Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-trans-threat-analysis
draft-ietf-trans-threat-analysis
Public Notary Transparency S. Kent
Internet-Draft Independent
Intended status: Informational October 4, 2018
Expires: April 7, 2019
Attack and Threat Model for Certificate Transparency
draft-ietf-trans-threat-analysis-16
Abstract
This document defines an attack model and discusses threats based on
the system design presented in [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis]. It
analyzes potential vulnerabilities associated with that design, and
considers compromises of system elements and malicious behavior by
such elements. It does not consider implementation vulnerabilities,
including ones that might enable denial of service attacks against
these elements.
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 April 7, 2019.
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Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Conventions used in this document . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2. Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. Semantic mis-issuance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1. Non-malicious CA context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.1. Certificate logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.1.1.1. Benign log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.1.1.2. Misbehaving log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.1.1.3. Misbehaving third party Monitor . . . . . . . . . 13
3.1.2. Certificate not logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2. Malicious CA context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.1. Certificate logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.1.1. Benign log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.1.2. Misbehaving log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2.1.3. Misbehaving third party Monitor . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2.2. Certificate not logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2.2.1. CT-aware browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3. Undetected Compromise of CAs or Logs . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3.1. Compromised CA, Benign Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3.2. Benign CA, Compromised Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3.3. Compromised CA, Compromised Log . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.4. Attacks Based on Exploiting Multiple Certificate Chains . 19
3.5. Attacks Related to Distribution of Revocation Status . . 21
4. Syntactic mis-issuance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.1. Non-malicious CA context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.1.1. Certificate logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.1.1.1. Benign log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.1.1.2. Misbehaving log or third party Monitor . . . . . 24
4.1.2. Certificate not logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.1.2.1. Self-monitoring Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.1.3. Situations Independent of Certificate Logging . . . . 25
4.1.3.1. Self-monitoring Subject and Benign third party
Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.1.3.2. CT-enabled browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2. Malicious CA context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2.1. Certificate logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.2.1.1. Benign log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.2.1.2. Misbehaving log or third party Monitor . . . . . 26
4.2.1.3. CT-enabled browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.2.2. Certificate is not logged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5. Issues Applicable to Sections 3 and 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.1. How does a Subject know which Monitor(s) to use? . . . . 27
5.2. How does a Monitor discover new logs? . . . . . . . . . . 27
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5.3. CA response to report of a bogus or erroneous certificate 27
5.4. Browser behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.5. Remediation for a malicious CA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.6. Auditing - detecting misbehaving logs . . . . . . . . . . 29
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1. Introduction
Certificate transparency (CT) is a set of mechanisms designed to
detect, deter, and facilitate remediation of certificate mis-
issuance. The term certificate mis-issuance is defined here to
encompass violations of either semantic or syntactic constraints.
The fundamental semantic constraint for a certificate is that it was
issued to an entity that is authorized to represent the Subject (or
Subject Alternative) named in the certificate. (It is also assumed
that the entity requested the certificate from the CA that issued
it.) Throughout the remainder of this document we refer to a
semantically mis-issued certificate as "bogus."
A certificate is characterized as syntactically mis-issued (aka
erroneous) if it violates syntax constraints associated with the
class of certificate that it purports to represent. Syntax
constraints for certificates are established by certificate profiles,
and often are application-specific. For example, certificates used
in the environment might be characterized as domain validation (DV)
or extended validation (EV) certificates. Certificates used with
applications such as IPsec or S/MIME have different syntactic
constraints from those in the context.
There are three classes of beneficiaries of CT: certificate Subjects,
CAs, and relying parties (RPs). In the initial focus context of CT,
Subjects are web sites and RPs are users of browsers employing HTTPS
to access these web sites. (In some contexts human users may not be
the final arbiters of what certificates are accepted, e.g., an
organization may The CAs that benefit are issuers of certificates
used to authenticate web sites.
A certificate Subject benefits from CT because CT helps detect
certificates that have been mis-issued in the name of that Subject.
A Subject learns of a bogus certificate (issued in its name), via the
Monitor function of CT. The Monitor function may be provided by the
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Subject itself, i.e., self-monitoring, or by a third party trusted by
the Subject. When a Subject is informed of certificate mis-issuance
by a Monitor, the Subject is expected to request/demand revocation of
the bogus certificate. Revocation of a bogus certificate is the
primary means of remedying mis-issuance.
Certificate Revocations Lists (CRLs) [RFC5280] and the Online
Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) data [RFC6960] are the primary
certificate revocation mechanisms established by IETF standards.
Browsers may make use of proprietary mechanisms to effect revocation
status checking, in lieu or in addition to the mechanisms noted
above. If a certificate contains an Authority Information Access
(AIA) extension [RFC5280], it directs a relying party to an OCSP
server to which a request can be directed. A browser may also
request OCSP responses from a TLS server with which it is
communicating [RFC6066][RFC6961].
RFC 5280 does not require inclusion of an AIA extension in
certificates, so a browser cannot assume that this extension will be
present. The Certification Authority browser Forum (CABF) Baseline
Requirements and Extended Validation Guidelines do mandate inclusion
of this extension in EE certificates (in conjunction with their
certificate policies). (See cabforum.org [1] for the most recent
versions of these policies.)
As noted above, browser vendors may employ proprietary means of
conveying certificate revocation status information to their
products, e.g., via a blacklist that enumerates revoked certificates
(EE or CA). Such capabilities enable a browser vendor to cause
browsers to reject any certificates on the blacklist. This approach
also can be employed to remedy mis-issuance. Throughout the
remainder of this document references to certificate revocation as a
remedy encompass this and analogous forms of browser behavior, if
available. (Note: there are no IETF standards defining a browser
blacklist capability.)
Note that a Subject can benefit from the Monitor function of CT even
if the Subject's certificate has not been logged. Monitoring of logs
for certificates issued in the Subject's name suffices to detect mis-
issuance targeting the Subject, if the bogus/erroneous certificate is
logged.
A relying party (e.g., browser user) benefits from CT if it rejects a
bogus certificate, i.e., treats it as invalid. (Note that
[I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] notes that anyone can elect to monitor
logs for mis-issuance, indicating that there is a potentially larger,
unspecified set of potential beneficiaries.) An RP is protected from
accepting a bogus certificate if that certificate is revoked, and if
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the RP checks the revocation status of the certificate, even in the
absence of an SCT. (An RP also is protected if a browser vendor
"blacklists" a certificate or places a CA on a "bad-CA-list", causing
all certs issued by the CA to be treated as invalid.) An RP also may
benefit from CT if the RP validates an SCT associated with a
certificate (see 8.1.3 in [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis]), and rejects
the certificate if the Signed certificate Timestamp (SCT)
[I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] is invalid. If an RP acquires and
verifies an inclusion proof for a certificate that claims to have
been logged has a valid log entry (8.1.4 in
[I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis]), the RP probably would have a higher
degree of confidence that the certificate is not bogus. However,
checking logs in this fashion imposes a burden on RPs and on logs.
Moreover, the existence of a log entry does not ensure that the
certificate is not mis-issued. Unless the certificate Subject is
monitoring the log(s) in question, a bogus certificate will not be
detected by CT mechanisms. Finally, if an RP were to check logs for
individual certificates, that would disclose to logs the identity of
web sites being visited by the RP, a potential privacy violation.
Thus this attack model does not assume that all RPs will check log
entries.
