Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-lamps-x509-policy-graph
draft-ietf-lamps-x509-policy-graph
Limited Additional Mechanisms for PKIX and SMIME D. Benjamin
Internet-Draft Google LLC
Updates: 5280 (if approved) 1 February 2024
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: 4 August 2024
Updates to X.509 Policy Validation
draft-ietf-lamps-x509-policy-graph-05
Abstract
This document updates RFC 5280 to replace the algorithm for X.509
policy validation with an equivalent, more efficient algorithm. The
original algorithm built a structure which scaled exponentially in
the worst case, leaving implementations vulnerable to denial-of-
service attacks.
Discussion Venues
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Discussion of this document takes place on the Limited Additional
Mechanisms for PKIX and SMIME Working Group mailing list
(spasm@ietf.org), which is archived at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/spasm/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/davidben/x509-policy-graph.
Status of This Memo
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."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 4 August 2024.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2024 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 publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Summary of Changes from RFC 5280 . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Denial of Service Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Policy Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Exponential Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Attack Vector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Avoiding Exponential Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Policy Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. Verification Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Updates to RFC 5280 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.1. Updates to Section 6.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2. Updates to Section 6.1.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3. Updates to Section 6.1.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.4. Updates to Section 6.1.4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.5. Updates to Section 6.1.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.6. Updates to Section 6.1.6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6. Other Mitigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.1. Verify Signatures First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.2. Limit Certificate Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.3. Limit Policy Tree Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.4. Inhibit Policy Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.5. Disable Policy Checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
7. Implementation Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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1. Introduction
[RFC5280] defines a suite of extensions for determining the
"policies" which apply to a certification path. A policy is
described by an object identifier (OID), and a set of optional
qualifiers.
Policy validation in [RFC5280] is complex. As an overview, the
certificate policies extension (Section 4.2.1.4 of [RFC5280])
describes the policies, with optional qualifiers, under which an
individual certificate was issued. The policy mappings extension
(Section 4.2.1.5 of [RFC5280]) allows a CA certificate to map its
policy OIDs to other policy OIDs in certificates that it issues.
Subject to these mappings and other extensions, the certification
path's overall policy set is the intersection of policies asserted by
each certificate in the path, collecting the corresponding
qualifiers.
The procedure in Section 6.1 of [RFC5280] determines this set in the
course of certification path validation. It does so by building a
policy tree, containing policies asserted by each certificate and
mappings between them. This tree can grow exponentially in the depth
of the certification path, which means an attacker, with a small
input, can cause a path validator to consume excessive memory and
computational resources. This cost asymmetry can lead to a denial-
of-service vulnerability in X.509-based applications, such as
[CVE-2023-0464] and [CVE-2023-23524].
Section 3 describes this vulnerability. Section 4.1 describes the
primary mitigation for this vulnerability, a replacement for the
policy tree structure. Section 5 provides updates to [RFC5280] which
implement this change. Finally, Section 6 discusses alternative
mitigation strategies for X.509 applications.
1.1. Summary of Changes from RFC 5280
The algorithm for processing certificate policies and policy mappings
is replaced with one which builds an equivalent, but much more
efficient structure. This new algorithm does not change the validity
status of any certification path, nor which certificate policies are
valid for it.
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2. Conventions and Definitions
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 BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Denial of Service Vulnerability
This section discusses how the path validation algorithm defined in
Section 6.1.2 of [RFC5280] can lead to a denial-of-service
vulnerability in X.509-based applications.
3.1. Policy Trees
Section 6.1.2 of [RFC5280] constructs the valid_policy_tree, a tree
of certificate policies, during certification path validation. The
nodes at any given depth in the tree correspond to policies asserted
by a certificate in the certification path. A node's parent policy
is the policy in the issuer certificate which was mapped to this
policy, and a node's children are the policies it was mapped to in
the subject certificate.
For example, suppose a certification path contains:
* An intermediate certificate which asserts policy OIDs OID1, OID2,
and OID5. It contains mappings OID1 to OID3, and OID1 to OID4.
* An end-entity certificate which asserts policy OIDs OID2, OID3,
and OID6.
