Secure Socket Layer and Transport Layer Security

SECURE SOCKET LAYER AND TRANSPORT LAYER SECURITY

Netscape originated SSL. Version 3 of the protocol was designed with public review and input from industry and was published as an Internet draft document. Subsequently, when a consensus was reached to submit the protocol for Internet standardization, the TLS working group was formed within IETF to develop a common standard. This first published version of TLS can be viewed as essentially an SSLv3.1 and is very close to and backward compatible with SSLv3.

This section is devoted to a discussion of SSLv3. In the next section, the principal differences between SSLv3 and TLS are described.

SSL Architecture

SSL is designed to make use of TCP to provide a reliable end-to-end secure service. SSL is not a single protocol but rather two layers of protocols, as illustrated in Figure 16.2.

The SSL Record Protocol provides basic security services to various higher- layer protocols. In particular, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which pro- vides the transfer service for Web client/server interaction, can operate on top of SSL. Three higher-layer protocols are defined as part of SSL: the Handshake Protocol, The Change Cipher Spec Protocol, and the Alert Protocol. These SSL-spe- cific protocols are used in the management of SSL exchanges and are examined later in this section.

Two important SSL concepts are the SSL session and the SSL connection, which are defined in the specification as follows.

•                           Connection: A connection is a transport (in the OSI layering model defini- tion) that provides a suitable type of service. For SSL, such connections are peer-to-peer relationships. The connections are transient. Every connection is associated with one session.

•                           Session: An SSL session is an association between a client and a server. Sessions are created by the Handshake Protocol. Sessions define a set of cryptographic

security parameters which can be shared among multiple connections. Sessions are used to avoid the expensive negotiation of new security parameters for each connection.

Between any pair of parties (applications such as HTTP on client and server), there may be multiple secure connections. In theory, there may also be multiple simultaneous sessions between parties, but this feature is not used in practice.

There are a number of states associated with each session. Once a session is established, there is a current operating state for both read and write (i.e., receive and send). In addition, during the Handshake Protocol, pending read and write states are created. Upon successful conclusion of the Handshake Protocol, the pending states become the current states.

A session state is defined by the following parameters.

•                           Session identifier: An arbitrary byte sequence chosen by the server to identify an active or resumable session state.

•                           Peer certificate: An X509.v3 certificate of the peer. This element of the state may be null.

•                           Compression method: The algorithm used to compress data prior to encryption.

•                           Cipher spec: Specifies the bulk data encryption algorithm (such as null, AES, etc.) and a hash algorithm (such as MD5 or SHA-1) used for MAC calculation. It also defines cryptographic attributes such as the hash_size.

•                           Master secret: 48-byte secret shared between the client and server.

•                           Is resumable: A flag indicating whether the session can be used to initiate new connections.

A connection state is defined by the following parameters.

•                           Server and client random: Byte sequences that are chosen by the server and client for each connection.

•                           Server write MAC secret: The secret key used in MAC operations on data sent by the server.

•                           Client write MAC secret: The secret key used in MAC operations on data sent by the client.

•                           Server write key: The secret encryption key for data encrypted by the server and decrypted by the client.

•                           Client write key: The symmetric encryption key for data encrypted by the client and decrypted by the server.

•                           Initialization vectors: When a block cipher in CBC mode is used, an initializa- tion vector (IV) is maintained for each key. This field is first initialized by the SSL Handshake Protocol. Thereafter, the final ciphertext block from each record is preserved for use as the IV with the following record.

Sequence numbers: Each party maintains separate sequence numbers for transmitted and received messages for each connection. When a party sends or receives a change cipher spec message, the appropriate sequence number is set to zero. Sequence numbers may not exceed 264 – 1.

 SSL Record Protocol

The SSL Record Protocol provides two services for SSL connections:

•                 Confidentiality: The Handshake Protocol defines a shared secret key that is used for conventional encryption of SSL payloads.

•                 Message Integrity: The Handshake Protocol also defines a shared secret key that is used to form a message authentication code (MAC).

Figure 16.3 indicates the overall operation of the SSL Record Protocol. The Record Protocol takes an application message to be transmitted, fragments the data into manageable blocks, optionally compresses the data, applies a MAC, encrypts, adds a header, and transmits the resulting unit in a TCP segment. Received data are decrypted, verified, decompressed, and reassembled before being delivered to higher-level users.

