Network Working Group | E. Rescorla |
Internet-Draft | RTFM, Inc. |
Obsoletes: 5077, 5246, 5746 (if | August 28, 2015 |
approved) | |
Updates: 4492 (if approved) | |
Intended status: Standards Track | |
Expires: February 29, 2016 |
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3
draft-ietf-tls-tls13-08
This document specifies Version 1.3 of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. The TLS protocol allows client/server applications to communicate over the Internet in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery.
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on February 29, 2016.
Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions published or made publicly available before November 10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process. Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other than English.
DISCLAIMER: This is a WIP draft of TLS 1.3 and has not yet seen significant security analysis.
RFC EDITOR: PLEASE REMOVE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH The source for this draft is maintained in GitHub. Suggested changes should be submitted as pull requests at https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec. Instructions are on that page as well. Editorial changes can be managed in GitHub, but any substantive change should be discussed on the TLS mailing list.
The primary goal of the TLS protocol is to provide privacy and data integrity between two communicating peers. The TLS protocol is composed of two layers: the TLS Record Protocol and the TLS Handshake Protocol. At the lowest level, layered on top of some reliable transport protocol (e.g., TCP [RFC0793]), is the TLS Record Protocol. The TLS Record Protocol provides connection security that has two basic properties:
Note: The TLS Record Protocol can operate in an insecure mode but is generally only used in this mode while another protocol is using the TLS Record Protocol as a transport for negotiating security parameters.
The TLS Record Protocol is used for encapsulation of various higher-level protocols. One such encapsulated protocol, the TLS Handshake Protocol, allows the server and client to authenticate each other and to negotiate an encryption algorithm and cryptographic keys before the application protocol transmits or receives its first byte of data. The TLS Handshake Protocol provides connection security that has three basic properties:
One advantage of TLS is that it is application protocol independent. Higher-level protocols can layer on top of the TLS protocol transparently. The TLS standard, however, does not specify how protocols add security with TLS; the decisions on how to initiate TLS handshaking and how to interpret the authentication certificates exchanged are left to the judgment of the designers and implementors of protocols that run on top of TLS.
The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “NOT RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
The following terms are used:
client: The endpoint initiating the TLS connection.
connection: A transport-layer connection between two endpoints.
endpoint: Either the client or server of the connection.
handshake: An initial negotiation between client and server that establishes the parameters of their transactions.
peer: An endpoint. When discussing a particular endpoint, “peer” refers to the endpoint that is remote to the primary subject of discussion.
receiver: An endpoint that is receiving records.
sender: An endpoint that is transmitting records.
session: An association between a client and a server resulting from a handshake.
server: The endpoint which did not initiate the TLS connection.
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The goals of the TLS protocol, in order of priority, are as follows:
This document and the TLS protocol itself have evolved from the SSL 3.0 Protocol Specification as published by Netscape. The differences between this version and previous versions are significant enough that the various versions of TLS and SSL 3.0 do not interoperate (although each protocol incorporates a mechanism by which an implementation can back down to prior versions). This document is intended primarily for readers who will be implementing the protocol and for those doing cryptographic analysis of it. The specification has been written with this in mind, and it is intended to reflect the needs of those two groups. For that reason, many of the algorithm-dependent data structures and rules are included in the body of the text (as opposed to in an appendix), providing easier access to them.
This document is not intended to supply any details of service definition or of interface definition, although it does cover select areas of policy as they are required for the maintenance of solid security.
This document deals with the formatting of data in an external representation. The following very basic and somewhat casually defined presentation syntax will be used. The syntax draws from several sources in its structure. Although it resembles the programming language “C” in its syntax and XDR [RFC4506] in both its syntax and intent, it would be risky to draw too many parallels. The purpose of this presentation language is to document TLS only; it has no general application beyond that particular goal.
The representation of all data items is explicitly specified. The basic data block size is one byte (i.e., 8 bits). Multiple byte data items are concatenations of bytes, from left to right, from top to bottom. From the byte stream, a multi-byte item (a numeric in the example) is formed (using C notation) by:
value = (byte[0] << 8*(n-1)) | (byte[1] << 8*(n-2)) | ... | byte[n-1];
This byte ordering for multi-byte values is the commonplace network byte order or big-endian format.
Comments begin with “/*” and end with “*/”.
Optional components are denoted by enclosing them in “[[ ]]” double brackets.
Single-byte entities containing uninterpreted data are of type opaque.
A vector (single-dimensioned array) is a stream of homogeneous data elements. The size of the vector may be specified at documentation time or left unspecified until runtime. In either case, the length declares the number of bytes, not the number of elements, in the vector. The syntax for specifying a new type, T’, that is a fixed- length vector of type T is
T T'[n];
Here, T’ occupies n bytes in the data stream, where n is a multiple of the size of T. The length of the vector is not included in the encoded stream.
In the following example, Datum is defined to be three consecutive bytes that the protocol does not interpret, while Data is three consecutive Datum, consuming a total of nine bytes.
opaque Datum[3]; /* three uninterpreted bytes */ Datum Data[9]; /* 3 consecutive 3 byte vectors */
Variable-length vectors are defined by specifying a subrange of legal lengths, inclusively, using the notation <floor..ceiling>. When these are encoded, the actual length precedes the vector’s contents in the byte stream. The length will be in the form of a number consuming as many bytes as required to hold the vector’s specified maximum (ceiling) length. A variable-length vector with an actual length field of zero is referred to as an empty vector.
T T'<floor..ceiling>;
In the following example, mandatory is a vector that must contain between 300 and 400 bytes of type opaque. It can never be empty. The actual length field consumes two bytes, a uint16, which is sufficient to represent the value 400 (see Section 4.4). On the other hand, longer can represent up to 800 bytes of data, or 400 uint16 elements, and it may be empty. Its encoding will include a two-byte actual length field prepended to the vector. The length of an encoded vector must be an even multiple of the length of a single element (for example, a 17-byte vector of uint16 would be illegal).
opaque mandatory<300..400>; /* length field is 2 bytes, cannot be empty */ uint16 longer<0..800>; /* zero to 400 16-bit unsigned integers */
The basic numeric data type is an unsigned byte (uint8). All larger numeric data types are formed from fixed-length series of bytes concatenated as described in Section 4.1 and are also unsigned. The following numeric types are predefined.
uint8 uint16[2]; uint8 uint24[3]; uint8 uint32[4]; uint8 uint64[8];
All values, here and elsewhere in the specification, are stored in network byte (big-endian) order; the uint32 represented by the hex bytes 01 02 03 04 is equivalent to the decimal value 16909060.
Note that in some cases (e.g., DH parameters) it is necessary to represent integers as opaque vectors. In such cases, they are represented as unsigned integers (i.e., leading zero octets are not required even if the most significant bit is set).
An additional sparse data type is available called enum. A field of type enum can only assume the values declared in the definition. Each definition is a different type. Only enumerateds of the same type may be assigned or compared. Every element of an enumerated must be assigned a value, as demonstrated in the following example. Since the elements of the enumerated are not ordered, they can be assigned any unique value, in any order.
enum { e1(v1), e2(v2), ... , en(vn) [[, (n)]] } Te;
An enumerated occupies as much space in the byte stream as would its maximal defined ordinal value. The following definition would cause one byte to be used to carry fields of type Color.
enum { red(3), blue(5), white(7) } Color;
One may optionally specify a value without its associated tag to force the width definition without defining a superfluous element.
In the following example, Taste will consume two bytes in the data stream but can only assume the values 1, 2, or 4.
enum { sweet(1), sour(2), bitter(4), (32000) } Taste;
The names of the elements of an enumeration are scoped within the defined type. In the first example, a fully qualified reference to the second element of the enumeration would be Color.blue. Such qualification is not required if the target of the assignment is well specified.
Color color = Color.blue; /* overspecified, legal */ Color color = blue; /* correct, type implicit */
For enumerateds that are never converted to external representation, the numerical information may be omitted.
enum { low, medium, high } Amount;
Structure types may be constructed from primitive types for convenience. Each specification declares a new, unique type. The syntax for definition is much like that of C.
struct { T1 f1; T2 f2; ... Tn fn; } [[T]];
The fields within a structure may be qualified using the type’s name, with a syntax much like that available for enumerateds. For example, T.f2 refers to the second field of the previous declaration. Structure definitions may be embedded.
Defined structures may have variants based on some knowledge that is available within the environment. The selector must be an enumerated type that defines the possible variants the structure defines. There must be a case arm for every element of the enumeration declared in the select. Case arms have limited fall-through: if two case arms follow in immediate succession with no fields in between, then they both contain the same fields. Thus, in the example below, “orange” and “banana” both contain V2. Note that this is a new piece of syntax in TLS 1.2.
The body of the variant structure may be given a label for reference. The mechanism by which the variant is selected at runtime is not prescribed by the presentation language.
struct { T1 f1; T2 f2; .... Tn fn; select (E) { case e1: Te1; case e2: Te2; case e3: case e4: Te3; .... case en: Ten; } [[fv]]; } [[Tv]];
For example:
enum { apple, orange, banana } VariantTag; struct { uint16 number; opaque string<0..10>; /* variable length */ } V1; struct { uint32 number; opaque string[10]; /* fixed length */ } V2; struct { select (VariantTag) { /* value of selector is implicit */ case apple: V1; /* VariantBody, tag = apple */ case orange: case banana: V2; /* VariantBody, tag = orange or banana */ } variant_body; /* optional label on variant */ } VariantRecord;
Typed constants can be defined for purposes of specification by declaring a symbol of the desired type and assigning values to it.
Under-specified types (opaque, variable-length vectors, and structures that contain opaque) cannot be assigned values. No fields of a multi-element structure or vector may be elided.
For example:
struct { uint8 f1; uint8 f2; } Example1; Example1 ex1 = {1, 4}; /* assigns f1 = 1, f2 = 4 */
The following common primitive types are defined and used subsequently:
enum { false(0), true(1) } Boolean;
The two cryptographic operations — digital signing, and authenticated encryption with additional data (AEAD) — are designated digitally-signed, and aead-ciphered, respectively. A field’s cryptographic processing is specified by prepending an appropriate key word designation before the field’s type specification. Cryptographic keys are implied by the current session state (see Section 5.1).
A digitally-signed element is encoded as a struct DigitallySigned:
struct { SignatureAndHashAlgorithm algorithm; opaque signature<0..2^16-1>; } DigitallySigned;
The algorithm field specifies the algorithm used (see Section 6.3.2.1 for the definition of this field). Note that the algorithm field was introduced in TLS 1.2, and is not in earlier versions. The signature is a digital signature using those algorithms over the contents of the element. The contents themselves do not appear on the wire but are simply calculated. The length of the signature is specified by the signing algorithm and key.
In previous versions of TLS, the ServerKeyExchange format meant that attackers can obtain a signature of a message with a chosen, 32-byte prefix. Because TLS 1.3 servers are likely to also implement prior versions, the contents of the element always start with 64 bytes of octet 32 in order to clear that chosen-prefix.
Following that padding is a NUL-terminated context string in order to disambiguate signatures for different purposes. The context string will be specified whenever a digitally-signed element is used.
Finally, the specified contents of the digitally-signed structure follow the NUL at the end of the context string. (See the example at the end of this section.)
In RSA signing, the opaque vector contains the signature generated using the RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 signature scheme defined in [RFC3447]. As discussed in [RFC3447], the DigestInfo MUST be DER-encoded [X680] [X690]. For hash algorithms without parameters (which includes SHA-1), the DigestInfo.AlgorithmIdentifier.parameters field MUST be NULL, but implementations MUST accept both without parameters and with NULL parameters. Note that earlier versions of TLS used a different RSA signature scheme that did not include a DigestInfo encoding.