This would result in the tree shown in Figure 1. Note that OID5 and
OID6 are not included or mapped across the whole path, so they do not
appear in the final structure.
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+-----------+
Root: | anyPolicy |
+-----------+
|{anyPolicy}|
+-----------+
/ \
/ \
v v
+------------+ +------------+
Intermediate: | OID1 | | OID2 |
(OID5 discarded) +------------+ +------------+
|{OID3, OID4}| | {OID2} |
+------------+ +------------+
| |
| |
v v
+------------+ +------------+
End-entity: | OID3 | | OID2 |
(OID6 discarded) +------------+ +------------+
Figure 1: An Example X.509 Policy Tree
The complete algorithm for building this structure is described in
steps (d), (e), and (f) of Section 6.1.3 of [RFC5280], steps (h),
(i), (j) of Section 6.1.4 of [RFC5280], and steps (a), (b), and (g)
of Section 6.1.5 of [RFC5280].
3.2. Exponential Growth
The valid_policy_tree grows exponentially in the worst case. In step
(d.1) of Section 6.1.3 of [RFC5280], a single policy P can produce
multiple child nodes if multiple issuer policies map to P. This can
cause the tree size to increase in size multiplicatively at each
level.
In particular, consider a certificate chain where every intermediate
certificate asserts policies OID1 and OID2, and then contains the
full Cartesian product of mappings:
* OID1 maps to OID1
* OID1 maps to OID2
* OID2 maps to OID1
* OID2 maps to OID2
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At each depth, the tree would double in size. For example, if there
are two intermediate certificates and one end-entity certificate, the
resulting tree would be as depicted in Figure 2.
+-----------------------+
| anyPolicy |
+-----------------------+
| {anyPolicy} |
+-----------------------+
/ \
/ \
v v
+------------+ +------------+
| OID1 | | OID2 |
+------------+ +------------+
|{OID1, OID2}| |{OID1, OID2}|
+------------+ +------------+
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
v v v v
+------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+
| OID1 | | OID2 | | OID1 | | OID2 |
+------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+
|{OID1, OID2}| |{OID1, OID2}| |{OID1, OID2}| |{OID1, OID2}|
+------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+
| | | | | | | |
v v v v v v v v
+------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+
| OID1 | | OID2 | | OID1 | | OID2 | | OID1 | | OID2 | | OID1 | | OID2 |
+------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+
Figure 2: An Example X.509 Policy Tree with Exponential Growth
3.3. Attack Vector
An attacker can use the exponential growth to mount a denial-of-
service attack against an X.509-based application. The attacker
sends certificate chain as in Section 3.2 and triggers the target
application's certificate validation process. For example, the
target application may be a TLS [RFC8446] server that performs client
certificate validation. The target application will consume far more
resources processing the input than the attacker consumed to send it,
preventing it from servicing other clients.
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4. Avoiding Exponential Growth
This document mitigates the denial-of-service vulnerability described
in Section 3 by replacing the policy tree with a policy graph
structure, described in this section. The policy graph grows
linearly instead of exponentially. This removes the asymmetric cost
in policy validation.
X.509 implementations SHOULD perform policy validation by building a
policy graph, following the procedure described in Section 5. This
replacement procedure computes the same policies as in [RFC5280],
however one of the outputs is in a different form. See Section 4.2
for details. Section 6 describes alternative mitigations for
implementations that depend on the original, exponential-sized
output.
4.1. Policy Graphs
The tree structure from [RFC5280] is an unnecessarily inefficient
representation of a certification path's policy mappings. A single
certificate policy may correspond to multiple nodes, but each node is
identical, with identical children. This redundancy is the source of
the exponential growth described in Section 3.2.
A policy graph is a directed acyclic graph of policy nodes. Where
[RFC5280] adds multiple duplicate nodes, a policy graph adds a single
node with multiple parents. See Section 5 for the procedure for
building this structure. Figure 3 shows the updated representation
of the example in Figure 2.
