Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-opsec-vpn-leakages
draft-ietf-opsec-vpn-leakages
opsec F. Gont
Internet-Draft Huawei Technologies
Intended status: Informational April 24, 2014
Expires: October 26, 2014
Layer-3 Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel traffic leakages in dual-
stack hosts/networks
draft-ietf-opsec-vpn-leakages-06
Abstract
The subtle way in which the IPv6 and IPv4 protocols co-exist in
typical networks, together with the lack of proper IPv6 support in
popular Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel products, may
inadvertently result in VPN tunnel traffic leaks. That is, traffic
meant to be transferred over an encrypted and integrity protected VPN
tunnel may leak out of such tunnel and be sent in the clear on the
local network towards the final destination. This document discusses
some scenarios in which such VPN tunnel traffic leakages may occur as
a result of employing IPv6-unaware VPN software. Additionally, this
document offers possible mitigations for this issue.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on October 26, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 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
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publication of this document. Please review these documents
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. IPv4 and IPv6 co-existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Virtual Private Networks in IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack
hosts/networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Inadvertent VPN tunnel traffic leakages in legitimate
scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. VPN tunnel traffic leakage attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Mitigations to VPN tunnel traffic leakage vulnerabilities . . 7
7.1. Fixing VPN client software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7.2. Operational Mitigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1. Introduction
It is a very common practice for users to employ VPN software when
employing a public (and possibly-rogue) local network. This is
typically done not only to gain access to remote resources that may
not otherwise be accessible from the public Internet, but also to
secure the host's traffic against attackers that might be connected
to the same local network as the victim host. The latter case
constitutes the problem space of this document. Indeed, it is
sometimes assumed that employing a VPN tunnel makes the use of
insecure protocols (e.g., that transfer sensitive information in the
clear) acceptable, as a VPN tunnel provides security services (such
as data integrity and/or confidentiality) for all communications made
over it. However, this document illustrates that under certain
circumstances, some traffic might not be mapped onto the VPN tunnel
and thus be sent in the clear on the local network.
Many VPN products that are typically employed for the aforementioned
VPN tunnels only support the IPv4 protocol: that is, they perform the
necessary actions such that IPv4 traffic is sent over the VPN tunnel,
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but they do nothing to secure IPv6 traffic originated from (or being
received at) the host employing the VPN client. However, the hosts
themselves are typically dual-stacked: they support (and enable by
default) both IPv4 and IPv6 (even if such IPv6 connectivity is simply
"dormant" when they connect to IPv4-only networks). When the IPv6
connectivity of such hosts is enabled, they may end up employing an
IPv6-unaware VPN client in a dual-stack network. This may have
"unexpected" consequences, as explained below.
The subtle way in which the IPv4 and IPv6 protocols interact and co-
exist in dual-stacked networks might, either inadvertently or as a
result of a deliberate attack, result in VPN tunnel traffic leakages
-- that is, traffic meant to be transferred over a VPN tunnel could
leak out of the VPN tunnel and be transmitted in the clear from the
local network to the final destination, without employing the VPN
services at all.
Since this issue is specific to VPN solutions that route layer-3
traffic, it is applicable to the following types of VPN technologies:
o IPsec-based VPN tunnel
o SSL/TLS VPN tunnel
NOTE: see Section 2 for a definition and description of these
terms.
Section 2 clarifies the terminology employed throughout this
document. Section 3 provides some background about IPv6 and IPv4 co-
existence, summarizing how IPv6 and IPv4 interact on a typical dual-
stacked network. Section 4 describes the underlying problem that
leads to the aforementioned VPN traffic leakages. Section 5
describes legitimate scenarios in which such traffic leakages might
occur, while Section 6 describes how VPN traffic leakages can be
triggered by deliberate attacks. Finally, Section 7 discusses
possible mitigation for the aforementioned issue.
2. Terminology
When employing the term "Virtual Private Network tunnel" (or "VPN
tunnel"), this document refers to IPsec-based or SSL/TLS-based
tunnels, where layer-3 packets are encapsulated and sent from a
client to a middle-box, to access multiple network services (possibly
employing different transport and/or application protocols).
IPsec-based VPN tunnels simply employ IPsec in tunnel mode to
encapsulate ans transfer layer-3 packets over the VPN tunnel. On the
other hand, the term "SSL/TLS-based VPN tunnels" warrants a
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clarification, since two different technologies are usually referred
to as "SSL/TLS VPN":
SSL VPN tunnel:
A technology that encapsulates traffic from a client to a
middlebox. In essence, an SSL/TLS VPN tunnel acts just like an
IPsec-based tunnel, but instead employs SSL/TLS for encryption,
and some proprietary/unspecified mechanism for encapsulation and
routing.
