This document specifies version 1.2 of the OpenConnect Virtual Private
Network (VPN) protocol, a secure VPN protocol that provides
communications privacy over the Internet. That protocol is believed
to be compatible with CISCO's AnyConnect VPN protocol. The protocol allows
the establishment of VPN tunnels in a way that is designed
to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, or 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 https://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."¶
Copyright (c) 2020 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
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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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.¶
The purpose of this document is to specify the OpenConnect VPN protocol
in a detail in order to allow for multiple interoperable implementations.
This is the protocol used by the OpenConnect client and server
[OPENCONNECT-CLIENT][OPENCONNECT-SERVER],
and is believed to be compatible with CISCO's AnyConnect protocol.¶
This protocol's design follows a minimalistic modular philosophy.
It delegates several protocol-related elements often considered as core VPN
features and diversifiers, to standards protocols. That delegation, allows
a minimalistic core protocol which contains very few security related elements
and is decoupled from cryptography. That in turn transfers the auditing
requirements due to cryptographic and negotiation protocols to dedicated
for that purpose components.
In particular the Openconnect VPN protocol uses standard protocols such as HTTP,
TLS [RFC8446] and DTLS [RFC6347] to provide a
VPN with data security and authenticity.¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].¶
The OpenConnect protocol version 1.2 specification is intended primarily
for readers who will be implementing the protocol and those doing
cryptographic analysis of it.¶
The OpenConnect protocol combines the TLS protocol [RFC8446], Datagram TLS protocol [RFC6347] and HTTP protocols [RFC2616] to provide an Internet-Layer VPN channel.
The channel is designed to operate using UDP packets, and
fallback on TCP if that's not possible.¶
In brief the protocol initiates an HTTP over TLS connection
on a known port, where client authentication is performed. After
this step, the client initiates an HTTP CONNECT command to
establish a VPN channel over TCP. A secondary VPN channel over
UDP will be established using information provided by the server
using HTTP headers. At that point the raw IP packets flow, over
the VPN channels.¶
The client and server establish a TLS connection over a known port,
typically over 443, the port used for HTTPS. The client SHOULD
negotiate TLS 1.2 or later, and support the following TLS protocol extensions.¶
Server Name Indication [RFC6066]: the client SHOULD provide the DNS name of
the server in the TLS handshake.¶
Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation [RFC7301]: the client MAY provide
this protocol name. The protocol name to be used is defined in Appendix A.¶
In the OpenConnect VPN protocol, the server is always authenticated using its
certificate. Once a client establishes a TCP connection to the server's well known
port, it initiates the TLS protocol.
In the first connection to the server, the client SHOULD verify the
provided by the server certificate, and SHOULD store its public key for
verification of subsequent sessions. Thus, subsequent sessions SHOULD
check whether the server's key match the initial.¶
The server's identity in the certificate SHOULD be placed in the
certificate's SubjectAlternativeName field, and unless a special
profile is assumed, it will be of type DNSName.¶
The OpenConnect VPN protocol allows for the following types of
client authentication, or combinations of them.¶
Password: a user can authenticate itself using a password.¶
Certificate: a user can authenticate itself using a PKIX certificate
it possesses.¶
HTTP SPNEGO: a user can authenticate itself using a Kerberos ticket, or any
other mechanism supported by SPNEGO (i.e., GSSAPI).¶
The server is authenticated to the client using a PKIX certificate
presented during the TLS negotiation.¶
It is important to note that during the password and HTTP SPNEGO authentication
methods, any headers allowed by the HTTP protocol can be present. In fact,
there are legacy clients which assume that the server will keep a state using
cookies, and send their username and password in different TLS and HTTP
connections. This practice prevents the server from binding the TLS
channel with the VPN session [RFC5056], and is discouraged.
