attack does indeed corrupt the authentication process.

 

SSH Encryption

 

SSH (secure shell) is a pair of protocols (versions 1 and 2), originally defined for Unix but also available under Windows 2000, that provides an authenticated and encrypted path to the shell or operating system command interpreter. Both SSH versions replace Unix utilities such as Telnet, rlogin, and rsh for remote access. SSH protects against spoofing attacks and modification of data in communication.

 

The SSH protocol involves negotiation between local and remote sites for encryption algorithm (for example, DES, IDEA, AES) and authentication (including public key and Kerberos).

 

SSL Encryption

 

The SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol was originally designed by Netscape to protect communication between a web browser and server. It is also known now as TLS, for transport layer security. SSL interfaces between applications (such as browsers) and the TCP/IP protocols to provide server authentication, optional client authentication, and an encrypted communications channel between client and server. Client and server negotiate a mutually supported suite of encryption for session encryption and hashing; possibilities include triple DES and SHA1, or RC4 with a 128-bit key and MD5.

 

To use SSL, the client requests an SSL session. The server responds with its public key certificate so that the client can determine the authenticity of the server. The client returns part of a symmetric session key encrypted under the server's public key. Both the server and client compute the session key, and then they switch to encrypted communication, using the shared session key.

 

The protocol is simple but effective, and it is the most widely used secure communication protocol on the Internet. However, remember that SSL protects only from the client's browser to the server's decryption point (which is often only to the server's firewall or, slightly stronger, to the computer that runs the web application). Data are exposed from the user's keyboard to the browser and throughout the recipient's company. Blue Gem Security has developed a product called LocalSSL that encrypts data after it has been typed until the operating system delivers it to the client's browser, thus thwarting any keylogging Trojan horse that has become implanted in the user's computer to reveal everything the user types.

 

IPSec

 

As noted previously, the address space for the Internet is running out. As domain names and equipment proliferate, the original, 30-year-old, 32-bit address structure of the Internet is filling up. A new structure, called IPv6 (version 6 of the IP protocol suite), solves the addressing problem. This restructuring also offered an excellent opportunity for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to address serious security requirements.

 

As a part of the IPv6 suite, the IETF adopted IPSec, or the IP Security Protocol Suite. Designed to address fundamental shortcomings such as being subject to spoofing, eavesdropping, and session hijacking, the IPSec protocol defines a standard means for handling encrypted data. IPSec is implemented at the IP layer, so it affects all layers above it, in particular TCP and UDP. Therefore, IPSec requires no change to the existing large number of TCP and UDP protocols.

 

IPSec is somewhat similar to SSL, in that it supports authentication and confidentiality in a way that does not necessitate significant change either above it (in applications) or below it (in the TCP protocols). Like SSL, it was designed to be independent of specific cryptographic protocols and to allow the two communicating parties to agree on a mutually supported set of protocols.

 

The basis of IPSec is what is called a security association, which is essentially the set of security parameters for a secured communication channel. It is roughly comparable to an SSL session. A security association includes

 

·      encryption algorithm and mode (for example, DES in block-chaining mode)

 

·      encryption key

 

·      encryption parameters, such as the initialization vector

 

·      authentication protocol and key

 

·      lifespan of the association, to permit long-running sessions to select a new cryptographic key as often as needed

 

·      address of the opposite end of association

 

·      sensitivity level of protected data (usable for classified data)

 

A host, such as a network server or a firewall, might have several security associations in effect for concurrent communications with different remote hosts. A security association is selected by a security parameter index (SPI), a data element that is essentially a pointer into a table of security associations.

 

The fundamental data structures of IPSec are the AH (authentication header) and the ESP (encapsulated security payload). The ESP replaces (includes) the conventional TCP header and data portion of a packet, as shown in Figure 7-27. The physical header and trailer depend on the data link and physical layer communications medium, such as Ethernet.