The first step is fragmentation. Each upper-layer message is fragmented into blocks of 214 bytes (16384 bytes) or less. Next, compression is optionally applied. Compression must be lossless and may  not  increase  the  content  length by more than 1024 bytes.1In SSLv3 (as well as the current version of TLS), no compression algorithm is specified, so the default compression algorithm    is null.

The next step in processing is to compute a message authentication code over the compressed data. For this purpose, a shared secret key is used. The calculation is defined as

Note that this is very similar to the HMAC algorithm defined in Chapter 12. The difference is that the two pads are concatenated in SSLv3 and are XORed in HMAC. The SSLv3 MAC algorithm is based on the original Internet draft for HMAC, which used concatenation. The final version of HMAC (defined in RFC 2104) uses the XOR. Next, the compressed message plus the MAC are encrypted using symmetric encryption. Encryption may not increase the content length by more than 1024 bytes, so that the total length may not exceed 214 + 2048. The following encryption algorithms are permitted:

Fortezza can be used in a smart card encryption scheme.

For stream encryption, the compressed message plus the MAC are encrypted. Note that the MAC is computed before encryption takes place and that the MAC is then encrypted along with the plaintext or compressed plaintext.

For block encryption, padding may be added after the MAC prior to encryp- tion. The padding is in the form of a number of padding bytes followed by a one-byte indication of the length of the padding. The total amount of padding is the smallest amount such that the total size of the data to be encrypted (plaintext plus MAC plus padding) is a multiple of the cipher’s block length. An example is a plaintext (or compressed text if compression is used) of 58 bytes, with a MAC of 20 bytes (using SHA-1), that is encrypted using a block length of 8 bytes (e.g., DES). With the padding-length byte, this yields a total of 79 bytes. To make the total an integer multiple of 8, one byte of padding is added.

The final step of SSL Record Protocol processing is to prepare a header consisting of the following fields:

•                 Content Type (8 bits): The higher-layer protocol used to process the enclosed fragment.

•                 Major Version (8 bits): Indicates major version of SSL in use. For SSLv3, the value is 3.

•                 Minor Version (8 bits): Indicates minor version in use. For SSLv3, the value is 0.

•                 Compressed Length (16 bits): The length in bytes of the plaintext fragment (or compressed fragment if compression is used). The maximum value is 214 + 2048.

The content types that have been defined are change_cipher_spec, alert, handshake, and application_data. The first three are the SSL-specific protocols, discussed next. Note that no distinction is made among the various appli- cations (e.g., HTTP) that might use SSL; the content of the data created by such applications is opaque to SSL.

Figure 16.4 illustrates the SSL record format.

Change Cipher Spec Protocol

The Change Cipher Spec Protocol is one of the three SSL-specific protocols that use the SSL Record Protocol, and it is the simplest. This protocol consists of a single message (Figure 16.5a), which consists of a single byte with the value 1. The sole pur- pose of this message is to cause the pending state to be copied into the current state, which updates the cipher suite to be used on this connection.

Alert Protocol

The Alert Protocol is used to convey SSL-related alerts to the peer entity. As with other applications that use SSL, alert messages are compressed and encrypted, as specified by the current state.

Each message in this protocol consists of two bytes (Figure 16.5b). The first byte takes the value warning (1) or fatal (2) to convey the severity of the message. If the level is fatal, SSL immediately terminates the connection. Other connections on the same session may continue, but no new connections on this session may be established. The second byte contains a code that indicates the specific alert. First,  we list those alerts that are always fatal (definitions from the SSL   specification):

•                           unexpected_message: An inappropriate message was received.

•                           bad_record_mac: An incorrect MAC was received.

•                           decompression_failure: The decompression function received improper input (e.g., unable to decompress or decompress to greater than maximum allowable length).

•                           handshake_failure: Sender was unable to negotiate an acceptable set of security parameters given the options available.

•                           illegal_parameter: A field in a handshake message was out of range or inconsistent with other fields.

The remaining alerts are the following.

•                           close_notify: Notifies the recipient that the sender will not send any more messages on this connection. Each party is required to send a close_notify alert before closing the write side of a connection.

•                           no_certificate: May be sent in response to a certificate request if no appropriate certificate is available.

•                           bad_certificate: A received certificate was corrupt (e.g., contained a signature that did not verify).

•                           unsupported_certificate: The type of the received certificate is not supported.

