Internet DRAFT - draft-quigley-label-format-registry
draft-quigley-label-format-registry
NFSv4 D. Quigley
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Standards Track J. Lu
Expires: October 19, 2014 Oracle
T. Haynes
Primary Data
April 17, 2014
Registry Specification for Mandatory Access Control(MAC) Security Label
Formats
draft-quigley-label-format-registry-02.txt
Abstract
In the past Mandatory Access Control (MAC) systems have used very
rigid policies which were hardcoded into the particular protocol and
platform. As MAC systems are more widely deployed additional
flexibility in mechanism and policy is required. Where traditional
trusted systems implemented Multi-Level Security (MLS) and integrity
models, modern systems have expanded to include technologies such as
type enforcement. Due to the wide range of policies and mechanisms
it has proven through past efforts to be virtually impossible to
accomodate all parties in one security label format and model.
To allow multiple MAC mechanisms and label formats in a network, this
document proposes a registry of label format specifications. This
registry contains several identifiers to accomodate both integer and
string preferences and associates those identifiers with an extensive
document outlining the exact syntax and use of the particular label
format.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on October 19, 2014.
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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
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Exisiting Label Format Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1. Commercial IP Security Option (CIPSO) . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2. Common Architecture Label IPv6 Security Option (CALIPSO) 4
4.3. Flux Advanced Security Kernel (FLASK) . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6.1. Initial Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.2. Adding a New Entry to the Registry . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.3. Obsoleting a Label Format Selector . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix A. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix B. RFC Editor Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
With the acceptance of security labels in several mainstream
operating systems the need to communicate labels between these
systems becomes more important. In a typical client and server
scenario, the client request to the server acts as a subject trying
to access an object on the server [RFC7204]. Unfortunately these
systems are diverse enough that attempts at establishing one common
label format have been unsucessful. The reason for this is that
systems implement different Mandatory Access Control (MAC) models,
which typically do not share any common ground.
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One solution is to define a single label format which consists of the
union of the requirements of all MAC models/implementations. This is
not ideal because it introduces an environment where many MAC models
would either have blank fields for many of the label's components or
will ignore the values that are present all together. This
environment introduces waste and complexity where it is not needed.
Additionally if a policy authority or identifier field is specified
in the label format it would require a robust description that could
be implemented which would lock policy administration into the
described model.
Ideally a mechanism to address this problem should allow the most
flexibility possible in terms of policy administration while
providing a specification that is suffient to allow for
implementation of the label format and understanding of the semantics
of the label. This means that the label format specification would
ideally contain a syntactic description of the label format and a
description of the semantics for each component in the label. This
allows protocols to specify the type of label and label semantics
that it requires while leaving policy and policy administration to
the individual organizations using the protocol in their environment.
Policy administration within an organization is a difficult problem.
This should not be made even more difficult by having to request
permission from external entities when crafting new policy or just
making department specific modifications to existing policies. The
policy authority field would allow an label format specification to
specify a scheme for policy administration without forcing it on all
users of security labels. However by agreeing to implement a
particular label format specification, the protocol agrees to that
policy administration mechanism when processing labels of that type.
2. Definitions
Label Format Specification: an identifier used by the client to
establish the syntactic format of the security label and the
semantic meaning of its components.
Multi-Level Security (MLS): a traditional model where objects are
given a sensitivity level (Unclassified, Secret, Top Secret, etc.)
and a category set [RH_MLS].
Object: a passive resource within the system that we wish to
protect. Objects can be entities such as files, directories,
pipes, sockets, and many other system resources relevant to the
protection of the system state.
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Subject: an active entity, usually a process, that is requesting
access to an object.
3. Requirements Language
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].
4. Exisiting Label Format Specifications
4.1. Commercial IP Security Option (CIPSO)
The Commercial IP Security Option (CIPSO) label format specification
is documented in [CIPSO]. While this draft has expired a long time
ago, it is the defacto standard for labeled networking. It is also
documented in [FIPS-188].
4.2. Common Architecture Label IPv6 Security Option (CALIPSO)
The Common Architecture Label IPv6 Security Option (CALIPSO) [CIPSO]
is a successor to CIPSO.
4.3. Flux Advanced Security Kernel (FLASK)
The Flux Advanced Security Kernel (FLASK) is an impelementation of an
architecture to provide flexible support for security policies.
5. Security Considerations
This document defines a mechanism to associate LFS identifier with a
document outlining the syntax and format of a label. There is no
security consideration in such an association. The label
specification documents referenced by each registration entry should
state security considerations for the label mechanism it specifies.
6. IANA Considerations
This section provides guidance to the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority (IANA) regarding creation of a new registry in accordance
with [RFC5226].
This submission requests the creation of a new registry called
"Security Label Format Selection Registry". The new registry has the
following fields:
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Label Format Selector: An integer number that maps to a particular
label format, e.g., the CALIPSO label format defined by [RFC5570].