The ESP contains both an authenticated portion and an encrypted portion, as shown in Figure 7-28. The sequence number is incremented by one for each packet transmitted to the same address using the same SPI, to preclude packet replay attacks. The payload data is the actual data of the packet. Because some encryption or other security mechanisms require blocks of certain sizes, the padding factor and padding length fields contain padding and the amount of padding to bring the payload data to an appropriate length. The next header indicates the type of payload data. The authentication field is used for authentication of the entire object.


As with most cryptographic applications, the critical element is key management. IPSec addresses this need with ISAKMP or Internet Security Association Key Management Protocol. Like SSL, ISAKMP requires that a distinct key be generated for each security association. The ISAKMP protocol is simple, flexible, and scalable. In IPSec, ISAKMP is implemented through IKE or ISAKMP key exchange. IKE provides a way to agree on and manage protocols, algorithms, and keys. For key exchange between unrelated parties IKE uses the DiffieHellman scheme (also described in Chapter 2). In DiffieHellman, each of the two parties, X and Y, chooses a large prime and sends a

number g raised to the power of the prime to the other. That is, X sends gx and Y sends gy. They both raise what they receive to the power

they kept: Y raises gx to (gx)y and X raises gy to (gy)x, which are both the same; voilà, they share a secret (gx)y = (gy)x. (The computation is slightly more complicated, being done in a finite field mod(n), so an attacker cannot factor the secret easily.) With their shared secret, the two parties now exchange identities and certificates to authenticate those identities. Finally, they derive a shared cryptographic key and enter a security association.

The key exchange is very efficient: The exchange can be accomplished in two messages, with an optional two more messages for authentication. Because this is a public key method, only two keys are needed for each pair of communicating parties. IKE has submodes for authentication (initiation) and for establishing new keys in an existing security association.

 

IPSec can establish cryptographic sessions with many purposes, including VPNs, applications, and lower-level network management (such as routing). The protocols of IPSec have been published and extensively scrutinized. Work on the protocols began in 1992. They were first published in 1995, and they were finalized in 1998 (RFCs 24012409) [KEN98].

 

Signed Code

 

As we have seen, someone can place malicious active code on a web site to be downloaded by unsuspecting users. Running with the privilege of whoever downloads it, such active code can do serious damage, from deleting files to sending e-mail messages to fetching Trojan horses to performing subtle and hard-to-detect mischief. Today's trend is to allow applications and updates to be downloaded from central sites, so the risk of downloading something malicious is growing.

 

A partialnot completeapproach to reducing this risk is to use signed code. A trustworthy third party appends a digital signature to a piece of code, supposedly connoting more trustworthy code. A signature structure in a PKI helps to validate the signature.

 

Who might the trustworthy party be? A well-known manufacturer would be recognizable as a code signer. But what of the small and virtually unknown manufacturer of a device driver or a code add-in? If the code vendor is unknown, it does not help that the vendor signs its own code; miscreants can post their own signed code, too.

 

In March 2001, Verisign announced it had erroneously issued two code-signing certificates under the name of Microsoft Corp. to someone who purported to bebut was nota Microsoft employee. These certificates were in circulation for almost two months before the error was detected. Even after Verisign detected the error and canceled the certificates, someone would know the certificates had been revoked only by checking Verisign's list. Most people would not question a code download signed by Microsoft.

 

Encrypted E-mail

 

An electronic mail message is much like the back of a post card. The mail carrier (and everyone in the postal system through whose hands the card passes) can read not just the address but also everything in the message field. To protect the privacy of the message and routing information, we can use encryption to protect the confidentiality of the message and perhaps its integrity.

 

As we have seen in several other applications, the encryption is the easy part; key management is the more difficult issue. The two dominant approaches to key management are the use of a hierarchical, certificate-based PKI solution for key exchange and the use of a flat, individual-to-individual exchange method. The hierarchical method is called S/MIME and is employed by many commercial mail-handling programs, such as Microsoft Exchange or Eudora. The individual method is called PGP and is a commercial add-on. We look more carefully at encrypted e-mail in a later section of this chapter.

 

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