•                           certificate_revoked: A certificate has been revoked by its signer.

•                           certificate_expired: A certificate has expired.

(e)                         certificate_unknown: Some other unspecified issue arose in processing the certificate, rendering it unacceptable.

Handshake  Protocol

The most complex part of SSL is the Handshake Protocol. This protocol allows the server and client to authenticate each other and to negotiate an encryption and MAC algorithm and cryptographic keys to be used to protect data sent in an SSL record. The Handshake Protocol is used before any application data is transmitted.

The Handshake Protocol consists of a series of messages exchanged by client and server. All of these have the format shown in Figure 16.5c. Each message has three fields:

(f)                          Type (1 byte): Indicates one of 10 messages. Table 16.2 lists the defined message types.

(g)                         Length (3 bytes):  The length of the message in bytes.

(h)                         Content ( Ú 0 bytes): The parameters associated with this message; these are

listed in Table 16.2.

Figure 16.6 shows the initial exchange needed to establish a logical connection between client and server. The exchange can be viewed as having four phases.

PHASE 1. ESTABLISH SECURITY CAPABILITIES This phase is used to initiate a logical connection and to establish the security capabilities that will be associated with it. The exchange is initiated by the client, which sends a client_hello message with the following parameters:

(i)                          Version: The highest SSL version understood by the client.

(j)                          Random: A client-generated random structure consisting of a 32-bit timestamp and 28 bytes generated by a secure random number generator. These values serve as nonces and are used during key exchange to prevent replay attacks.

Table 16.2  SSL Handshake Protocol Message Types

•                          Session ID: A variable-length session identifier. A nonzero value indicates that the client wishes to update the parameters of an existing connection or to create a new connection on this session. A zero value indicates that the client wishes to establish a new connection on a new session.

•                          CipherSuite: This is a list that contains the combinations of cryptographic algorithms supported by the client, in decreasing order of preference. Each element of the list (each cipher suite) defines both a key exchange algorithm and a CipherSpec; these are discussed subsequently.

•                 Compression Method: This is a list of the compression methods the client supports.

After sending the client_hello message, the client waits for the server_hello message, which contains the same parameters as the client_hello message. For the server_hello message, the following conven- tions apply. The Version field contains the lower of the versions suggested by the client and the highest supported by the server. The Random field is generated by the server and is independent of the client’s Random field. If the SessionID field of the client was nonzero, the same value is used by the server; otherwise the server’s SessionID field contains the value for a new session. The CipherSuite field contains the single cipher suite selected by the server from those proposed by the client. The Compression field contains the compression method selected by the server from those proposed by the client.

The first element of the CipherSuite parameter is the key exchange method (i.e., the means by which the cryptographic keys for conventional encryption and MAC are exchanged). The following key exchange methods are supported.

•                 RSA: The secret key is encrypted with the receiver’s RSA public key. A public- key certificate for the receiver’s key must be made available.

•                 Fixed Diffie-Hellman: This is a Diffie-Hellman key exchange in which the server’s certificate contains the Diffie-Hellman public parameters signed by the certificate authority (CA). That is, the public-key certificate contains the Diffie-Hellman public-key parameters. The client provides its Diffie-Hellman public-key parameters either in a certificate, if client authentication is required, or in a key exchange message. This method results in a fixed secret key between two peers based on the Diffie-Hellman calculation using the fixed public keys.

•                 Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman: This technique is used to create ephemeral (temporary, one-time) secret keys. In this case, the Diffie-Hellman public keys are exchanged, signed using the sender’s private RSA or DSS key. The receiver can use the corresponding public key to verify the signature. Certificates are used to authenticate the public keys. This would appear to  be the most secure of the three Diffie-Hellman options, because it results in a temporary, authenticated key.

•                 Anonymous Diffie-Hellman: The base Diffie-Hellman algorithm is used with no authentication. That is, each side sends its public Diffie-Hellman parameters to the other with no authentication. This approach is vulnerable to man-in-the- middle attacks, in which the attacker conducts anonymous Diffie-Hellman with both parties.

•                 Fortezza: The technique defined for the Fortezza scheme.

Following the definition of a key exchange method is the CipherSpec, which includes the following fields.