In DSA, the 20 bytes of the SHA-1 hash are run directly through the Digital Signing Algorithm with no additional hashing. This produces two values, r and s. The DSA signature is an opaque vector, as above, the contents of which are the DER encoding of:
Dss-Sig-Value ::= SEQUENCE { r INTEGER, s INTEGER }
Note: In current terminology, DSA refers to the Digital Signature Algorithm and DSS refers to the NIST standard. In the original SSL and TLS specs, “DSS” was used universally. This document uses “DSA” to refer to the algorithm, “DSS” to refer to the standard, and it uses “DSS” in the code point definitions for historical continuity.
All ECDSA computations MUST be performed according to ANSI X9.62 [X962] or its successors. Data to be signed/verified is hashed, and the result run directly through the ECDSA algorithm with no additional hashing. The default hash function is SHA-1 [SHS]. However, an alternative hash function, such as one of the new SHA hash functions specified in FIPS 180-2 may be used instead if the certificate containing the EC public key explicitly requires use of another hash function. (The mechanism for specifying the required hash function has not been standardized, but this provision anticipates such standardization and obviates the need to update this document in response. Future PKIX RFCs may choose, for example, to specify the hash function to be used with a public key in the parameters field of subjectPublicKeyInfo.) [[OPEN ISSUE: This needs updating per 4492-bis https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/issues/59]]
In AEAD encryption, the plaintext is simultaneously encrypted and integrity protected. The input may be of any length, and aead-ciphered output is generally larger than the input in order to accommodate the integrity check value.
In the following example
struct { uint8 field1; uint8 field2; digitally-signed opaque { uint8 field3<0..255>; uint8 field4; }; } UserType;
Assume that the context string for the signature was specified as “Example”. The input for the signature/hash algorithm would be:
2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020 4578616d706c6500
followed by the encoding of the inner struct (field3 and field4).
The length of the structure, in bytes, would be equal to two bytes for field1 and field2, plus two bytes for the signature and hash algorithm, plus two bytes for the length of the signature, plus the length of the output of the signing algorithm. The length of the signature is known because the algorithm and key used for the signing are known prior to encoding or decoding this structure.
The TLS Record Protocol is a layered protocol. At each layer, messages may include fields for length, description, and content. The TLS Record Protocol takes messages to be transmitted, fragments the data into manageable blocks, protects the records, and transmits the result. Received data is decrypted and verified, reassembled, and then delivered to higher-level clients.
Three protocols that use the TLS Record Protocol are described in this document: the TLS Handshake Protocol, the Alert Protocol, and the application data protocol. In order to allow extension of the TLS protocol, additional record content types can be supported by the TLS Record Protocol. New record content type values are assigned by IANA in the TLS Content Type Registry as described in Section 11.
Implementations MUST NOT send record types not defined in this document unless negotiated by some extension. If a TLS implementation receives an unexpected record type, it MUST send an “unexpected_message” alert.
Any protocol designed for use over TLS must be carefully designed to deal with all possible attacks against it. As a practical matter, this means that the protocol designer must be aware of what security properties TLS does and does not provide and cannot safely rely on the latter.
Note in particular that type and length of a record are not protected by encryption. If this information is itself sensitive, application designers may wish to take steps (e.g., padding, cover traffic) to minimize information leakage.
[[TODO: I plan to totally rewrite or remove this. IT seems like just cruft.]]
A TLS connection state is the operating environment of the TLS Record Protocol. It specifies a record protection algorithm and its parameters as well as the record protection keys and IVs for the connection in both the read and the write directions. The security parameters are set by the TLS Handshake Protocol, which also determines when new cryptographic keys are installed and used for record protection. The initial current state always specifies that records are not protected.
The security parameters for a TLS Connection read and write state are set by providing the following values:
These parameters are defined in the presentation language as:
enum { server, client } ConnectionEnd; enum { tls_kdf_sha256, tls_kdf_sha384 } KDFAlgorithm; enum { aes_gcm } RecordProtAlgorithm; /* The algorithms specified in KDFAlgorithm and RecordProtAlgorithm may be added to. */ struct { ConnectionEnd entity; KDFAlgorithm kdf_algorithm; RecordProtAlgorithm record_prot_algorithm; uint8 enc_key_length; uint8 iv_length; opaque hs_master_secret[48]; opaque master_secret[48]; opaque client_random[32]; opaque server_random[32]; } SecurityParameters;
[TODO: update this to handle new key hierarchy.]
The connection state will use the security parameters to generate the following four items:
client write key server write key client write iv server write iv
The client write parameters are used by the server when receiving and processing records and vice versa. The algorithm used for generating these items from the security parameters is described in Section 7.2.
Once the security parameters have been set and the keys have been generated, the connection states can be instantiated by making them the current states. These current states MUST be updated for each record processed. Each connection state includes the following elements:
The TLS record layer receives uninterpreted data from higher layers in non-empty blocks of arbitrary size.
The record layer fragments information blocks into TLSPlaintext records carrying data in chunks of 2^14 bytes or less. Client message boundaries are not preserved in the record layer (i.e., multiple client messages of the same ContentType MAY be coalesced into a single TLSPlaintext record, or a single message MAY be fragmented across several records).
struct { uint8 major; uint8 minor; } ProtocolVersion; enum { reserved(20), alert(21), handshake(22), application_data(23), early_handshake(25), (255) } ContentType; struct { ContentType type; ProtocolVersion record_version = { 3, 1 }; /* TLS v1.x */ uint16 length; opaque fragment[TLSPlaintext.length]; } TLSPlaintext;
This document describes TLS Version 1.3, which uses the version { 3, 4 }. The version value 3.4 is historical, deriving from the use of { 3, 1 } for TLS 1.0 and { 3, 0 } for SSL 3.0. In order to maximize backwards compatibility, the record layer version identifies as simply TLS 1.0. Endpoints supporting other versions negotiate the version to use by following the procedure and requirements in Appendix C.
Implementations MUST NOT send zero-length fragments of Handshake or Alert types. Zero-length fragments of Application data MAY be sent as they are potentially useful as a traffic analysis countermeasure.
The record protection functions translate a TLSPlaintext structure into a TLSCiphertext. The deprotection functions reverse the process. In TLS 1.3 as opposed to previous versions of TLS, all ciphers are modeled as “Authenticated Encryption with Additional Data” (AEAD) [RFC5116]. AEAD functions provide a unified encryption and authentication operation which turns plaintext into authenticated ciphertext and back again.
AEAD ciphers take as input a single key, a nonce, a plaintext, and “additional data” to be included in the authentication check, as described in Section 2.1 of [RFC5116]. The key is either the client_write_key or the server_write_key.
struct { ContentType type; ProtocolVersion record_version = { 3, 1 }; /* TLS v1.x */ uint16 length; aead-ciphered struct { opaque content[TLSPlaintext.length]; } fragment; } TLSCiphertext;
The length of the per-record nonce (iv_length) is set to max(8 bytes, N_MIN) for the AEAD algorithm (see [RFC5116] Section 4). An AEAD algorithm where N_MAX is less than 8 bytes MUST NOT be used with TLS. The per-record nonce for the AEAD construction is formed as follows:
The resulting quantity (of length iv_length) is used as the per-record nonce.
Note: This is a different construction from that in TLS 1.2, which specified a partially explicit nonce.
The plaintext is the TLSPlaintext.fragment.
The additional authenticated data, which we denote as additional_data, is defined as follows:
additional_data = seq_num + TLSPlaintext.type + TLSPlaintext.record_version
where “+” denotes concatenation.
Note: In versions of TLS prior to 1.3, the additional_data included a length field. This presents a problem for cipher constructions with data-dependent padding (such as CBC). TLS 1.3 removes the length field and relies on the AEAD cipher to provide integrity for the length of the data.
The AEAD output consists of the ciphertext output by the AEAD encryption operation. The length will generally be larger than TLSPlaintext.length, but by an amount that varies with the AEAD cipher. Since the ciphers might incorporate padding, the amount of overhead could vary with different TLSPlaintext.length values. Symbolically,
AEADEncrypted = AEAD-Encrypt(write_key, nonce, plaintext, additional_data)
In order to decrypt and verify, the cipher takes as input the key, nonce, the “additional_data”, and the AEADEncrypted value. The output is either the plaintext or an error indicating that the decryption failed. There is no separate integrity check. That is:
TLSPlaintext.fragment = AEAD-Decrypt(write_key, nonce, AEADEncrypted, additional_data)
If the decryption fails, a fatal “bad_record_mac” alert MUST be generated.
An AEAD cipher MUST NOT produce an expansion of greater than 256 bytes. An endpoint that receives a record that is larger than 2^14 + 256 octets MUST generate a fatal “record_overflow” alert.
As a special case, we define the NULL_NULL AEAD cipher which is simply the identity operation and thus provides no security. This cipher MUST ONLY be used with the initial TLS_NULL_WITH_NULL_NULL cipher suite.
TLS has three subprotocols that are used to allow peers to agree upon security parameters for the record layer, to authenticate themselves, to instantiate negotiated security parameters, and to report error conditions to each other.
The TLS Handshake Protocol is responsible for negotiating a session, which consists of the following items:
These items are then used to create security parameters for use by the record layer when protecting application data. Many connections can be instantiated using the same session using a PSK established in an initial handshake.
One of the content types supported by the TLS record layer is the alert type. Alert messages convey the severity of the message (warning or fatal) and a description of the alert. Alert messages with a level of fatal result in the immediate termination of the connection. In this case, other connections corresponding to the session may continue, but the session identifier MUST be invalidated, preventing the failed session from being used to establish new connections. Like other messages, alert messages are encrypted as specified by the current connection state.
enum { warning(1), fatal(2), (255) } AlertLevel; enum { close_notify(0), unexpected_message(10), /* fatal */ bad_record_mac(20), /* fatal */ decryption_failed_RESERVED(21), /* fatal */ record_overflow(22), /* fatal */ decompression_failure_RESERVED(30), /* fatal */ handshake_failure(40), /* fatal */ no_certificate_RESERVED(41), /* fatal */ bad_certificate(42), unsupported_certificate(43), certificate_revoked(44), certificate_expired(45), certificate_unknown(46), illegal_parameter(47), /* fatal */ unknown_ca(48), /* fatal */ access_denied(49), /* fatal */ decode_error(50), /* fatal */ decrypt_error(51), /* fatal */ export_restriction_RESERVED(60), /* fatal */ protocol_version(70), /* fatal */ insufficient_security(71), /* fatal */ internal_error(80), /* fatal */ inappropriate_fallback(86), /* fatal */ user_canceled(90), no_renegotiation_RESERVED(100), /* fatal */ missing_extension(109), /* fatal */ unsupported_extension(110), /* fatal */ certificate_unobtainable(111), unrecognized_name(112), bad_certificate_status_response(113), /* fatal */ bad_certificate_hash_value(114), /* fatal */ unknown_psk_identity(115), (255) } AlertDescription; struct { AlertLevel level; AlertDescription description; } Alert;
The client and the server must share knowledge that the connection is ending in order to avoid a truncation attack. Failure to properly close a connection does not prohibit a session from being resumed.
Either party MAY initiate a close by sending a “close_notify” alert. Any data received after a closure alert is ignored. If a transport-level close is received prior to a “close_notify”, the receiver cannot know that all the data that was sent has been received.
Each party MUST send a “close_notify” alert before closing the write side of the connection, unless some other fatal alert has been transmitted. The other party MUST respond with a “close_notify” alert of its own and close down the connection immediately, discarding any pending writes. The initiator of the close need not wait for the responding “close_notify” alert before closing the read side of the connection.