A CA benefits from CT when it (acting as a Monitor for its clients)
detects a (mis-issued) certificate that represents the same Subject
name as a legitimate certificate issued by the CA.
Note that all RPs may benefit from CT even if they do nothing with
SCTs. If Monitors inform Subjects of potential mis-issuance, and if
a CA revokes a certificate in response to a request from the
certificate's legitimate Subject, then an RP benefits without having
to implement any CT-specific mechanisms.
Also note that one proposal [I-D.ietf-trans-gossip] for distributing
Audit information (to detect misbehaving logs) calls for a browser to
send SCTs it receives to the corresponding website when visited by
the browser. If a website acquires an inclusion proof from a log for
each (unique) SCT it receives in this fashion, this would cause a
bogus SCT to be discovered, and, presumably, trigger a revocation
request.
Logging [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] is the central element of CT.
Logging enables a Monitor to detect a bogus certificate based on
reference information provided by the certificate Subject. (Monitors
also perform an Audit function.) Logging of certificates thus helps
to deter mis-issuance, by creating a publicly-accessible record that
associates a CA with any certificates that it mis-issues. Logging
does not remedy mis-issuance; but it does facilitate remediation by
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providing the information needed to enable detection and subsequent
revocation of bogus certificates in some circumstances.
Auditing is a function employed by CT to detect misbehavior by logs
and to deter mis-issuance that is abetted by misbehaving logs.
Auditing detects several types of log misbehavior, including failures
to adhere to the advertised Maximum Merge Delay (MMD) and Signed Tree
Head (STH) frequency count [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] violating the
append-only property, and providing inconsistent views of the log to
different log clients. The first three of these are relatively easy
for an individual auditor to detect, but the last form of misbehavior
requires communication among multiple log clients. Monitors ought
not trust logs that are detected misbehaving. Thus the Audit
function does not detect mis-issuance per se. The CT design
identifies audit functions designed to detect several types of
misbehavior. However, mechanisms to detect some forms of log
misbehavior are not yet standardized.
Figure 1a (below) illustrates the data exchanges among the major
elements of the CT system, in the contest of CA submission of
certificate (or pre-certificates) to Logs. It is based on the log
specification [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] and on the assumed
behavior of other CT system elements as described above. This
Figure does not include the Audit function, because there is not yet
agreement on how that function will work in a distributed, privacy-
preserving fashion.
Figure 1b (later) illustrates data exchanges in the context where a
Subject submist a certificate to a Log.
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+----+ +---------+ +---------+
| CA |---[1]--->| Log |<---[8]---| Monitor |
| | | | | |
| |<--[2]----| |----[9]-->| |
| | | | | |
| |---[3]--->| |<--[10]---| |
| | | | | |--------+
| |<--[4]----| |---[11]-->| | |
| | | | +---------+ |
| | | | |
| | | | +---------+ |
| | | |<--[8]----| Self- | |
| | | | | Monitor | |
| | | |---[9]--->|(Subject)| |
| | | | | | |
| | | |<--[10]---| | [12]
| | | | | | |
| | | |---[11]-->| | |
| | +---------+ +---------+ |
| | |
| | +---------+ +---------+ |
| |---[5]--->| Website |---[7]--->| Browser | |
| | |(Subject)| +---------+ |
| |<--[6]--->| |<----------------------------+
+----+ +---------+
[ 1] Retrieve accepted root certs
[ 2] accepted root certs
[ 3] Add chain to Log/add PreCertChain to Log
[ 4] SCT
[ 5] send cert + SCTs (or cert with embedded SCTs)
[ 6] Revocation request/response (in response to detected
mis-issuance)
[ 7] cert + SCTs (or cert with embedded SCTs)
[ 8] Retrieve entries from Log
[ 9] returned entries from Log
[10] Retrieve latest STH
[11] returned STH
[12] bogus/erroneous cert notification
Figure 1a: Data Exchanges Among CT System Element (CA submission)
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+----+ +---------+ +---------+
| W |---[1]--->| Log |<---[8]---| Monitor |
| e | | | | (3rd |
| b |<--[2]----| |----[9]-->| party) |
| s | | | | |
| i |---[3]--->| |<--[10]---| |
| t | | | | |--------+
| e |<--[4]----| |---[11]-->| | |
| | +---------+ +---------+ |
| S | |
| u | [12]
| b | |
| j | +---------+ |
| e | | | |
| c |--------------[7]------------->| Browser |<-------+
| t | | |
+----+ +---------+
[ 1] Retrieve accepted root certs
[ 2] accepted root certs
[ 3] Add chain to Log
[ 4] SCT + STH
[ 7] cert + SCTs
[ 8] Retrieve entries from Log
[ 9] returned entries from Log
[10] Retrieve latest STH
[11] returned STH
[12] bogus/erroneous cert notification
Figure 1b: Data Exchanges Among CT System Elements (Subject
submission)
Certificate mis-issuance may arise in one of several ways. The ways
by which CT enables a Subject (or others) to detect and redress mis-
issuance depends on the context and the entities involved in the mis-
issuance. This attack model applies to use of CT in the context of
browsers and TLS-enabled web servers. If CT is extended to apply to
other contexts, each context will require its own attack model,
although most elements of the model described here are likely to be
applicable.
Because certificates are issued by CAs, the top level differentiation
in this analysis is whether the CA that mis-issued a certificate did
so maliciously or not. Next, for each scenario, the model considers
whether or not the certificate was logged. Scenarios are further
differentiated based on whether the logs and monitors are benign or
malicious and whether a certificate's Subject is self-monitoring or
is using a third party Monitoring service. Finally, the analysis
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considers whether a browser is performing checking relevant to CT.
The scenarios are organized as illustrated by the following outline:
CA - malicious vs non-malicious
Certificate - logged vs not logged
Log - benign vs malicious
Third party Monitor - benign vs malicious
Certificate's Subject - self-monitoring (or not)
Browser - CT-supporting (or not)
The next section of the document briefly discusses threats.
Subsequent sections examine each of the cases described above. As
noted earlier, the focus here is on the context, although most of the
analysis is applicable to other PKI contexts.
1.1. Conventions used in this document
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].
2. Threats
In the context of this document, a threat is defined, traditionally,
as a motivated, capable adversary. An adversary who is not motivated
to attack a system is not a threat. An adversary who is motivated
but not "capable" also is not a threat. Threats change over time;
new classes of adversaries may arise, new motivations may come into
play, and the capabilities of adversaries may change. Nonetheless,
it is useful to document perceived threats against a system to
provide a context for understanding attacks (even though some attacks
may be the result of errors, not threats). Even if the assumptions
about adversaries prove to be incorrect, documenting the assumptions
is valuable.
As noted above, the goals of CT appear to be to deter, detect, and
facilitate remediation of attacks that result in certificate mis-
issuance in the context of browsers and TLS-enabled web servers.
(Note that errors by a CA are viewed as attacks, in the context of
this document.) Such attacks can enable an attacker to spoof the
identity of TLS-enabled web sites. Spoofing enables an adversary to
perform many types of attacks, e.g., delivery of malware to a client,
reporting bogus information, or acquiring information that a client
would not communicate if the client were aware of the spoofing. Such
information may include personal identification and authentication
information and electronic payment authorization information.
