Network Working Group P. Nikander, Ed.
Request for Comments: 3756 Ericsson Research Nomadic Lab
Category: Informational J. Kempf
DoCoMo USA Labs
E. Nordmark
Sun Microsystems Laboratories
May 2004
IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND) Trust Models and Threats
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
The existing IETF standards specify that IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND)
and Address Autoconfiguration mechanisms may be protected with IPsec
Authentication Header (AH). However, the current specifications
limit the security solutions to manual keying due to practical
problems faced with automatic key management. This document
specifies three different trust models and discusses the threats
pertinent to IPv6 Neighbor Discovery. The purpose of this discussion
is to define the requirements for Securing IPv6 Neighbor Discovery.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Previous Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Trust Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Corporate Intranet Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Public Wireless Network with an Operator. . . . . . . . . 6
3.3. Ad Hoc Network. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Threats on a (Public) Multi-Access Link. . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1. Non router/routing related threats. . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1.1. Neighbor Solicitation/Advertisement Spoofing . . . 9
4.1.2. Neighbor Unreachability Detection (NUD) failure. . 10
4.1.3. Duplicate Address Detection DoS Attack . . . . . . 11
4.2. Router/routing involving threats. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2.1. Malicious Last Hop Router. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
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4.2.2. Default router is 'killed' . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2.3. Good Router Goes Bad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.4. Spoofed Redirect Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.5. Bogus On-Link Prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.6. Bogus Address Configuration Prefix . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.7. Parameter Spoofing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.3. Replay attacks and remotely exploitable attacks . . . . . 17
4.3.1. Replay attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3.2. Neighbor Discovery DoS Attack. . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.4. Summary of the attacks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
7. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1. Introduction
The IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND) RFC 2461 [2] and Address
Autoconfiguration RFC 2462 [3] mechanisms are used by nodes in an
IPv6 network to learn the local topology, including the IP to MAC
address mappings for the local nodes, the IP and MAC addresses of the
routers present in the local network, and the routing prefixes served
by the local routers. The current specifications suggest that IPsec
AH RFC 2402 [1] may be used to secure the mechanisms, but does not
specify how. It appears that using current AH mechanisms is
problematic due to key management problems [8].
To solve the problem, the Secure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) working
group was chartered in Fall 2002. The goal of the working group is
to define protocol support for securing IPv6 Neighbor Discovery
without requiring excessive manual keying.
The purpose of this document is to define the types of networks in
which the Secure IPv6 Neighbor Discovery mechanisms are expected to
work, and the threats that the security protocol(s) must address. To
fulfill this purpose, this document first defines three different
trust models, roughly corresponding to secured corporate intranets,
public wireless access networks, and pure ad hoc networks. After
that, a number of threats are discussed in the light of these trust
models. The threat catalog is aimed to be exhaustive, but it is
likely that some threats are still missing. Thus, ideas for new
threats to consider are solicited.
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1.1. Remarks
Note that the SEND WG charter limits the scope of the working group
to secure Neighbor Discovery functions. Furthermore, the charter
explicitly mentions zero configuration as a fundamental goal behind
Neighbor Discovery. Network access authentication and access control
are outside the scope of this work.
During the discussions while preparing this document, the following
aspects that may help to evaluate the eventual solutions were
mentioned.
Zero configuration
Interaction with access control solutions
Scalability
Efficiency
However, the main evaluation criteria are formed by the trust models
and threat lists. In other words, the solutions are primarily
evaluated by seeing how well they secure the networks against the
identified threats, and only secondarily from the configuration,
access control, scalability, and efficiently point of view.
IMPORTANT. This document occasionally discusses solution proposals,
such as Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGA) [7] and Address
Based Keys (ABK) [6]. However, such discussion is solely for
illustrative purposes. Its purpose is to give the readers a more
concrete idea of *some* possible solutions. Such discussion does NOT
indicate any preference on solutions on the behalf of the authors or
the working group.
It should be noted that the term "trust" is used in this document in
a rather non-technical manner. The most appropriate interpretation
is to consider it as an expression of an organizational or collective
belief, i.e., an expression of commonly shared beliefs about the
future behavior of the other involved parties. Conversely, the term
"trust relationship" denotes a mutual a priori relationship between
the involved organizations or parties where the parties believe that
the other parties will behave correctly even in the future. A trust
relationship makes it possible to configure authentication and
authorization information between the parties, while the lack of such
a relationship makes it impossible to pre-configure such information.
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2. Previous Work
The RFCs that specify the IPv6 Neighbor Discovery and Address
Autoconfiguration protocols [2] [3] contain the required discussion
of security in a Security Considerations section. Some of the
threats identified in this document were raised in the original RFCs.