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+-----------+
| anyPolicy |
+-----------+
|{anyPolicy}|
+-----------+
/ \
/ \
v v
+------------+ +------------+
| OID1 | | OID2 |
+------------+ +------------+
|{OID1, OID2}| |{OID1, OID2}|
+------------+ +------------+
| \ / |
| \ / |
| \/ |
| /\ |
| / \ |
v v v v
+------------+ +------------+
| OID1 | | OID2 |
+------------+ +------------+
|{OID1, OID2}| |{OID1, OID2}|
+------------+ +------------+
| \ / |
| \ / |
| \/ |
| /\ |
| / \ |
v v v v
+------------+ +------------+
| OID1 | | OID2 |
+------------+ +------------+
Figure 3: A More Efficient Representation of an X.509 Policy Tree
This graph's size is bounded linearly by the total number of
certificate policies (Section 4.2.1.4 of [RFC5280]) and policy
mappings (Section 4.2.1.5 of [RFC5280]). The policy tree from
[RFC5280] is the tree of all paths from the root to a leaf in the
policy graph, so no information is lost in the graph representation.
4.2. Verification Outputs
Section 6.1.6 of [RFC5280] describes the entire valid_policy_tree
structure as an output of the verification process. Section 12.2 of
[X.509] instead only outputs the authorities-constrained policies,
the user-constrained policies, and their associated qualifiers.
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As the valid_policy_tree is the exponential structure, computing it
reintroduces the denial-of-service vulnerability. X.509
implementations SHOULD NOT output the entire valid_policy_tree
structure and instead SHOULD limit output to just the set of
authorities-constrained and/or user-constrained policies, as
described in [X.509]. Section 5.6 and Section 6 discuss other
mitigations for applications where this option is not available.
X.509 implementations MAY omit policy qualifiers from the output to
simplify processing. Note Section 4.2.1.4 of [RFC5280] already
recommends that certification authorities omit policy qualifiers from
policy information terms.
5. Updates to RFC 5280
This section provides updates to [RFC5280]. This implements the
changes described in Section 4.
5.1. Updates to Section 6.1
This update replaces a paragraph of Section 6.1 of [RFC5280] as
follows:
OLD:
A particular certification path may not, however, be appropriate
for all applications. Therefore, an application MAY augment this
algorithm to further limit the set of valid paths. The path
validation process also determines the set of certificate policies
that are valid for this path, based on the certificate policies
extension, policy mappings extension, policy constraints
extension, and inhibit anyPolicy extension. To achieve this, the
path validation algorithm constructs a valid policy tree. If the
set of certificate policies that are valid for this path is not
empty, then the result will be a valid policy tree of depth n,
otherwise the result will be a null valid policy tree.
NEW:
A particular certification path may not, however, be appropriate
for all applications. Therefore, an application MAY augment this
algorithm to further limit the set of valid paths. The path
validation process also determines the set of certificate policies
that are valid for this path, based on the certificate policies
extension, policy mappings extension, policy constraints
extension, and inhibit anyPolicy extension. To achieve this, the
path validation algorithm constructs a valid policy set, which may
be empty if no certificate policies are valid for this path.
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5.2. Updates to Section 6.1.2
This update replaces entry (a) of Section 6.1.2 of [RFC5280] with the
following text:
(a) valid_policy_graph: A directed acyclic graph of certificate
policies with their optional qualifiers; each of the leaves of
the graph represents a valid policy at this stage in the
certification path validation. If valid policies exist at this
stage in the certification path validation, the depth of the
graph is equal to the number of certificates in the chain that
have been processed. If valid policies do not exist at this
stage in the certification path validation, the graph is set to
NULL. Once the graph is set to NULL, policy processing ceases.
Implementations MAY omit qualifiers if not returned in the
output.
Each node in the valid_policy_graph includes three data objects:
the valid policy, a set of associated policy qualifiers, and a
set of one or more expected policy values.
Nodes in the graph can be divided into depths, numbered starting
from zero. A node at depth x can have zero or more children at
depth x+1 and, with the exception of depth zero, one or more
parents at depth x-1. No other edges between nodes may exist.