If the application protocol using TLS provides that any data may be carried over the underlying transport after the TLS connection is closed, the TLS implementation must receive the responding “close_notify” alert before indicating to the application layer that the TLS connection has ended. If the application protocol will not transfer any additional data, but will only close the underlying transport connection, then the implementation MAY choose to close the transport without waiting for the responding “close_notify”. No part of this standard should be taken to dictate the manner in which a usage profile for TLS manages its data transport, including when connections are opened or closed.
Note: It is assumed that closing a connection reliably delivers pending data before destroying the transport.
Error handling in the TLS Handshake Protocol is very simple. When an error is detected, the detecting party sends a message to its peer. Upon transmission or receipt of a fatal alert message, both parties immediately close the connection. Servers and clients MUST forget any session-identifiers, keys, and secrets associated with a failed connection. Thus, any connection terminated with a fatal alert MUST NOT be resumed.
Whenever an implementation encounters a condition which is defined as a fatal alert, it MUST send the appropriate alert prior to closing the connection. For all errors where an alert level is not explicitly specified, the sending party MAY determine at its discretion whether to treat this as a fatal error or not. If the implementation chooses to send an alert but intends to close the connection immediately afterwards, it MUST send that alert at the fatal alert level.
If an alert with a level of warning is sent and received, generally the connection can continue normally. If the receiving party decides not to proceed with the connection (e.g., after having received a “user_canceled” alert that it is not willing to accept), it SHOULD send a fatal alert to terminate the connection. Given this, the sending peer cannot, in general, know how the receiving party will behave. Therefore, warning alerts are not very useful when the sending party wants to continue the connection, and thus are sometimes omitted. For example, if a party decides to accept an expired certificate (perhaps after confirming this with the user) and wants to continue the connection, it would not generally send a “certificate_expired” alert.
The following error alerts are defined:
New Alert values are assigned by IANA as described in Section 11.
The cryptographic parameters of the session state are produced by the TLS Handshake Protocol, which operates on top of the TLS record layer. When a TLS client and server first start communicating, they agree on a protocol version, select cryptographic algorithms, optionally authenticate each other, and establish shared secret keying material.
TLS supports three basic key exchange modes:
Which mode is used depends on the negotiated cipher suite. Conceptually, the handshake establishes two secrets which are used to derive all the keys.
Ephemeral Secret (ES): A secret which is derived from fresh (EC)DHE shares for this connection. Keying material derived from ES is intended to be forward secure (with the exception of pre-shared key only modes).
Static Secret (SS): A secret which may be derived from static or semi-static keying material, such as a pre-shared key or the server’s semi-static (EC)DH share.
In some cases, as with the DH handshake shown in Figure 1, these secrets are the same, but having both allows for a uniform key derivation scheme for all cipher modes.
The basic TLS Handshake for DH is shown in Figure 1:
Client Server ClientHello + ClientKeyShare --------> ServerHello ServerKeyShare* {EncryptedExtensions} {ServerConfiguration*} {Certificate*} {CertificateRequest*} {CertificateVerify*} <-------- {Finished} {Certificate*} {CertificateVerify*} {Finished} --------> [Application Data] <-------> [Application Data] * Indicates optional or situation-dependent messages that are not always sent. {} Indicates messages protected using keys derived from the ephemeral secret. [] Indicates messages protected using keys derived from the master secret.
Figure 1: Message flow for full TLS Handshake
The first message sent by the client is the ClientHello Section 6.3.1.1 which contains a random nonce (ClientHello.random), its offered protocol version, cipher suite, and extensions, and one or more Diffie-Hellman key shares in the ClientKeyShare extension Section 6.3.2.3.
The server processes the ClientHello and determines the appropriate cryptographic parameters for the connection. It then responds with the following messages:
Upon receiving the server’s messages, the client responds with his final flight of messages:
At this point, the handshake is complete, and the client and server may exchange application layer data. Application data MUST NOT be sent prior to sending the Finished message. If client authentication is requested, the server MUST NOT send application data before it receives the client’s Finished.
[[TODO: Move this elsewhere? Note that higher layers should not be overly reliant on whether TLS always negotiates the strongest possible connection between two endpoints. There are a number of ways in which a man-in-the-middle attacker can attempt to make two entities drop down to the least secure method they support (i.e., perform a downgrade attack). The TLS protocol has been designed to minimize this risk, but there are still attacks available: for example, an attacker could block access to the port a secure service runs on, or attempt to get the peers to negotiate an unauthenticated connection. The fundamental rule is that higher levels must be cognizant of what their security requirements are and never transmit information over a channel less secure than what they require. The TLS protocol is secure in that any cipher suite offers its promised level of security: if you negotiate AES-GCM [GCM] with a 255-bit ECDHE key exchange with a host whose certificate chain you have verified, you can expect that to be reasonably “secure” against algorithmic attacks, at least in the year 2015.]]
If the client has not provided an appropriate ClientKeyShare (e.g. it includes only DHE or ECDHE groups unacceptable or unsupported by the server), the server corrects the mismatch with a HelloRetryRequest and the client will need to restart the handshake with an appropriate ClientKeyShare, as shown in Figure 2:
Client Server ClientHello + ClientKeyShare --------> <-------- HelloRetryRequest ClientHello + ClientKeyShare --------> ServerHello ServerKeyShare {EncryptedExtensions} {ServerConfiguration*} {Certificate*} {CertificateRequest*} {CertificateVerify*} <-------- {Finished} {Certificate*} {CertificateVerify*} {Finished} --------> [Application Data] <-------> [Application Data]
Figure 2: Message flow for a full handshake with mismatched parameters
[[OPEN ISSUE: Should we restart the handshake hash? https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/issues/104.]] [[OPEN ISSUE: We need to make sure that this flow doesn’t introduce downgrade issues. Potential options include continuing the handshake hashes (as long as clients don’t change their opinion of the server’s capabilities with aborted handshakes) and requiring the client to send the same ClientHello (as is currently done) and then checking you get the same negotiated parameters.]]
If no common cryptographic parameters can be negotiated, the server will send a “handshake_failure” or “insufficient_security” fatal alert (see Section 6.1).
TLS also allows several optimized variants of the basic handshake, as described below.
TLS 1.3 supports a “0-RTT” mode in which the client can send application data as well as its Certificate and CertificateVerify (if client authentication is requested) on its first flight, thus reducing handshake latency. In order to enable this functionality, the server provides a ServerConfiguration message containing a long-term (EC)DH share. On future connections to the same server, the client can use that share to encrypt the first-flight data.
Client Server ClientHello + ClientKeyShare + EarlyDataIndication (EncryptedExtensions) (Certificate*) (CertificateVerify*) (Application Data) --------> ServerHello + EarlyDataIndication ServerKeyShare {EncryptedExtensions} {ServerConfiguration*} {Certificate*} {CertificateRequest*} {CertificateVerify*} <-------- {Finished} {Finished} --------> [Application Data] <-------> [Application Data] () Indicates messages protected using keys derived from the static secret.
Figure 3: Message flow for a zero round trip handshake
Note: because sequence numbers continue to increment between the initial (early) application data and the application data sent after the handshake has completed, an attacker cannot remove early application data messages.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The security properties for 0-RTT data (regardless of the cipher suite) are weaker than those for other kinds of TLS data. Specifically.
Finally, TLS provides a pre-shared key (PSK) mode which allows a client and server who share an existing secret (e.g., a key established out of band) to establish a connection authenticated by that key. PSKs can also be established in a previous session and then reused (“session resumption”). Once a handshake has completed, the server can send the client a PSK identity which corresponds to a key derived from the initial handshake (See Section 6.3.12). The client can then use that PSK identity in future handshakes to negotiate use of the PSK; if the server accepts it, then the security context of the original connection is tied to the new connection. In TLS 1.2 and below, this functionality was provided by “session resumption” and “session tickets” [RFC5077]. Both mechanisms are obsoleted in TLS 1.3.
PSK cipher suites can either use PSK in combination with an (EC)DHE exchange in order to provide forward secrecy in combination with shared keys, or can use PSKs alone, at the cost of losing forward secrecy.
Figure 4 shows a pair of handshakes in which the first establishes a PSK and the second uses it:
Client Server Initial Handshake: ClientHello + ClientKeyShare --------> ServerHello ServerKeyShare {EncryptedExtensions} {ServerConfiguration*} {Certificate*} {CertificateRequest*} {CertificateVerify*} <-------- {Finished} {Certificate*} {CertificateVerify*} {Finished} --------> <-------- [NewSessionTicket] [Application Data] <-------> [Application Data] Subsequent Handshake: ClientHello + ClientKeyShare, PreSharedKeyExtension --------> ServerHello +PreSharedKeyExtension {EncryptedExtensions} <-------- {Finished} {Certificate*} {Finished} --------> [Application Data] <-------> [Application Data]
Figure 4: Message flow for resumption and PSK
Note that the client supplies a ClientKeyShare to the server as well, which allows the server to decline resumption and fall back to a full handshake. However, because the server is authenticating via a PSK, it does not send a Certificate or a CertificateVerify. PSK-based resumption cannot be used to provide a new ServerConfiguration.
The contents and significance of each message will be presented in detail in the following sections.
The TLS Handshake Protocol is one of the defined higher-level clients of the TLS Record Protocol. This protocol is used to negotiate the secure attributes of a session. Handshake messages are supplied to the TLS record layer, where they are encapsulated within one or more TLSPlaintext or TLSCiphertext structures, which are processed and transmitted as specified by the current active session state.
enum { reserved(0), client_hello(1), server_hello(2), session_ticket(4), hello_retry_request(6), server_key_share(7), certificate(11), reserved(12), certificate_request(13), server_configuration(17), certificate_verify(15), reserved(16), finished(20), (255) } HandshakeType; struct { HandshakeType msg_type; /* handshake type */ uint24 length; /* bytes in message */ select (HandshakeType) { case client_hello: ClientHello; case server_hello: ServerHello; case hello_retry_request: HelloRetryRequest; case server_key_share: ServerKeyShare; case server_configuration:ServerConfiguration; case certificate: Certificate; case certificate_request: CertificateRequest; case certificate_verify: CertificateVerify; case finished: Finished; case session_ticket: NewSessionTicket; } body; } Handshake;
The TLS Handshake Protocol messages are presented below in the order they MUST be sent; sending handshake messages in an unexpected order results in an “unexpected_message” fatal error. Unneeded handshake messages can be omitted, however.
New handshake message types are assigned by IANA as described in Section 11.
The hello phase messages are used to exchange security enhancement capabilities between the client and server. When a new session begins, the record layer’s connection state AEAD algorithm is initialized to NULL_NULL.
When this message will be sent:
Structure of this message:
struct { opaque random_bytes[32]; } Random;
Note: Versions of TLS prior to TLS 1.3 used the top 32 bits of the Random value to encode the time since the UNIX epoch.
The cipher suite list, passed from the client to the server in the ClientHello message, contains the combinations of cryptographic algorithms supported by the client in order of the client’s preference (favorite choice first). Each cipher suite defines a key exchange algorithm, a record protection algorithm (including secret key length) and a hash to be used with HKDF. The server will select a cipher suite or, if no acceptable choices are presented, return a “handshake_failure” alert and close the connection. If the list contains cipher suites the server does not recognize, support, or wish to use, the server MUST ignore those cipher suites, and process the remaining ones as usual.
uint8 CipherSuite[2]; /* Cryptographic suite selector */ enum { null(0), (255) } CompressionMethod; struct { ProtocolVersion client_version = { 3, 4 }; /* TLS v1.3 */ Random random; SessionID session_id; CipherSuite cipher_suites<2..2^16-2>; CompressionMethod compression_methods<1..2^8-1>; select (extensions_present) { case false: struct {}; case true: Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; }; } ClientHello;
TLS allows extensions to follow the compression_methods field in an extensions block. The presence of extensions can be detected by determining whether there are bytes following the compression_methods at the end of the ClientHello. Note that this method of detecting optional data differs from the normal TLS method of having a variable-length field, but it is used for compatibility with TLS before extensions were defined.