The recommended remedy was to secure the involved packets with an
IPsec AH [1] header. However, that recommendation oversimplifies the
problem by leaving the AH key management for future work. For
example, a host attempting to gain access to a Public Access network
may or may not have the required IPsec security associations set up
with the network. In a roaming (but not necessarily mobile)
situation, where a user is currently accessing the network through a
service provider different from the home provider, it is not likely
that the host will have been preconfigured with the proper mutual
trust relationship for the foreign provider's network, allowing it to
directly authenticate the network and get itself authenticated.
As of today, any IPsec security association between the host and the
last hop routers or other hosts on the link would need to be
completely manually preconfigured, since the Neighbor Discovery and
Address Autoconfiguration protocols deal to some extent with how a
host obtains initial access to a link. Thus, if a security
association is required for initial access and the host does not have
that association, there is currently no standard way that the host
can dynamically configure itself with that association, even if it
has the necessary minimum prerequisite keying material. This
situation could induce administration hardships when events such as
re-keying occur.
In addition, Neighbor Discovery and Address Autoconfiguration use a
few fixed multicast addresses plus a range of 16 million "solicited
node" multicast addresses. A naive application of pre-configured SAs
would require pre-configuring an unmanageable number of SAs on each
host and router just in case a given solicited node multicast address
is used. Preconfigured SAs are impractical for securing such a large
potential address range.
3. Trust Models
When considering various security solutions for the IPv6 Neighbor
Discovery (ND) [2], it is important to keep in mind the underlying
trust models. The trust models defined in this section are used
later in this document, when discussing specific threats.
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In the following, the RFC 2461/RFC 2462 mechanisms are loosely
divided into two categories: Neighbor Discovery (ND) and Router
Discovery (RD). The former denotes operations that do not primarily
involve routers while the operations in the latter category do.
Three different trust models are specified:
1. A model where all authenticated nodes trust each other to behave
correctly at the IP layer and not to send any ND or RD messages
that contain false information. This model is thought to
represent a situation where the nodes are under a single
administration and form a closed or semi-closed group. A
corporate intranet is a good example.
2. A model where there is a router trusted by the other nodes in the
network to be a legitimate router that faithfully routes packets
between the local network and any connected external networks.
Furthermore, the router is trusted to behave correctly at the IP
layer and not to send any ND or RD messages that contain false
information.
This model is thought to represent a public network run by an
operator. The clients pay to the operator, have its credentials,
and trust it to provide the IP forwarding service. The clients
do not trust each other to behave correctly; any other client
node must be considered able to send falsified ND and RD
messages.
3. A model where the nodes do not directly trust each other at the
IP layer. This model is considered suitable for e.g., ad hoc
networks.
Note that even though the nodes are assumed to trust each other in
the first trust model (corporate intranet), it is still desirable to
limit the extent of damage a node is able to inflict to the local
network if it becomes compromised.
3.1. Corporate Intranet Model
In a corporate intranet or other network where all nodes are under
one administrative domain, the nodes may be considered to be reliable
at the IP layer. Thus, once a node has been accepted to be a member
of the network, it is assumed to behave in a trustworthy manner.
Under this model, if the network is physically secured or if the link
layer is cryptographically secured to the extent needed, no other
protection is needed for IPv6 ND, as long as none of the nodes become
compromised. For example, a wired LAN with 802.1x access control or
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a WLAN with 802.11i Robust Security Network (RSN) with AES encryption
may be considered secure enough, requiring no further protection
under this trust model. On the other hand, ND security would add
protection depth even under this model (see below). Furthermore, one
should not overestimate the level of security any L2 mechanism is
able to provide.
If the network is not physically secured and the link layer does not
have cryptographic protection, or if the cryptographic protection is
not secure enough (e.g., just 802.1x and not 802.11i in a WLAN), the
nodes in the network may be vulnerable to some or all of the threats
outlined in Section 4. In such a case some protection is desirable
to secure ND. Providing such protection falls within the main
initial focus of the SEND working group.
Furthermore, it is desirable to limit the amount of potential damage
in the case a node becomes compromised. For example, it might still
be acceptable that a compromised node is able to launch a denial-of-
service attack, but it is undesirable if it is able to hijack
existing connections or establish man-in-the-middle attacks on new
connections.
As mentioned in Section 2, one possibility to secure ND would be to
use IPsec AH with symmetric shared keys, known by all trusted nodes
and by no outsiders. However, none of the currently standardized
automatic key distribution mechanisms work right out-of-the-box. For
further details, see [8]. Furthermore, using a shared key would not
protect against a compromised node.
More specifically, the currently used key agreement protocol, IKE,
suffers from a chicken-and-egg problem [8]: one needs an IP address
to run IKE, IKE is needed to establish IPsec SAs, and IPsec SAs are
required to configure an IP address. Furthermore, there does not
seem to be any easy and efficient ways of securing ND with symmetric
key cryptography. The required number of security associations would
be very large [9].