CipherAlgorithm: Any of the algorithms mentioned earlier: RC4, RC2, DES, 3DES, DES40, IDEA, or Fortezza

•                          MACAlgorithm:  MD5 or SHA-1

•                          CipherType:  Stream or Block

•                          IsExportable: True or False

•                          HashSize:  0, 16 (for MD5), or 20 (for SHA-1) bytes

•                          Key Material: A sequence of bytes that contain data used in generating the write keys

•                          IV Size: The size of the Initialization Value for Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) encryption

PHASE 2. SERVER AUTHENTICATION AND KEY EXCHANGE The server begins this phase by sending its certificate if it needs to be authenticated; the message contains one or a chain of X.509 certificates. The certificate message is required for any agreed-on key exchange method except anonymous Diffie-Hellman. Note that if fixed Diffie- Hellman is used, this certificate message functions as the server’s key exchange message because it contains the server’s public Diffie-Hellman parameters.

Next, a server_key_exchange message may be sent if it is required. It is not required in two instances: (1) The server has sent a certificate with fixed Diffie-Hellman parameters or (2) a RSA key exchange is to be used. The server_key_exchange message is needed for the following:

•                          Anonymous Diffie-Hellman: The message content consists of the two global Diffie-Hellman values (a prime number and a primitive root of that number) plus the server’s public Diffie-Hellman key (see Figure 10.1).

•                          Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman: The message content includes the three Diffie- Hellman parameters provided for anonymous Diffie-Hellman plus a signature of those parameters.

•                          RSA key exchange (in which the server is using RSA but has a signature-only RSA key): Accordingly, the client cannot simply send a secret key encrypted with the server’s public key. Instead, the server must create a temporary RSA public/private key pair and use the server_key_exchange message to send the public key. The message content includes the two parameters of the temporary RSA public key (exponent and modulus; see Figure 9.5) plus a signature  of  those parameters.

•                         Fortezza

Some further details about the signatures are warranted. As usual, a signature is created by taking the hash of a message and encrypting it with the sender’s private key. In this case, the hash is defined as

hash(ClientHello.random |    ServerHello.random | ServerParams)

So the hash covers not only the Diffie-Hellman or RSA parameters but also the two nonces from the initial hello messages. This ensures against replay attacks and misrepresentation. In the case of a DSS signature, the hash is performed using the SHA-1 algorithm. In the case of an RSA signature, both an MD5 and an SHA-1 hash are calculated, and the concatenation of the two hashes (36 bytes) is encrypted with the server’s private key.

Next, a nonanonymous server (server not using anonymous Diffie-Hellman) can request a certificate from the client. The certificate_request message includes two parameters: certificate_type and certificate_authorities. The certificate type indicates the public-key algorithm and its use:

•                 RSA, signature only

•                 DSS, signature only

•                 RSA for fixed Diffie-Hellman; in this case the signature is used only for authentication, by sending a certificate signed with RSA

•                 DSS for fixed Diffie-Hellman; again, used only for authentication

•                 RSA for ephemeral Diffie-Hellman

•                 DSS for ephemeral Diffie-Hellman

•                 Fortezza

The second parameter in the certificate_request message is a list of the distinguished names of acceptable certificate authorities.

The final message in phase 2, and one that is always required, is the server_done message, which is sent by the server to indicate the end of the server hello and associated messages. After sending this message, the server will wait for a client response. This message has no parameters.

PHASE   3.  CLIENT   AUTHENTICATION   AND   KEY   EXCHANGE  Upon   receipt   of  the

server_done message, the client should verify that the server provided a valid certificate (if required) and check that the server_hello parameters are acceptable. If all is satisfactory, the client sends one or more messages back to the server.

If the server has requested a certificate, the client begins this phase by sending a certificate message. If no suitable certificate is available, the client sends a no_certificate alert instead.

Next is the client_key_exchange message, which must be sent in this phase. The content of the message depends on the type of key exchange, as   follows.

•                 RSA: The client generates a 48-byte pre-master secret and encrypts with the public key from the server’s certificate or temporary RSA key from a server_key_exchange message. Its use to compute a master secret is explained later.

•                 Ephemeral or Anonymous Diffie-Hellman: The client’s public Diffie-Hellman parameters  are sent.

•                 Fixed Diffie-Hellman: The client’s public Diffie-Hellman parameters were sent in a certificate message, so the content of this message is null.

•                 Fortezza: The client’s Fortezza parameters are sent.

