Network Working Group G. Huang
Request for Comments: 3706 S. Beaulieu
Category: Informational D. Rochefort
Cisco Systems, Inc.
February 2004
A Traffic-Based Method of Detecting Dead Internet
Key Exchange (IKE) Peers
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes the method detecting a dead Internet Key
Exchange (IKE) peer that is presently in use by a number of vendors.
The method, called Dead Peer Detection (DPD) uses IPSec traffic
patterns to minimize the number of IKE messages that are needed to
confirm liveness. DPD, like other keepalive mechanisms, is needed to
determine when to perform IKE peer failover, and to reclaim lost
resources.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Document Roadmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Rationale for Periodic Message Exchange for Proof of
Liveliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Keepalives vs. Heartbeats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.1. Keepalives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.2. Heartbeats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. DPD Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1. DPD Vendor ID. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2. Message Exchanges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.3. NOTIFY(R-U-THERE/R-U-THERE-ACK) Message Format . . . . . 8
5.4. Impetus for DPD Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.5. Implementation Suggestion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.6. Comparisons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Resistance to Replay Attack and False Proof of Liveliness. . . 10
6.1. Sequence Number in DPD Messages. . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
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6.2. Selection and Maintenance of Sequence Numbers. . . . . . 11
7. Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
8. IANA Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
9.1. Normative Reference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
10. Editors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
11. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1. Introduction
When two peers communicate with IKE [2] and IPSec [3], the situation
may arise in which connectivity between the two goes down
unexpectedly. This situation can arise because of routing problems,
one host rebooting, etc., and in such cases, there is often no way
for IKE and IPSec to identify the loss of peer connectivity. As
such, the SAs can remain until their lifetimes naturally expire,
resulting in a "black hole" situation where packets are tunneled to
oblivion. It is often desirable to recognize black holes as soon as
possible so that an entity can failover to a different peer quickly.
Likewise, it is sometimes necessary to detect black holes to recover
lost resources.
This problem of detecting a dead IKE peer has been addressed by
proposals that require sending periodic HELLO/ACK messages to prove
liveliness. These schemes tend to be unidirectional (a HELLO only)
or bidirectional (a HELLO/ACK pair). For the purpose of this
document, the term "heartbeat" will refer to a unidirectional message
to prove liveliness. Likewise, the term "keepalive" will refer to a
bidirectional message.
The problem with current heartbeat and keepalive proposals is their
reliance upon their messages to be sent at regular intervals. In the
implementation, this translates into managing some timer to service
these message intervals. Similarly, because rapid detection of the
dead peer is often desired, these messages must be sent with some
frequency, again translating into considerable overhead for message
processing. In implementations and installations where managing
large numbers of simultaneous IKE sessions is of concern, these
regular heartbeats/keepalives prove to be infeasible.
To this end, a number of vendors have implemented their own approach
to detect peer liveliness without needing to send messages at regular
intervals. This informational document describes the current
practice of those implementations. This scheme, called Dead Peer
Detection (DPD), relies on IKE Notify messages to query the
liveliness of an IKE peer.
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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 RFC-2119 [1].
2. Document Roadmap
As mentioned above, there are already proposed solutions to the
problem of detecting dead peers. Section 3 elaborates the rationale
for using an IKE message exchange to query a peer's liveliness.
Section 4 examines a keepalives-based approach as well as a
heartbeats-based approach. Section 5 presents the DPD proposal
fully, highlighting differences between DPD and the schemes presented
in Section 4 and emphasizing scalability issues. Section 6 examines
security issues surrounding replayed messages and false liveliness.
3. Rationale for Periodic Message Exchange for Proof of Liveliness
As the introduction mentioned, it is often necessary to detect that a
peer is unreachable as soon as possible. IKE provides no way for
this to occur -- aside from waiting until the rekey period, then
attempting (and failing the rekey). This would result in a period of
loss connectivity lasting the remainder of the lifetime of the
security association (SA), and in most deployments, this is
unacceptable. As such, a method is needed for checking up on a
peer's state at will. Different methods have arisen, usually using
an IKE Notify to query the peer's liveliness. These methods rely on
either a bidirectional "keepalive" message exchange (a HELLO followed
by an ACK), or a unidirectional "heartbeat" message exchange (a HELLO
only). The next section considers both of these schemes.