In the event that a client requests additional functionality using extensions, and this functionality is not supplied by the server, the client MAY abort the handshake. A server MUST accept ClientHello messages both with and without the extensions field, and (as for all other messages) it MUST check that the amount of data in the message precisely matches one of these formats; if not, then it MUST send a fatal “decode_error” alert.
After sending the ClientHello message, the client waits for a ServerHello or HelloRetryRequest message.
When this message will be sent:
Structure of this message:
struct { ProtocolVersion server_version; Random random; CipherSuite cipher_suite; select (extensions_present) { case false: struct {}; case true: Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; }; } ServerHello;
The presence of extensions can be detected by determining whether there are bytes following the cipher_suite field at the end of the ServerHello.
When this message will be sent:
Structure of this message:
struct { ProtocolVersion server_version; CipherSuite cipher_suite; NamedGroup selected_group; Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; } HelloRetryRequest;
[[OPEN ISSUE: Merge in DTLS Cookies?]]
The “server_version”, “cipher_suite” and “extensions” fields have the same meanings as their corresponding values in the ServerHello. The server SHOULD send only the extensions necessary for the client to generate a correct ClientHello pair.
Upon receipt of a HelloRetryRequest, the client MUST first verify that the “selected_group” field does not identify a group which was not in the original ClientHello. If it was present, then the client MUST abort the handshake with a fatal “handshake_failure” alert. Clients SHOULD also abort with “handshake_failure” in response to any second HelloRetryRequest which was sent in the same connection (i.e., where the ClientHello was itself in response to a HelloRetryRequest).
Otherwise, the client MUST send a ClientHello with a new ClientKeyShare extension to the server. The ClientKeyShare MUST append a new ClientKeyShareOffer which is consistent with the “selected_group” field to the groups in the original ClientKeyShare.
Upon re-sending the ClientHello and receiving the server’s ServerHello/ServerKeyShare, the client MUST verify that the selected CipherSuite and NamedGroup match that supplied in the HelloRetryRequest.
The extension format is:
struct { ExtensionType extension_type; opaque extension_data<0..2^16-1>; } Extension; enum { supported_groups(10), signature_algorithms(13), early_data(TBD), pre_shared_key(TBD), client_key_shares(TBD), (65535) } ExtensionType;
Here:
The initial set of extensions is defined in [RFC6066]. The list of extension types is maintained by IANA as described in Section 11.
An extension type MUST NOT appear in the ServerHello or HelloRetryRequest unless the same extension type appeared in the corresponding ClientHello. If a client receives an extension type in ServerHello or HelloRetryRequest that it did not request in the associated ClientHello, it MUST abort the handshake with an “unsupported_extension” fatal alert.
Nonetheless, “server-oriented” extensions may be provided in the future within this framework. Such an extension (say, of type x) would require the client to first send an extension of type x in a ClientHello with empty extension_data to indicate that it supports the extension type. In this case, the client is offering the capability to understand the extension type, and the server is taking the client up on its offer.
When multiple extensions of different types are present in the ClientHello or ServerHello messages, the extensions MAY appear in any order. There MUST NOT be more than one extension of the same type.
Finally, note that extensions can be sent both when starting a new session and when requesting session resumption or 0-RTT mode. Indeed, a client that requests session resumption does not in general know whether the server will accept this request, and therefore it SHOULD send the same extensions as it would send if it were not attempting resumption.
In general, the specification of each extension type needs to describe the effect of the extension both during full handshake and session resumption. Most current TLS extensions are relevant only when a session is initiated: when an older session is resumed, the server does not process these extensions in ClientHello, and does not include them in ServerHello. However, some extensions may specify different behavior during session resumption. [[TODO: update this and the previous paragraph to cover PSK-based resumption.]]
There are subtle (and not so subtle) interactions that may occur in this protocol between new features and existing features which may result in a significant reduction in overall security. The following considerations should be taken into account when designing new extensions:
The client uses the “signature_algorithms” extension to indicate to the server which signature/hash algorithm pairs may be used in digital signatures.
All clients MUST send a valid “signature_algorithms” extension containing at least one supported SignatureAndHashAlgorithm when offering any certificate authenticated cipher suites. Servers MUST NOT negotiate use of a certificate authenticated cipher suite unless the client supplies a supported SignatureAndHashAlgorithm. If the extension is not provided and no alternative cipher suite is available, the server MUST close the connection with a fatal “missing_extension” alert. (see Section 8.2)
Servers MUST NOT send this extension. TLS servers MUST support receiving this extension. Clients receiving this extension MUST respond with an “unsupported_extension” alert and close the connection.
The “extension_data” field of this extension contains a “supported_signature_algorithms” value:
enum { none(0), md5_RESERVED(1), sha1(2), sha224_RESERVED(3), sha256(4), sha384(5), sha512(6), (255) } HashAlgorithm; enum { anonymous(0), rsa(1), dsa(2), ecdsa(3), (255) } SignatureAlgorithm; struct { HashAlgorithm hash; SignatureAlgorithm signature; } SignatureAndHashAlgorithm; SignatureAndHashAlgorithm supported_signature_algorithms<2..2^16-2>;
Each SignatureAndHashAlgorithm value lists a single hash/signature pair that the client is willing to verify. The values are indicated in descending order of preference.
Note: Because not all signature algorithms and hash algorithms may be accepted by an implementation (e.g., DSA with SHA-1, but not SHA-256), algorithms here are listed in pairs.
The semantics of this extension are somewhat complicated because the cipher suite indicates permissible signature algorithms but not hash algorithms. Section 6.3.5 and Section 6.3.3 describe the appropriate rules.
Note: TLS 1.3 servers MAY receive TLS 1.2 ClientHellos which do not contain this extension. If those servers are willing to negotiate TLS 1.2, they MUST behave in accordance with the requirements of [RFC5246].
When sent by the client, the “supported_groups” extension indicates the named groups which the client supports, ordered from most preferred to least preferred.
Note: In versions of TLS prior to TLS 1.3, this extension was named “elliptic_curves” and only contained elliptic curve groups. See [RFC4492] and [I-D.ietf-tls-negotiated-ff-dhe].
All clients MUST send a valid “supported_groups” extension containing at least one group for each ephemeral key exchange algorithm (currently DHE and ECDHE) for which it offers a cipher suite. Servers MUST NOT negotiate use of a DHE or ECDHE cipher suites unless the client supplies a supported NamedGroup. If the extension is not provided and no alternative cipher suite is available, the server MUST close the connection with a fatal “missing_extension” alert. (see Section 8.2) If the extension is provided, but no compatible group is offered, the server MUST NOT negotiate a cipher suite of the relevant type. For instance, if a client supplies only ECDHE groups, the server MUST NOT negotiate finite field Diffie-Hellman. If no acceptable group can be selected across all cipher suites, then the server MUST generate a fatal “handshake_failure” alert.
Servers MUST NOT send this extension. TLS servers MUST support receiving this extension. Clients receiving this extension MUST respond with an “unsupported_extension” alert and close the connection.
The “extension_data” field of this extension contains a “NamedGroupList” value:
enum { // Elliptic Curve Groups. obsolete_RESERVED (1..22), secp256r1 (23), secp384r1 (24), secp521r1 (25), // Finite Field Groups. ffdhe2048 (256), ffdhe3072 (257), ffdhe4096 (258), ffdhe6144 (259), ffdhe8192 (260), ffdhe_private_use (0x01FC..0x01FF), // Reserved Code Points. ecdhe_private_use (0xFE00..0xFEFF), obsolete_RESERVED (0xFF01..0xFF02), (0xFFFF) } NamedGroup; struct { NamedGroup named_group_list<1..2^16-1>; } NamedGroupList;
Values within “obsolete_RESERVED” ranges were used in previous versions of TLS and MUST NOT be offered or negotiated by TLS 1.3 implementations. The obsolete curves have various known/theoretical weaknesses or have had very little usage, in some cases only due to unintentional server configuration issues. They are no longer considered appropriate for general use and should be assumed to be potentially unsafe. The set of curves specified here is sufficient for interoperability with all currently deployed and properly configured TLS implementations.
Items in named_curve_list are ordered according to the client’s preferences (most preferred choice first).
As an example, a client that only supports secp256r1 (aka NIST P-256; value 23 = 0x0017) and secp384r1 (aka NIST P-384; value 24 = 0x0018) and prefers to use secp256r1 would include a TLS extension consisting of the following octets. Note that the first two octets indicate the extension type (Supported Group Extension):
00 0A 00 06 00 04 00 17 00 18
NOTE: A server participating in an ECDHE-ECDSA key exchange may use different curves for (i) the ECDSA key in its certificate, and (ii) the ephemeral ECDH key in the ServerKeyShare message. The server must consider the supported groups in both cases.
[[TODO: IANA Considerations.]]
The “client_key_share” extension contains the client’s cryptographic parameters for zero or more non-PSK key establishment methods (currently DHE or ECDHE).
All clients MUST send a valid “client_key_share” extension when offering any DHE or ECDHE cipher suites. Servers MUST NOT negotiate use of a DHE or ECDHE cipher suites unless the client supplies a (possibly empty) “client_key_share” extension. If the extension is not provided and no alternative cipher suite is available, the server MUST close the connection with a fatal “missing_extension” alert. (see Section 8.2)
Servers MUST NOT send this extension. TLS servers MUST support receiving this extension. Clients receiving this extension MUST respond with an “unsupported_extension” alert and close the connection.
[[OPEN ISSUE: Would it be better to omit it if it’s empty?. https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/issues/190]]
struct { NamedGroup group; opaque key_exchange<1..2^16-1>; } ClientKeyShareOffer;
The “extension_data” field of this extension contains a “ClientKeyShare” value:
struct { ClientKeyShareOffer offers<0..2^16-1>; } ClientKeyShare;
Clients may offer an arbitrary number of ClientKeyShareOffer values, each representing a single set of key agreement parameters; for instance a client might offer shares for several elliptic curves or multiple integer DH groups. The shares for each ClientKeyShareOffer MUST by generated independently. Clients MUST NOT offer multiple ClientKeyShareOffers for the same parameters. It is explicitly permitted to send an empty “client_key_share” extension as this is used to elicit the server’s parameters if the client has no useful information.
[[TODO: Recommendation about what the client offers. Presumably which integer DH groups and which curves.]]
Diffie-Hellman [DH] parameters for both clients and servers are encoded in the opaque key_exchange field of the ClientKeyShareOffer or ServerKeyShare structures. The opaque value contains the Diffie-Hellman public value (dh_Y = g^X mod p), encoded as a big-endian integer.
opaque dh_Y<1..2^16-1>;
ECDHE parameters for both clients and servers are encoded in the opaque key_exchange field of the ClientKeyShareOffer or ServerKeyShare structures. The opaque value conveys the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman public value (ecdh_Y) represented as a byte string ECPoint.point.
opaque point <1..2^8-1>;
Although X9.62 supports multiple point formats, any given curve MUST specify only a single point format. All curves currently specified in this document MUST only be used with the uncompressed point format.