SSL VPN portal:
A front-end provided by the middlebox to add security to a
normally-unsecured site. A TLS/SSL VPN portal is typically
application specific, wrapping the specific protocol, such as
HTTP, to provide access to specific services on a network. In
such case, the SSL/TLS VPN portal would be accessed just like any
HTTPS URL. TLS/SSL VPN portals are used when one wants to
restrict access and only provide remote users to very specific
services on the network. SSL/TLS VPN portals do not require an
agent and the policy is typically more liberal from organizations
allowing access from anywhere via this access method. All other
traffic on the system may be routed directly to the destination,
whether it is IPv4, IPv6, or even other service level (HTTP)
destination addresses.
Our document focuses on layer-3 VPNs that employ IPsec-based or SSL/
TLS-based tunnels, and excludes the so-called SSL/TLS VPN portals.
Both IPsec-basec and TLS/SSL-based VPN tunnels are designed to route
layer-3 traffic via de VPN tunnel through to VPN tunnel server.
Typically, these solutions are agent-based, meaning that software is
required on the client end-point to establish the VPN tunnel and
manage access control or routing rules. This provides an opportunity
for controls to be managed through that application as well as on the
client endpoint.
NOTE: Further discussion of SSL-based VPNs can be found in
[SSL-VPNs].
We note that, in addition to the general case of "send all traffic
through the VPN", this document considers the so-called "split-
tunnel" case, where some subset of the traffic is sent through the
VPN, while other traffic is sent to its intended destination with a
direct routing path (i.e., without employing the VPN tunnel). We
note that many organizations will prevent split-tunneling in their
VPN configurations if they would like to make sure the users data
goes through a gateway with protections (malware detection, URL
filtering, etc.), but others are more interested in performance of
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the user's access or the ability for researchers to have options to
access sites they may not be able to through the gateway.
3. IPv4 and IPv6 co-existence
The co-existence of the IPv4 and IPv6 protocols has a number of
interesting and subtle aspects that may have "surprising"
consequences. While IPv6 is not backwards-compatible with IPv4, the
two protocols are "glued" together by the Domain Name System (DNS).
For example, consider a site (say, www.example.com) that has both
IPv4 and IPv6 support. The corresponding domain name
(www.example.com, in our case) will contain both A and AAAA DNS
resource records (RRs). Each A record will contain one IPv4 address,
while each AAAA record will contain one IPv6 address -- and there
might be more than one instance of each of these record types. Thus,
when a dual-stacked client application means to communicate with
www.example.com, it can request both A and AAAA records, and use any
of the available addresses. The preferred address family (IPv4 or
IPv6) and the specific address that will be used (assuming more than
one address of each family is available) varies from one protocol
implementation to another, with many host implementations preferring
IPv6 addresses over IPv4 addresses.
NOTE: [RFC6724] specifies an algorithm for selecting a destination
address from a list of IPv6 and IPv4 addresses. [RFC6555]
discusses the challenge of selecting the most appropriate
destination address, along with a proposed implementation approach
that mitigates connection-establishment delays.
As a result of this "co-existence" between IPv6 and IPv4, when a
dual-stacked client means to communicate with some other system, the
availability of A and AAAA DNS resource records will typically affect
which protocol is employed to communicate with that system.
4. Virtual Private Networks in IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack hosts/networks
Many VPN tunnel implementations do not support the IPv6 protocol --
or, what is worse, they completely ignore IPv6. This typically means
that, once a VPN tunnel has been established, the VPN software takes
care of the IPv4 connectivity by, e.g. inserting an IPv4 default
route that causes all IPv4 traffic to be sent over the VPN connection
(as opposed to sending the traffic in the clear, employing the local
router). However, if IPv6 is not supported (or completely ignored),
any packets destined to an IPv6 address will be sent in the clear
using the local IPv6 router. That is, the VPN software will do
nothing about the IPv6 traffic.
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The underlying reason for which these VPN leakages may occur is that,
for dual-stacked systems, it is not possible to secure the
communication with another system without securing both protocols
(IPv6 and IPv4). Therefore, as long as the traffic for one of these
protocols is not secured, there is the potential for VPN traffic
leakages.