The name space of this identifier has the range of 0..65,535.
Label Description: A human readable ASCII text string that describes
the label format, e.g., "Common Architecture Label IPv6 Security
Option (CALIPSO)". The length of this field is limited to 128
bytes.
Status: A short ASCII text string indicating the status of an entry
in the registry. The status field for most entries should have
the value "active". In the case that a label format selection
entry is obsolete, the status field of the obsoleted entry should
be "obsoleted by entry NNN".
Label Format Specification: A reference to a stable, public document
that specify the label format, e.g., an URL to [RFC5570].
6.1. Initial Registry
The initial assignments of the registry are as follows:
+-----------------+------------------+--------+---------------------+
| Label Format | Description | Status | Reference |
| Selector | | | |
+-----------------+------------------+--------+---------------------+
| 0 | Reserved | - | - |
| 1 - 127 | Private Use | - | - |
| 128 - 255 | Experimental Use | - | - |
| 256 | CIPSO (tag type | active | [[CIPSO] URL] |
| | #1) | | |
| 257 | CALIPSO (RFC | active | [[RFC5570] URL] |
| | 5570) | | |
| 258 | FLASK Security | active | [[FLASK] URL] |
| | Context | | |
| 258 - 65535 | Unassigned | - | - |
+-----------------+------------------+--------+---------------------+
Label Format Specifier Ranges
Table 1
6.2. Adding a New Entry to the Registry
A label format specification document is required to add a new entry
to this registry. If the label format document is inside the RFC
path, then The IANA Consideration section of the label format
document should clearly reference the Label Format Selection registry
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and request allocation of a new entry. The well-known IANA policy,
Specification Required, as defined in section 4.1 of [RFC5226], will
be used to handle such requests. Note that "Specification Required"
policy implies this process requires a Designated Expert reviewer,
i.e., adding a new entry to this registry requires both a published
label format specification and a Designated Expert review.
6.3. Obsoleting a Label Format Selector
In the case that a label format selector number is assigned to a
label format and the label format specification is changed later, a
new selector assignment should be requested. The same Specification
Required IANA policy applies to such requests. The IANA
Consideration section of the updated label format specification
should be explicit in which old label selector assignment it
obsoletes. Below is an example of obsoleted entry in the registry:
+---------------+-------------------+------------+------------------+
| Label Format | Description | Status | Reference |
| Selector | | | |
+---------------+-------------------+------------+------------------+
| 0 | Reserved | - | - |
| 1 - 127 | Private Use | - | - |
| 128 - 255 | Experimental Use | - | - |
| 256 | CIPSO (tag type | active | [[CIPSO] URL] |
| | #1) | | |
| 257 | CALIPSO (RFC | active | [[RFC5570] URL] |
| | 5570) | | |
| 258 | FLASK Security | obsoleted | [[FLASK] URL] |
| | Context | by 263 | |
| ... | | | |
| 263 | FLASK Security | active | [new spec URL] |
| | Context (v2) | | |
| 264 - 65535 | Unassigned | - | - |
+---------------+-------------------+------------+------------------+
Example Label Format Specifier Updated Ranges
Table 2
7. References
7.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", March 1997.
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[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
7.2. Informative References
[CIPSO] IETF CIPSO Working Group, "Commercial IP Security Option
(CIPSO 2.2)", draft-ietf-cipso-ipsecurity-01 (expired),
July 1992.
[FIPS-188]
US National Institute of Standards and Technology,
"Standard Security Labels for Information Transfer",
Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 188,
September 1994.
[FLASK] Spencer, R., Smalley, S., Loscocco, P., Hibler, M.,
Andersen, D., and J. Lepreau, "The Flask Security
Architecture: System Support for Diverse Security
Policies", In Proceedings of the Eighth USENIX Security
Symposium, pages 123-139 , August 1999.
[RFC5570] StJohns, M., Atkinson, R., and G. Thomas, "Common
Architecture Label IPv6 Security Option (CALIPSO)", RFC
5570, July 2009.
[RFC7204] Haynes, T., "Requirements for Labeled NFS", RFC 7204,
April 2014.
[RH_MLS] "Multi-Level Security (MLS)", "Deployment, configuration
and administration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Edition
10", Section 49.6, 2013, <http://docs.redhat.com/docs/
en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Deployment_Guide/
sec-mls-ov.html>.
Appendix A. Acknowledgments
Appendix B. RFC Editor Notes
[RFC Editor: please remove this section prior to publishing this
document as an RFC]
Authors' Addresses
David P. Quigley
Email: dpquigl@davequigley.com
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Jarrett Lu
Oracle
Email: jarrett.lu@oracle.com
Thomas Haynes
Primary Data, Inc.
4300 El Camino Real Ste 100
Los Altos, CA 94022
USA
Phone: +1 408 215 1519
Email: thomas.haynes@primarydata.com
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