Note: Versions of TLS prior to 1.3 permitted point negotiation; TLS 1.3 removes this feature in favor of a single point format for each curve.
[[OPEN ISSUE: We will need to adjust the compressed/uncompressed point issue if we have new curves that don’t need point compression. This depends on the CFRG’s recommendations. The expectation is that future curves will come with defined point formats and that existing curves conform to X9.62.]]
The “pre_shared_key” extension is used to indicate the identity of the pre-shared key to be used with a given handshake in association with a PSK or (EC)DHE-PSK cipher suite (see [RFC4279] for background).
All clients MUST send a valid “pre_shared_key” extension when offering any PSK cipher suites. Servers MUST NOT negotiate use of a PSK cipher suite unless the client supplies a “pre_shared_key” extension. If the extension is not provided and no alternative cipher suite is available, the server MUST close the connection with a fatal “missing_extension” alert. (see Section 8.2)
The “extension_data” field of this extension contains a “PreSharedKeyExtension” value:
opaque psk_identity<0..2^16-1>; struct { select (Role) { case client: psk_identity identities<0..2^16-1>; case server: psk_identity identity; } } PreSharedKeyExtension;
If no suitable identity is provided, the server MUST NOT negotiate a PSK cipher suite and MAY respond with an “unknown_psk_identity” alert message. Sending this alert is OPTIONAL; servers MAY instead choose to send a “decrypt_error” alert to merely indicate an invalid PSK identity or instead negotiate use of a non-PSK cipher suite, if available.
If the server selects a PSK cipher suite, it MUST send a PreSharedKeyExtension with the identity that it selected. The client MUST verify that the server has selected one of the identities that the client supplied. If any other identity is returned, the client MUST generate a fatal “unknown_psk_identity” alert and close the connection.
In cases where TLS clients have previously interacted with the server and the server has supplied a ServerConfiguration Section 6.3.7, the client can send application data and its Certificate/CertificateVerify messages (if client authentication is required). If the client opts to do so, it MUST supply an Early Data Indication extension.
The “extension_data” field of this extension contains an “EarlyDataIndication” value:
enum { client_authentication(1), early_data(2), client_authentication_and_data(3), (255) } EarlyDataType; struct { select (Role) { case client: opaque configuration_id<1..2^16-1>; CipherSuite cipher_suite; Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; opaque context<0..255>; EarlyDataType type; case server: struct {}; } } EarlyDataIndication;
The client specifies the cryptographic configuration for the 0-RTT data using the “configuration”, “cipher_suite”, and “extensions” values. For configurations received in-band (in a previous TLS connection) the client MUST:
If TLS client authentication is being used, then either “early_handshake” or “early_handshake_and_data” MUST be indicated in order to send the client authentication data on the first flight. In either case, the client Certificate and CertificateVerify (assuming that the Certificate is non-empty) MUST be sent on the first flight. A server which receives an initial flight with only “early_data” and which expects certificate-based client authentication MUST NOT accept early data.
In order to allow servers to readily distinguish between messages sent in the first flight and in the second flight (in cases where the server does not accept the EarlyDataIndication extension), the client MUST send the handshake messages as content type “early_handshake”. A server which does not accept the extension proceeds by skipping all records after the ClientHello and until the next client message of type “handshake”. [[OPEN ISSUE: This needs replacement when we add encrypted content types.]]
A server which receives an EarlyDataIndication extension can behave in one of two ways:
Prior to accepting the EarlyDataIndication extension, the server MUST perform the following checks:
If any of these checks fail, the server MUST NOT respond with the extension and must discard all the remaining first flight data (thus falling back to 1-RTT).
[[TODO: How does the client behave if the indication is rejected.]]
[[OPEN ISSUE: This just specifies the signaling for 0-RTT but not the the 0-RTT cryptographic transforms, including:
What’s here now needs a lot of cleanup before it is clear and correct.]]
In order to allow the server to decrypt 0-RTT data, the client needs to provide enough information to allow the server to decrypt the traffic without negotiation. This is accomplished by having the client indicate the “cryptographic determining parameters” in its ClientHello, which are necessary to decrypt the client’s packets. This includes the following values:
[[TODO: Are there other extensions we need? I’ve gone over the list and I don’t see any, but…]] [[TODO: This should be the same list as what you need for !EncryptedExtensions. Consolidate this list.]]
As noted in Section 6.2.2, TLS does not provide any inter-connection mechanism for replay protection for data sent by the client in the first flight. As a special case, implementations where the server configuration, is delivered out of band (as has been proposed for DTLS-SRTP [RFC5763]), MAY use a unique server configuration identifier for each connection, thus preventing replay. Implementations are responsible for ensuring uniqueness of the identifier in this case.
When this message will be sent:
Meaning of this message:
Structure of this message:
struct { NamedGroup group; opaque key_exchange<1..2^16-1>; } ServerKeyShare;
When this message will be sent:
Meaning of this message:
Structure of this message:
struct { Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; } EncryptedExtensions;
When this message will be sent:
Meaning of this message:
Structure of this message:
opaque ASN1Cert<1..2^24-1>; struct { ASN1Cert certificate_list<0..2^24-1>; } Certificate;
Note: Prior to TLS 1.3, “certificate_list” ordering was required to be strict, however some implementations already allowed for some flexibility. For maximum compatibility, all implementations SHOULD be prepared to handle potentially extraneous certificates and arbitrary orderings from any TLS version (with the exception of the sender’s certificate). Some servers are configured to send both a current and deprecated intermediate for transitional purposes, and others are simply configured incorrectly, but these cases can nonetheless be validated properly by clients capable of doing so. Although the chain MAY be ordered in a variety of ways, the peer’s end-entity certificate MUST be the first element in the vector.
The same message type and structure will be used for the client’s response to a certificate request message. Note that a client MAY send no certificates if it does not have an appropriate certificate to send in response to the server’s authentication request.
Note: PKCS #7 [PKCS7] is not used as the format for the certificate vector because PKCS #6 [PKCS6] extended certificates are not used. Also, PKCS #7 defines a SET rather than a SEQUENCE, making the task of parsing the list more difficult.
The following rules apply to the certificates sent by the server:
Key Exchange Alg. Certificate Key Type DHE_RSA RSA public key; the certificate MUST allow the ECDHE_RSA key to be used for signing (i.e., the digitalSignature bit MUST be set if the key usage extension is present) with the signature scheme and hash algorithm that will be employed in the ServerKeyShare message. Note: ECDHE_RSA is defined in [RFC4492]. DHE_DSS DSA public key; the certificate MUST allow the key to be used for signing with the hash algorithm that will be employed in the server key exchange message. ECDHE_ECDSA ECDSA-capable public key; the certificate MUST allow the key to be used for signing with the hash algorithm that will be employed in the ServerKeyShare message. The public key MUST use a curve and point format supported by the client, as described in [RFC4492].
All certificates provided by the server MUST be signed by a hash/signature algorithm pair that appears in the “signature_algorithms” extension provided by the client (see Section 6.3.2.1). [[OPEN ISSUE: changing this is under consideration]] Note that this implies that a certificate containing a key for one signature algorithm MAY be signed using a different signature algorithm (for instance, an RSA key signed with a ECDSA key).
If the server has multiple certificates, it chooses one of them based on the above-mentioned criteria (in addition to other criteria, such as transport layer endpoint, local configuration and preferences, etc.). If the server has a single certificate, it SHOULD attempt to validate that it meets these criteria.
Note that there are certificates that use algorithms and/or algorithm combinations that cannot be currently used with TLS. For example, a certificate with RSASSA-PSS signature key (id-RSASSA-PSS OID in SubjectPublicKeyInfo) cannot be used because TLS defines no corresponding signature algorithm.
As cipher suites that specify new key exchange methods are specified for the TLS protocol, they will imply the certificate format and the required encoded keying information.
When this message will be sent:
Structure of this message:
enum { rsa_sign(1), dss_sign(2), rsa_fixed_dh(3), dss_fixed_dh(4), rsa_ephemeral_dh_RESERVED(5), dss_ephemeral_dh_RESERVED(6), fortezza_dms_RESERVED(20), (255) } ClientCertificateType; opaque DistinguishedName<1..2^16-1>; struct { ClientCertificateType certificate_types<1..2^8-1>; SignatureAndHashAlgorithm supported_signature_algorithms<2..2^16-2>; DistinguishedName certificate_authorities<0..2^16-1>; } CertificateRequest;
rsa_sign a certificate containing an RSA key dss_sign a certificate containing a DSA key rsa_fixed_dh a certificate containing a static DH key. dss_fixed_dh a certificate containing a static DH key
The interaction of the certificate_types and supported_signature_algorithms fields is somewhat complicated. certificate_types has been present in TLS since SSL 3.0, but was somewhat underspecified. Much of its functionality is superseded by supported_signature_algorithms. The following rules apply:
New ClientCertificateType values are assigned by IANA as described in Section 11.
Note: Values listed as RESERVED MUST NOT be used. They were used in SSL 3.0.
Note: It is a fatal “handshake_failure” alert for an anonymous server to request client authentication.
When this message will be sent:
Structure of this Message:
enum { (65535) } ConfigurationExtensionType; struct { ConfigurationExtensionType extension_type; opaque extension_data<0..2^16-1>; } ConfigurationExtension; struct { opaque configuration_id<1..2^16-1>; uint32 expiration_date; NamedGroup group; opaque server_key<1..2^16-1>; EarlyDataType early_data_type; ConfigurationExtension extensions<0..2^16-1>; } ServerConfiguration;
The semantics of this message are to establish a shared state between the client and server for use with the “known_configuration” extension with the key specified in key and with the handshake parameters negotiated by this handshake.
When the ServerConfiguration message is sent, the server MUST also send a Certificate message and a CertificateVerify message, even if the “known_configuration” extension was used for this handshake, thus requiring a signature over the configuration before it can be used by the client.
When this message will be sent:
Structure of this message:
struct { digitally-signed struct { opaque handshake_hash[hash_length]; } } CertificateVerify;
When this message will be sent:
Meaning of this message:
Structure of this message:
struct { opaque verify_data[verify_data_length]; } Finished;
The verify_data value is computed as follows:
Note: Alerts and any other record types are not handshake messages and are not included in the hash computations. Also, HelloRequest messages and the Finished message are omitted from handshake hashes. The input to the client and server Finished messages may not be the same because the server’s Finished does not include the client’s Certificate and CertificateVerify message.
When this message will be sent:
Meaning of this message:
In particular:
Client Cert. Type Certificate Key Type rsa_sign RSA public key; the certificate MUST allow the key to be used for signing with the signature scheme and hash algorithm that will be employed in the CertificateVerify message. dss_sign DSA public key; the certificate MUST allow the key to be used for signing with the hash algorithm that will be employed in the CertificateVerify message. ecdsa_sign ECDSA-capable public key; the certificate MUST allow the key to be used for signing with the hash algorithm that will be employed in the CertificateVerify message; the public key MUST use a curve and point format supported by the server. rsa_fixed_dh Diffie-Hellman public key; MUST use the same dss_fixed_dh parameters as server's key. rsa_fixed_ecdh ECDH-capable public key; MUST use the ecdsa_fixed_ecdh same curve as the server's key, and MUST use a point format supported by the server.
Note that, as with the server certificate, there are certificates that use algorithms/algorithm combinations that cannot be currently used with TLS.