It is RECOMMENDED for clients to complete authentication in the same TLS
session, and rely on TLS session resumption if reconnections to the server
are needed.¶
After the TLS session is established the client irrespective of the
supported authentication methods, should send an HTTP POST request
on "/" with a config-auth XML structure of type 'init'. An example of its
contents follow.¶
The precise DTD declarations for the contents of XML messages defined in
this document are listed in Appendix C. Also the
HTTP Content-Type to be used for these XML structures MUST be 'text/xml'.¶
During the initial TLS protocol handshake the server may require
a client certificate to be presented, depending on its configuration.¶
Because under TLS 1.2 the client certificate is sent in the clear during the handshake,
the certificate SHOULD NOT contain other identifying information other than a username,
or a pseudonymus identifier. It is RECOMMENDED to place the user identifier
in the DN field of the certificate, using the UID object identifier
(0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.1) [RFC4519].¶
After the TLS session is established and the the config-auth XML structure of type 'init'
is sent, the server should send it reply. If the certificate sent by the
client was successfully validated, it should reply using
the HTTP response code 200, and the contents of the reply should be
a config-auth XML structure of type 'complete', as follows.¶
After the TLS session is established and the the config-auth XML structure of type 'init'
is sent, the server will reply using forms the client software should prompt the
user to fill in. Its reply utilizes a config-auth XML structure of type
'auth-request'.¶
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE auth SYSTEM "config-auth.dtd">
<config-auth client="vpn" type="auth-request">
<auth id="main">
<message>Please enter your username</message>
<form action="/auth" method="post">
<input label="Username:" name="username" type="text" />
</form>
</auth>
</config-auth>
The client software will then fill in the provided form and sent it back
to the server using an HTTP POST on the location specified by the server
(in the above examples it was "/auth"). The reply would then be of type
'auth-reply' as in the following example.¶
As mentioned above, the server may ask repeatedly for information until it
believes the user is authenticated. For example, the server could present
a second form asking for the password, after the username is provided, or
ask for a second password if that is necessary. In these cases the server
should respond with an HTTP 200 OK status code, and proceed sending its
new request.¶
If client authentication fails, the server MUST respond with an HTTP 401
unauthorized status code. Otherwise, on successful authentication
the server should reply with a 200 HTTP code and use the 'complete' config-auth
XML structure as in Section 2.1.2.1.¶
Note, that including the username and password in XML messages will
reveal the length of them to a passive eavesdropper. For that is is
RECOMMENDED for clients to use an 'X-Pad' HTTP header, containing
arbitrary printable data to make the message length a multiple of 64 bytes.¶
That type of authentication is performed using the HTTP SPNEGO protocol [RFC4559], a method which is available using the Generic Security
Service API [RFC2743]. The following approach is used
to advertise the availability of the HTTP SPNEGO protocol by the client.
A client which supports the HTTP SPNEGO protocol, SHOULD indicate it using the
following header on in its initial request to the server with the
config-auth 'init' XML structure.¶
After that the server would report a "401 Unauthorized" status code
and authentication would proceed as specified in the HTTP SPNEGO protocol.
The server may utilize the following header, to indicate that alternative
authentication methods are available (e.g., with plain password), if
authentication fails.¶
If client authentication fails, the server MUST respond with an HTTP 401
unauthorized status code. In that case, a client which received the previous
header should retry authenticating to the
server without sending the "X-Support-HTTP-Auth: true" header.¶
Otherwise, on successful authentication
the server should reply with a 200 HTTP code and use the 'complete' config-auth
XML structure as in Section 2.1.2.1.¶
After a successful receipt of an HTTP CONNECT request, the server should
reply and provide the client with configuration parameters. The available
options follow.¶
X-CSTP-Address: The IPv4 address of the client, if IPv4 has been
requested.¶
X-CSTP-Netmask: An IPv4 netmask to be pushed to the client, if IPv4 has been
requested. This should contain the mask on the P-t-P link and is
RECOMMENDED the server address to be the first in defined network.¶
X-CSTP-Address-IP6: The IPv6 address of the client in CIDR
notation, if IPv6 has been requested. The prefix length is
RECOMMENDED to be set to 127-bits according to [RFC6164].¶
X-CSTP-DNS: The IP address of a DNS server that can be used for
that session.¶
X-CSTP-Default-Domain: The DNS default search domains. Typically a
subset of X-CSTP-Split-DNS. If multiple, the domains are space separated.¶
X-CSTP-Split-DNS: A DNS domain the provided DNS servers
respond for. Multiple such headers may be present for different domains.¶
X-CSTP-Split-Include: The network address of a route which is
provided by this server. Multiple such headers may be present.¶
X-CSTP-Split-Exclude: The network address of a route that is not
provided by this server. Multiple such headers may be present.¶
X-CSTP-Base-MTU: The MTU of the link as estimated by this
server.¶
X-CSTP-DynDNS: Set to "true" if the server is operating with a
dynamic DNS address.¶
X-CSTP-Content-Encoding: if present is it set to one of the values
presented by the client in 'X-CSTP-Accept-Encoding' header. It will
be the compression algorithm used in the CSTP channel.¶
X-DTLS-Content-Encoding: if present is it set to one of the values
presented by the client in 'X-DTLS-Accept-Encoding' header. It will
be the compression algorithm used in the DTLS channel.¶
The client is expected to treat the received parameters as his networking
settings. If no "X-CSTP-Split-Include" headers are present, the client is
expected to assign its default route through the VPN.¶
The previous HTTP message is the last HTTP message sent by the server.