Because of the nature of the information that may be divulged (or
misinformation or malware that may be delivered), the principal
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adversaries in the CT context are perceived to be (cyber) criminals
and nation states. Both adversaries are motivated to acquire
personal identification and authentication information. Criminals
are also motivated to acquire electronic payment authorization
information.
To make use of bogus web site certificates, an adversary must be able
to direct a TLS client to a spoofed web site, so that it can present
the bogus certificate during a TLS handshake. An adversary may
achieve this in various ways, e.g., by manipulation of the DNS
response sent to a TLS client or via a man-in-the-middle attack.
The elements of CT may themselves be targets of attacks, as described
below. A criminal organization might compromise a CA and cause it to
issue bogus certificates, or it may exert influence over a CA (or CA
staff) to do so, e.g., through extortion or physical threat. A CA
may be the victim of social engineering, causing it to issue a
certificate to an inappropriate Subject. (Even though the CA is not
intentionally malicious in this case, the action is equivalent to a
malicious CA, hence the use of the term "bogus" here.) A nation
state may operate or influence a CA that is part of the large set of
"root CAs" in browsers. A CA, acting in this fashion, is termed a
"malicious" CA. A nation state also might compromise a CA in another
country, to effect issuance of bogus certificates. In this case the
(non-malicious) CA, upon detecting the compromise (perhaps because of
CT) is expected to work with Subjects to remedy the mis-issuance.
A log also might be compromised by a suitably sophisticated criminal
organization or by a nation state. Compromising a log would enable a
compromised or rogue CA to acquire SCTs, but log entries would be
suppressed, either for all log clients or for targeted clients (e.g.,
to selected Monitors or Auditors).
Finally, note that a browser trust store may include a CA that is use
to issue certificates to enable monitoring of encrypted browser
sessions, for example. Additional certificates may be locally
installed to enable an organization to acts as its own trust anchor.
CT mechanisms may or may not be applied address locally-managed
certificates of this sort.
3. Semantic mis-issuance
3.1. Non-malicious CA context
In this section, we address the case where the CA has no intent to
issue a bogus certificate.
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A CA may have mis-issued a certificate as a result of an error or, in
the case of a bogus certificate, because it was the victim of a
social engineering or a technical attack. In the case of an error,
the CA should have a record of the erroneous certificate and be
prepared to revoke this certificate once it has discovered and
confirmed the error. In the event of a technical attack, a CA may
have no record of a bogus certificate.
3.1.1. Certificate logged
3.1.1.1. Benign log
The log (or logs) is benign and thus is presumed to provide
consistent, accurate responses to requests from all clients.
If a bogus (pre-)certificate has been submitted to one or more logs
prior to issuance to acquire an embedded SCT, or post-issuance to
acquire a standalone SCT, detection of this mis-issuance is the
responsibility of a Monitor.
3.1.1.1.1. Self-monitoring Subject
If a Subject is tracking the log(s) to which a certificate was
submitted, and is performing self-monitoring, then it will be able to
detect a bogus (pre-)certificate and request revocation. In this
case, the CA will make use of the log entry (supplied by the Subject)
to determine the serial number of the bogus certificate, and
investigate/revoke it. (See Sections 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3.)
3.1.1.1.2. Benign third party Monitor
If a benign third party monitor is checking the logs to which a
certificate was submitted and is protecting the targeted Subject, it
will detect a bogus certificate and will alert the Subject. The
Subject, in turn, will ask the CA to revoke the bogus certificate.
In this case, the CA will make use of the log entry (supplied by the
Subject) to determine the serial number of the bogus certificate, and
revoke it (after investigation). (See Sections 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3.)
3.1.1.2. Misbehaving log
In this case, the bogus (pre-)certificate has been submitted to one
or more logs, each of which generate an SCT for the submission. A
misbehaving log may will suppress a bogus certificate log entry, or
it may create an entry for the certificate but report it selectively.
(A misbehaving log also could create and report entries for bogus
certificates that have not been issued by the indicated CA (hereafter
called "fake"). Fake bogus certificates could cause the Monitors to
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report non-existent semantic problems to a Subject who would, in
turn, report them to the indicated issuing CA. This might cause the
CA to incorrectly revoke and re-issue the Subject's real certificate.
Note that for every certificate submitted to a log, the log must
verify a complete certificate chain up to one of the roots it
accepts. So creating a log entry for a fake bogus certificate
suggests that the log may be misbehaving.
3.1.1.2.1. Self-monitoring Subject & Benign third party Monitor
If a misbehaving log suppresses a bogus certificate log entry, a
Subject performing self-monitoring will not detect the bogus
certificate. CT relies on an Audit mechanism to detect log
misbehavior, as a deterrent. It is anticipated that logs that are
identified as persistently misbehaving will cease to be relied upon
by Monitors, non-malicious CAs, and by browser vendors. This
assumption forms the basis for the perceived deterrent. It is not
clear if mechanisms to detect this sort of log misbehavior will be
viable.
Similarly, when a misbehaving log suppresses a bogus certificate log
entry (or report such entries inconsistently) a benign third party
Monitor that is protecting the targeted Subject also will not detect
a bogus certificate. In this scenario, CT may rely upon a
distributed Auditing mechanism, e.g., [I-D.ietf-trans-gossip], to
detect log misbehavior, as a deterrent. (See Section 5.6 below.)
However, a Monitor (third-party or self) must participate in the
Audit mechanism in order to become aware of log misbehavior.
If the misbehaving log has logged the bogus certificate when issuing
the associated SCT, it will try to hide this from the Subject (if
self-monitoring) or from the Monitor protecting the Subject. It does
so by presenting them with a view of its log entries and STH that
does not contain the bogus certificate. To other entities, the log
presents log entries and an STH that include the bogus certificate.
This discrepancy can be detected if there is an exchange of relevant
STHs between the entities receiving the view that excludes the bogus
certificate and entities that receive a view that includes it, i.e.,
a distributed Audit mechanism.
If a malicious log does not create an entry for a bogus certificate
(for which an SCT has been issued), then any Monitor/Auditor that
encounters the bogus certificate (and SCT) will detect this when it
checks with the log for inclusion proofs and STH (see Section 3.1.2.)
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3.1.1.3. Misbehaving third party Monitor
A third party Monitor that misbehaves will not notify the targeted
Subject of a bogus certificate. This is true irrespective of whether
the Monitor checks the logs or whether the logs are benign or
malicious/conspiring.
Note that independent of any mis-issuance on the part of the CA, a
misbehaving Monitor could issue false warnings to a Subject that it
protects. These could cause the Subject to report non-existent
semantic problems to the issuing CA and cause the CA to do needless
investigative work or perhaps incorrectly revoke and re-issue the
Subject's certificate.
3.1.2. Certificate not logged
If the CA (or Subject) does not submit a pre-certificate to a log,
whether a log is benign or misbehaving does not matter. The same is
true if a Subject is issued a certificate without an SCT and does not
log the certificate itself, to acquire an SCT. Also, since there is
no log entry in this scenario, there is no difference in outcome
between a benign and a misbehaving third party Monitor. In both
cases, no Monitor (self or third-party) will detect a bogus
certificate based on Monitor functions and there will be no
consequent reporting of the problem to the Subject or by the Subject
to the CA based on examination of log entries.
3.2. Malicious CA context
In this section, we address the scenario in which the mis-issuance is
intentional, not due to error. The CA is not the victim but the
attacker.