When this message will be sent:
After the server has received the client Finished message, it MAY send a NewSessionTicket message. This message MUST be sent before the server sends any application data traffic, and is encrypted under the application traffic key. This message creates a pre-shared key (PSK) binding between the resumption master secret and the ticket label. The client MAY use this PSK for future handshakes by including it in the “pre_shared_key” extension in its ClientHello (Section 6.3.2.4) and supplying a suitable PSK cipher suite.
struct { uint32 ticket_lifetime_hint; opaque ticket<0..2^16-1>; } NewSessionTicket;
The ticket lifetime hint is informative only. A client SHOULD delete the ticket and associated state when the time expires. It MAY delete the ticket earlier based on local policy. A server MAY treat a ticket as valid for a shorter or longer period of time than what is stated in the ticket_lifetime_hint.
The ticket itself is an opaque label. It MAY either be a database lookup key or a self-encrypted and self-authenticated value. Section 4 of [RFC5077] describes a recommended ticket construction mechanism.
[[TODO: Should we require that tickets be bound to the existing symmetric cipher suite. See the TODO above about early_data and PSK.??]
In order to begin connection protection, the TLS Record Protocol requires specification of a suite of algorithms, a master secret, and the client and server random values. The authentication, key agreement, and record protection algorithms are determined by the cipher_suite selected by the server and revealed in the ServerHello message. The random values are exchanged in the hello messages. All that remains is to calculate the key schedule.
The TLS handshake establishes secret keying material which is then used to protect traffic. This keying material is derived from the two input secret values: Static Secret (SS) and Ephemeral Secret (ES).
The exact source of each of these secrets depends on the operational mode (DHE, ECDHE, PSK, etc.) and is summarized in the table below:
Key Exchange Static Secret (SS) Ephemeral Secret (ES) ------------ ------------------ --------------------- (EC)DHE Client ephemeral Client ephemeral (full handshake) w/ server ephemeral w/ server ephemeral (EC)DHE Client ephemeral Client ephemeral (w/ 0-RTT) w/ server static w/ server ephemeral PSK Pre-Shared Key Pre-shared key PSK + (EC)DHE Pre-Shared Key Client ephemeral w/ server ephemeral
These shared secret values are used to generate cryptographic keys as shown below.
The derivation process is as follows, where L denotes the length of the underlying hash function for HKDF [RFC5869]. SS and ES denote the sources from the table above. Whilst SS and ES may be the same in some cases, the extracted xSS and xES will not.
HKDF-Expand-Label(Secret, Label, HashValue, Length) = HKDF-Expand(Secret, Label + '\0' + HashValue, Length) 1. xSS = HKDF(0, SS, "extractedSS", L) 2. xES = HKDF(0, ES, "extractedES", L) 3. master_secret = HKDF(xSS, xES, "master secret", L) 4. finished_secret = HKDF-Expand-Label(xSS, "finished secret", handshake_hash, L) Where handshake_hash includes all the messages in the client's first flight and the server's flight, excluding the Finished messages (which are never included in the hashes). 5. resumption_secret = HKDF-Expand-Label(master_secret, "resumption master secret" session_hash, L) Where session_hash is as defined in {{the-handshake-hash}}. 6. exporter_secret = HKDF-Expand-Label(master_secret, "exporter master secret", session_hash, L) Where session_hash is the session hash as defined in {{the-handshake-hash}} (i.e., the entire handshake except for Finished).
The traffic keys are computed from xSS, xES, and the master_secret as described in Section 7.2 below.
[[OPEN ISSUE: This needs to be revised. Most likely we’ll extract each key component separately. See https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/issues/5]]
The Record Protocol requires an algorithm to generate keys required by the current connection state (see Appendix A.5) from the security parameters provided by the handshake protocol.
The traffic key computation takes four input values and returns a key block of sufficient size to produce the needed traffic keys:
The keying material is computed using:
key_block = HKDF-Expand-Label(Secret, Label, handshake_hash, total_length)
The key_block is partitioned as follows:
client_write_key[SecurityParameters.enc_key_length] server_write_key[SecurityParameters.enc_key_length] client_write_IV[SecurityParameters.iv_length] server_write_IV[SecurityParameters.iv_length]
The following table describes the inputs to the key calculation for each class of traffic keys:
Record Type Secret Label Handshake Hash ----------- ------ ----- --------------- Early data xSS "early data key expansion" ClientHello Handshake xES "handshake key expansion" ClientHello... ServerKeyShare Application master "application data key expansion" All handshake secret messages but Finished (session_hash)
handshake_hash = Hash( Hash(handshake_messages) || Hash(configuration) )
This final value of the handshake hash is referred to as the “session hash” because it contains all the handshake messages required to establish the session. Note that if client authentication is not used, then the session hash is complete at the point when the server has sent its first flight. Otherwise, it is only complete when the client has sent its first flight, as it covers the client’s Certificate and CertificateVerify.
A conventional Diffie-Hellman computation is performed. The negotiated key (Z) is used as the shared secret, and is used in the key schedule as specified above. Leading bytes of Z that contain all zero bits are stripped before it is used as the input to HKDF.
All ECDH calculations (including parameter and key generation as well as the shared secret calculation) are performed according to [6] using the ECKAS-DH1 scheme with the identity map as key derivation function (KDF), so that the shared secret is the x-coordinate of the ECDH shared secret elliptic curve point represented as an octet string. Note that this octet string (Z in IEEE 1363 terminology) as output by FE2OSP, the Field Element to Octet String Conversion Primitive, has constant length for any given field; leading zeros found in this octet string MUST NOT be truncated.
(Note that this use of the identity KDF is a technicality. The complete picture is that ECDH is employed with a non-trivial KDF because TLS does not directly use this secret for anything other than for computing other secrets.)
In the absence of an application profile standard specifying otherwise, a TLS-compliant application MUST implement the cipher suite TODO:Needs to be selected. (See Appendix A.4 for the definition.)
In the absence of an application profile standard specifying otherwise, a TLS-compliant application MUST implement the following TLS extensions:
All implementations MUST send and use these extensions when offering applicable cipher suites:
When negotiating use of applicable cipher suites, endpoints MUST abort the connection with a “missing_extension” alert if the required extension was not provided. Any endpoint that receives any invalid combination of cipher suites and extensions MAY abort the connection with a “missing_extension” alert, regardless of negotiated parameters.
Additionally, all implementations MUST support use of the “server_name” extension with applications capable of using it. Servers MAY require clients to send a valid “server_name” extension. Servers requiring this extension SHOULD respond to a ClientHello lacking a “server_name” extension with a fatal “missing_extension” alert.
Application data messages are carried by the record layer and are fragmented and encrypted based on the current connection state. The messages are treated as transparent data to the record layer.
Security issues are discussed throughout this memo, especially in Appendices B, C, and D.
[[TODO: Update https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/issues/62]]
This document uses several registries that were originally created in [RFC4346]. IANA has updated these to reference this document. The registries and their allocation policies (unchanged from [RFC4346]) are listed below.
This document also uses a registry originally created in [RFC4366]. IANA has updated it to reference this document. The registry and its allocation policy (unchanged from [RFC4366]) is listed below:
This document also uses two registries originally created in [RFC4492]. IANA [should update/has updated] it to reference this document. The registries and their allocation policies are listed below.
In addition, this document defines two new registries to be maintained by IANA:
This section describes protocol types and constants.
struct { uint8 major; uint8 minor; } ProtocolVersion; enum { reserved(20), alert(21), handshake(22), application_data(23), early_handshake(25), (255) } ContentType; struct { ContentType type; ProtocolVersion record_version = { 3, 1 }; /* TLS v1.x */ uint16 length; opaque fragment[TLSPlaintext.length]; } TLSPlaintext; struct { ContentType type; ProtocolVersion record_version = { 3, 1 }; /* TLS v1.x */ uint16 length; aead-ciphered struct { opaque content[TLSPlaintext.length]; } fragment; } TLSCiphertext;
enum { warning(1), fatal(2), (255) } AlertLevel; enum { close_notify(0), unexpected_message(10), /* fatal */ bad_record_mac(20), /* fatal */ decryption_failed_RESERVED(21), /* fatal */ record_overflow(22), /* fatal */ decompression_failure_RESERVED(30), /* fatal */ handshake_failure(40), /* fatal */ no_certificate_RESERVED(41), /* fatal */ bad_certificate(42), unsupported_certificate(43), certificate_revoked(44), certificate_expired(45), certificate_unknown(46), illegal_parameter(47), /* fatal */ unknown_ca(48), /* fatal */ access_denied(49), /* fatal */ decode_error(50), /* fatal */ decrypt_error(51), /* fatal */ export_restriction_RESERVED(60), /* fatal */ protocol_version(70), /* fatal */ insufficient_security(71), /* fatal */ internal_error(80), /* fatal */ inappropriate_fallback(86), /* fatal */ user_canceled(90), no_renegotiation_RESERVED(100), /* fatal */ missing_extension(109), /* fatal */ unsupported_extension(110), /* fatal */ certificate_unobtainable(111), unrecognized_name(112), bad_certificate_status_response(113), /* fatal */ bad_certificate_hash_value(114), /* fatal */ unknown_psk_identity(115), (255) } AlertDescription; struct { AlertLevel level; AlertDescription description; } Alert;
enum { reserved(0), client_hello(1), server_hello(2), session_ticket(4), hello_retry_request(6), server_key_share(7), certificate(11), reserved(12), certificate_request(13), server_configuration(17), certificate_verify(15), reserved(16), finished(20), (255) } HandshakeType; struct { HandshakeType msg_type; /* handshake type */ uint24 length; /* bytes in message */ select (HandshakeType) { case client_hello: ClientHello; case server_hello: ServerHello; case hello_retry_request: HelloRetryRequest; case server_key_share: ServerKeyShare; case server_configuration:ServerConfiguration; case certificate: Certificate; case certificate_request: CertificateRequest; case certificate_verify: CertificateVerify; case finished: Finished; case session_ticket: NewSessionTicket; } body; } Handshake;
uint8 CipherSuite[2]; /* Cryptographic suite selector */ enum { null(0), (255) } CompressionMethod; struct { ProtocolVersion client_version = { 3, 4 }; /* TLS v1.3 */ Random random; SessionID session_id; CipherSuite cipher_suites<2..2^16-2>; CompressionMethod compression_methods<1..2^8-1>; select (extensions_present) { case false: struct {}; case true: Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; }; } ClientHello; struct { ProtocolVersion server_version; Random random; CipherSuite cipher_suite; select (extensions_present) { case false: struct {}; case true: Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; }; } ServerHello; struct { ProtocolVersion server_version; CipherSuite cipher_suite; NamedGroup selected_group; Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; } HelloRetryRequest; struct { ExtensionType extension_type; opaque extension_data<0..2^16-1>; } Extension; enum { supported_groups(10), signature_algorithms(13), early_data(TBD), pre_shared_key(TBD), client_key_shares(TBD), (65535) } ExtensionType; opaque psk_identity<0..2^16-1>; struct { select (Role) { case client: psk_identity identities<0..2^16-1>; case server: psk_identity identity; } } PreSharedKeyExtension; enum { client_authentication(1), early_data(2), client_authentication_and_data(3), (255) } EarlyDataType; struct { select (Role) { case client: opaque configuration_id<1..2^16-1>; CipherSuite cipher_suite; Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; opaque context<0..255>; EarlyDataType type; case server: struct {}; } } EarlyDataIndication; struct { Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>; } EncryptedExtensions; enum { (65535) } ConfigurationExtensionType; struct { ConfigurationExtensionType extension_type; opaque extension_data<0..2^16-1>; } ConfigurationExtension; struct { opaque configuration_id<1..2^16-1>; uint32 expiration_date; NamedGroup group; opaque server_key<1..2^16-1>; EarlyDataType early_data_type; ConfigurationExtension extensions<0..2^16-1>; } ServerConfiguration;
enum { none(0), md5_RESERVED(1), sha1(2), sha224_RESERVED(3), sha256(4), sha384(5), sha512(6), (255) } HashAlgorithm; enum { anonymous(0), rsa(1), dsa(2), ecdsa(3), (255) } SignatureAlgorithm; struct { HashAlgorithm hash; SignatureAlgorithm signature; } SignatureAndHashAlgorithm; SignatureAndHashAlgorithm supported_signature_algorithms<2..2^16-2>;
enum { // Elliptic Curve Groups. obsolete_RESERVED (1..22), secp256r1 (23), secp384r1 (24), secp521r1 (25), // Finite Field Groups. ffdhe2048 (256), ffdhe3072 (257), ffdhe4096 (258), ffdhe6144 (259), ffdhe8192 (260), ffdhe_private_use (0x01FC..0x01FF), // Reserved Code Points. ecdhe_private_use (0xFE00..0xFEFF), obsolete_RESERVED (0xFF01..0xFF02), (0xFFFF) } NamedGroup; struct { NamedGroup named_group_list<1..2^16-1>; } NamedGroupList;
struct { NamedGroup group; opaque key_exchange<1..2^16-1>; } ClientKeyShareOffer; struct { ClientKeyShareOffer offers<0..2^16-1>; } ClientKeyShare; opaque dh_Y<1..2^16-1>; opaque point <1..2^8-1>; struct { NamedGroup group; opaque key_exchange<1..2^16-1>; } ServerKeyShare;
opaque ASN1Cert<1..2^24-1>; struct { ASN1Cert certificate_list<0..2^24-1>; } Certificate; enum { rsa_sign(1), dss_sign(2), rsa_fixed_dh(3), dss_fixed_dh(4), rsa_ephemeral_dh_RESERVED(5), dss_ephemeral_dh_RESERVED(6), fortezza_dms_RESERVED(20), (255) } ClientCertificateType; opaque DistinguishedName<1..2^16-1>; struct { ClientCertificateType certificate_types<1..2^8-1>; SignatureAndHashAlgorithm supported_signature_algorithms<2..2^16-2>; DistinguishedName certificate_authorities<0..2^16-1>; } CertificateRequest; struct { digitally-signed struct { opaque handshake_hash[hash_length]; } } CertificateVerify;
struct { opaque verify_data[verify_data_length]; } Finished;
struct { uint32 ticket_lifetime_hint; opaque ticket<0..2^16-1>; } NewSessionTicket;
A cipher suite defines a cipher specification supported in TLS and negotiated via hello messages in the TLS handshake. Cipher suite names follow a general naming convention composed of a series of component algorithm names separated by underscores:
CipherSuite TLS_KEA_SIGN_WITH_CIPHER_HASH = VALUE; Component Contents TLS The string "TLS" KEA The key exchange algorithm SIGN The signature algorithm WITH The string "WITH" CIPHER The symmetric cipher used for record protection HASH The hash algorithm used with HKDF VALUE The two byte ID assigned for this cipher suite
The “CIPHER” component commonly has sub-components used to designate the cipher name, bits, and mode, if applicable. For example, “AES_256_GCM” represents 256-bit AES in the GCM mode of operation. Cipher suite names that lack a “HASH” value that are defined for use with TLS 1.2 or later use the SHA-256 hash algorithm by default.