As an example, one possible approach to overcome this limitation is
to use public key cryptography, and to secure ND packets directly
with public key signatures.
3.2. Public Wireless Network with an Operator
A scenario where an operator runs a public wireless (or wireline)
network, e.g., a WLAN in a hotel, airport, or cafe, has a different
trust model. Here the nodes may be assumed to trust the operator to
provide the IP forwarding service in a trustworthy manner, and not to
disrupt or misdirect the clients' traffic. However, the clients do
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not usually trust each other. Typically the router (or routers) fall
under one administrative domain, and the client nodes each fall under
their own administrative domain.
It is assumed that under this scenario the operator authenticates all
the client nodes, or at least requires authorization in the form of a
payment. At the same time, the clients must be able to authenticate
the router and make sure that it belongs to the trusted operator.
Depending on the link-layer authentication protocol and its
deployment, the link layer may take care of the mutual
authentication. The link-layer authentication protocol may allow the
client nodes and the access router to create a security association.
Note that there exist authentication protocols, e.g., particular EAP
methods, that do not create secure keying material and/or do not
allow the client to authenticate the network.
In this scenario, cryptographically securing the link layer does not
necessarily block all the threats outlined in Section 4; see the
individual threat descriptions. Specifically, even in 802.11i RSN
with AES encryption the broadcast and multicast keys are shared
between all nodes. Even if the underlying link layer was aware of
all the nodes' link-layer addresses, and were able to check that no
source addresses were falsified, there would still be
vulnerabilities.
One should also note that link-layer security and IP topology do not
necessarily match. For example, the wireless access point may not be
visible at the IP layer at all. In such a case cryptographic
security at the link layer does not provide any security with regard
to IP Neighbor Discovery.
There seems to be at least two ways to bring in security into this
scenario. One possibility seems to be to enforce strong security
between the clients and the access router, and make the access router
aware of the IP and link-layer protocol details. That is, the router
would check ICMPv6 packet contents, and filter packets that contain
information which does not match the network topology. The other
possibly acceptable way is to add cryptographic protection to the
ICMPv6 packets carrying ND messages.
3.3. Ad Hoc Network
In an ad hoc network, or any network without a trusted operator, none
of the nodes trust each other. In a generic case, the nodes meet
each other for the first time, and there are no guarantees that the
other nodes would behave correctly at the IP layer. They must be
considered suspicious to send falsified ND and RD messages.
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Since there are no a priori trust relationships, the nodes cannot
rely on traditional authentication. That is, the traditional
authentication protocols rely on some existing relationship between
the parties. The relationship may be direct or indirect. The
indirect case relies on one or more trusted third parties, thereby
creating a chain of trust relationships between the parties.
In the generic ad hoc network case, there are no trusted third
parties, nor do the parties trust each other directly. Thus, the
traditional means of first authenticating and then authorizing the
users (to use their addresses) do not work.
It is still possible to use self-identifying mechanisms, such as
Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGA) [7]. These allow the
nodes to ensure that they are talking to the same nodes (as before)
at all times, and that each of the nodes indeed have generated their
IP address themselves and not "stolen" someone else's address. It
may also be possible to learn the identities of any routers using
various kinds of heuristics, such as testing the node's ability to
convey cryptographically protected traffic towards a known and
trusted node somewhere in the Internet. Methods like these seem to
mitigate (but not completely block) some of the attacks outlined in
the next section.
4. Threats on a (Public) Multi-Access Link
In this section we discuss threats against the current IPv6 Neighbor
Discovery mechanisms, when used in multi-access links. The threats
are discussed in the light of the trust models defined in the
previous section.
There are three general types of threats:
1. Redirect attacks in which a malicious node redirects packets away
from the last hop router or other legitimate receiver to another
node on the link.
2. Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, in which a malicious node
prevents communication between the node under attack and all
other nodes, or a specific destination address.
3. Flooding Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, in which a malicious
node redirects other hosts' traffic to a victim node, and thereby
creates a flood of bogus traffic at the victim host.
A redirect attack can be used for DoS purposes by having the node to
which the packets were redirected drop the packets, either completely
or by selectively forwarding some of them and not others.
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The subsections below identify specific threats for IPv6 network
access. The threat descriptions are organized in three subsections.
We first consider threats that do not involve routers or routing
information. We next consider threats that do involve routers or
routing information. Finally, we consider replay attacks and threats
that are remotely exploitable. All threats are discussed in the
light of the trust models.
4.1. Non router/routing related threats
In this section we discuss attacks against "pure" Neighbor Discovery
functions, i.e., Neighbor Discovery (ND), Neighbor Unreachability
Detection (NUD), and Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) in Address
Autoconfiguration.