3.2.1. Certificate logged
3.2.1.1. Benign log
A bogus (pre-)certificate may be submitted to one or more benign logs
prior to issuance, to acquire an embedded SCT, or post-issuance to
acquire a standalone SCT. The log (or logs) replies correctly to
requests from clients.
3.2.1.1.1. Self-monitoring Subject
If a Subject is checking the logs to which a certificate was
submitted and is performing self-monitoring, it will be able to
detect the bogus certificate and may request revocation. The CA may
refuse to revoke, or may substantially delay revoking, the bogus
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certificate. For example, the CA could make excuses about inadequate
proof that the certificate is bogus, or argue that it cannot quickly
revoke the certificate because of legal concerns, etc. In this case,
the CT mechanisms will have detected mis-issuance, but the
information logged by CT may not suffice to remedy the problem. (See
Sections 4 and 6.)
A malicious CA might revoke a bogus certificate to avoid having
browser vendors take punitive action against the CA and/or to
persuade them to not enter the bogus certificate on a vendor-
maintained blacklist. However, the CA might provide a "good" OCSP
response (from a server it operates) to a targeted browser instance
as a way to circumvent the remediation nominally offered by
revocation. No component of CT is tasked with detecting this sort of
misbehavior by a CA. (The misbehavior is analogous to a log offering
split views to different clients, as discussed later. The Audit
element of CT is tasked with detecting this sort of attack.)
3.2.1.1.2. Benign third party Monitor
If a benign third party monitor is checking the logs to which a
certificate was submitted and is protecting the targeted Subject, it
will detect the bogus certificate and will alert the Subject. The
Subject will then ask the CA to revoke the bogus certificate. As in
3.2.1.1.1, the CA may or may not revoke the certificate and it might
revoke the certificate but provide "good" OCSP responses to a
targeted browser instance.
3.2.1.2. Misbehaving log
A bogus (pre-)certificate may have been submitted to one or more logs
that are misbehaving, e.g., conspiring with an attacker. These logs
presumably issue SCTs, but will hide the log entries from some or all
Monitors.
3.2.1.2.1. Monitors - third party and self
If log entries are hidden from a Monitor (third party or self), the
Monitor will not be able to detect issuance of a bogus certificate.
The Audit function of CT is intended to detect logs that conspire to
delay or suppress log entries (potentially selectively), based on
consistency checking of logs. (See 3.1.1.2.2.) If a Monitor learns
of misbehaving log operation, it alerts the Subjects that it is
protecting. The Monitor also may avoid relying upon such a for
future entries. However, unless a distributed Audit mechanism, or
equivalent, proves effective in detecting such misbehavior, CT cannot
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be relied upon to detect this form of mis-issuance. (See Section 5.6
below.)
3.2.1.3. Misbehaving third party Monitor
If the third party Monitor that is "protecting" the targeted Subject
is misbehaving, then it will not notify the targeted Subject of any
mis-issuance or of any malfeasant log behavior that it detects
irrespective of whether the logs it checks are benign or malicious/
conspiring. The CT architecture does not include any measures to
detect misbehavior by third-party monitors.
3.2.2. Certificate not logged
Because the CA is presumed malicious, it may choose to not submit a
(pre-)certificate to a log. This means there is no SCT for the
certificate. (Note that an entity other than the issuing CA might
submit a certificate issued by this CA to a log, if it encountered
the certificate. In a narrowly-focused attack, such logging would
not occur, i.e., only the target of the attack would see the
certificate.)
When a CA does not submit a certificate to a log, whether a log is
benign or misbehaving does not matter. Also, since there is no log
entry, there is no difference in behavior between a benign and a
misbehaving third-party Monitor. Neither will report a problem to
the Subject.
A bogus certificate would not be delivered to the legitimate Subject.
So the Subject, acting as a self-Monitor, cannot detect the issuance
of a bogus certificate in this case.
3.2.2.1. CT-aware browser
If careful browsers reject certificates without SCTs, CAs may be
"encouraged" to log certificates (see section 5.4). However, the CT
architecture does not require a browser to reject a certificate
lacking a matching SCT (or equivalent evidence of logging) in all
cases. This is a matter of local policy. Section 8.1.6 of
[I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] says: "It is up to a client's local
policy to specify the quantity and form of evidence (SCTs, inclusion
proofs or a combination) needed to achieve compliance and how to
handle non-compliance." As a result, this attack model does not
assume that browsers will reject a certificate that is not
accompanied by an SCT in all circumstances. Certificates have to be
logged to enable detection of possible mis-issuance by Monitors, and
to trigger possible subsequent revocation. The effectiveness of CT
in protecting an RP is diminished in circumstances where local policy
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does not mandate SCT or inclusion proof checking by the RP's
software.
3.3. Undetected Compromise of CAs or Logs
Sections 3.1 and 3.2 examined attacks in the context of non-malicious
and malicious CAs, and benign and misbehaving logs. Another class of
attacks might occur in the context of a non-malicious CA and/or a
benign log. Specifically these CT elements might be compromised and
the compromise might go undetected. Compromise of CAs and logs was
noted in Section 2, as was coercion of a CA. As noted there, a
compromised CA is almost equivalent to a malicious CA, and thus the
discussions in Section 3.2 are applicable. Section 3.4 explores the
undetected compromise of a CA in the context of attacks designed to
issue a bogus certificate that might avoid revocation (because the
certificate would appear on distinct certificate paths).
The section focuses on undetected compromise of CAs. Such
compromises warrant some additional discussion, since some relying
parties may see signed objects issued by the legitimate (non-
malicious) CA, others may see signed objects from its compromised
counterpart, and some may see objects from both. In the case of a
compromised CA or log the adversary may have access to the private
key used by a CA to sign certificates, or used by a log to sign SCTs
and STHs. (An attacker might not have access to a CA or log private
key per se. The attacker may be able to cause a CA to issue bogus
certificates, or a log to generate bogus objects, and not have a
record of them. The DigiNotar [2] case is an example of this sort of
attack on a CA.) Until such time that the compromise is detected,
there will be no effort by a CA to have its certificate revoked or by
a log to shut down the log.
3.3.1. Compromised CA, Benign Log
In the case of a compromised (non-malicious) CA, an attacker may have
acquired the CA's private key, or it may be able to cause the CA to
sign certificates using that key, even though the attacker does not
know the key per se. In other cases the goal is to cause the CA to
issues a bogus certificate (that the CA would not knowingly issue).
If this certificate is submitted to a (benign) log, then it is
subject to detection by a Monitor, as discussed in 3.1.1.1. If the
bogus certificate is submitted to a misbehaving log, then an SCT can
be generated, but there will be no entry for it, as discussed in
3.1.1.2. If the bogus certificate is not logged, then there will be
no SCT, and the implications are as described in 3.1.2.
This sort of attack may be most effective if the CA that is the
victim of the attack has issued a certificate for the targeted
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Subject. In this case the bogus certificate will then have the same
certification path as the legitimate certificate, which may help hide
the bogus certificate (depending on details of Monitor behavior).
However, means of remedying the attack are independent of this
aspect, i.e., revocation can be effected irrespective of whether the
targeted Subject received its certificate from the compromised CA.
