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IETF RFC 8165
Last modified on Thursday, May 11th, 2017
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) T. Hardie
Request for Comments: 8165 May 2017
Category: Informational
ISSN: 2070-1721
Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion
 Abstract
The IAB published RFC 7624 in response to several revelations of
pervasive attacks on Internet communications. This document
considers the implications of protocol designs that associate
metadata with encrypted flows. In particular, it asserts that
designs that share metadata only by explicit actions at the host are
preferable to designs in which middleboxes insert metadata.
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 7841.
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 8165.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 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.
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RFC 8165 Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion May 2017
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Terminology .....................................................2
3. Design Pattern ..................................................2
4. Advice ..........................................................3
5. Deployment Considerations .......................................4
6. IANA Considerations .............................................5
7. Security Considerations .........................................5
8. References ......................................................6
8.1. Normative References .......................................6
8.2. Informative References .....................................6
Acknowledgements ...................................................7
Author's Address ...................................................7
1. Introduction
To minimize the risks associated with pervasive surveillance, it is
necessary for the Internet technical community to address the
vulnerabilities exploited in the attacks documented in [RFC 7258] and
the threats described in [RFC 7624]. The goal of this document is to
address a common design pattern that emerges from the increase in
encryption: explicit association of metadata that would previously
have been inferred from the plaintext protocol.
2. Terminology
This document makes extensive use of standard security and privacy
terminology; see [RFC 4949] and [RFC 6973]. Readers should be familiar
with the terms defined in [RFC 6973], including "Eavesdropper",
"Observer", "Initiator", "Intermediary", "Recipient", "Attack" (in a
privacy context), "Correlation", "Fingerprint", "Traffic Analysis",
and "Identifiability" (and related terms). Readers should also be
familiar with terms that are specific to the attacks discussed in
[RFC 7624], including "Pervasive Attack", "Passive Pervasive Attack",
"Active Pervasive Attack", "Observation", "Inference", and
"Collaborator".
3. Design Pattern
One of the core mitigations for the loss of confidentiality in the
presence of pervasive surveillance is data minimization, which limits
the amount of data disclosed to those elements absolutely required to
complete the relevant protocol exchange. When data minimization is
in effect, some information that was previously available may be
removed from specific protocol exchanges. The information may be
removed explicitly (for example, by a browser suppressing cookies
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RFC 8165 Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion May 2017
during private modes) or by other means. As noted in [RFC 7624], some
topologies that aggregate or alter the network path also act to
reduce the ease with which metadata is available to eavesdroppers.
In some cases, other actors within a protocol context will continue
to have access to the information that has been thus withdrawn from
specific protocol exchanges. If those actors attach the information
as metadata to those protocol exchanges, the confidentiality effect
of data minimization is lost.
Restoring information is particularly tempting at systems not
primarily deployed to increase confidentiality. A proxy providing
compression, for example, may wish to restore the identity of the
requesting party; similarly, a VPN system used to provide channel
security may believe that the origin IP should be restored. Actors
considering restoring metadata may believe that they understand the
relevant privacy considerations or believe that, because the primary
purpose of the service was not privacy-related, none exist. Examples
of this design pattern include [RFC 7239] and [RFC 7871].
4. Advice
Avoid inserting metadata to restore information that would otherwise
be unavailable to later participants in a protocol exchange. It
contributes to the overall loss of confidentiality for the Internet
and trust in the Internet as a medium. Do not add metadata to flows
at intermediary devices unless a positive affirmation of approval for
restoration has been received from the actor whose data will be
added.
Instead, design the protocol so that the actor can add such metadata
themselves so that it flows end to end, rather than requiring the
action of other parties. In addition to improving privacy, this
approach ensures consistent availability between the communicating
parties, no matter what path is taken. (Note that this document does
not attempt to describe how an actor sets policies on providing this
metadata, as the range of systems that might be implied is very
broad).
As an example, RFC 7871 describes a method that had already been
deployed and notes that it is unlikely that a clean-slate design
would result in this mechanism. If a clean-slate design were built
to follow the advice in this document, that design would likely not
use a core element of RFC 7871: rather than adding metadata at a
proxy, it would provide facilities for end systems to add it to their
initial queries. In the case of RFC 7871, the relevant metadata is
relatively easy for an end system to derive, as Session Traversal
Utilities for NAT (STUN) [RFC 5389] provides a method for learning the
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reflexive transport address from which a client subnet could be
derived. This would allow clients to populate this data themselves,
thus affirming their consent and providing data at a granularity with
which they were comfortable. As in RFC 7871, the addition of this
data would require confirmation that the upstream DNS resolver
understands what to do with it, but the same negotiation mechanism,
an Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS(0)) option [RFC 6891], could be
used. Because of this negotiation, there would be a new variability
in responses that would change the caching behavior for data supplied
by participating servers. This is not a major change from the
current design, however, as the same considerations set out in
Sections 7.3.2 and 7.5 of RFC 7871 would apply to client-supplied
subnets as well as to proxy-supplied subnets.
