



Network                                                       P. Wouters
Internet-Draft                                                     Aiven
Intended status: Standards Track                              V. Smyslov
Expires: 16 October 2026                                      ELVIS-PLUS
                                                           14 April 2026


           IKEv2 Support for Child SA PFS Policy Information
                  draft-ietf-ipsecme-child-pfs-info-00

Abstract

   This document defines an extension for the Internet Key Exchange
   Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2) to support negotiation at the time of
   initial Child Security Association (SA) establishing of Key Exchange
   (KE) method that could be used in subsequent rekeys of this SA.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 16 October 2026.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2026 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
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   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.




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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Terminology and Notation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Protocol Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Protocol Details  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Operational Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  Implementation Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7

1.  Introduction

   The IKEv2 [RFC7296] protocol uses the Key Exchange (KE) payload to
   perform an ephemeral key exchange.  During an IKEv2 rekey operations,
   a new KE payload is used to create a new ephemeral key, resulting in
   Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS).

   A Child Security Association (SA) optionally uses its own PFS
   settings by including its own KE payload and list of acceptable Key
   Exchange methods.  During Child SA rekeys, KE payloads of acceptable
   Key Exchange methods are exchanged to create PFS.

   The Initial Exchanges establish both an IKE SA and a Child SA using
   the Key Exchange method negotiated for the IKE SA.  Thus, after the
   Initial exchanges, the peers are not aware of each other PFS
   requirements for the existing Child SA.  It is common practice to
   either not perform PFS for Child SAs, or to only perform the same KE
   methods for both the IKE SA and all Child SAs.  The situation is even
   more complex when Post-Quantum Key Exchange methods are used that
   might contain multiple KE payloads, which might not all be desired
   for rekeying the Initial Child SA.  It is currently not possible to
   know the desired PFS configuration for rekey of the initial Child SA.
   The peers find out about this problem only at the first Child SA
   rekey, which can be substantially (several hours) later than initial
   Child SA is created.

   This document defines a method for peers to negotiate a Key Exchange
   method that is compliant with peers' Child SA PFS policy at the time
   an initial Child SA is being established.







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1.1.  Terminology and Notation

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   The document uses a term "initial Child SA" to refer to a Child SA
   created in the IKE_AUTH exchange.  A Child SA created in the
   CREATE_CHILD_SA exchange cannot be considered as "initial Child SA"
   even if it is the first ever Child SA created in the IKE SA (e.g., in
   case of childless IKE SA [RFC6023]).

2.  Protocol Overview

   In IKEv2, when an IKE SA is created, an initial Child SA is also
   created as described in [RFC7296].  Negotiation of the Child SA
   parameters for the initial Child SA is different than for any other
   Child SA.  In particular, since the IKE_AUTH exchange does not
   contain Key Exchange (KE) payloads, key exchange method for initial
   Child SA cannot be negotiated.  Section 1.2 of [RFC7296] states that
   the SA payloads in the IKE_AUTH exchange cannot contain Transform
   Type 4 (Key Exchange Method) with any value other than NONE (and that
   [RFC7296] recommends implementations to omit the whole transform
   substructure if its Transform ID is NONE).  This is the only
   difference in the negotiation of Child SA parameters between the
   IKE_AUTH (for initial Child SA) and the CREATE_CHILD_SA (for all
   other Child SA) exchanges.

   In order to allow peers to negotiate the Key Exchange method for use
   in successive rekey operations during initial IKE exchanges, this
   document allows supporting peers to negotiate key exchange method (or
   methods in case of multiple key exchanges [RFC9370]) in the IKE_AUTH
   exchange as they would do it in the CREATE_CHILD_SA exchange.  Note,
   that this negotiation does not affect the way session keys are
   derived for an initial Child SA and is only purposed for agreeing on
   the mutually acceptable key exchange method for successive rekey of
   initial Child SA.

3.  Protocol Details

   To be able to use this extensions peers first need to negotiate
   support for it.  This is done in the IKE_SA_INIT exchange by
   exchanging new notification CHILD_SA_PFS_INFO_SUPPORTED (<TBA>).  The
   Protocol ID and SPI Size fields of this notification are set to 0,
   the Notification Data is empty.  The initiator wishing to use this
   extension includes this notification in the IKE_SA_INIT request.  If



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   the responder receives the CHILD_SA_PFS_INFO_SUPPORTED and supports
   this extension, it sends this notification back in the response.

   If peers successfully exchanged the CHILD_SA_PFS_INFO_SUPPORTED
   notification in the IKE_SA_INIT exchange then the initiator MAY
   include the Key Exchange Method (KE) transform(s) that it is wishing
   to use for subsequent rekey operations according to its Child SA PFS
   policy in the SA payload in the IKE_AUTH exchange.  Additional Key
   Exchange Method (AKE*) transforms are also included if the initiator
   proposes multiple key exchanges [RFC9370].  The responder selects one
   of the proposed KE (and each of AKE*, if present) transform according
   to its Child SA PFS policy and returns back its selection in the
   response along with transforms of other types, as specified in
   Section 2.7 of [RFC7296].  If the responder fails to find mutually
   acceptable set of transforms then it returns the NO_PROPOSAL_CHOSEN
   notification and the initial Child SA is not created, as defined in
   Section 2.7 of [RFC7296].