A compromised (non-malicious) CA may be able to revoke the bogus
certificate if it is detected by a Monitor, and the targeted Subject
has been notified. It can do so only when the serial number of the
bogus certificate is made known to this CA and assuming that the
bogus certificate was not issued with an Authority Information Access
(AIA) or CRL Distribution Point (CRL DP) extension that enables only
the malicious twin to revoke the certificate. (The AIA extension in
the bogus certificate could be used to direct relying parties to an
OCSP server controlled by the malicious twin. The CRL DP extension
could be used to direct relying parties to a CRL controlled by the
malicious twin.) If the bogus certificate contains either extension,
the compromised CA cannot effectively revoke it. However, the
presence of either of these extensions provides some evidence that an
entity other than the compromised CA issued the certificate in
question. (If the extensions differ from those in other certificates
issued by the compromised CA, that is suspicious.)
If the serial number of the bogus certificate is the same as for a
valid, not-expired certificate issued by the CA (to the target or to
another Subject), then revocation poses a problem. This is because
revocation of the bogus certificate will also invalidate a legitimate
certificate. This problem may cause the compromised CA to delay
revocation, thus allowing the bogus certificate to remain a danger
for a longer time.
The compromised CA may not realize that the bogus certificate was
issued by a malicious twin; one occurrence of this sort might be
regarded as an error, and not cause the CA to transition to a new key
pair. (This assumes that the bogus certificate does not contain an
AIA or CRL DP extension that wrests control of revocation from the
compromised CA.)
Also note that the malicious twin of the compromised CA may be
capable of issuing its own CRL or OCSP responses, without changing
any AIA/CRL DP data present in the targeted certificate. The
revocation status data from the evil twin will appear as valid as
those of the compromised CA. If the attacker has the ability to
control the sources of revocation status data available to a targeted
user (browser instance), then the user may not become aware of the
attack.
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A bogus certificate issued by the malicious CA will not match the SCT
for the legitimate certificate, since they are not identical, e.g.,
at a minimum the private keys do not match. Thus a CT-aware browser
that rejects certificates without SCTs (see 3.2.2.1) will reject a
bogus certificate created under these circumstances if it is not
logged. If the bogus certificate is logged it is subject to
detection by Monitors. Because the CA is presumed to be malicious
the CA may delay revocation or try to suppress revocation status (see
Section 3.5) even when confronted with evidence of issuance of the
bogus certificate. In this case, even browsers that require an SCT
will still accept the bogus certificate until they become aware of
its revocation status.
3.3.2. Benign CA, Compromised Log
A benign CA does not issue bogus certificates, except as a result of
an accident or attack. So, in normal operation, it is not clear what
behavior by a compromised log would yield an attack. If a bogus
certificate is issued by a benign CA (under these circumstances) is
submitted to a compromised (non-malicious) log, then both an SCT and
a log entry will be created. Again, it is not clear what additional
adverse actions the compromised log would perform to further an
attack on CT.
It is worth noting that if a benign CA was attacked and thus issued
one or more bogus certificates, then a malicious log might provide
split views of its log to help conceal the bogus certificate from
targeted users. Specifically, the log would show an accurate set of
log entries (and STHs) to most clients, but would maintain a separate
log view for targeted users. This sort of attack motivates the need
for Audit capabilities based on "gossiping" [I-D.ietf-trans-gossip].
However, even if such mechanisms are employed, they might be thwarted
if a user is unable to exchange log information with trustworthy
partners.
3.3.3. Compromised CA, Compromised Log
As noted in 3.4, an evil twin CA may issue a bogus certificate that
contains the same Subject name as a legitimate certificate issued by
the compromised CA. Alternatively, the bogus certificate may contain
a different name but reuse a serial number from a valid, not revoked
certificate issued by that CA.
An attacker who compromises a log might act in one of two ways. It
might use the private key of the log only to generate SCTs for a
malicious CA or the evil twin of a compromised CA. If a browser
checks the signature on an SCT but does not acquire an inclusion
proof, then this could be an effective attack strategy.
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Alternatively, the attacker might not only generate SCTs, but also
pose as the compromised log, at least with regard to requests from
targeted users. In the latter case, this "evil twin" log could
respond to STH requests from targeted users, making it appear that
the compromised log was offering a split view (thus acting as a
malicious log). To detect this attack an Auditor may need to employ
a mechanism that is able to acquire CT data from diverse sources,
e.g., [I-D.ietf-trans-gossip].
An evil twin CA might submit a bogus certificate to the evil twin of
a compromised log. (The same adversary may be controlling both.)
The operator of the evil twin log can use the purloined private key
to generate SCTs for certificates that have not been logged by its
legitimate counterpart. These SCTs will appear valid relative to the
public key associated with the legitimate log. However, an STH
issued by the legitimate log will not correspond to a tree
(maintained by the compromised log) containing these SCTs. Thus
checking the SCTs issued by the evil twin log against STHs from the
compromised log will identify this discrepancy. As noted above, if
an attacker uses the key to generate log entries and respond to log
queries, the effect is analogous to a malicious log.)
An Auditor checking for log consistency and with access to bogus
SCTs, might conclude that the compromised log is acting maliciously,
and is presenting a split view to its clients. In this fashion the
compromised log may be shunned and forced to shut down. However, if
an attacker targets a set of TLS clients that do not have access to
the legitimate log, they may not be able to detect this
inconsistency. In this case CT might need to rely on a distributed
gossiping audit mechanism to detect the compromise (see Section 5.6).
3.4. Attacks Based on Exploiting Multiple Certificate Chains
Section 3.2 examined attacks in which a malicious CA issued a bogus
certificate and either tried to prevent the Subject from detecting
the bogus certificate, or reported the bogus certificate as valid, to
at least some relying parties, even if the Subject requested
revocation. These attacks are limited in that if the bogus
certificate is not submitted to a log, then it may not be accepted by
CT-aware browsers, and submitting the bogus certificate to a log
increases the chances that the CA's malicious behavior will be
detected.
In general, if a CA is discovered to be acting maliciously, its
certificates will no longer be accepted, either because its parent
will revoke its CA certificate, its CA certificate will be added to
browsers' blacklists, or both. However, a malicious CA may be able
to obtain an SCT for each bogus certificate that it issues and
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continue to have those certificates accepted by relying parties even
after its malicious behavior has been detected. It can do this by
creating more than one path validation chain for the certificates, as
shown in Figure 2.
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
| CA A | | CA B |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+
\ /
\ /
CA certificate 1 \ / CA certificate 2
\ /
+----------------+
| malicious CA |
+----------------+
|
| bogus EE certificate
|
+------------------+
| targeted Subject |
+------------------+
Figure 2: Multiple Certificate Chains for a Bogus Certificate
In Figure 2, the malicious CA has been issued CA certificates by two
different parent CAs. The parent CAs may be two different trust
anchors, or one or both of them may be an intermediate CA (i.e., it
is subordinate to some trust anchor). If both parent CAs are
intermediate CAs, they may be subordinate to the same trust anchor or
to different trust anchors. The malicious CA may have obtained
certificates from the two parents by applying to them for the
certificates, or by compromising the parent CAs and creating the
certificates without the knowledge of the CAs. If the malicious CA
applied for its certificates from these CAs, it may have presented
false information as input to the CA's normal issuance procedures,
with the result that the CAs do not realize that a certificate with
the same subject name and public key has been issued by another CA.