The primary key exchange algorithm used in TLS is Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman [DH]. The finite field based version is denoted “DHE” and the elliptic curve based version is denoted “ECDHE”. Prior versions of TLS supported non-ephemeral key exchanges, however these are not supported by TLS 1.3.
See the definitions of each cipher suite in its specification document for the full details of each combination of algorithms that is specified.
TLS_NULL_WITH_NULL_NULL is specified and is the initial state of a TLS connection during the first handshake on that channel, but MUST NOT be negotiated, as it provides no more protection than an unsecured connection.
CipherSuite TLS_NULL_WITH_NULL_NULL = {0x00,0x00};
The following is a list of standards track server-authenticated (and optionally client-authenticated) cipher suites which are currently available in TLS 1.3:
Cipher Suite Name Value Specification TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 {0x00,0x9E} [RFC5288] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 {0x00,0x9F} [RFC5288] TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 {0x00,0xA2} [RFC5288] TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 {0x00,0xA3} [RFC5288] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CCM {0xC0,0x9E} [RFC6655] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CCM {0xC0,0x9F} [RFC6655] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CCM_8 {0xC0,0xA2} [RFC6655] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CCM_8 {0xC0,0xA3} [RFC6655] TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305 {TBD,TBD} [I-D.ietf-tls-chacha20-poly1305] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305 {TBD,TBD} [I-D.ietf-tls-chacha20-poly1305] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305 {TBD,TBD} [I-D.ietf-tls-chacha20-poly1305]
[[TODO: CHACHA20_POLY1305 cipher suite IDs are TBD.]]
The following is a list of non-standards track server-authenticated (and optionally client-authenticated) cipher suites which are currently available in TLS 1.3:
Cipher Suite Name Value Specification TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x2B} [RFC5289] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x2C} [RFC5289] TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x2F} [RFC5289] TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x30} [RFC5289] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CCM {0xC0,0xAC} [RFC7251] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CCM {0xC0,0xAD} [RFC7251] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CCM_8 {0xC0,0xAE} [RFC7251] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CCM_8 {0xC0,0xAF} [RFC7251] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_ARIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x52} [RFC6209] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_ARIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x53} [RFC6209] TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_ARIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x56} [RFC6209] TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_ARIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x57} [RFC6209] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_ARIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x5C} [RFC6209] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_ARIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x5D} [RFC6209] TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_ARIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x60} [RFC6209] TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_ARIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x61} [RFC6209] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x7C} [RFC6367] TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x7D} [RFC6367] TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x80} [RFC6367] TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x81} [RFC6367] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x86} [RFC6367] TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x87} [RFC6367] TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_GCM_SHA256 {0xC0,0x8A} [RFC6367] TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_GCM_SHA384 {0xC0,0x8B} [RFC6367]
ECDHE AES GCM is not yet standards track, however it is already widely deployed.
Note: In the case of the CCM mode of AES, two variations exist: “CCM_8” which uses an 8-bit authentication tag and “CCM” which uses a 16-bit authentication tag. Both use the default hash, SHA-256.
In addition to authenticated cipher suites, completely anonymous Diffie-Hellman cipher suites exist to provide communications in which neither party is authenticated. This mode is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and is therefore unsafe for general use. These cipher suites MUST NOT be used by TLS implementations unless the application layer has specifically requested to allow anonymous key exchange. Anonymous key exchange may sometimes be acceptable, for example, to support opportunistic encryption when no set-up for authentication is in place, or when TLS is used as part of more complex security protocols that have other means to ensure authentication. The following specifications provide “DH_anon” key exchange cipher suites: AES-GCM [RFC5288], ARIA-GCM [RFC6209], and CAMELLIA-GCM [RFC6367].
All cipher suites in this section are specified for use with both TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, as well as the corresponding versions of DTLS. (see Appendix C)
Note that using non-anonymous key exchange without actually verifying the key exchange is essentially equivalent to anonymous key exchange, and the same precautions apply. While non-anonymous key exchange will generally involve a higher computational and communicational cost than anonymous key exchange, it may be in the interest of interoperability not to disable non-anonymous key exchange when the application layer is allowing anonymous key exchange.
New cipher suite values are assigned by IANA as described in Section 11.
These security parameters are determined by the TLS Handshake Protocol and provided as parameters to the TLS record layer in order to initialize a connection state. SecurityParameters includes:
enum { server, client } ConnectionEnd; enum { tls_kdf_sha256, tls_kdf_sha384 } KDFAlgorithm; enum { aes_gcm } RecordProtAlgorithm; /* The algorithms specified in KDFAlgorithm and RecordProtAlgorithm may be added to. */ struct { ConnectionEnd entity; KDFAlgorithm kdf_algorithm; RecordProtAlgorithm record_prot_algorithm; uint8 enc_key_length; uint8 iv_length; opaque hs_master_secret[48]; opaque master_secret[48]; opaque client_random[32]; opaque server_random[32]; } SecurityParameters;
RFC 4492 [RFC4492] adds Elliptic Curve cipher suites to TLS. This document changes some of the structures used in that document. This section details the required changes for implementors of both RFC 4492 and TLS 1.2. Implementors of TLS 1.2 who are not implementing RFC 4492 do not need to read this section.
This document adds a “signature_algorithm” field to the digitally-signed element in order to identify the signature and digest algorithms used to create a signature. This change applies to digital signatures formed using ECDSA as well, thus allowing ECDSA signatures to be used with digest algorithms other than SHA-1, provided such use is compatible with the certificate and any restrictions imposed by future revisions of [RFC5280].
As described in Section 6.3.5 and Section 6.3.10, the restrictions on the signature algorithms used to sign certificates are no longer tied to the cipher suite (when used by the server) or the ClientCertificateType (when used by the client). Thus, the restrictions on the algorithm used to sign certificates specified in Sections 2 and 3 of RFC 4492 are also relaxed. As in this document, the restrictions on the keys in the end-entity certificate remain.
The TLS protocol cannot prevent many common security mistakes. This section provides several recommendations to assist implementors.
TLS requires a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (PRNG). Care must be taken in designing and seeding PRNGs. PRNGs based on secure hash operations, most notably SHA-1, are acceptable, but cannot provide more security than the size of the random number generator state.
To estimate the amount of seed material being produced, add the number of bits of unpredictable information in each seed byte. For example, keystroke timing values taken from a PC compatible 18.2 Hz timer provide 1 or 2 secure bits each, even though the total size of the counter value is 16 bits or more. Seeding a 128-bit PRNG would thus require approximately 100 such timer values.
[RFC4086] provides guidance on the generation of random values.
Implementations are responsible for verifying the integrity of certificates and should generally support certificate revocation messages. Certificates should always be verified to ensure proper signing by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). The selection and addition of trusted CAs should be done very carefully. Users should be able to view information about the certificate and root CA.
TLS supports a range of key sizes and security levels, including some that provide no or minimal security. A proper implementation will probably not support many cipher suites. For instance, anonymous Diffie-Hellman is strongly discouraged because it cannot prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. Applications should also enforce minimum and maximum key sizes. For example, certificate chains containing keys or signatures weaker than 2048-bit RSA or 224-bit ECDSA are not appropriate for secure applications. See also Appendix C.3.
Implementation experience has shown that certain parts of earlier TLS specifications are not easy to understand, and have been a source of interoperability and security problems. Many of these areas have been clarified in this document, but this appendix contains a short list of the most important things that require special attention from implementors.
TLS protocol issues:
Cryptographic details:
The TLS protocol provides a built-in mechanism for version negotiation between endpoints potentially supporting different versions of TLS.
TLS 1.x and SSL 3.0 use compatible ClientHello messages. Servers can also handle clients trying to use future versions of TLS as long as the ClientHello format remains compatible and the client supports the highest protocol version available in the server.
Prior versions of TLS used the record layer version number for various purposes. (TLSPlaintext.record_version & TLSCiphertext.record_version) As of TLS 1.3, this field is deprecated and its value MUST be ignored by all implementations. Version negotiation is performed using only the handshake versions. (ClientHello.client_version & ServerHello.server_version) In order to maximize interoperability with older endpoints, implementations that negotiate the use of TLS 1.0-1.2 SHOULD set the record layer version number to the negotiated version for the ServerHello and all records thereafter.