4. Keepalives vs. Heartbeats
4.1. Keepalives:
Consider a keepalives scheme in which peer A and peer B require
regular acknowledgements of each other's liveliness. The messages
are exchanged by means of an authenticated notify payload. The two
peers must agree upon the interval at which keepalives are sent,
meaning that some negotiation is required during Phase 1. For any
prompt failover to be possible, the keepalives must also be sent at
rather frequent intervals -- around 10 seconds or so. In this
hypothetical keepalives scenario, peers A and B agree to exchange
keepalives every 10 seconds. Essentially, every 10 seconds, one peer
must send a HELLO to the other. This HELLO serves as proof of
liveliness for the sending entity. In turn, the other peer must
acknowledge each keepalive HELLO. If the 10 seconds elapse, and one
side has not received a HELLO, it will send the HELLO message itself,
using the peer's ACK as proof of liveliness. Receipt of either a
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HELLO or ACK causes an entity's keepalive timer to reset. Failure to
receive an ACK in a certain period of time signals an error. A
clarification is presented below:
Scenario 1:
Peer A's 10-second timer elapses first, and it sends a HELLO to B.
B responds with an ACK.
Peer A: Peer B:
10 second timer fires; ------>
wants to know that B is alive;
sends HELLO.
Receives HELLO; acknowledges
A's liveliness;
<------ resets keepalive timer, sends
ACK.
Receives ACK as proof of
B's liveliness; resets timer.
Scenario 2:
Peer A's 10-second timer elapses first, and it sends a HELLO to B.
B fails to respond. A can retransmit, in case its initial HELLO is
lost. This situation describes how peer A detects its peer is dead.
Peer A: Peer B (dead):
10 second timer fires; ------X
wants to know that B is
alive; sends HELLO.
Retransmission timer ------X
expires; initial message
could have been lost in
transit; A increments
error counter and
sends another HELLO.
---
After some number of errors, A assumes B is dead; deletes SAs and
possibly initiates failover.
An advantage of this scheme is that the party interested in the other
peer's liveliness begins the message exchange. In Scenario 1, peer A
is interested in peer B's liveliness, and peer A consequently sends
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the HELLO. It is conceivable in such a scheme that peer B would
never be interested in peer A's liveliness. In such a case, the onus
would always lie on peer A to initiate the exchange.
4.2. Heartbeats:
By contrast, consider a proof-of-liveliness scheme involving
unidirectional (unacknowledged) messages. An entity interested in
its peer's liveliness would rely on the peer itself to send periodic
messages demonstrating liveliness. In such a scheme, the message
exchange might look like this:
Scenario 3: Peer A and Peer B are interested in each other's
liveliness. Each peer depends on the other to send periodic HELLOs.
Peer A: Peer B:
10 second timer fires; ------>
sends HELLO. Timer also
signals expectation of
B's HELLO.
Receives HELLO as proof of A's
liveliness.
<------ 10 second timer fires; sends
HELLO.
Receives HELLO as proof
of B's liveliness.
Scenario 4:
Peer A fails to receive HELLO from B and marks the peer dead. This
is how an entity detects its peer is dead.
Peer A: Peer B (dead):
10 second timer fires; ------X
sends HELLO. Timer also
signals expectation of
B's HELLO.
---
Some time passes and A assumes B is dead.
The disadvantage of this scheme is the reliance upon the peer to
demonstrate liveliness. To this end, peer B might never be
interested in peer A's liveliness. Nonetheless, if A is interested
B's liveliness, B must be aware of this, and maintain the necessary
state information to send periodic HELLOs to A. The disadvantage of
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such a scheme becomes clear in the remote-access scenario. Consider
a VPN aggregator that terminates a large number of sessions (on the
order of 50,000 peers or so). Each peer requires fairly rapid
failover, therefore requiring the aggregator to send HELLO packets
every 10 seconds or so. Such a scheme simply lacks scalability, as
the aggregator must send 50,000 messages every few seconds.