If the node is at depth x, the components of the node have the
following semantics:
(1) The valid_policy is a single policy OID representing a
valid policy for the path of length x.
(2) The qualifier_set is a set of policy qualifiers associated
with the valid policy in certificate x. It is only
necessary to maintain this field if policy qualifiers are
returned to the application. See Section 6.1.5, step (g).
(3) The expected_policy_set contains one or more policy OIDs
that would satisfy this policy in the certificate x+1.
The initial value of the valid_policy_graph is a single node
with valid_policy anyPolicy, an empty qualifier_set, and an
expected_policy_set with the single value anyPolicy. This node
is considered to be at depth zero.
The graph additionally satisfies the following invariants:
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* For any depth x and policy OID P-OID, there is at most one
node at depth x whose valid_policy is P-OID.
* The expected_policy_set of a node whose valid_policy is
anyPolicy is always {anyPolicy}.
* A node at depth x whose valid_policy is anyPolicy, except for
the one at depth zero, always has exactly one parent: a node
at depth x-1 whose valid_policy is also anyPolicy.
* Each node at depth greater than 0 has either one or more
parent nodes whose valid_policy is not anyPolicy, or a single
parent node whose valid_policy is anyPolicy. That is, a node
cannot simultaneously be a child of both anyPolicy and some
non-anyPolicy OID.
Figure 4 is a graphic representation of the initial state of the
valid_policy_graph. Additional figures will use this format to
describe changes in the valid_policy_graph during path
processing.
+----------------+
| anyPolicy | <---- valid_policy
+----------------+
| {} | <---- qualifier_set
+----------------+
| {anyPolicy} | <---- expected_policy_set
+----------------+
Figure 4: Initial value of the valid_policy_graph State Variable
5.3. Updates to Section 6.1.3
This update replaces steps (d), (e), and (f) of Section 6.1.3 of
[RFC5280] with the following text:
(d) If the certificate policies extension is present in the
certificate and the valid_policy_graph is not NULL, process the
policy information by performing the following steps in order:
(1) For each policy P not equal to anyPolicy in the certificate
policies extension, let P-OID denote the OID for policy P
and P-Q denote the qualifier set for policy P. Perform the
following steps in order:
(i) Let parent_nodes be the nodes at depth i-1 in the
valid_policy_graph where P-OID is in the
expected_policy_set. If parent_nodes is not empty,
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create a child node as follows: set the valid_policy
to P-OID, set the qualifier_set to P-Q, set the
expected_policy_set to {P-OID}, and set the parent
nodes to parent_nodes.
For example, consider a valid_policy_graph with a
node of depth i-1 where the expected_policy_set is
{Gold, White}, and a second node where the
expected_policy_set is {Gold, Yellow}. Assume the
certificate policies Gold and Silver appear in the
certificate policies extension of certificate i. The
Gold policy is matched, but the Silver policy is not.
This rule will generate a child node of depth i for
the Gold policy. The result is shown as Figure 5.
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| Red | | Blue |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {} | | {} | depth i-1
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {Gold, White} | | {Gold, Yellow} |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
\ /
\ /
\ /
v v
+-----------------+
| Gold |
+-----------------+
| {} | depth i
+-----------------+
| {Gold} |
+-----------------+
Figure 5: Processing an Exact Match
(ii) If there was no match in step (i) and the
valid_policy_graph includes a node of depth i-1 with
the valid_policy anyPolicy, generate a child node
with the following values: set the valid_policy to
P-OID, set the qualifier_set to P-Q, set the
expected_policy_set to {P-OID}, and set the parent
node to the anyPolicy node at depth i-1.
For example, consider a valid_policy_graph with a
node of depth i-1 where the valid_policy is
anyPolicy. Assume the certificate policies Gold and
Silver appear in the certificate policies extension
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of certificate i. The Gold policy does not have a
qualifier, but the Silver policy has the qualifier
Q-Silver. If Gold and Silver were not matched in (i)
above, this rule will generate two child nodes of
depth i, one for each policy. The result is shown as
Figure 6.