After that message, the established TCP channel is used to transport IP
packets between the client and the server. The transferred packets
encoding is discussed in Section 2.2. This
channel will be referred as CSTP in the rest of this document.¶
To establish the secondary UDP-based channel, which will be referred to as the DTLS channel,
the client must advertise support for it during the issue of the HTTP CONNECT request
(see Section 2.1.3). This is done by appending the following headers
to the request.¶
X-DTLS-Accept-Encoding: A comma separated list of accepted
compression algorithms for the DTLS channel.¶
X-DTLS-CipherSuite: Must contain the keyword PSK-NEGOTIATE.¶
The DTLS channel utilizes the DTLS 1.2 protocol (or later version) with the PSK
key exchange method.
The key material for this session is a 256-bit value generated with an [RFC5705] exporter. The key material exporter uses the label
"EXPORTER-openconnect-psk" without the quotes, and without any context
value.¶
In its client hello message the client must copy the value received in the
'X-DTLS-App-ID' header (after hex decoding it), to the session ID field of
the DTLS client hello. That identifier, is not used for session resumption,
and is used by the server to associate the DTLS channel with the CSTP channel.
The following headers are used by the server's response to CONNECT, and are
related to the DTLS channel establishment.¶
X-DTLS-App-ID: A hex encoded value to be used as a DTLS application-specific
identifier by the client. It serves as an identifier for the server to associate the
incoming DTLS session with the TLS session.¶
X-DTLS-Port: The port number to which the client should send UDP
packets for DTLS.¶
X-DTLS-CipherSuite: It must contain the value "PSK-NEGOTIATE" without any quotes.¶
X-DTLS-Rekey-Time: The time (in seconds) after which the DTLS
session should rekey, see Section 2.4. Only considered if
applicable to the negotiated DTLS protocol.¶
X-DTLS-Rekey-Method: The method used in DTLS rekey, see Section 2.4.
Only considered if applicable to the negotiated DTLS protocol.¶
The format of the packets sent over the primary channel consists of an
8-bytes header followed by data. The whole packet
in encapsulated in a TLS record (see [RFC8446]). The bytes of the header indicate the type of data
that follow, and their contents are explained in Table 1.¶
DATA: the TLS record packet contains an IPv4 or IPv6 packet
0x03
DPD-REQ: used for dead peer detection. Once sent the peer
should reply with a DPD-RESP packet, that has the same contents as the
original request.
0x04
DPD-RESP: used as a response to a previously received DPD-REQ.
0x05
DISCONNECT: sent by the client (or server) to terminate the session.
This is followed by one byte indicating the disconnect reason. When the reason
is '0xb0' the session should be invalidated after the request.
0x07
KEEPALIVE: sent by any peer. No data is associated with this
request.
0x08
COMPRESSED DATA: a Data packet which is compressed prior to encryption.
0x09
TERMINATE: sent by the server to indicate that the server is shutting down. No data is associated with this
request.
The format of the packets sent over the UDP channel consists of an
1-byte header followed by data. The header byte
indicates the type of data that follow as in Table 2.
The header and the data are encapsulated in a DTLS record packet
(see [RFC6347]).¶
During the exchange of session parameters (Section 2.1.3), the server advertizes the methods available
for session rekey using the "X-CSTP-Rekey-Method" and "X-DTLS-Rekey-Method"
HTTP headers. The available options for both the server and client are
listed below.¶
none: no rekey; the session will go on until 2^48 DTLS records
have been exchanged, or 2^64 TLS records.¶
ssl: a TLS or DTLS rekey will be performed
periodically. Under TLS/DTLS 1.2 this is performed using a rehandshake,
and in later versions using a rekey.¶
new-tunnel: the session will tear down and the client will
reconnect periodically.¶
When the value is other than "none" the rekey period is determinated by the
"X-CSTP-Rekey-Time" and "X-DTLS-Rekey-Time" headers. These headers contain
the time in seconds after which a session should rekey.¶
It should be noted that when the "ssl" rekey option is used under TLS1.2,
care must be taken by both the client and the server to ensure that either safe
renegotiation is used ([RFC5746]), or that the identity of
the peer remained the same.¶
In OpenConnect there are two packet types that can be used for keep-alive or
dead peer detection, as shown in Table 2. These are
the DPD-REQ and KeepAlive packets.¶
The timings of the transmission of these packets are set by the server, and
they for the DPD are advisory to a client. However, any peer receiving these packets
MUST response with the appropriate packet. For DPD-REQ packets, the response
MUST be DPD-RESP, and for KeepAlive packets the response must be another
KeepAlive packet. The main difference between these two types of packets,
is that the DPD packets similarly to [RFC3706] are sent when
there is no traffic or when the other party requests them, and allow for arbitrary
data to be attached, making them suitable for Path MTU detection.¶
The server advertizes the suggested periods during the exchange of session parameters (Section 2.1.3). The available headers are listed below.¶
X-CSTP-DPD: applicable to CSTP channel; contains a relative time in seconds.¶
X-CSTP-Keepalive: applicable to CSTP channel; contains a relative time in seconds.¶
X-DTLS-DPD: applicable to DTLS channel; contains a relative time in seconds.¶
X-DTLS-Keepalive: applicable to DTLS channel; contains a relative time in seconds.¶
This document provides a description of a protocol to establish
a VPN over a TLS 1.2 or later channel. All security
considerations of the referenced documents in particular
[RFC8446] and [RFC6347] are applicable,
in addition the following considerations.¶
The protocol is designed to be as compatible as possible with
a legacy VPN protocol. This compatibility is not believed
to cause a degradation of the overall protocol security.¶
The protocol provides a VPN channel which carries payload
hidden from eavesdroppers. However, the payload's length remain
visible and in certain scenarios that may be sufficient to
determine the transferred payload. Furthermore, there are scenarios
where compressed payload lengths may reveal more information than
the uncompressed data [COMP-ISSUES][COMP-ISSUES2].