4.1.1. Neighbor Solicitation/Advertisement Spoofing
Nodes on the link use Neighbor Solicitation and Advertisement
messages to create bindings between IP addresses and MAC addresses.
More specifically, there are two cases when a node creates neighbor
cache entries upon receiving Solicitations:
1. A node receives a Neighbor Solicitation that contains a node's
address. The node can use that to populate its neighbor cache.
This is basically a performance optimization, and a SHOULD in the
base documents.
2. During Duplicate Address Detection (DAD), if a node receives a
Neighbor Solicitation for the same address it is soliciting for,
the situation is considered a collision, and the node must cease
to solicit for the said address.
In contrast to solicitation messages that create or modify state only
in these specific occasions, state is usually modified whenever a
node receives a solicited-for advertisement message.
An attacking node can cause packets for legitimate nodes, both hosts
and routers, to be sent to some other link-layer address. This can
be done by either sending a Neighbor Solicitation with a different
source link-layer address option, or sending a Neighbor Advertisement
with a different target link-layer address option.
The attacks succeed because the Neighbor Cache entry with the new
link-layer address overwrites the old. If the spoofed link-layer
address is a valid one, as long as the attacker responds to the
unicast Neighbor Solicitation messages sent as part of the Neighbor
Unreachability Detection, packets will continue to be redirected.
This is a redirect/DoS attack.
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This mechanism can be used for a DoS attack by specifying an unused
link-layer address; however, this DoS attack is of limited duration
since after 30-50 seconds (with default timer values) the Neighbor
Unreachability Detection mechanism will discard the bad link-layer
address and multicast anew to discover the link-layer address. As a
consequence, the attacker will need to keep responding with
fabricated link-layer addresses if it wants to maintain the attack
beyond the timeout.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Neighbor
Solicitation and Neighbor Advertisement messages.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised, the other nodes are
exposed to this threat. In the case where just the operator is
trusted, the nodes may rely on the operator to certify the address
bindings for other local nodes. From the security point of view, the
router may act as a trusted proxy for the other nodes. This assumes
that the router can be trusted to represent correctly the other nodes
on the link. In the ad hoc network case, and optionally in the other
two cases, the nodes may use self certifying techniques (e.g., CGA)
to authorize address bindings.
Additionally, some implementations log an error and refuse to accept
ND overwrites, instead requiring the old entry to time out first.
4.1.2. Neighbor Unreachability Detection (NUD) failure
Nodes on the link monitor the reachability of local destinations and
routers with the Neighbor Unreachability Detection procedure [2].
Normally the nodes rely on upper-layer information to determine
whether peer nodes are still reachable. However, if there is a
sufficiently long delay on upper-layer traffic, or if the node stops
receiving replies from a peer node, the NUD procedure is invoked.
The node sends a targeted NS to the peer node. If the peer is still
reachable, it will reply with a NA. However, if the soliciting node
receives no reply, it tries a few more times, eventually deleting the
neighbor cache entry. If needed, this triggers the standard address
resolution protocol to learn the new MAC address. No higher level
traffic can proceed if this procedure flushes out neighbor cache
entries after determining (perhaps incorrectly) that the peer is not
reachable.
A malicious node may keep sending fabricated NAs in response to NUD
NS messages. Unless the NA messages are somehow protected, the
attacker may be able to extend the attack for a long time using this
technique. The actual consequences depend on why the node become
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unreachable for the first place, and how the target node would behave
if it knew that the node has become unreachable. This is a DoS
attack.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Neighbor
Solicitation/Advertisement messages.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised, the other nodes are
exposed to this DoS threat. Under the two other trust models, a
solution requires that the node performing NUD is able to make a
distinction between genuine and fabricated NA responses.
4.1.3. Duplicate Address Detection DoS Attack
In networks where the entering hosts obtain their addresses using
stateless address autoconfiguration [3], an attacking node could
launch a DoS attack by responding to every duplicate address
detection attempt made by an entering host. If the attacker claims
the address, then the host will never be able to obtain an address.
The attacker can claim the address in two ways: it can either reply
with an NS, simulating that it is performing DAD, too, or it can
reply with an NA, simulating that it has already taken the address
into use. This threat was identified in RFC 2462 [3]. The issue may
also be present when other types of address configuration is used,
i.e., whenever DAD is invoked prior to actually configuring the
suggested address. This is a DoS attack.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Neighbor
Solicitation/Advertisement messages.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised, the other nodes
become exposed to this DoS threat. Under the two other trust models,
a solution requires that the node performing DAD is able to verify
whether the sender of the NA response is authorized to use the given
IP address or not. In the trusted operator case, the operator may
act as an authorizer, keeping track of allocated addresses and making
sure that no node has allocated more than a few (hundreds of)
addresses. On the other hand, it may be detrimental to adopt such a
practice, since there may be situations where it is desirable for one
node to have a large number of addresses, e.g., creating a separate
address per TCP connection, or when running an ND proxy. Thus, it
may be inappropriate to suggest that ISPs could control how many
addresses a legitimate host can have; the discussion above must be
considered only as examples, as stated in the beginning of this
document.