+-----------------+
| anyPolicy |
+-----------------+
| {} |
+-----------------+ depth i-1
| {anyPolicy} |
+-----------------+
/ \
/ \
/ \
v v
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| Gold | | Silver |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {} | | {Q-Silver} | depth i
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {Gold} | | {Silver} |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
Figure 6: Processing Unmatched Policies when a
Leaf Node Specifies anyPolicy
(2) If the certificate policies extension includes the policy
anyPolicy with the qualifier set AP-Q and either (a)
inhibit_anyPolicy is greater than 0 or (b) i<n and the
certificate is self-issued, then:
For each policy OID P-OID (including anyPolicy) which
appears in the expected_policy_set of some node in the
valid_policy_graph for depth i-1, if P-OID does not appear
as the valid_policy of some node at depth i, create a
single child node with the following values: set the
valid_policy to P-OID, set the qualifier_set to AP-Q, set
the expected_policy_set to {P-OID}, and set the parents to
the nodes at depth i-1 where P-OID appears in
expected_policy_set.
This is equivalent to running step (1) above, as if the
certificate policies extension contained a policy with OID
P-OID and qualifier set AP-Q.
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For example, consider a valid_policy_graph with a node of
depth i-1 where the expected_policy_set is {Gold, Silver},
and a second node of depth i-1 where the
expected_policy_set is {Gold}. Assume anyPolicy appears in
the certificate policies extension of certificate i with
policy qualifiers AP-Q, but Gold and Silver do not appear.
This rule will generate two child nodes of depth i, one for
each policy. The result is shown below as Figure 7.
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| Red | | Blue |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {} | | {} | depth i-1
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {Gold, Silver} | | {Gold} |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| \ |
| \ |
| \ |
| \ |
| \ |
v v v
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| Silver | | Gold |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {AP-Q} | | {AP-Q} | depth i
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| {Silver} | | {Gold} |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
Figure 7: Processing Unmatched Policies When the
Certificate Policies Extension Specifies anyPolicy
(3) If there is a node in the valid_policy_graph of depth i-1
or less without any child nodes, delete that node. Repeat
this step until there are no nodes of depth i-1 or less
without children.
For example, consider the valid_policy_graph shown in
Figure 8 below. The two nodes at depth i-1 that are marked
with an 'X' have no children, and they are deleted.
Applying this rule to the resulting graph will cause the
nodes at depth i-2 that is marked with a 'Y' to be deleted.
In the resulting graph, there are no nodes of depth i-1 or
less without children, and this step is complete.
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+-----------+
| | depth i-3
+-----------+
/ | \
/ | \
v v v
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| | | | | Y | depth i-2
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| \ | |
| \ | |
v v v v
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| X | | | | X | depth i-1
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
/ | \
/ | \
v v v
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| | | | | | depth i
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
Figure 8: Pruning the valid_policy_graph
(e) If the certificate policies extension is not present, set the
valid_policy_graph to NULL.
(f) Verify that either explicit_policy is greater than 0 or the
valid_policy_graph is not equal to NULL;
5.4. Updates to Section 6.1.4
This update replaces step (b) of Section 6.1.4 of [RFC5280] with the
following text:
(b) If a policy mappings extension is present, then for each
issuerDomainPolicy ID-P in the policy mappings extension:
(1) If the policy_mapping variable is greater than 0 and there
is a node in the valid_policy_graph of depth i where ID-P
is the valid_policy, set expected_policy_set to the set of
subjectDomainPolicy values that are specified as equivalent
to ID-P by the policy mappings extension.
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(2) If the policy_mapping variable is greater than 0, no node
of depth i in the valid_policy_graph has a valid_policy of
ID-P, but there is a node of depth i with a valid_policy of
anyPolicy, then generate a child node of the node of depth
i-1 that has a valid_policy of anyPolicy as follows:
(i) set the valid_policy to ID-P;
(ii) set the qualifier_set to the qualifier set of the
policy anyPolicy in the certificate policies
extension of certificate i; and
(iii) set the expected_policy_set to the set of
subjectDomainPolicy values that are specified as
equivalent to ID-P by the policy mappings extension.