From a protocol perspective, in other words, this approach would be a
minor change from RFC 7871, would be as fully featured, and would
provide better privacy properties than the on-path update mechanism
RFC 7871 provides. The next section examines why, despite this,
deployment considerations have sometimes trumped cleaner designs.
5. Deployment Considerations
There are a few common tensions associated with the deployment of
systems that restore metadata. The first is the trade-off in speed
of deployment for different actors. The Forwarded HTTP Extension in
[RFC 7239] provides an example of this. When used with a proxy, it
restores information related to the original requesting party, thus
allowing a responding server to tailor responses according to the
original party's region, network, or other characteristics associated
with the identity. It would, of course, be possible for the
originating client to add this data itself, after using STUN
[RFC 5389] or a similar mechanism to first determine the information
to declare. This would require, however, full specification and
adoption of this mechanism by the end systems. It would not be
available at all during this period and would thereafter be limited
to systems that have been upgraded to include it. The long tail of
browser deployments indicates that many systems might go without
upgrades for a significant period of time. The proxy infrastructure,
in contrast, is commonly under more active management and represents
a much smaller number of elements; this impacts both the general
deployment difficulty and the number of systems that the origin
server must trust.
The second common tension is between metadata minimization and the
desire to tailor content responses. For origin servers whose content
is common across users, the loss of metadata may have limited impact
on the system's functioning. For other systems, which commonly
tailor content by region or network, the loss of metadata may imply a
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RFC 8165 Design Considerations for Metadata Insertion May 2017
loss of functionality. Where the user desires this functionality,
restoration can commonly be achieved by the use of other identifiers
or login procedures. Where the user does not desire this
functionality, but it is a preference of the server or a third party,
adjustment is more difficult. At the extreme, content blocking by
network origin may be a regulatory requirement. Trusting a network
intermediary to provide accurate data is, of course, fragile in this
case, but it may be a part of the regulatory framework.
There are also tensions with latency of operation. For example,
where the end system does not initially know the information that
would be added by on-path devices, it must engage the protocol
mechanisms to determine it. Determining a public IP address to
include in a locally supplied header might require a STUN exchange,
and the additional latency of this exchange discourages deployment of
host-based solutions. To minimize this latency, engaging those
mechanisms may need to be done in parallel with or in advance of the
core protocol exchanges with which this metadata would be supplied.
These tensions do not change the basic recommendation, but they
suggest that the parties who are introducing encryption and data
minimization for existing protocols consider carefully whether the
work also implies introducing mechanisms for the end-to-end
provisioning of metadata when a user has actively consented to
provide it.
6. IANA Considerations
This document makes no request of IANA.
7. Security Considerations
This memorandum describes a design pattern emerging from responses to
the attacks described in [RFC 7258]. Continued use of this design
pattern, which uses mid-flow devices to restore metadata, lowers the
impact of mitigations to that attack.
Note that some emergency service recipients, notably PSAPs (Public
Safety Answering Points) may prefer data provided by a network to
data provided by an end system, because an end system could use false
data to attack others or consume resources. While this has the
consequence that the data available to the PSAP is often more coarse
than that available to the end system, the risk of false data being
provided involves a risk to the lives of those targeted.
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8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC 4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2",
FYI 36, RFC 4949, DOI 10.17487/RFC 4949, August 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 4949>.
[RFC 6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6973, July 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6973>.
[RFC 7258] Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7258, May
2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7258>.
[RFC 7624] Barnes, R., Schneier, B., Jennings, C., Hardie, T.,
Trammell, B., Huitema, C., and D. Borkmann,
"Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance: A
Threat Model and Problem Statement", RFC 7624,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 7624, August 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7624>.
8.2. Informative References
[RFC 5389] Rosenberg, J., Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and D. Wing,
"Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5389,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5389, October 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5389>.
[RFC 6891] Damas, J., Graff, M., and P. Vixie, "Extension Mechanisms
for DNS (EDNS(0))", STD 75, RFC 6891,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6891, April 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6891>.
[RFC 7239] Petersson, A. and M. Nilsson, "Forwarded HTTP Extension",
RFC 7239, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7239, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7239>.
[RFC 7687] Farrell, S., Wenning, R., Bos, B., Blanchet, M., and H.
Tschofenig, "Report from the Strengthening the Internet
(STRINT) Workshop", RFC 7687, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7687,
December 2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7687>.
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[RFC 7871] Contavalli, C., van der Gaast, W., Lawrence, D., and W.
Kumari, "Client Subnet in DNS Queries", RFC 7871,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 7871, May 2016,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7871>.
Acknowledgements
This document is derived in part from the work initially done on the
perpass mailing list and at the STRINT workshop [RFC 7687]. The text
was originally developed by the IAB's Privacy and Security Program
before submission to the IETF. The document also benefited from an
extensive review by Mohamed Boucadair.
Author's Address
Ted Hardie
Email: ted.ietf@gmail.com
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RFC TOTAL SIZE: 16405 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Thursday, May 11th, 2017
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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