In both of these schemes (keepalives and heartbeats), some
negotiation of message interval must occur, so that each entity can
know how often its peer expects a HELLO. This immediately adds a
degree of complexity. Similarly, the need to send periodic messages
(regardless of other IPSec/IKE activity), also increases
computational overhead to the system.
5. DPD Protocol
DPD addresses the shortcomings of IKE keepalives- and heartbeats-
schemes by introducing a more reasonable logic governing message
exchange. Essentially, keepalives and heartbeats mandate exchange of
HELLOs at regular intervals. By contrast, with DPD, each peer's DPD
state is largely independent of the other's. A peer is free to
request proof of liveliness when it needs it -- not at mandated
intervals. This asynchronous property of DPD exchanges allows fewer
messages to be sent, and this is how DPD achieves greater
scalability.
As an elaboration, consider two DPD peers A and B. If there is
ongoing valid IPSec traffic between the two, there is little need for
proof of liveliness. The IPSec traffic itself serves as the proof of
liveliness. If, on the other hand, a period of time lapses during
which no packet exchange occurs, the liveliness of each peer is
questionable. Knowledge of the peer's liveliness, however, is only
urgently necessary if there is traffic to be sent. For example, if
peer A has some IPSec packets to send after the period of idleness,
it will need to know if peer B is still alive. At this point, peer A
can initiate the DPD exchange.
To this end, each peer may have different requirements for detecting
proof of liveliness. Peer A, for example, may require rapid
failover, whereas peer B's requirements for resource cleanup are less
urgent. In DPD, each peer can define its own "worry metric" - an
interval that defines the urgency of the DPD exchange. Continuing the
example, peer A might define its DPD interval to be 10 seconds.
Then, if peer A sends outbound IPSec traffic, but fails to receive
any inbound traffic for 10 seconds, it can initiate a DPD exchange.
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Peer B, on the other hand, defines its less urgent DPD interval to be
5 minutes. If the IPSec session is idle for 5 minutes, peer B can
initiate a DPD exchange the next time it sends IPSec packets to A.
It is important to note that the decision about when to initiate a
DPD exchange is implementation specific. An implementation might
even define the DPD messages to be at regular intervals following
idle periods. See section 5.5 for more implementation suggestions.
5.1. DPD Vendor ID
To demonstrate DPD capability, an entity must send the DPD vendor ID.
Both peers of an IKE session MUST send the DPD vendor ID before DPD
exchanges can begin. The format of the DPD Vendor ID is:
1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
! !M!M!
! HASHED_VENDOR_ID !J!N!
! !R!R!
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
where HASHED_VENDOR_ID = {0xAF, 0xCA, 0xD7, 0x13, 0x68, 0xA1, 0xF1,
0xC9, 0x6B, 0x86, 0x96, 0xFC, 0x77, 0x57}, and MJR and MNR correspond
to the current major and minor version of this protocol (1 and 0
respectively). An IKE peer MUST send the Vendor ID if it wishes to
take part in DPD exchanges.
5.2. Message Exchanges
The DPD exchange is a bidirectional (HELLO/ACK) Notify message. The
exchange is defined as:
Sender Responder
-------- -----------
HDR*, NOTIFY(R-U-THERE), HASH ------>
<------ HDR*, NOTIFY(R-U-THERE-
ACK), HASH
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The R-U-THERE message corresponds to a "HELLO" and the R-U-THERE-ACK
corresponds to an "ACK." Both messages are simply ISAKMP Notify
payloads, and as such, this document defines these two new ISAKMP
Notify message types:
Notify Message Value
R-U-THERE 36136
R-U-THERE-ACK 36137
An entity that has sent the DPD Vendor ID MUST respond to an R-U-
THERE query. Furthermore, an entity MUST reject unencrypted R-U-
THERE and R-U-THERE-ACK messages.
5.3. NOTIFY(R-U-THERE/R-U-THERE-ACK) Message Format
When sent, the R-U-THERE message MUST take the following form:
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
! Next Payload ! RESERVED ! Payload Length !