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In the ad hoc network case one may want to structure the addresses in
such a way that self authorization is possible.
4.2. Router/routing involving threats
In this section we consider threats pertinent to router discovery or
other router assisted/related mechanisms.
4.2.1. Malicious Last Hop Router
This threat was identified in [5] but was classified as a general
IPv6 threat and not specific to Mobile IPv6. It is also identified
in RFC 2461 [2]. This threat is a redirect/DoS attack.
An attacking node on the same subnet as a host attempting to discover
a legitimate last hop router could masquerade as an IPv6 last hop
router by multicasting legitimate-looking IPv6 Router Advertisements
or unicasting Router Advertisements in response to multicast Router
Advertisement Solicitations from the entering host. If the entering
host selects the attacker as its default router, the attacker has the
opportunity to siphon off traffic from the host, or mount a man-in-
the-middle attack. The attacker could ensure that the entering host
selected itself as the default router by multicasting periodic Router
Advertisements for the real last hop router having a lifetime of
zero. This may spoof the entering host into believing that the real
access router is not willing to take any traffic. Once accepted as a
legitimate router, the attacker could send Redirect messages to
hosts, then disappear, thus covering its tracks.
This threat is partially mitigated in RFC 2462; in Section 5.5.3 of
RFC 2462 it is required that if the advertised prefix lifetime is
less than 2 hours and less than the stored lifetime, the stored
lifetime is not reduced unless the packet was authenticated.
However, the default router selection procedure, as defined in
Section 6.3.6. of RFC 2461, does not contain such a rule.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Router Advertisement
and Router Advertisement Solicitation messages.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised, the other nodes are
exposed to this threat. However, the threat can be partially
mitigated through a number of means, for example, by configuring the
nodes to prefer existing routers over new ones. Note that this
approach does not necessarily prevent one from introducing new
routers into the network, depending on the details of implementation.
At minimum, it just makes the existing nodes to prefer the existing
routers over the new ones.
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In the case of a trusted operator, there must be a means for the
nodes to make a distinction between trustworthy routers, run by the
operator, and other nodes. There are currently no widely accepted
solutions for the ad hoc network case, and the issue remains as a
research question.
4.2.2. Default router is 'killed'
In this attack, an attacker 'kills' the default router(s), thereby
making the nodes on the link to assume that all nodes are local. In
Section 5.2 of RFC 2461 [2] it is stated that "[if] the Default
Router List is empty, the sender assumes that the destination is on-
link." Thus, if the attacker is able to make a node to believe that
there are no default routers on the link, the node will try to send
the packets directly, using Neighbor Discovery. After that the
attacker can use NS/NA spoofing even against off-link destinations.
There are a few identified ways how an attacker can 'kill' the
default router(s). One is to launch a classic DoS attack against the
router so that it does not appear responsive any more. The other is
to send a spoofed Router Advertisement with a zero Router Lifetime
(see Section 6.3.4 of RFC 2461 [2]). However, see also the
discussion in Section 4.2.1, above.
This attack is mainly a DoS attack, but it could also be used to
redirect traffic to the next better router, which may be the
attacker.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Router Advertisement
messages. One variant of this threat may be possible by overloading
the router, without using any ND/RD messages.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised, the other nodes are
exposed to this threat. In the case of a trusted operator, there
must be a means for the nodes to make a distinction between
trustworthy routers, run by the operator, and other nodes. That
protects against spoofed Router Advertisements, but it does not
protect against router overloading. There are currently no widely
accepted solutions for the ad hoc network case, and the issue remains
as a research question.
Thanks to Alain Durand for identifying this threat.
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4.2.3. Good Router Goes Bad
In this attack, a router that previously was trusted is compromised.
The attacks available are the same as those discussed in Section
4.2.1. This is a redirect/DoS attack.
There are currently no known solutions for any of the presented three
trust models. On the other hand, on a multi-router link one could
imagine a solution involving revocation of router rights. The
situation remains as a research question.
4.2.4. Spoofed Redirect Message
The Redirect message can be used to send packets for a given
destination to any link-layer address on the link. The attacker uses
the link-local address of the current first-hop router in order to
send a Redirect message to a legitimate host. Since the host
identifies the message by the link-local address as coming from its
first hop router, it accepts the Redirect. As long as the attacker
responds to Neighbor Unreachability Detection probes to the link-
layer address, the Redirect will remain in effect. This is a
redirect/DoS attack.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Redirect messages.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised, the other nodes are
exposed to this threat. In the case of a trusted operator, there
must be a means for the nodes to make a distinction between
trustworthy routers, run by the operator, and other nodes. There are
currently no widely accepted solutions for the ad hoc network case,
and the issue remains as a research question.