5. Inadvertent VPN tunnel traffic leakages in legitimate scenarios
Consider a dual-stacked host that employs IPv4-only VPN software to
establish a VPN tunnel with a VPN server, and that such host now
connects to a dual-stacked network (that provides both IPv6 and IPv4
connectivity). If some application on the client means to
communicate with a dual-stacked destination, the client will
typically query both A and AAAA DNS resource records. Since the host
will have both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity, and the intended
destination will have both A and AAAA DNS resource records, one of
the possible outcomes is that the host will employ IPv6 to
communicate with the intended destination. Since the VPN software
does not support IPv6, the IPv6 traffic will not employ the VPN
connection, and hence will have neither integrity nor confidentiality
protection from the source host to the final destination.
This could inadvertently expose sensitive traffic that was assumed to
be secured by the VPN software. In this particular scenario, the
resulting VPN tunnel traffic leakage is a side-effect of employing
IPv6-unaware VPN software in a dual-stacked host/network.
6. VPN tunnel traffic leakage attacks
A local attacker could deliberately trigger IPv6 connectivity on the
victim host by sending forged ICMPv6 Router Advertisement messages
[RFC4861]. Such packets could be sent by employing standard software
such as rtadvd [RTADVD], or by employing packet-crafting tools such
as [SI6-Toolkit] or THC-IPv6 [THC-IPv6]. Once IPv6 connectivity has
been enabled, communications with dual-stacked systems could result
in VPN tunnel traffic leakages, as previously described.
While this attack may be useful enough (due to the increasing number
of IPv6-enabled sites), it will only lead to traffic leakages when
the destination system is dual-stacked. However, it is usually
trivial for an attacker to trigger such VPN tunnel traffic leakages
for any destination systems: an attacker could simply advertise
himself as the local recursive DNS server by sending forged Router
Advertisement messages [RFC4861] that include the corresponding RDNSS
option [RFC6106], and then perform a DNS spoofing attack such that he
can become a "Man in the Middle" and intercept the corresponding
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traffic. As with the previous attack scenario, packet-crafting tools
such as [SI6-Toolkit] and [THC-IPv6] can readily perform this attack.
NOTE: Some systems are known to prefer IPv6-based recursive DNS
servers over IPv4-based ones, and hence the "malicious" recursive
DNS servers would be preferred over the legitimate ones advertised
by the VPN server.
7. Mitigations to VPN tunnel traffic leakage vulnerabilities
At the time of this writing, a large number of VPN implementations
have not yet addressed the issue of VPN tunnel traffic leakages.
Most of these implementations simply ignore IPv6, and hence IPv6
traffic leaks out of the VPN tunnel. Some VPN-tunnel implementations
handle IPv6, but not properly. For example, they may be able to
prevent inadvertent VPN tunnel traffic leakages arising in legitimate
dual-stack networks, but fail to properly handle the myriad of
vectors available to an attacker for injecting "more specific
routes", such as ICMPv6 Router Advertisement messages with Prefix
Information Options and/or Route Information Options, and ICMPv6
Redirect messages.
Clearly, the issue of VPN tunnel traffic leakages warrants proper
IPv6 support in VPN tunnel implementations.
7.1. Fixing VPN client software
There are a number of possible mitigations for the VPN tunnel traffic
leakage vulnerability discussed in this document.
If the VPN client is configured by administrative decision to
redirect all IPv4 traffic to the VPN, it should:
1. If IPv6 is not supported in the VPN software, disable IPv6
support in all network interfaces.
NOTE: For IPv6-unaware VPN clients, the most simple mitigation
would be to disable IPv6 support in all network interface
cards when a VPN connection is meant to be employed. Thus,
applications on the host running the VPN client software will
have no other option than to employ IPv4, and hence they will
simply not even try to send/process IPv6 traffic. We note
that this should only be regarded as a temporary workaround,
since the proper mitigation would be to correctly handle IPv6
traffic.
2. If IPv6 is supported in the VPN software, ensure that all IPv6
traffic is also sent via the VPN.
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NOTE: This would imply, among other things, properly handling
any vectors that might be employed by an attacker to install
IPv6 routes at the victim system (such as ICMPv6 Router
Advertisement messages with Prefix Information Options or
Route information Options [RFC4191], ICMPv6 Redirect messages,
etc.). We note that properly handling all the aforementioned
vectors may prove to be non-trivial.
If the VPN client is configured to only send a subset of IPv4 traffic
to the VPN tunnel (split-tunnel mode), then:
1. If the VPN client does not support IPv6, it should disable IPv6
support in all network interfaces.
NOTE: As noted above, this should only be regarded as a
temporary workaround, since the proper mitigation would be to
correctly handle IPv6 traffic.
2. If the VPN client supports IPv6, it is the administrators
responsibility to ensure that the correct corresponding sets of
IPv4 and IPv6 networks get routed into the VPN tunnel.
