Re: ESP Unix encrypted session protocol software

[Matt Blaze <mab@research.att.com>]

>On Mon, 30 Jan 1995, Matt Blaze wrote:
>
>> ESP is an encrypted session protocol layer for managing remote
>> encrypted sessions.  It does 1024 bit DH key exchange (from RSAREF)
>> and 3-des in 8bit cfb mode for the traffic encryption.
>
>I'm curious what Matt and others think about the possibility of the DH key
>exchange being spoofed by an interloper in this application. 
>
>-Thomas
>

Well, cryptographically speaking, it's trivial for an active attack and
probably infeasible for a passive attack.  But you knew that...

So there are two questions - first, what's the threat model for TCP/IP,
and second, what are the alternatives?

I'm not sure about the threat model.  Spoofing attacks on TCP sessions
are not exactly easy - there's a lot to do to pull it off - but not
out of the question either (as demonstrated by the recent NYT articles
and CERT advisories).  Probably the easiest way to receive packets intended
for another host is to convince the routing tables between you and your
victim to route to you instead of the real host.  I'm not aware of this
every being done ON PURPOSE, but it's not out of the question, either.

As for the alternatives, I think the picture is pretty bleak, to tell
the truth.  The cryptographically sound way to prevent spoofing is
with authentication of the agreed key.  But for the remote host to
authenticate itself, it has to have a secret signature key.  Where to
store it?  A typical machine, especially a multi-user, unattended server
simply has no safe place to store keys.  And if you had a trusted secure key
store on the remote host, you wouldn't really need to use Diffie-Hellman
to establish the session key in the first place, since you could just
store each user's pre-established session key in advance.

At the extreme, fixing this is a Hard Problem.  In practice for establishing
a reasonably secure session, it all depends on how much you worry about a
full-blown (two way) spoofing attack against IP.

-matt
session ke