4.2.5. Bogus On-Link Prefix
An attacking node can send a Router Advertisement message specifying
that some prefix of arbitrary length is on-link. If a sending host
thinks the prefix is on-link, it will never send a packet for that
prefix to the router. Instead, the host will try to perform address
resolution by sending Neighbor Solicitations, but the Neighbor
Solicitations will not result in a response, denying service to the
attacked host. This is a DoS attack.
The attacker can use an arbitrary lifetime on the bogus prefix
advertisement. If the lifetime is infinity, the sending host will be
denied service until it loses the state in its prefix list e.g., by
rebooting, or after the same prefix is advertised with a zero
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lifetime. The attack could also be perpetrated selectively for
packets destined to a particular prefix by using 128 bit prefixes,
i.e., full addresses.
Additionally, the attack may cause a denial-of-service by flooding
the routing table of the node. The node would not be able to
differentiate between legitimate on-link prefixes and bogus ones when
making decisions as to which ones are kept and which are dropped.
Inherently, any finite system must have some point at which new
received prefixes must be dropped rather than accepted.
This attack can be extended into a redirect attack if the attacker
replies to the Neighbor Solicitations with spoofed Neighbor
Advertisements, thereby luring the nodes on the link to send the
traffic to it or to some other node.
This threat involves Router Advertisement message. The extended
attack combines the attack defined in Section 4.1.1 and in this
section, and involves Neighbor Solicitation, Neighbor Advertisement,
and Router Advertisement messages.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised, the other nodes are
exposed to this threat. In the case of a trusted operator, there
must be a means for the nodes to make a distinction between
trustworthy routers, run by the operator, and other nodes. There are
currently no known solutions for the ad hoc network case, and the
issue remains as a research question.
As an example, one possible approach to limiting the damage of this
attack is to require advertised on-link prefixes be /64s (otherwise
it's easy to advertise something short like 0/0 and this attack is
very easy).
4.2.6. Bogus Address Configuration Prefix
An attacking node can send a Router Advertisement message specifying
an invalid subnet prefix to be used by a host for address
autoconfiguration. A host executing the address autoconfiguration
algorithm uses the advertised prefix to construct an address [3],
even though that address is not valid for the subnet. As a result,
return packets never reach the host because the host's source address
is invalid. This is a DoS attack.
This attack has the potential to propagate beyond the immediate
attacked host if the attacked host performs a dynamic update to the
DNS based on the bogus constructed address. DNS update [4] causes
the bogus address to be added to the host's address record in the
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DNS. Should this occur, applications performing name resolution
through the DNS obtain the bogus address and an attempt to contact
the host fails. However, well-written applications will fall back
and try the other addresses registered in DNS, which may be correct.
A distributed attacker can make the attack more severe by creating a
falsified reverse DNS entry that matches with the dynamic DNS entry
created by the target. Consider an attacker who has legitimate
access to a prefix , and a target who has an interface
ID . The attacker creates a reverse DNS entry for
:, pointing to the real domain name of the
target, e.g., "secure.target.com". Next the attacker advertises the
prefix at the target's link. The target will create an
address :, and update its DNS entry so that
"secure.target.com" points to :.
At this point "secure.target.com" points to
:, and : points to
"secure.target.com". This threat is mitigated by the fact that the
attacker can be traced since the owner of the is
available at the registries.
There is also a related possibility of advertising a target prefix as
an autoconfiguration prefix on a busy link, and then have all nodes
on this link try to communicate to the external world with this
address. If the local router doesn't have ingress filtering on, then
the target link may get a large number of replies for those initial
communication attempts.
The basic threat discussed in this subsection involves Router
Advertisement messages. The extended attack scenarios involve the
DNS, too.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised the other nodes are
exposed to this threat. In the case of a trusted operator, there
must be a means for the nodes to make a distinction between
trustworthy routers, run by the operator, and other nodes. There are
currently no known solutions for the ad hoc network case, and the
issue remains as a research question.
4.2.7. Parameter Spoofing
IPv6 Router Advertisements contain a few parameters used by hosts
when they send packets and to tell hosts whether or not they should
perform stateful address configuration [2]. An attacking node could
send out a valid-seeming Router Advertisement that duplicates the
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Router Advertisement from the legitimate default router, except the
included parameters are designed to disrupt legitimate traffic. This
is a DoS attack.