Finally, in this phase, the client may send a certificate_verify message to provide explicit verification of a client certificate. This message is only sent fol- lowing any client certificate that has signing capability (i.e., all certificates except those containing fixed Diffie-Hellman parameters). This message signs a hash code based on the preceding messages, defined as

CertificateVerify.signature.md5_hash=

MD5(master_secret | pad_2 | MD5(handshake_messages | master_secret | pad_1));

CertificateVerify.signature.sha_hash=

SHA(master_secret | pad_2 | SHA(handshake_messages | master_secret | pad_1));

where pad_1 and pad_2 are the values defined earlier for the MAC, handshake_messages refers to all Handshake Protocol messages sent or received starting at client_hello but not including this message, and master_secret is the calculated secret whose construction is explained later in this section. If the user’s private key is DSS, then it is used to encrypt the SHA-1 hash. If the user’s private key is RSA, it is used to encrypt the concatenation of the MD5 and SHA-1 hashes. In either case, the purpose is to verify the client’s owner- ship of the private key for the client certificate. Even if someone is misusing the client’s certificate, he or she would be unable to send this message.

PHASE 4. FINISH This phase completes the setting up of a secure connection. The client sends a change_cipher_spec message and copies the pending CipherSpec into the current CipherSpec. Note that this message is not considered part of the Handshake Protocol but is sent using the Change Cipher Spec Protocol. The client then immediately sends the finished message under the new algorithms, keys, and secrets. The finished message verifies that the key exchange and authentication processes were successful. The content of the finished message is the concatenation of two hash values:

MD5(master_secret | pad2 | MD5(handshake_messages | Sender | master_secret | pad1))

SHA(master_secret | pad2 | SHA(handshake_messages | Sender | master_secret | pad1))

where Sender is a code that identifies that the sender is the client and handshake_messages is all of the data from all handshake messages up to but not including this message.

In response to these two messages, the server sends its own change_cipher_spec message, transfers the pending to the current CipherSpec, and sends its finished message. At this point, the handshake is complete and the client and server may begin to exchange application-layer data.

Cryptographic Computations

Two further items are of interest: (1) the creation of a shared master secret by means of the key exchange and (2) the generation of cryptographic parameters from the master secret.

MASTER SECRET  CREATION  The shared master secret is a one-time 48-byte value  (384 bits) generated for this session by means of secure key exchange. The creation   is in two stages. First, a pre_master_secret is exchanged. Second, the master_secret is calculated by both parties. For pre_master_secret exchange, there are two possibilities.

•                 RSA: A 48-byte pre_master_secret is generated by the client, encrypted with the server’s public RSA key, and sent to the server. The server decrypts the ciphertext using its private key to recover the pre_master_secret.

•                 Diffie-Hellman: Both client and server generate a Diffie-Hellman public key. After these are exchanged, each side performs the Diffie-Hellman calculation to create the shared pre_master_secret.

Both sides now compute the master_secret as

master_secret = MD5(pre_master_secret | SHA('A' |

pre_master_secret | ClientHello.random | ServerHello.random)) ||

MD5(pre_master_secret | SHA('BB' | pre_master_secret | ClientHello.random | ServerHello.random)) |

MD5(pre_master_secret | SHA('CCC' | pre_master_secret | ClientHello.random | ServerHello.random))

where ClientHello.random and ServerHello.random are the two nonce values exchanged in the initial hello  messages.

GENERATION OF CRYPTOGRAPHIC PARAMETERS CipherSpecs require a client write MAC secret, a server write MAC secret, a client write key, a server write key, a client write IV, and a server write IV, which are generated from the master secret in that order. These parameters are generated from the master secret by hashing the master secret into a sequence of secure bytes of sufficient length for all needed parameters.

The generation of the key material from the master secret uses the same format for generation of the master secret from the pre-master secret as

key_block = MD5(master_secret | SHA('A' | master_secret | ServerHello.random | ClientHello.random)) ||

MD5(master_secret | SHA('BB' | master_secret | ServerHello.random | ClientHello.random)) ||

MD5(master_secret | SHA('CCC' | master_secret | ServerHello.random | ClientHello.random)) ||...

until enough output has been generated. The result of this algorithmic structure is a pseudorandom function. We can view the master_secret as the pseudorandom seed value to the function. The client and server random numbers can be viewed as salt values to complicate cryptanalysis (see Chapter 20 for a discussion of the use of salt values).