For maximum compatibility with previously non-standard behavior and misconfigured deployments, all implementations SHOULD support validation of certificate chains based on the expectations in this document, even when handling prior TLS versions’ handshakes. (see Section 6.3.5)
A TLS 1.3 client who wishes to negotiate with such older servers will send a normal TLS 1.3 ClientHello containing { 3, 4 } (TLS 1.3) in ClientHello.client_version. If the server does not support this version it will respond with a ServerHello containing an older version number. If the client agrees to use this version, the negotiation will proceed as appropriate for the negotiated protocol. A client resuming a session SHOULD initiate the connection using the version that was previously negotiated.
If the version chosen by the server is not supported by the client (or not acceptable), the client MUST send a “protocol_version” alert message and close the connection.
If a TLS server receives a ClientHello containing a version number greater than the highest version supported by the server, it MUST reply according to the highest version supported by the server.
Some legacy server implementations are known to not implement the TLS specification properly and might abort connections upon encountering TLS extensions or versions which it is not aware of. Interoperability with buggy servers is a complex topic beyond the scope of this document. Multiple connection attempts may be required in order to negotiate a backwards compatible connection, however this practice is vulnerable to downgrade attacks and is NOT RECOMMENDED.
A TLS server can also receive a ClientHello containing a version number smaller than the highest supported version. If the server wishes to negotiate with old clients, it will proceed as appropriate for the highest version supported by the server that is not greater than ClientHello.client_version. For example, if the server supports TLS 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2, and client_version is TLS 1.0, the server will proceed with a TLS 1.0 ServerHello. If the server only supports versions greater than client_version, it MUST send a “protocol_version” alert message and close the connection.
Note that earlier versions of TLS did not clearly specify the record layer version number value in all cases (TLSPlaintext.record_version). Servers will receive various TLS 1.x versions in this field, however its value MUST always be ignored.
If an implementation negotiates use of TLS 1.2, then negotiation of cipher suites also supported by TLS 1.3 SHOULD be preferred, if available.
The security of RC4 cipher suites is considered insufficient for the reasons cited in [RFC7465]. Implementations MUST NOT offer or negotiate RC4 cipher suites for any version of TLS for any reason.
Old versions of TLS permitted the use of very low strength ciphers. Ciphers with a strength less than 112 bits MUST NOT be offered or negotiated for any version of TLS for any reason.
The security of SSL 2.0 [SSL2] is considered insufficient for the reasons enumerated in [RFC6176], and MUST NOT be negotiated for any reason.
Implementations MUST NOT send an SSL version 2.0 compatible CLIENT-HELLO. Implementations MUST NOT negotiate TLS 1.3 or later using an SSL version 2.0 compatible CLIENT-HELLO. Implementations are NOT RECOMMENDED to accept an SSL version 2.0 compatible CLIENT-HELLO in order to negotiate older versions of TLS.
Implementations MUST NOT send or accept any records with a version less than { 3, 0 }.
The security of SSL 3.0 [SSL3] is considered insufficient for the reasons enumerated in [RFC7568], and MUST NOT be negotiated for any reason.
Implementations MUST NOT send a ClientHello.client_version or ServerHello.server_version set to { 3, 0 } or less. Any endpoint receiving a Hello message with ClientHello.client_version or ServerHello.server_version set to { 3, 0 } MUST respond with a “protocol_version” alert message and close the connection.
Implementations MUST NOT use the Truncated HMAC extension, defined in Section 7 of [RFC6066], as it is not applicable to AEAD ciphers and has been shown to be insecure in some scenarios.
[[TODO: The entire security analysis needs a rewrite.]]
The TLS protocol is designed to establish a secure connection between a client and a server communicating over an insecure channel. This document makes several traditional assumptions, including that attackers have substantial computational resources and cannot obtain secret information from sources outside the protocol. Attackers are assumed to have the ability to capture, modify, delete, replay, and otherwise tamper with messages sent over the communication channel. This appendix outlines how TLS has been designed to resist a variety of attacks.
The TLS Handshake Protocol is responsible for selecting a cipher spec and generating a master secret, which together comprise the primary cryptographic parameters associated with a secure session. The TLS Handshake Protocol can also optionally authenticate parties who have certificates signed by a trusted certificate authority.
TLS supports three authentication modes: authentication of both parties, server authentication with an unauthenticated client, and total anonymity. Whenever the server is authenticated, the channel is secure against man-in-the-middle attacks, but completely anonymous sessions are inherently vulnerable to such attacks. Anonymous servers cannot authenticate clients. If the server is authenticated, its certificate message must provide a valid certificate chain leading to an acceptable certificate authority. Similarly, authenticated clients must supply an acceptable certificate to the server. Each party is responsible for verifying that the other’s certificate is valid and has not expired or been revoked.
[[TODO: Rewrite this because the master_secret is not used this way any more after Hugo’s changes.]] The general goal of the key exchange process is to create a master_secret known to the communicating parties and not to attackers (see Section 7.1). The master_secret is required to generate the Finished messages and record protection keys (see Section 6.3.9 and Section 7.2). By sending a correct Finished message, parties thus prove that they know the correct master_secret.
Completely anonymous sessions can be established using Diffie-Hellman for key exchange. The server’s public parameters are contained in the server key share message, and the client’s are sent in the client key share message. Eavesdroppers who do not know the private values should not be able to find the Diffie-Hellman result.
Warning: Completely anonymous connections only provide protection against passive eavesdropping. Unless an independent tamper-proof channel is used to verify that the Finished messages were not replaced by an attacker, server authentication is required in environments where active man-in-the-middle attacks are a concern.
When Diffie-Hellman key exchange is used, the client and server use the client key exchange and server key exchange messages to send temporary Diffie-Hellman parameters. The signature in the certificate verify message (if present) covers the entire handshake up to that point and thus attests the certificate holder’s desire to use the the ephemeral DHE keys.
Peers SHOULD validate each other’s public key Y (dh_Ys offered by the server or DH_Yc offered by the client) by ensuring that 1 < Y < p-1. This simple check ensures that the remote peer is properly behaved and isn’t forcing the local system into a small subgroup.
Additionally, using a fresh key for each handshake provides Perfect Forward Secrecy. Implementations SHOULD generate a new X for each handshake when using DHE cipher suites.
Because TLS includes substantial improvements over SSL Version 2.0, attackers may try to make TLS-capable clients and servers fall back to Version 2.0. This attack can occur if (and only if) two TLS-capable parties use an SSL 2.0 handshake. (See also Appendix C.3.)
Although the solution using non-random PKCS #1 block type 2 message padding is inelegant, it provides a reasonably secure way for Version 3.0 servers to detect the attack. This solution is not secure against attackers who can brute-force the key and substitute a new ENCRYPTED-KEY-DATA message containing the same key (but with normal padding) before the application-specified wait threshold has expired. Altering the padding of the least-significant 8 bytes of the PKCS padding does not impact security for the size of the signed hashes and RSA key lengths used in the protocol, since this is essentially equivalent to increasing the input block size by 8 bytes.
An attacker might try to influence the handshake exchange to make the parties select different encryption algorithms than they would normally choose.
For this attack, an attacker must actively change one or more handshake messages. If this occurs, the client and server will compute different values for the handshake message hashes. As a result, the parties will not accept each others’ Finished messages. Without the static secret, the attacker cannot repair the Finished messages, so the attack will be discovered.
The shared secrets are hashed with the handshake transcript to produce unique record protection secrets for each connection.
Outgoing data is protected using an AEAD algorithm before transmission. The authentication data includes the sequence number, message type, message length, and the message contents. The message type field is necessary to ensure that messages intended for one TLS record layer client are not redirected to another. The sequence number ensures that attempts to delete or reorder messages will be detected. Since sequence numbers are 64 bits long, they should never overflow. Messages from one party cannot be inserted into the other’s output, since they use independent keys.
TLS is susceptible to a number of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. In particular, an attacker who initiates a large number of TCP connections can cause a server to consume large amounts of CPU doing asymmetric crypto operations. However, because TLS is generally used over TCP, it is difficult for the attacker to hide his point of origin if proper TCP SYN randomization is used [RFC1948] by the TCP stack.
Because TLS runs over TCP, it is also susceptible to a number of DoS attacks on individual connections. In particular, attackers can forge RSTs, thereby terminating connections, or forge partial TLS records, thereby causing the connection to stall. These attacks cannot in general be defended against by a TCP-using protocol. Implementors or users who are concerned with this class of attack should use IPsec AH [RFC4302] or ESP [RFC4303].
For TLS to be able to provide a secure connection, both the client and server systems, keys, and applications must be secure. In addition, the implementation must be free of security errors.
The system is only as strong as the weakest key exchange and authentication algorithm supported, and only trustworthy cryptographic functions should be used. Short public keys and anonymous servers should be used with great caution. Implementations and users must be careful when deciding which certificates and certificate authorities are acceptable; a dishonest certificate authority can do tremendous damage.
The discussion list for the IETF TLS working group is located at the e-mail address tls@ietf.org. Information on the group and information on how to subscribe to the list is at https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls
Archives of the list can be found at: https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/index.html
Martin Abadi University of California, Santa Cruz abadi@cs.ucsc.edu Christopher Allen (co-editor of TLS 1.0) Alacrity Ventures ChristopherA@AlacrityManagement.com Steven M. Bellovin Columbia University smb@cs.columbia.edu Benjamin Beurdouche Karthikeyan Bhargavan (co-author of [I-D.ietf-tls-session-hash]) INRIA karthikeyan.bhargavan@inria.fr Simon Blake-Wilson (co-author of RFC4492) BCI sblakewilson@bcisse.com Nelson Bolyard Sun Microsystems, Inc. nelson@bolyard.com (co-author of RFC4492) Ran Canetti IBM canetti@watson.ibm.com Pete Chown Skygate Technology Ltd pc@skygate.co.uk Antoine Delignat-Lavaud (co-author of [I-D.ietf-tls-session-hash]) INRIA antoine.delignat-lavaud@inria.fr Tim Dierks (co-editor of TLS 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2) Independent tim@dierks.org Taher Elgamal Securify taher@securify.com Pasi Eronen Nokia pasi.eronen@nokia.com Anil Gangolli anil@busybuddha.org David M. Garrett Vipul Gupta (co-author of RFC4492) Sun Microsystems Laboratories vipul.gupta@sun.com Chris Hawk (co-author of RFC4492) Corriente Networks LLC chris@corriente.net Kipp Hickman Alfred Hoenes David Hopwood Independent Consultant david.hopwood@blueyonder.co.uk Daniel Kahn Gillmor ACLU dkg@fifthhorseman.net Phil Karlton (co-author of SSL 3.0) Paul Kocher (co-author of SSL 3.0) Cryptography Research paul@cryptography.com Hugo Krawczyk IBM hugo@ee.technion.ac.il Adam Langley (co-author of [I-D.ietf-tls-session-hash]) Google agl@google.com Ilari Liusvaara ilari.liusvaara@elisanet.fi Jan Mikkelsen Transactionware janm@transactionware.com Bodo Moeller (co-author of RFC4492) Google bodo@openssl.org Erik Nygren Akamai Technologies erik+ietf@nygren.org Magnus Nystrom RSA Security magnus@rsasecurity.com Alfredo Pironti (co-author of [I-D.ietf-tls-session-hash]) INRIA alfredo.pironti@inria.fr Marsh Ray (co-author of [I-D.ietf-tls-session-hash]) Microsoft maray@microsoft.com Robert Relyea Netscape Communications relyea@netscape.com Jim Roskind Netscape Communications jar@netscape.com Michael Sabin Dan Simon Microsoft, Inc. dansimon@microsoft.com Martin Thomson Mozilla mt@mozilla.com Tom Weinstein Tim Wright Vodafone timothy.wright@vodafone.com