For that we RECOMMEND that implementations
don't enable compression by default, and only allow it when
explicitly enabled by administrators who are aware of the
consequences.¶
This protocol could sometimes be used because it ressembles
the TLS protocol and thus is not detected by the available
VPN blockers. While an implementation could intentionally masquerade
its packets to ressemble a typical HTTPS session, a fully compliant
implementation will be distinct from an average HTTP session due to the
DTLS session establishment, and the transferred packet sizes.¶
For certificate authentication OpenConnect relies on the
TLS protocol. However, as mentioned in the text, TLS version 1.2 and earlier
do not protect the client's (or the server's) certificate from
eavesdroppers. For that it is RECOMMENDED that certificates to be
used with this protocol contain the minimum possible identifying
information.¶
This document defines a protocol name for Application-Layer Protocol
Negotiation. That, if used by a client would indicate to any
eavesdropping parties that the client wishes to use VPN, thus
compromising its intention privacy. On the other hand, providing
that information would help a server that re-uses the same port
for different protocols under TLS, to forward to the appropriate handler
of the connection. That is, it would allow hosting a plain HTTPS server
serving content, and a VPN server using openconnect at the same port.
It is left to the client implementation to decide the balance between privacy and
usability with such servers.¶
Rescorla, E., Ray, M., Dispensa, S., and N. Oskov, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Renegotiation Indication Extension", RFC 5746, DOI 10.17487/RFC5746, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5746>.
Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, DOI 10.17487/RFC2616, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2616>.
[RFC4559]
Jaganathan, K., Zhu, L., and J. Brezak, "SPNEGO-based Kerberos and NTLM HTTP Authentication in Microsoft Windows", RFC 4559, DOI 10.17487/RFC4559, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4559>.
[RFC2743]
Linn, J., "Generic Security Service Application Program Interface Version 2, Update 1", RFC 2743, DOI 10.17487/RFC2743, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2743>.
Sciberras, A., Ed., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): Schema for User Applications", RFC 4519, DOI 10.17487/RFC4519, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4519>.
[RFC6066]
Eastlake 3rd, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066, DOI 10.17487/RFC6066, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6066>.
[RFC7301]
Friedl, S., Popov, A., Langley, A., and E. Stephan, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation Extension", RFC 7301, DOI 10.17487/RFC7301, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7301>.
[RFC6164]
Kohno, M., Nitzan, B., Bush, R., Matsuzaki, Y., Colitti, L., and T. Narten, "Using 127-Bit IPv6 Prefixes on Inter-Router Links", RFC 6164, DOI 10.17487/RFC6164, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6164>.
[RFC3706]
Huang, G., Beaulieu, S., and D. Rochefort, "A Traffic-Based Method of Detecting Dead Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Peers", RFC 3706, DOI 10.17487/RFC3706, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3706>.
[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
The available compression algorithms for the CSTP and DTLS channels are
shown in Table 3. Note, that all algorithms are
intentionally stateless to prevent the influence of independent packets
(e.g., from different sources) on each others compression. That does not
eliminate all known attacks on compression before encryption, and for
that reason an implentation MUST NOT enable compression by default.¶
After compression is negotiated each side may choose to compress the
payload and use the 'COMPRESSED DATA' header from Table 2, or may send uncompressed data with the 'DATA'
payload. Each side MUST be able to process both payloads.¶