Because there are two certificate path validation chains, the
malicious CA could provide the chain that includes CA A when
submitting a bogus certificate to one or more logs, but an attacker
(colluding with the malicious CA) could provide the chain that
includes CA B to targeted browsers. If the CA's malicious behavior
is detected, then CA A and browser vendors may be alerted (e.g., via
the CT Monitor function) and revoke/blacklist CA certificate 1.
However, CA certificate 2 does not appear in any logs, and CA A is
unaware that CA B has issued a certificate to the malicious CA. Thus
those who detected the malicious behavior may not discover the second
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chain and so may not alert CA B or browser vendors of the need to
revoke/blacklist CA certificate 2. In this case, targeted browsers
would continue to accept the bogus certificates issued by the
malicious CA, since the certificate chain they are provided is valid
and because the SCT issued for the bogus certificate it the same
irrespective of which certificate chain is presented.
This sort of attack might be thwarted if all intermediate (i.e., CA)
certificates had to be logged. In that case CA certificate 2 might
be rejected by CT-aware browsers.
This type of attack also might be thwarted if a browser vendor
blacklists a malicious CA using the CA's public key (not by its
serial number and the name of the parent CA or by a hash of the
certificate). This approach to revocation would cause CA certificate
2 to be rejected as well as CA certificate 1. However none of these
mechanisms are part of the CT specification
[I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] nor general IETF PKI standards (e.g.,
[RFC5280]).
3.5. Attacks Related to Distribution of Revocation Status
A bogus certificate that has been revoked may still appear valid to a
browser under certain circumstances. In part this is because the
revocation information seen by a relying party is partly under the
control of the CA and/or the certificate subject. As a result,
different relying parties may be presented with different revocation
information. This is true irrespective of whether revocation is
effected via use of a CRL or OCSP. (This analysis does not consider
proprietary browser revocation status mechanisms.) Additionally, an
attacker can steer a browser to specific revocation status data via
various means, preventing a targeted browser from acquiring accurate
revocation status information for a bogus certificate.
The bogus certificate might contain an AIA extension pointing to an
OCSP server controlled by the malicious CA (or the attacker). As
noted in Section 3.2.1.1.1, the malicious CA could send a "good" OCSP
response to a targeted browser instance, even if other parties are
provided with a "revoked" response. A TLS server can supply an OCSP
response to a browser as part of the TLS handshake [RFC6961], if
requested by the browser. A TLS server posing as the entity named in
the bogus certificate also could acquire a "good" OCSP response from
the malicious CA to effect the attack. If the browser relies upon a
trusted, third-party OCSP responder, one not part of the collusion,
would these OCSP-based attacks fail.
The bogus certificate could contain a CRL distribution point
extension instead of an AIA extension. In that case a site supplying
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CRLs for the malicious CA could supply different CRLs to different
requestors, in an attempt to hide the revocation status of the bogus
certificate from targeted browser instances. This is analogous to a
split-view attack effected by a CT log. However, as noted in
Section 3.2.1.1 and 3.2.1.1.1, no element of CT is responsible for
detecting inconsistent reporting of certificate revocation status
data. (Monitoring in the CT context tracks log entries made by CAs
or Subjects. Auditing is designed to detect misbehavior by logs, not
by CAs per se.)
The failure of a bogus certificate to be detected as revoked (by a
browser) is not the fault of CT. In the class of attacks described
above, CT achieves its goal of detecting the bogus certificate when
that certificate is logged and a Monitor observes the log entry.
Detection is intended to trigger revocation, to effect remediation,
the details of which are outside the scope of CT. However the SCT
mechanism is intended to assure a relying party that certificate has
been logged, is susceptible to being detected as bogus by a Monitor,
and presumably will be revoked if detected as such. In the context
of these attacks, because of the way revocation may be implemented,
the assurance provided by the SCT may not have the anticipated
effect.
4. Syntactic mis-issuance
4.1. Non-malicious CA context
This section analyzes the scenario in which the CA has no intent to
issue a syntactically incorrect certificate, but it may do so in
error. (Remember that errors are considered form of attack in this
document, see Section 2). As noted in Section 1, we refer to a
syntactically incorrect certificate as erroneous. A certificate is
erroneous if it violates a criteria to which the issuing CA claims to
adhere. This might be a general profile such as [RFC5280], or a
narrower profile such as those established by the CABF [1] for domain
validated (DV) or extended validation (EV) certificates. If the
Subject is a web site that expected to receive an EV certificate, but
the certificate issued to it carries the DV policy OID, or no policy
OID, relying parties may reject the certificate, causing harm to the
business of the Subject. Conversely, if a CA issues a certificate to
a web site and erroneously includes the EV policy OID, relying
parties may place more trust in the certificate than is warranted.
4.1.1. Certificate logged
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4.1.1.1. Benign log
If a (pre )certificate is submitted to a benign log, syntactic mis-
issuance can (optionally) be detected, and noted. This will happen
only if the log performs syntactic checks in general, and if the log
is capable of performing the checks applicable to the submitted (pre
)certificate. (A (pre-)certificate should be logged even if it fails
syntactic validation; logging takes precedence over detection of
syntactic mis-issuance.) If syntactic validation fails, this could
be noted in an SCT extension returned to the submitter.
If the (pre-)certificate is submitted by the non-malicious issuing
CA, then the CA should remedy the syntactic problem and re-submit the
(pre-)certificate to a log or logs. If this is a pre-certificate
submitted prior to issuance, syntactic checking by a log could help a
CA detect and avoid issuance of an erroneous certificate. If the CA
does not have a record of the certificate contents, then presumably
it was a bogus certificate and the CA should revoke it.
If a certificate is submitted by its Subject, and is deemed
erroneous, then the Subject should contact the issuing CA and request
a new certificate. If the Subject is a legitimate subscriber of the
CA, then the CA will either have a record of the certificate content
or can obtain a copy of the certificate from the Subject. The CA
will remedy the syntactic problem and either re-submit a corrected
(pre-)certificate to a log and send it to the Subject or the Subject
will re-submit it to a log. Here too syntactic checking by a log
enables a Subject to be informed that its certificate is erroneous
and thus may hasten issuance of a replacement certificate.
If a certificate is submitted by a third party, that party might
contact the Subject or the issuing CA, but because the party is not
the Subject of the certificate it is not clear how the CA will
respond.
This analysis suggests that syntactic mis-issuance of a certificate
can be avoided by a CA if it makes use of logs that are capable of
performing these checks for the types of certificates that are
submitted, and if the CA acts on the feedback it receives. If a CA
uses a log that does not perform such checks, or if the CA requests
checking relative to criteria not supported by the log, then
syntactic mis-issuance will not be detected or avoided by this
mechanism. Similarly, syntactic mis-issuance can be remedied if a
Subject submits a certificate to a log that performs syntactic
checks, and if the Subject asks the issuing CA to fix problems
detected by the log. (The issuer is presumed to be willing to re-
issue the certificate, correcting any problems, because the issuing
CA is not malicious.)
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4.1.1.2. Misbehaving log or third party Monitor
A log or Monitor that is conspiring with the attacker or is
independently malicious, will either not perform syntactic checks,
even though it claims to do so, or simply not report errors. The log
entry and the SCT for an erroneous certificate will assert that the
certificate syntax was verified.
As with detection of semantic mis-issuance, a distributed Audit
mechanism could, in principle, detect misbehavior by logs or Monitors
with respect to syntactic checking. For example, if for a given
certificate, some logs (or Monitors) are reporting syntactic errors
and some that claim to do syntactic checking, are not reporting these
errors, this is indicative of misbehavior by these logs and/or
Monitors.