(3) If the policy_mapping variable is equal to 0:
(i) delete the node, if any, of depth i in the
valid_policy_graph where ID-P is the valid_policy.
(ii) If there is a node in the valid_policy_graph of depth
i-1 or less without any child nodes, delete that
node. Repeat this step until there are no nodes of
depth i-1 or less without children.
5.5. Updates to Section 6.1.5
This update replaces step (g) of Section 6.1.5 of [RFC5280] with the
following text:
(g) Calculate the user_constrained_policy_set as follows. The
user_constrained_policy_set is a set of policy OIDs, along with
associated policy qualifiers.
(1) If the valid_policy_graph is NULL, set
valid_policy_node_set to the empty set.
(2) If the valid_policy_graph is not NULL, set
valid_policy_node_set to the set of policy nodes whose
valid_policy is not anyPolicy and whose parent list is a
single node with valid_policy of anyPolicy.
(3) If the valid_policy_graph is not NULL and contains a node
of depth n with the valid_policy anyPolicy, add it to
valid_policy_node_set.
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(4) Compute authority_constrained_policy_set, a set of policy
OIDs and associated qualifiers as follows. For each node
in valid_policy_node_set:
(i) Add the node's valid_policy to
authority_constrained_policy_set.
(ii) Collect all qualifiers in the node, its ancestors,
and descendants and associate them with valid_policy.
Applications that do not use policy qualifiers MAY
skip this step to simplify processing.
(5) Set user_constrained_policy_set to
authority_constrained_policy_set.
(6) If the user-initial-policy-set is not anyPolicy:
(i) Remove any elements of user_constrained_policy_set
which do not appear in user-initial-policy-set.
(ii) If anyPolicy appears in
authority_constrained_policy_set with qualifiers AP-
Q, for each OID P-OID in user-initial-policy-set
which does not appear in user_constrained_policy_set,
add P-OID with qualifiers AP-Q to
user_constrained_policy_set.
Additionally, this update replaces the final paragraph as follows:
OLD:
If either (1) the value of explicit_policy variable is greater
than zero or (2) the valid_policy_tree is not NULL, then path
processing has succeeded.
NEW:
If either (1) the value of explicit_policy is greater than zero or
(2) the user_constrained_policy_set is not empty, then path
processing has succeeded.
5.6. Updates to Section 6.1.6
This update replaces Section 6.1.6 of [RFC5280] with the following
text:
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If path processing succeeds, the procedure terminates, returning a
success indication together with final value of the
user_constrained_policy_set, the working_public_key, the
working_public_key_algorithm, and the
working_public_key_parameters.
Note the original procedure described in [RFC5280] included a
valid_policy_tree structure as part of the output. This structure
grows exponentially in the size of the input, so computing it
risks denial-of-service vulnerabilities in X.509-based
applications, such as [CVE-2023-0464] and [CVE-2023-23524].
Accordingly, this output is deprecated. Computing this structure
is NOT RECOMMENDED.
An implementation which requires valid_policy_tree for
compatibility with legacy systems may compute it from
valid_policy_graph by recursively duplicating every multi-parent
node. This may be done on-demand when the calling application
first requests this output. However, this computation may consume
exponential time and memory, so such implementations SHOULD
mitigate denial-of-service in other ways, such as limiting the
depth or size of the tree.
6. Other Mitigations
X.509 implementations that are unable switch to the policy graph
structure SHOULD mitigate the denial-of-service attack in other ways.
This section describes alternate mitigation and partial mitigation
strategies.
6.1. Verify Signatures First
X.509 validators SHOULD verify signatures in certification paths
before or in conjunction with policy verification. This limits the
attack to entities in control of CA certificates. For some
applications, this may be sufficient to mitigate the attack.
However, other applications may still be impacted. For example:
* Any application that evaluates an untrusted PKI, such as a hosting
provider that evaluates a customer-supplied PKI
* Any application that evaluates an otherwise trusted PKI, but where
untrusted entities have technically-constrained intermediate
certificates where policy mapping and path length are
unconstrained.
