wdiff rfc7685.original rfc7685.txt

Network Working Group
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Langley
Internet-Draft
Request for Comments: 7685 Google Inc
Updates: 5246 (if approved) Sept October 2015
Intended status:
Category: Standards Track
Expires: March 11, 2016
ISSN: 2070-1721

A TLS Transport Layer Security (TLS) ClientHello padding extension
draft-ietf-tls-padding-04 Padding Extension

Abstract

This memo describes a TLS Transport Layer Security (TLS) extension that
can be used to pad ClientHello messages to a desired size.

Status of This Memo

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This Internet-Draft will expire on March 11, 2016.
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7685.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Requirements Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Padding Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
4. Example usage Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
7. Acknowledgements Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Acknowledgements . . . . 4
8. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1. Introduction

Successive TLS [RFC5246] versions have added support for more cipher
suites and, over time, more TLS extensions have been defined. This
has caused the size of the TLS ClientHello to grow grow, and the
additional size has caused some implementation bugs to come to light.
At least one of these implementation bugs can be ameliorated by
making the ClientHello even larger. This is desirable given that
fully comprehensive patching of affected implementations is difficult
to achieve.

This memo describes a TLS extension that can be used to pad a
ClientHello to a desired size in order to avoid implementation bugs
caused by certain ClientHello sizes.

2. Requirements Notation

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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

3. Padding Extension

A new extension type ("padding(21)") is defined and MAY be included
by the client in its ClientHello message.

enum {
padding(21), (65535)
} ExtensionType;

The "extension_data" for the extension consists of an arbitrary
number of zero bytes. For example, the smallest "padding" extension
is four bytes long and is encoded as 0x00 0x15 0x00 0x00. A ten byte ten-byte
extension would include 6 six bytes of "extension_data" and would be
encoded as:

00 15 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00
|---| |---| |---------------|
| | |
| | \- extension_data: 6 zero bytes
| |
| \------------- 16-bit, extension_data length
|
\------------------- extension_type for padding extension

The client MUST fill the padding extension completely with zero
bytes, although the padding extension_data field may be empty.

The server MUST NOT echo the extension.

4. Example usage Usage

As an example, consider a client that wishes to avoid sending a
ClientHello with a record size TLSCiphertext.length between 256 and 511 bytes
(inclusive). This case is considered because at least one TLS
implementation is known to hang the connection when such a
ClientHello record is received.

After building a ClientHello as normal, the client can add four bytes
to the length (to account for the "msg_type" and "length" fields of
the handshake protocol) and test whether the resulting length falls
into that range. If it does, a padding extension can be added in
order to push the length to (at least) 512 bytes.

Note that if the original ClientHello size was between 505 and 507
bytes
bytes, then, with the handshake protocol overhead, the record payload
would be between 509 and 511 bytes long. Since it's not possible for
an extension to take less than four bytes of space, the additional
padding would have to expand the ClientHello record past payload beyond
512 bytes in these cases.

5. Security Considerations

The contents of the padding extension could be used as a covert
channel. In order to prevent this, the contents are required to be
all zeros, although the length of the extension can still be used as
a much smaller covert channel.

6. IANA Considerations

RFC EDITOR: Please delete this section prior to publication.

An early code-point assignment (21) was made for this draft in the
registry of TLS ExtensionType values.

IANA is requested to has permanently assign this code-point.

7. Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Wan-Teh Chang
and registered value 21 (padding) in the suggestions of Eric Rescorla.

8.
"ExtensionType Values" registry.

7. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

[RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5246, August 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5246>.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Wan-Teh Chang
and the suggestions of Eric Rescorla.

Author's Address

Adam Langley
Google Inc

Email: agl@google.com