Note that a malicious log (or Monitor) could report syntactic errors
for a syntactically valid certificate. This could result in
reporting of non-existent syntactic problems to the issuing CA, which
might cause the CA to do needless investigative work or perhaps
incorrectly revoke and re-issue the Subject's certificate.
4.1.2. Certificate not logged
If a CA does not submit a certificate to a log, there can be no
syntactic checking by the log. (Note that a Monitor might choose to
perform such checks, instead of a log, although this capability is
not addressed in [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis].) Detection of
syntactic errors will depend on a Subject performing the requisite
checks when it receives its certificate from a CA. A Monitor that
performs syntactic checks on behalf of a Subject also could detect
such problems, but the CT architecture does not require Monitors to
perform such checks.
4.1.2.1. Self-monitoring Subject
A Subject performing self-monitoring will be able to detect the lack
of an embedded SCT in the certificate it received from the CA, or the
lack of an SCT supplied to the Subject via an out-of-band channel. A
Subject ought to notify the CA if the Subject expected that its
certificate was to be logged. (A Subject would expect its
certificate to be logged if there is an agreement between the Subject
and the CA to do so, or because the CA advertises that it logs all of
the certificates that it issues.) If the certificate was supposed to
be logged, but was not, the CA can use the certificate supplied by
the Subject to investigate and remedy the problem. In the context of
a benign CA, a failure to log the certificate might be the result of
an operations error, or evidence of an attack on the CA.
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4.1.3. Situations Independent of Certificate Logging
4.1.3.1. Self-monitoring Subject and Benign third party Monitor
If a Subject or benign third party Monitor performs syntactic checks,
it will detect the erroneous certificate and the issuing CA will be
notified (by the Subject). If the Subject is a legitimate subscriber
of the CA, then the CA will either have a record of the certificate
content or can obtain a copy of the certificate from the Subject.
The CA SHOULD revoke the erroneous certificate (after investigation)
and remedy the syntactic problem. The CA SHOULD either re-submit the
corrected (pre-)certificate to one or more logs and then send the
result to the Subject, or send the corrected certificate to the
Subject, who will re-submit it to one or more logs.
4.1.3.2. CT-enabled browser
If a browser rejects an erroneous certificate and notifies the
Subject and/or the issuing CA, then syntactic mis-issuance will be
detected (see Section 5.) Unfortunately, experience suggests that
many browsers do not always perform very good syntactic checks on
certificates. For example, a browser may fail to verify that a
certificate used in a certificate path is properly marked as a CA
certificate. Also, it would be problematic for a browser to check a
certificate against a specific version of a profile if the profile
changes and the policy OID remains constant. Thus it seems unlikely
that browsers will be a reliable way to detect erroneous certificates
in all circumstances. Moreover, a protocol used by a browser to
notify a Subject and/or CA of an erroneous certificate represents a
DoS potential, and thus may not be appropriate. Additionally, if a
browser directly contacts a CA when an erroneous certificate is
detected, this is a potential privacy violation, i.e., the CA learns
that the browser user is visiting the web site in question. These
observations argue for syntactic checking to be performed by other
elements of the CT system, e.g., logs and/or Monitors.
4.2. Malicious CA context
This section analyzes the scenario in which the CA's issuance of a
syntactically incorrect certificate is intentional, not due to error.
The CA is not the victim but the attacker.
Note that irrespective of whether syntactic checks are performed by a
log, a malicious CA can acquire an embedded SCT, or post-issuance
will acquire a standalone SCT for an erroneous certificate. If
Subjects or Monitors perform syntactic checks that detect the
syntactic mis-issuance and report the problem to the CA, a malicious
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CA may do nothing or may delay the action(s) needed to remedy the
problem.
4.2.1. Certificate logged
4.2.1.1. Benign log
Because the CA is presumed to be malicious, the CA might cause the
log to not perform checks (if the log offered this option). Because
logs are not required to perform syntax checks, there probably would
have to be a way for a CA to request checking, the CA might indicate
that it did not desire such checks to be performed. Or the CA might
submit a (pre-)certificate to a log that is known to not perform any
syntactic checks, and thus avoid syntactic checking.
4.2.1.2. Misbehaving log or third party Monitor
A misbehaving log or third party Monitor will either not perform
syntactic checks or not report any problems that it discovers. (See
4.1.1.2 for further problems). Also, as noted above, the CT
architecture includes no explicit provisions for detecting a
misbehaving third-party Monitor.
4.2.1.3. CT-enabled browser
As noted above (4.1.3.2), most browsers do not perform thorough
syntax checks on certificates. Such browsers might benefit from
having syntax checks performed by a log and reported in the SCT,
although the pervasive nature of syntactically-defective certificates
may limit the utility of such checks. (Remember, in this scenario,
the log is benign.) However, if a browser does not discriminate
against certificates that do not contain SCTs (or that are not
accompanied by an SCT in the TLS handshake), only minimal benefits
might accrue to the browser from syntax checks perform by logs or
Monitors.
If a browser accepts certificates that do not appear to have been
syntactically checked by a log (as indicated by the SCT), a malicious
CA need not worry about failing a log-based check. Similarly, if
there is no requirement for a browser to reject a certificate that
was logged by an operator that does not perform syntactic checks, the
fourth attack noted in 4.2.1.1 will succeed as well. If a browser
were configured to know which versions of certificate types are
applicable to its use of a certificate, the second and third attack
strategies noted above could be thwarted.
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4.2.2. Certificate is not logged
Since certificates are not logged in this scenario, a third-party
Monitor cannot detect the issuance of an erroneous certificate based
on examination of log entries. However, if a Subject informs a
Monitor of the syntactic criteria applicable to the certificate it is
supplying, the Monitor can perform syntactic checks on behalf of the
Subject. Thus there is no difference between a benign or a
malicious/conspiring log or a benign or conspiring/malicious Monitor.
(Also note that a Subject MAY detect a syntax error by examining the
certificate returned to it by the Issuer.) However, even if errors
are detected and reported to the CA, a malicious/conspiring CA may do
nothing to fix the problem or may delay action.
5. Issues Applicable to Sections 3 and 4
5.1. How does a Subject know which Monitor(s) to use?
If a CA submits a bogus certificate to one or more logs, but these
logs are not tracked by a Monitor that is protecting the targeted
Subject, CT will not remedy this type of mis-issuance attack. If
third-party Monitors advertise which logs they track, Subjects may be
able to use this information to select an appropriate Monitor (or set
thereof). Also, it is not clear whether every third-party Monitor
must offer to track every Subject that requests protection. If a
Subject acts as its own Monitor, this problem is solved for that
Subject.
5.2. How does a Monitor discover new logs?
It is not clear how a (self-)Monitor becomes aware of all (relevant)
logs, including newly created logs. The means by which Monitors
become aware of new logs must accommodate self-monitoring by a
potentially very large number of web site operators. If there are
many logs, it may not be feasible for a (self-) Monitor to track all
of them, or to determine what set of logs suffice to ensure an
adequate level of coverage.
