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IETF RFC 6379



Last modified on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                            L. Law
Request for Comments: 6379                                    J. Solinas
Obsoletes: 4869                                                      NSA
Category: Informational                                   October 2011
ISSN: 2070-1721


                 Suite B Cryptographic Suites for IPsec

 Abstract

   This document proposes four cryptographic user interface suites
   ("UI suites") for IP Security (IPsec), similar to the two suites
   specified in RFC 4308.  The four new suites provide compatibility
   with the United States National Security Agency's Suite B
   specifications.  This document obsoletes RFC 4869, which presented
   earlier versions of these suites.

 Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6379.

 Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.



Law & Solinas                 Informational                  PAGE 1 top


RFC 6379 Suite B Crypto for IPsec October 2011 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ....................................................2 2. Requirements Terminology ........................................2 3. New UI Suites ...................................................2 3.1. Suite "Suite-B-GCM-128" ....................................3 3.2. Suite "Suite-B-GCM-256" ....................................3 3.3. Suite "Suite-B-GMAC-128" ...................................4 3.4. Suite "Suite-B-GMAC-256" ...................................4 4. Security Considerations .........................................4 5. IANA Considerations .............................................5 6. Changes from RFC 4869 ...........................................5 7. References ......................................................5 7.1. Normative References .......................................5 7.2. Informative References .....................................6 1. Introduction [RFC 4308] proposes two optional cryptographic user interface suites ("UI suites") for IPsec. The two suites, VPN-A and VPN-B, represent commonly used present day corporate VPN security choices and anticipated future choices, respectively. [RFC 4869] proposed four new UI suites based on implementations of the United States National Security Agency's Suite B algorithms (see [SuiteB]). As with the VPN suites, the Suite B suites are simply collections of values for some options in IPsec. Use of UI suites does not change the IPsec protocols in any way. This document reduces the scope of the suites in [RFC 4869] while retaining the original suite names. A detailed list of the changes is given in Section 6. This document obsoletes RFC 4869. 2. Requirements Terminology 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]. 3. New UI Suites Each of the following UI suites provides choices for ESP (see [RFC 4303]) and for Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) (see [RFC 5996]). The four suites are differentiated by the choice of cryptographic algorithm strengths, and a choice of whether the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) is to provide both confidentiality and integrity or integrity only. The suite names are based on the Law & Solinas Informational PAGE 2 top

RFC 6379 Suite B Crypto for IPsec October 2011 Advanced Encryption Standard [AES] mode and AES key length specified for ESP. IPsec implementations that use these UI suites MUST use the suite names listed here. IPsec implementations SHOULD NOT use names different than those listed here for the suites that are described, and MUST NOT use the names listed here for suites that do not match these values. These requirements are necessary for interoperability. 3.1. Suite "Suite-B-GCM-128" This suite provides ESP integrity protection and confidentiality using 128-bit AES-GCM (see [RFC 4106]). This suite or the following suite should be used when ESP integrity protection and encryption are both needed. ESP: Encryption AES with 128-bit keys and 16-octet Integrity Check Value (ICV) in GCM mode [RFC 4106] Integrity NULL IKEv2: Encryption AES with 128-bit keys in CBC mode [RFC 3602] Pseudo-random function HMAC-SHA-256 [RFC 4868] Integrity HMAC-SHA-256-128 [RFC 4868] Diffie-Hellman group 256-bit random ECP group [RFC 5903] 3.2. Suite "Suite-B-GCM-256" This suite provides ESP integrity protection and confidentiality using 256-bit AES-GCM (see [RFC 4106]). This suite or the preceding suite should be used when ESP integrity protection and encryption are both needed. ESP: Encryption AES with 256-bit keys and 16-octet ICV in GCM mode [RFC 4106] Integrity NULL IKEv2: Encryption AES with 256-bit keys in CBC mode [RFC 3602] Pseudo-random function HMAC-SHA-384 [RFC 4868] Integrity HMAC-SHA-384-192 [RFC 4868] Diffie-Hellman group 384-bit random ECP group [RFC 5903] Law & Solinas Informational PAGE 3 top