Specific attacks include:
1. The attacker includes a Current Hop Limit of one or another small
number which the attacker knows will cause legitimate packets to
be dropped before they reach their destination.
2. The attacker implements a bogus DHCPv6 server or relay and the
'M' and/or 'O' flag is set, indicating that stateful address
configuration and/or stateful configuration of other parameters
should be done. The attacker is then in a position to answer the
stateful configuration queries of a legitimate host with its own
bogus replies.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Router Advertisement
messages.
Note that securing DHCP alone does not resolve this problem. There
are two reasons for this. First, the attacker may prevent the node
from using DHCP in the first place. Second, depending on the node's
local configuration, the attacker may spoof the node to use a less
trusted DHCP server. (The latter is a variant of the so called
"bidding down" or "down grading" attacks.)
As an example, one possible approach to mitigate this threat is to
ignore very small hop limits. The nodes could implement a
configurable minimum hop limit, and ignore attempts to set it below
said limit.
This attack is not a concern if access to the link is restricted to
trusted nodes; if a trusted node is compromised the other nodes are
exposed to this treat. In the case of a trusted operator, there must
be a means for the nodes to make a distinction between trustworthy
routers, run by the operator, and other nodes. There are currently
no known solutions for the ad hoc network case, and the issue remains
a research question.
4.3. Replay attacks and remotely exploitable attacks
4.3.1. Replay attacks
All Neighbor Discovery and Router Discovery messages are prone to
replay attacks. That is, even if they were cryptographically
protected so that their contents cannot be forged, an attacker would
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be able to capture valid messages and replay them later. Thus,
independent on what mechanism is selected to secure the messages,
that mechanism must be protected against replay attacks.
Fortunately it is fairly easy to defeat most replay attacks. In
request-reply exchanges, such as Solicitation-Advertisement, the
request may contain a nonce that must appear also in the reply.
Thus, old replies are not valid since they do not contain the right
nonce. Correspondingly, stand-alone messages, such as unsolicited
Advertisements or Redirect messages, may be protected with timestamps
or counters. In practise, roughly synchronized clocks and timestamps
seem to work well, since the recipients may keep track of the
difference between the clocks of different nodes, and make sure that
all new messages are newer than the last seen message.
4.3.2. Neighbor Discovery DoS Attack
In this attack, the attacking node begins fabricating addresses with
the subnet prefix and continuously sending packets to them. The last
hop router is obligated to resolve these addresses by sending
neighbor solicitation packets. A legitimate host attempting to enter
the network may not be able to obtain Neighbor Discovery service from
the last hop router as it will be already busy with sending other
solicitations. This DoS attack is different from the others in that
the attacker may be off-link. The resource being attacked in this
case is the conceptual neighbor cache, which will be filled with
attempts to resolve IPv6 addresses having a valid prefix but invalid
suffix. This is a DoS attack.
The threat discussed in this subsection involves Neighbor
Solicitation messages.
This attack does not directly involve the trust models presented.
However, if access to the link is restricted to registered nodes, and
the access router keeps track of nodes that have registered for
access on the link, the attack may be trivially plugged. However, no
such mechanisms are currently standardized.
In a way, this problem is fairly similar to the TCP SYN flooding
problem. For example, rate limiting Neighbor Solicitations,
restricting the amount of state reserved for unresolved
solicitations, and clever cache management may be applied.
It should be noted that both hosts and routers need to worry about
this problem. The router case was discussed above. Hosts are also
vulnerable since the neighbor discovery process can potentially be
abused by an application that is tricked into sending packets to
arbitrary on-link destinations.
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4.4. Summary of the attacks
Columns:
N/R Neighbor Discovery (ND) or Router Discovery (RD) attack
R/D Redirect/DoS (Redir) or just DoS attack
Msgs Messages involved in the attack: NA, NS, RA, RS, Redir
1 Present in trust model 1 (corporate intranet)
2 Present in trust model 2 (public operator run network)
3 Present in trust model 3 (ad hoc network)
Symbols in trust model columns:
- The threat is not present or not a concern.
+ The threat is present and at least one solution is known.
R The threat is present but solving it is a research problem.
Note that the plus sign '+' in the table does not mean that there is
a ready-to-be-applied, standardized solution. If solutions existed,
this document would be unnecessary. Instead, it denotes that in the
authors' opinion the problem has been solved in principle, and there
exists a publication that describes some approach to solve the
problem, or a solution may be produced by straightforward application
of known research and/or engineering results.
In the other hand, and 'R' indicates that the authors' are not aware
of any publication describing a solution to the problem, and cannot
at the time of writing think about any simple and easy extension of
known research and/or engineering results to solve the problem.