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6.2. Limit Certificate Depth
The policy tree grows exponentially in the depth of a certification
path, so limiting the depth and certificate size can mitigate the
attack.
However, this option may not be viable for all applications. Too low
of a limit may reject existing paths which the application wishes to
accept. Too high of a limit may still admit a DoS attack for the
application. By modifying the example in Section 3.2 to increase the
number of policies asserted in each certificate, an attacker could
still achieve O(N^(depth/2)) scaling.
6.3. Limit Policy Tree Size
The attack can be mitigated by limiting the number of nodes in the
policy tree, and rejecting the certification path if this limit is
reached. This limit should be set high enough to still admit
existing valid certification paths for the application, but low
enough to no longer admit a DoS attack.
6.4. Inhibit Policy Mapping
If policy mapping is disabled via the initial-policy-mapping-inhibit
setting (see Section 6.1.1 of [RFC5280]), the attack is mitigated.
This also significantly simplifies the X.509 implementation, which
reduces the risk of other security bugs. However, this will break
compatibility with any existing certification paths which rely on
policy mapping.
To facilitate this mitigation, certificate authorities SHOULD NOT
issue certificates with the policy mappings extension
(Section 4.2.1.5 of [RFC5280]). Applications maintaining policies
for accepted trust anchors are RECOMMENDED to forbid this extension
in participating certificate authorities.
6.5. Disable Policy Checking
An X.509 validator can mitigate this attack by disabling policy
validation entirely. This may be viable for applications which do
not require policy validation. In this case, critical policy-related
extensions, notably the policy constraints (Section 4.2.1.11 of
[RFC5280]), MUST be treated as unrecognized extensions as in
Section 4.2 of [RFC5280] and be rejected.
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7. Implementation Status
This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
This section records the status of known implementations of the
protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of this
Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in RFC 7942.
The description of implementations in this section is intended to
assist the IETF in its decision processes in progressing drafts to
RFCs. Please note that the listing of any individual implementation
here does not imply endorsement by the IETF. Furthermore, no effort
has been spent to verify the information presented here that was
supplied by IETF contributors. This is not intended as, and must not
be construed to be, a catalog of available implementations or their
features. Readers are advised to note that other implementations may
exist.
According to RFC 7942, "this will allow reviewers and working groups
to assign due consideration to documents that have the benefit of
running code, which may serve as evidence of valuable experimentation
and feedback that have made the implemented protocols more mature.
It is up to the individual working groups to use this information as
they see fit".
The following projects adopted the concept outlined in this document:
* [BoringSSL]
* [LibreSSL]
8. Security Considerations
Section 3 discusses how [RFC5280]'s policy tree algorithm can lead to
denial-of-service vulnerabilities in X.509-based applications, such
as [CVE-2023-0464] and [CVE-2023-23524].
Section 5 replaces this algorithm to avoid this issue. As discussed
in Section 4.1, the new structure scales linearly with the input.
This means input limits in X.509 validators will more naturally bound
processing time, thus avoiding these vulnerabilities.
9. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
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[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
(CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5280>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
10.2. Informative References
[BoringSSL]
"BoringSSL", January 2024,
<https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl>.
[CVE-2023-0464]
"Excessive Resource Usage Verifying X.509 Policy
Constraints", March 2023,
<https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-0464>.
[CVE-2023-23524]
"Processing a maliciously crafted certificate may lead to
a denial-of-service", February 2023,
<https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-23524>.
[LibreSSL] "LibreSSL", January 2024, <https://www.libressl.org/>.
[RFC8446] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446>.
[X.509] International Telecommunications Union, "Information
technology - Open Systems Interconnection - The Directory:
Public-key and attribute certificate frameworks",
ITU-T Recommendation X.509, October 2019.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks Bob Beck, Adam Langley, Matt Mueller, and Ryan
Sleevi for many valuable discussions that led to discovering this
issue, understanding it, and developing the mitigation. The author
also thanks Martin Thomson and Job Snijders for feedback on this
document.
Author's Address
David Benjamin
Google LLC
Email: davidben@google.com
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