RFC 6379 Suite B Crypto for IPsec October 2011 3.3. Suite "Suite-B-GMAC-128" This suite provides ESP integrity protection using 128-bit AES-GMAC (see [RFC 4543]) but does not provide confidentiality. This suite or the following suite should be used only when there is no need for ESP encryption. ESP: Encryption NULL Integrity AES with 128-bit keys in GMAC mode [RFC 4543] IKEv2: Encryption AES with 128-bit keys in CBC mode [RFC 3602] Pseudo-random function HMAC-SHA-256 [RFC 4868] Integrity HMAC-SHA-256-128 [RFC 4868] Diffie-Hellman group 256-bit random ECP group [RFC 5903] 3.4. Suite "Suite-B-GMAC-256" This suite provides ESP integrity protection using 256-bit AES-GMAC (see [RFC 4543]) but does not provide confidentiality. This suite or the preceding suite should be used only when there is no need for ESP encryption. ESP: Encryption NULL Integrity AES with 256-bit keys in GMAC mode [RFC 4543] IKEv2: Encryption AES with 256-bit keys in CBC mode [RFC 3602] Pseudo-random function HMAC-SHA-384 [RFC 4868] Integrity HMAC-SHA-384-192 [RFC 4868] Diffie-Hellman group 384-bit random ECP group [RFC 5903] 4. Security Considerations This document inherits all of the security considerations of the IPsec and IKEv2 documents. Some of the security options specified in these suites may be found in the future to have properties significantly weaker than those that were believed at the time this document was produced. Law & Solinas Informational PAGE 4 top

RFC 6379 Suite B Crypto for IPsec October 2011 5. IANA Considerations IANA maintains a registry called "Cryptographic Suites for IKEv1, IKEv2, and IPsec" (see [IANA-Suites]). The registry consists of a text string and an RFC number that lists the associated transforms. The four suites in this document have been listed with this document as the RFC reference. These entries will be updated upon approval of this document. The updated values for the registry are: Identifier Defined in Suite-B-GCM-128 RFC 6379 Suite-B-GCM-256 RFC 6379 Suite-B-GMAC-128 RFC 6379 Suite-B-GMAC-256 RFC 6379 6. Changes from RFC 4869 The changes from [RFC 4869] are: 1. Removed definitions of the suites for IKEv1. 2. Removed IKE authentication methods from the suite definitions. These now appear in [RFC 6380]. 3. Removed the requirements on rekeying in IKEv2. 7. References 7.1. Normative References [IANA-Suites] Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, "Cryptographic Suites for IKEv1, IKEv2, and IPsec", <http://www.iana.org/assignments/crypto-suites>. [RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC 3602] Frankel, S., Glenn, R., and S. Kelly, "The AES-CBC Cipher Algorithm and Its Use with IPsec", RFC 3602, September 2003. [RFC 4106] Viega, J. and D. McGrew, "The Use of Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) in IPsec Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)", RFC 4106, June 2005. Law & Solinas Informational PAGE 5 top

RFC 6379 Suite B Crypto for IPsec October 2011 [RFC 4303] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)", RFC 4303, December 2005. [RFC 4308] Hoffman, P., "Cryptographic Suites for IPsec", RFC 4308, December 2005. [RFC 4543] McGrew, D. and J. Viega, "The Use of Galois Message Authentication Code (GMAC) in IPsec ESP and AH", RFC 4543, May 2006. [RFC 4868] Kelly, S. and S. Frankel, "Using HMAC-SHA-256, HMAC- SHA-384, and HMAC-SHA-512 with IPsec", RFC 4868, May 2007. [RFC 4869] Law, L. and J. Solinas, "Suite B Cryptographic Suites for IPsec", RFC 4869, May 2007. [RFC 5903] Fu, D. and J. Solinas, "Elliptic Curve Groups modulo a Prime (ECP Groups) for IKE and IKEv2", RFC 5903, June 2010. [RFC 5996] Kaufman, C., Hoffman, P., Nir, Y., and P. Eronen, "Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)", RFC 5996, September 2010. 7.2. Informative References [AES] U.S. Department of Commerce/National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)", FIPS PUB 197, November 2001, <http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/index.html>. [RFC 6380] Burgin, K. and M. Peck, "Suite B Profile for Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)", RFC 6380, October 2011. [SuiteB] U.S. National Security Agency, "NSA Suite B Cryptography", January 2009, <http://www.nsa.gov/ ia/programs/suiteb_cryptography/>. Law & Solinas Informational PAGE 6 top

RFC 6379 Suite B Crypto for IPsec October 2011 Authors' Addresses Laurie E. Law National Security Agency EMail: lelaw@orion.ncsc.mil Jerome A. Solinas National Security Agency EMail: jasolin@orion.ncsc.mil Law & Solinas Informational PAGE 7 top

RFC TOTAL SIZE: 12624 bytes PUBLICATION DATE: Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)


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