NOTE: As noted above, this would imply, among other things,
properly handling any vectors that might be employed by an
attacker to install IPv6 routes at the victim system, and that
this may prove to be a non-trivial task.
A network may prevent local attackers from successfully performing
the aforementioned attacks against other local hosts by implementing
First-Hop Security solutions such as Router Advertisement Guard (RA-
Guard) [RFC6105] and DHCPv6-Shield [I-D.ietf-opsec-dhcpv6-shield].
However, for obvious reasons, a host cannot and should not rely on
this type of mitigations when connecting to an open network
(cybercafe, etc.).
NOTE: Besides, popular implementations of RA-Guard are known to be
vulnerable to evasion attacks [RFC7113].
Finally, we note that if (eventually) IPv6-only VPN implementations
become available, similar issues to the ones discussed in this
document could arise if these IPv6-only VPN implementations do
nothing about the IPv4 traffic.
7.2. Operational Mitigations
While the desired mitigation for the issues discussed in this
document is for VPN clients to be IPv6-aware, we note that in
scenarios where this would be unfeasible, and administrator may want
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to disable IPv6 connectivity on all network interfaces of the node
employing the IPv6-unaware VPN client.
8. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
9. Security Considerations
This document discusses how traffic meant to be transferred over a
VPN tunnel can leak out of such tunnel, and hence appear in the clear
on the local network. This is the result of employing IPv6-unaware
VPN client software on dual-stacked hosts.
The proper mitigation of this issue is to correctly handle IPv6
traffic in the VPN client software. However, in scenarios in which
such mitigation is unfeasible, an administrator may choose to disable
IPv6 connectivity on all network interfaces of the host employing the
VPN client.
10. Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Kathleen Moriarty and Paul Hoffman who
contributed text that was readily incorporated into Section 2 of this
document.
The author of this document would like to thank (in alphabetical
order) Cameron Byrne, Spencer Dawkins, Gert Doering, Stephen Farrell,
Seth Hall, Paul Hoffman, Tor Houghton, Russ Housley, Joel Jaeggli,
Alastair Johnson, Merike Kaeo, Panos Kampanakis, Stephen Kent, Warren
Kumari, Henrik Lund Kramshoj, Barry Leiba, Kathleen Moriarty, Thomas
Osterried, Jim Small, Martin Vigoureux, and Andrew Yourtchenko for
providing valuable comments on earlier versions of this document.
11. References
11.1. Normative References
[RFC4191] Draves, R. and D. Thaler, "Default Router Preferences and
More-Specific Routes", RFC 4191, November 2005.
[RFC4861] Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman,
"Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 4861,
September 2007.
[RFC6106] Jeong, J., Park, S., Beloeil, L., and S. Madanapalli,
"IPv6 Router Advertisement Options for DNS Configuration",
RFC 6106, November 2010.
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[RFC6724] Thaler, D., Draves, R., Matsumoto, A., and T. Chown,
"Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol Version 6
(IPv6)", RFC 6724, September 2012.
[RFC6555] Wing, D. and A. Yourtchenko, "Happy Eyeballs: Success with
Dual-Stack Hosts", RFC 6555, April 2012.
11.2. Informative References
[RFC6105] Levy-Abegnoli, E., Van de Velde, G., Popoviciu, C., and J.
Mohacsi, "IPv6 Router Advertisement Guard", RFC 6105,
February 2011.
[RFC7113] Gont, F., "Implementation Advice for IPv6 Router
Advertisement Guard (RA-Guard)", RFC 7113, February 2014.
[I-D.ietf-opsec-dhcpv6-shield]
Gont, F., Will, W., and G. Velde, "DHCPv6-Shield:
Protecting Against Rogue DHCPv6 Servers", draft-ietf-
opsec-dhcpv6-shield-02 (work in progress), February 2014.
[SI6-Toolkit]
"SI6 Networks' IPv6 toolkit",
<http://www.si6networks.com/tools/ipv6toolkit>.
[THC-IPv6]
"The Hacker's Choice IPv6 Attack Toolkit",
<http://www.thc.org/thc-ipv6/>.
[RTADVD] "rtadvd(8) manual page", <http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/
man.cgi?query=rtadvd&sektion=8>.
[SSL-VPNs]
Hoffman, P., "SSL VPNs: An IETF Perspective", IETF 72,
SAAG Meeting., 2008,
<http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/72/slides/saag-4.pdf>.
Author's Address
Fernando Gont
Huawei Technologies
Evaristo Carriego 2644
Haedo, Provincia de Buenos Aires 1706
Argentina
Phone: +54 11 4650 8472
Email: fgont@si6networks.com
URI: http://www.si6networks.com
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