5.3. CA response to report of a bogus or erroneous certificate
A CA being presented with evidence of a bogus or erroneous
certificate, supported by a log entry and/or SCT, will need to
examine its records to determine if it has knowledge of the
certificate in question. It also will likely require the targeted
Subject to provide assurances that it is the authorized entity
representing the Subject name (subjectAltname) in question. Thus a
Subject should not expect immediate revocation of a contested
certificate. The time frame in which a CA will respond to a
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revocation request usually is described in the CPS for the CA. Other
certificate fields and extensions may be of interest for forensic
purposes, but are not required to effect. The SCT and log entry,
because each contains a timestamp from a third party, is probably
valuable for forensic purposes (assuming a non-conspiring log
operator).
5.4. Browser behavior
If a browser is to reject a certificate that lacks an embedded SCT,
or is not accompanied by an SCT transported via the TLS handshake,
this behavior needs to be defined in a way that is compatible with
incremental deployment. [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] does not
describe a strategy for incremental deployment, however it calls for
local policy controls that might be used to facilitate incremental
deployment (see 3.2.2.1 earlier). For example a browser might
establish a date after which all certificates issued MUST contain an
SCT or be accompanied by an SCT during TLS session establishment. A
strategy like this would allow certificates issued before that date
to be "grandfathered". This approach would allow a malicious CA to
backdate a certificate to avoid logging it, exploiting a window of
vulnerability. Note that issuing a warning to a (human) user is
probably insufficient, based on experience with warnings displayed
for expired certificates, lack of certificate revocation status
information, and similar errors that violate RFC 5280 path validation
rules [RFC5280].
5.5. Remediation for a malicious CA
A targeted Subject might ask the parent of a malicious CA to revoke
the certificate of the non-cooperative CA. However, a request of
this sort may be rejected, e.g., because of the potential for
significant collateral damage. A browser might be configured to
reject all certificates issued by the malicious CA, e.g., using a
bad-CA-list distributed by a browser vendor. However, if the
malicious CA has a sufficient number of legitimate clients, treating
all of their certificates as bogus or erroneous still represents
serious collateral damage. If this specification were to require
that a browser can be configured to reject a specific, bogus or
erroneous certificate identified by a Monitor, then the bogus or
erroneous certificate could be rejected in that fashion. This
remediation strategy calls for communication between Monitors and
browsers, or between Monitors and browser vendors. If a browser
vendor operates it's own Monitor, there is no need for a standard way
to convey this information. However, there are no standard ways to
convey Monitor information to a browser, e.g., to reject individual
bogus or erroneous certificates based on information provided by a
Monitor. Moreover, the same or another malicious CA could issue new
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bogus or erroneous certificates for the targeted Subject, which would
have to be detected and rejected in this (as yet unspecified)
fashion. Thus, for now, CT does not seem to provide a way to
facilitate remediation of this form of attack, even though it
provides a basis for detecting such attacks.
5.6. Auditing - detecting misbehaving logs
The combination of a malicious CA and one or more conspiring logs
motivates the definition of an audit function, to detect conspiring
logs. If a Monitor protecting a Subject does not see bogus
certificates, it cannot alert the Subject. If one or more SCTs are
present in a certificate, or passed via the TLS handshake, a browser
has no way to know that the logged certificate may not be visible to
Monitors. If browsers reject certificates that contain SCTs from
conspiring logs (e.g., based on information from an auditor) CT
should be able to detect and deter use of such logs by (benign) CAs.
Section 8.3 of [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis] specifies that auditing
is performed by Monitors and/or browsers. If a Monitor performs the
function, then it needs a way to communicate the results of audit
infractions to CAs and browsers. If a browser vendor operates a
Monitor it could use its audit information to cause browsers to
reject certificates with SCTs from suspect logs. However, there is
no standard mechanism defined to allow a self-monitoring Subject to
convey this information to browsers directly.
If auditing is performed by browsers directly there may be user
privacy concerns due to direct interaction with logs, as noted in
Section 8.1.4 of [I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis]. Also, unless browsers
have ways to share audit information with other browsers, local
detection of a misbehaving log does not necessarily benefit a larger
community. At the time of this writing, one mechanism has been
defined (via an RFC) for use with CT to achieve the necessary
communication: [I-D.ietf-trans-gossip].
Monitors play a critical role in detecting semantic certificate mis-
issuance, for Subjects that have requested monitoring of their
certificates. A monitor (including a Subject performing self-
monitoring) examines logs for certificates associated with one or
more Subjects that are being "protected". A third-party Monitor must
obtain a list of valid certificates for the Subject being monitored,
in a secure manner, to use as a reference. It also must be able to
identify and track a potentially large number of logs on behalf of
its Subjects. This may be a daunting task for Subjects that elect to
perform self-monitoring.
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Note: A Monitor should not rely on a CA or RA database for its
reference information or use certificate discovery protocols; this
information should be acquired by the Monitor based on reference
certificates provided by a Subject. If a Monitor were to rely on a
CA or RA database (for the CA that issued a targeted certificate),
the Monitor would not detect mis-issuance due to malfeasance on the
part of that CA or the RA, or due to compromise of the CA or the RA.
If a CA or RA database is used, it would support detection of mis-
issuance by an unauthorized CA.
As noted above, Monitors represent another target for adversaries who
wish to effect certificate mis-issuance. If a Monitor is compromised
by, or conspires with, an attacker, it will fail to alert a Subject
to a bogus or erroneous certificate targeting that Subject, as noted
above. It is suggested that a Subject request certificate monitoring
from multiple sources to guard against such failures. Operation of a
Monitor by a Subject, on its own behalf, avoids dependence on third
party Monitors. However, the burden of Monitor operation may be
viewed as too great for many web sites, and thus this mode of
operation ought not be assumed to be universal when evaluating
protection against Monitor compromise.
6. Security Considerations
An attack and threat model is, by definition, a security-centric
document. Unlike a protocol description, a threat model does not
create security problems nor does it purport to address security
problems. This model postulates a set of threats (i.e., motivated,
capable adversaries) and examines classes of attacks that these
threats are capable of effecting, based on the motivations ascribed
to the threats. It then analyses the ways in which the CT
architecture addresses these attacks.
7. IANA Considerations
None.
8. Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank David Mandelberg and Karen Seo for
their assistance in reviewing and preparing this document, and other
members of the TRANS working group for reviewing it. Most of the
text of Section 3.4 was provided by David Cooper, motivated by
observations from Daniel Kahn Gilmor. Thanks also go to Daiming Li
for her editorial assistance.
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9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
9.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-trans-gossip]
Nordberg, L., Gillmor, D., and T. Ritter, "Gossiping in
CT", draft-ietf-trans-gossip-05 (work in progress),
January 2018.
[I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis]
Laurie, B., Langley, A., Kasper, E., Messeri, E., and R.
Stradling, "Certificate Transparency Version 2.0", draft-
ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis-28 (work in progress), March 2018.
[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/info/rfc5280>.
[RFC6066] Eastlake 3rd, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6066, January 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6066>.
[RFC6960] Santesson, S., Myers, M., Ankney, R., Malpani, A.,
Galperin, S., and C. Adams, "X.509 Internet Public Key
Infrastructure Online Certificate Status Protocol - OCSP",
RFC 6960, DOI 10.17487/RFC6960, June 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6960>.
[RFC6961] Pettersen, Y., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Multiple Certificate Status Request Extension", RFC 6961,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6961, June 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6961>.
9.3. URIs
[1] https://cabforum.org
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar
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Author's Address
Stephen Kent
Independent
Email: kent@alum.mit.edu
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