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
! Domain of Interpretation (DOI) !
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
! Protocol-ID ! SPI Size ! Notify Message Type !
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
! !
~ Security Parameter Index (SPI) ~
! !
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
! Notification Data !
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
As this message is an ISAKMP NOTIFY, the Next Payload, RESERVED, and
Payload Length fields should be set accordingly. The remaining
fields are set as:
- Domain of Interpretation (4 octets) - SHOULD be set to IPSEC-DOI.
- Protocol ID (1 octet) - MUST be set to the protocol ID for ISAKMP.
- SPI Size (1 octet) - SHOULD be set to sixteen (16), the length of
two octet-sized ISAKMP cookies.
- Notify Message Type (2 octets) - MUST be set to R-U-THERE
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- Security Parameter Index (16 octets) - SHOULD be set to the
cookies of the Initiator and Responder of the IKE SA (in that
order)
- Notification Data (4 octets) - MUST be set to the sequence number
corresponding to this message
The format of the R-U-THERE-ACK message is the same, with the
exception that the Notify Message Type MUST be set to R-U-THERE-ACK.
Again, the Notification Data MUST be sent to the sequence number
corresponding to the received R-U-THERE message.
5.4. Impetus for DPD Exchange
Again, rather than relying on some negotiated time interval to force
the exchange of messages, DPD does not mandate the exchange of R-U-
THERE messages at any time. Instead, an IKE peer SHOULD send an R-
U-THERE query to its peer only if it is interested in the liveliness
of this peer. To this end, if traffic is regularly exchanged between
two peers, either peer SHOULD use this traffic as proof of
liveliness, and both peers SHOULD NOT initiate a DPD exchange.
A peer MUST keep track of the state of a given DPD exchange. That
is, once it has sent an R-U-THERE query, it expects an ACK in
response within some implementation-defined period of time. An
implementation SHOULD retransmit R-U-THERE queries when it fails to
receive an ACK. After some number of retransmitted messages, an
implementation SHOULD assume its peer to be unreachable and delete
IPSec and IKE SAs to the peer.
5.5. Implementation Suggestion
Since the liveliness of a peer is only questionable when no traffic
is exchanged, a viable implementation might begin by monitoring
idleness. Along these lines, a peer's liveliness is only important
when there is outbound traffic to be sent. To this end, an
implementation can initiate a DPD exchange (i.e., send an R-U-THERE
message) when there has been some period of idleness, followed by the
desire to send outbound traffic. Likewise, an entity can initiate a
DPD exchange if it has sent outbound IPSec traffic, but not received
any inbound IPSec packets in response. A complete DPD exchange
(i.e., transmission of R-U-THERE and receipt of corresponding R-U-
THERE-ACK) will serve as proof of liveliness until the next idle
period.
Again, since DPD does not mandate any interval, this "idle period"
(or "worry metric") is left as an implementation decision. It is not
a negotiated value.
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5.6. Comparisons
The performance benefit that DPD offers over traditional keepalives-
and heartbeats-schemes comes from the fact that regular messages do
not need to be sent. Returning to the examples presented in section
4.1, a keepalive implementation such as the one presented would
require one timer to signal when to send a HELLO message and another
timer to "timeout" the ACK from the peer (this could also be the
retransmit timer). Similarly, a heartbeats scheme such as the one
presented in section 4.2 would need to keep one timer to signal when
to send a HELLO, as well as another timer to signal the expectation
of a HELLO from the peer. By contrast a DPD scheme needs to keep a
timestamp to keep track of the last received traffic from the peer
(thus marking beginning of the "idle period"). Once a DPD R-U-THERE
message has been sent, an implementation need only maintain a timer
to signal retransmission. Thus, the need to maintain active timer
state is reduced, resulting in a scalability improvement (assuming
maintaining a timestamp is less costly than an active timer).
Furthermore, since a DPD exchange only occurs if an entity has not
received traffic recently from its peer, the number of IKE messages
to be sent and processed is also reduced. As a consequence, the
scalability of DPD is much better than keepalives and heartbeats.