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+-------+----------------------+-----+-------+-------+---+---+---+
| Sec | Attack name | N/R | R/D | Msgs | 1 | 2 | 3 |
+-------+----------------------+-----+-------+-------+---+---+---+
| 4.1.1 | NS/NA spoofing | ND | Redir | NA NS | + | + | + |
| 4.1.2 | NUD failure | ND | DoS | NA NS | - | + | + |
| 4.1.3 | DAD DoS | ND | DoS | NA NS | - | + | + |
+-------+----------------------+-----+-------+-------+---+---+---+
| 4.2.1 | Malicious router | RD | Redir | RA RS | + | + | R |
| 4.2.2 | Default router killed| RD | Redir | RA |+/R|+/R| R | 1)
| 4.2.3 | Good router goes bad | RD | Redir | RA RS | R | R | R |
| 4.2.4 | Spoofed redirect | RD | Redir | Redir | + | + | R |
| 4.2.5 | Bogus on-link prefix | RD | DoS | RA | - | + | R | 2)
| 4.2.6 | Bogus address config | RD | DoS | RA | - | + | R | 3)
| 4.2.7 | Parameter spoofing | RD | DoS | RA | - | + | R |
+-------+----------------------+-----+-------+-------+---+---+---+
| 4.3.1 | Replay attacks | All | Redir | All | + | + | + |
| 4.3.2 | Remote ND DoS | ND | DoS | NS | + | + | + |
+------------------------------+-----+-------+-------+---+---+---+
Figure 1
1. It is possible to protect the Router Advertisements, thereby
closing one variant of this attack. However, closing the other
variant (overloading the router) does not seem to be plausible
within the scope of this working group.
2. Note that the extended attack defined in Section 4.2.5 combines
sending a bogus on-link prefix and performing NS/NA spoofing as
per Section 4.1.1. Thus, if the NA/NS exchange is secured, the
ability to use Section 4.2.5 for redirect is most probably
blocked, too.
3. The bogus DNS registration resulting from blindly registering the
new address via DNS update [4] is not considered an ND security
issue here. However, it should be noted as a possible
vulnerability in implementations.
For a slightly different approach, see also Section 7 in [9].
Especially the table in Section 7.7 of [9] is very good.
5. Security Considerations
This document discusses security threats to network access in IPv6.
As such, it is concerned entirely with security.
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6. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Alper Yegin of DoCoMo Communications Laboratories USA for
identifying the Neighbor Discovery DoS attack. We would also like to
thank Tuomas Aura and Michael Roe of Microsoft Research Cambridge as
well as Jari Arkko and Vesa-Matti Mantyla of Ericsson Research
Nomadiclab for discussing some of the threats with us.
Thanks to Alper Yegin, Pekka Savola, Bill Sommerfeld, Vijay
Devaparalli, Dave Thaler, and Alain Durand for their constructive
comments.
Thanks to Craig Metz for his numerous very good comments, and
especially for more material of implementations that refuse to accept
ND overrides, for the bogus on-link prefix threat, and for reminding
us about replay attacks.
7. Informative References
[1] Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "IP Authentication Header", RFC 2402,
November 1998.
[2] Narten, T., Nordmark, E. and W. Simpson, "Neighbor Discovery
for IP Version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 2461, December 1998.
[3] Thomson, S. and T. Narten, "IPv6 Stateless Address
Autoconfiguration", RFC 2462, December 1998.
[4] Wellington, B., "Secure Domain Name System (DNS) Dynamic
Update", RFC 3007, November 2000.
[5] Mankin, A., "Threat Models introduced by Mobile IPv6 and
Requirements for Security in Mobile IPv6", Work in Progress.
[6] Kempf, J., Gentry, C. and A. Silverberg, "Securing IPv6
Neighbor Discovery Using Address Based Keys (ABKs)", Work in
Progress, June 2002.
[7] Roe, M., "Authentication of Mobile IPv6 Binding Updates and
Acknowledgments", Work in Progress, March 2002.
[8] Arkko, J., "Effects of ICMPv6 on IKE", Work in Progress, March
2003.
[9] Arkko, J., "Manual Configuration of Security Associations for
IPv6 Neighbor Discovery", Work in Progress, March 2003.
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Authors' Addresses
Pekka Nikander (editor)
Ericsson Research Nomadic Lab
JORVAS FIN-02420
FINLAND
Phone: +358 9 299 1
EMail: pekka.nikander@nomadiclab.com
James Kempf
DoCoMo USA Labs
181 Metro Drive, Suite 300
San Jose, CA 95110
USA
Phone: +1 408 451 4711
EMail: kempf@docomolabs-usa.com
Erik Nordmark
Sun Microsystems
17 Network Circle
Menlo Park, CA 94043
USA
Phone: +1 650 786 2921
EMail: erik.nordmark@sun.com
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Full Copyright Statement
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RFC, FYI, BCP