   Note that this extension may cause initial Child SA to fail even when
   it would be created if peers didn't use this extension (in situation
   when no peer's Child SA PFS policies have no mutually acceptable key
   exchange methods).  For this reason, if any of the peers does not
   intends to rekey the initial Child SA (e.g., it plans to create a
   short-lived Child SA), then this peer SHOULD NOT negotiate support
   for this extension in the IKE_SA_INIT exchange, so that the extension
   is not used.

   The negotiated key exchange method along with additional key exchange
   methods (if any) are not used in the key derivation for the initial
   Child SA.  Instead, peers keep this information for later use.  When
   one of the peers wishes to rekey the initial Child SA, it SHOULD
   propose the negotiated KE transform and AKE* transforms (if they were
   negotiated) in the SA payload in the CREATE_CHILD_SA exchange.  In
   this case the proposing host can be sure that the peer supports this
   key exchange method and these additional key exchange methods (if
   any).  Note, that other KE (and AKE*) transforms MAY additionally be
   proposed in this case, for example when the Child SA PFS policy has
   been updated.

4.  Operational Considerations

   This document is a result of cases from operational experience that
   have shown peers can run into broken IPsec connections at rekey time.
   These are not obvious to the administrators as these usually do not
   sit around for a few hours to wait and see if the rekey process
   worked successfully.  The method defined in this document results in
   immediate negotiation failure that can be repaired before taking the
   IPsec connection into production.



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   During rekey, the cryptographic strength of a rekeyed Child SA SHOULD
   remain at least as strong as the Child SA being rekeyed.  In practice
   this often means the negotiated algorithms remain the same.  But some
   deployments use stronger settings for the IKE SA compared to its
   Child SAs, which means technically the initial Child SA uses a
   stronger KE method than for rekeys.  The negotiation of KE method
   during initial Child SA establishing exposes such settings to the
   peers at the time IKE SA is being created, and peers can at that time
   accept or reject the child proposal.  Once the KE method is
   negotiated during initial Child SA establishing, rekey proposals
   using this method are guaranteed to be acceptable to both parties.

   Deployments with a large number of Child SAs often use no PFS for
   their Child SAs.  It is computationally much cheaper to establish the
   large number of Child SAs and then immediately rekey the IKE SA.
   This method can also be used if the peer's Child SA KE methods are
   unacceptable.  If both peers accept the KE method of 0 (NONE), it can
   decide to rekey the Child SA without PFS and immediately rekey the
   IKE SA using its accepted KE method to gain PFS on the Child SA.

5.  Security Considerations

   This document introduces no new security considerations, as it only
   causes an increased awareness of peer capabilities with respect to KE
   methods.

6.  Implementation Status

   [Note to RFC Editor: Please remove this section and the reference to
   [RFC7942] before publication.]

   This section records the status of known implementations of the
   protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of this
   Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in [RFC7942].
   The description of implementations in this section is intended to
   assist the IETF in its decision processes in progressing drafts to
   RFCs.  Please note that the listing of any individual implementation
   here does not imply endorsement by the IETF.  Furthermore, no effort
   has been spent to verify the information presented here that was
   supplied by IETF contributors.  This is not intended as, and must not
   be construed to be, a catalog of available implementations or their
   features.  Readers are advised to note that other implementations may
   exist.








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   According to [RFC7942], "this will allow reviewers and working groups
   to assign due consideration to documents that have the benefit of
   running code, which may serve as evidence of valuable experimentation
   and feedback that have made the implemented protocols more mature.
   It is up to the individual working groups to use this information as
   they see fit".

   Authors are requested to add a note to the RFC Editor at the top of
   this section, advising the Editor to remove the entire section before
   publication, as well as the reference to [RFC7942].

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document defines one new IKEv2 Notify Message Type payload for
   the IANA "IKEv2 Notify Message Status Types" registry.

         Value   Notify Message Status Type        Reference
         -----   ------------------------------    ---------------
         TBA     CHILD_SA_PFS_INFO_SUPPORTED       [this document]

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC7296]  Kaufman, C., Hoffman, P., Nir, Y., Eronen, P., and T.
              Kivinen, "Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2
              (IKEv2)", STD 79, RFC 7296, DOI 10.17487/RFC7296, October
              2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7296>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [RFC6023]  Nir, Y., Tschofenig, H., Deng, H., and R. Singh, "A
              Childless Initiation of the Internet Key Exchange Version
              2 (IKEv2) Security Association (SA)", RFC 6023,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6023, October 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6023>.






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   [RFC7942]  Sheffer, Y. and A. Farrel, "Improving Awareness of Running
              Code: The Implementation Status Section", BCP 205,
              RFC 7942, DOI 10.17487/RFC7942, July 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7942>.

   [RFC9370]  Tjhai, CJ., Tomlinson, M., Bartlett, G., Fluhrer, S., Van
              Geest, D., Garcia-Morchon, O., and V. Smyslov, "Multiple
              Key Exchanges in the Internet Key Exchange Protocol
              Version 2 (IKEv2)", RFC 9370, DOI 10.17487/RFC9370, May
              2023, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9370>.

Authors' Addresses

   Paul Wouters
   Aiven
   Email: paul.wouters@aiven.io


   Valery Smyslov
   ELVIS-PLUS
   Email: svan@elvis.ru






























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