DPD maintains the HELLO/ACK model presented by keepalives, as it
follows that an exchange is initiated only by an entity interested in
the liveliness of its peer.
6. Resistance to Replay Attack and False Proof of Liveliness
6.1. Sequence Number in DPD Messages
To guard against message replay attacks and false proof of
liveliness, a 32-bit sequence number MUST be presented with each R-
U-THERE message. A responder to an R-U-THERE message MUST send an
R-U-THERE-ACK with the same sequence number. Upon receipt of the R-
U-THERE-ACK message, the initial sender SHOULD check the validity of
the sequence number. The initial sender SHOULD reject the R-U-
THERE-ACK if the sequence number fails to match the one sent with the
R-U-THERE message.
Additionally, both the receiver of the R-U-THERE and the R-U-THERE-
ACK message SHOULD check the validity of the Initiator and Responder
cookies presented in the SPI field of the payload.
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6.2. Selection and Maintenance of Sequence Numbers
As both DPD peers can initiate a DPD exchange (i.e., both peers can
send R-U-THERE messages), each peer MUST maintain its own sequence
number for R-U-THERE messages. The first R-U-THERE message sent in a
session MUST be a randomly chosen number. To prevent rolling past
overflowing the 32-bit boundary, the high-bit of the sequence number
initially SHOULD be set to zero. Subsequent R-U-THERE messages MUST
increment the sequence number by one. Sequence numbers MAY reset at
the expiry of the IKE SA, moving to a newly chosen random number.
Each entity SHOULD also maintain its peer's R-U-THERE sequence
number, and an entity SHOULD reject the R-U-THERE message if it fails
to match the expected sequence number.
Implementations MAY maintain a window of acceptable sequence numbers,
but this specification makes no assumptions about how this is done.
Again, it is an implementation specific detail.
7. Security Considerations
As the previous section highlighted, DPD uses sequence numbers to
ensure liveliness. This section describes the advantages of using
sequence numbers over random nonces to ensure liveliness.
While sequence numbers do require entities to keep per-peer state,
they also provide an added method of protection in certain replay
attacks. Consider a case where peer A sends peer B a valid DPD R-U-
THERE message. An attacker C can intercept this message and flood B
with multiple copies of the messages. B will have to decrypt and
process each packet (regardless of whether sequence numbers or nonces
are in use). With sequence numbers B can detect that the packets are
replayed: the sequence numbers in these replayed packets will not
match the incremented sequence number that B expects to receive from
A. This prevents B from needing to build, encrypt, and send ACKs.
By contrast, if the DPD protocol used nonces, it would provide no way
for B to detect that the messages are replayed (unless B maintained a
list of recently received nonces).
Another benefit of sequence numbers is that it adds an extra
assurance of the peer's liveliness. As long as a receiver verifies
the validity of a DPD R-U-THERE message (by verifying its incremented
sequence number), then the receiver can be assured of the peer's
liveliness by the very fact that the sender initiated the query.
Nonces, by contrast, cannot provide this assurance.
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8. IANA Considerations
There is no IANA action required for this document. DPD uses notify
numbers from the private range.
9. References
9.1. Normative Reference
[1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
9.2. Informative References
[2] Harkins, D. and D. Carrel, "The Internet Key Exchange (IKE)",
RFC 2409, November 1998.
[3] Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for the
Internet Protocol", RFC 2401, November 1998.
10. Editors' Addresses
Geoffrey Huang
Cisco Systems, Inc.
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
Phone: (408) 525-5354
EMail: ghuang@cisco.com
Stephane Beaulieu
Cisco Systems, Inc.
2000 Innovation Drive
Kanata, ON
Canada, K2K 3E8
Phone: (613) 254-3678
EMail: stephane@cisco.com
Dany Rochefort
Cisco Systems, Inc.
124 Grove Street, Suite 205
Franklin, MA 02038
Phone: (508) 553-8644
EMail: danyr@cisco.com
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11. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). This document is subject
to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78 and
except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE
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INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
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Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
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RFC, FYI, BCP