





Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                        J. Seedorf
Request for Comments: 6404                                  S. Niccolini
Category: Informational                                              NEC
ISSN: 2070-1721                                                  E. Chen
                                                                     NTT
                                                               H. Scholz
                                                              VOIPFUTURE
                                                           November 2011


        Session PEERing for Multimedia INTerconnect (SPEERMINT)
             Security Threats and Suggested Countermeasures

Abstract

   The Session PEERing for Multimedia INTerconnect (SPEERMINT) working
   group (WG) provides a peering framework that leverages the building
   blocks of existing IETF-defined protocols such as SIP and ENUM for
   the interconnection between SIP Service Providers (SSPs).  The
   objective of this document is to identify and enumerate SPEERMINT-
   specific threat vectors and to give guidance for implementers on
   selecting appropriate countermeasures.  Security requirements for
   SPEERMINT that have been derived from the threats detailed in this
   document can be found in RFC 6271; this document provides concrete
   countermeasures to meet those SPEERMINT security requirements.  In
   this document, the different security threats related to SPEERMINT
   are classified into threats to the Lookup Function (LUF), the
   Location Routing Function (LRF), the Signaling Function (SF), and the
   Media Function (MF) of a specific SIP Service Provider.  Various
   instances of the threats are briefly introduced inside the
   classification.  Finally, existing security solutions for SIP and
   RTP/RTCP (Real-time Transport Control Protocol) are presented to
   describe countermeasures currently available for such threats.  Each
   SSP may have connections to one or more remote SSPs through peering
   or transit contracts.  A potentially compromised remote SSP that
   attacks other SSPs is out of the scope of this document; this
   document focuses on attacks on an SSP from outside the trust domain
   such an SSP may have with other SSPs.













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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/rfc6404.

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.





















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Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................4
   2. Security Threats Relevant to SPEERMINT ..........................5
      2.1. Threats to the Lookup Function (LUF) .......................5
           2.1.1. Threats to LUF Confidentiality ......................5
           2.1.2. Threats to LUF Integrity ............................6
           2.1.3. Threats to LUF Availability .........................6
      2.2. Threats to the Location Routing Function (LRF) .............6
           2.2.1. Threats to LRF Confidentiality ......................6
           2.2.2. Threats to LRF Integrity ............................7
           2.2.3. Threats to LRF Availability .........................7
      2.3. Threats to the Signaling Function (SF) .....................7
           2.3.1. Threats to SF Confidentiality .......................7
           2.3.2. Threats to SF Integrity .............................8
           2.3.3. Threats to SF Availability .........................10
      2.4. Threats to the Media Function (MF) ........................10
           2.4.1. Threats to MF Confidentiality ......................10
           2.4.2. Threats to MF Integrity ............................10
           2.4.3. Threats to MF Availability .........................11
   3. Security Requirements ..........................................11
      3.1. Security Requirements from SPEERMINT Requirements
           Document ..................................................11
      3.2. How to Fulfill the Security Requirements for SPEERMINT ....11
   4. Suggested Countermeasures ......................................12
      4.1. Database Security BCPs ....................................14
      4.2. DNSSEC ....................................................14
      4.3. DNS Replication ...........................................15
      4.4. Cross-Domain Privacy Protection ...........................15
      4.5. Secure Exchange of SIP Messages ...........................15
      4.6. Ingress Filtering / Reverse-Path Filtering ................16
      4.7. Strong Identity Assertion .................................16
      4.8. Reliable Border Element Pooling ...........................17
      4.9. Rate limit ................................................17
      4.10. Topology Hiding ..........................................17
      4.11. Border Element Hardening .................................17
      4.12. Securing Session Establishment Data ......................18
      4.13. Encryption and Integrity Protection of Media Stream ......18
   5. Conclusions ....................................................18
   6. Security Considerations ........................................18
   7. Acknowledgements ...............................................19
   8. Informative References .........................................19









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1.  Introduction

   With Voice over IP (VoIP), the need for security is compounded
   because there is the need to protect both the control plane and the
   data plane.  In a legacy telephone system, security is a more valid
   assumption.  Intercepting conversations requires either physical
   access to telephone lines or a compromise to the Public Switched
   Telephone Network (PSTN) nodes or the office Private Branch eXchanges
   (PBXs).  Only particularly security-sensitive organizations bother to
   encrypt voice traffic over traditional telephone lines.  In contrast,
   the risk of sending unencrypted data across the Internet is more
   significant (e.g., dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) tones
   corresponding to the credit card number).  An additional security
   threat to Internet Telephony comes from the fact that the signaling
   devices may be addressed directly by attackers as they use the same
   underlying networking technology as the multimedia data; traditional
   telephone systems have the signaling network separated from the data
   network.  This is an increased security threat since a hacker could
   attack the signaling network and its servers with increased damage
   potential (call hijacking, call drop, Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks
   [RFC4732], etc.).  Therefore, there is a need to investigate the
   different security threats, to extract security-related requirements,
   and to highlight potential solutions on how to protect against such
   threats.

   The Session PEERing for Multimedia INTerconnect (SPEERMINT) working
   group provides a peering framework that leverages the building blocks
   of existing IETF-defined protocols such as SIP and ENUM for the
   interconnection between SIP servers [RFC5486].  The objective of this
   document is to identify and enumerate SPEERMINT-specific threat
   vectors and to give guidance for implementers on selecting
   appropriate countermeasures.  Security requirements for SPEERMINT can
   be found in RFC 6271 "Requirements for SIP-Based Session Peering"
   [RFC6271].  These security requirements for SPEERMINT are derived
   from the threats that are detailed in this document; they have been
   moved from an earlier version of this document to the SPEERMINT
   requirements document [RFC6271].  In addition to being the base for
   those security requirements, this document provides to implementers
   advice and examples for concrete countermeasures on how to meet these
   security requirements for SPEERMINT with technical means.  The
   SPEERMINT terminology outlined in [RFC5486] is used throughout this
   document.

   In this document, the different security threats related to SPEERMINT
   are classified into threats to the Lookup Function (LUF), the
   Location Routing Function (LRF), the Signaling Function (SF), and the
   Media Function (MF) of a specific SIP Service Provider (SSP).
   Various instances of the threats are briefly introduced inside the



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   classification.  Finally, existing security solutions for SIP and
   RTP/RTCP are presented to describe countermeasures currently
   available for such threats.  Each SSP may have connections to one or
   more remote SSPs through peering or transit contracts.  A potentially
   compromised remote SSP that attacks other SSPs is out of the scope of
   this document; this document focuses on attacks on an SSP from
   outside the trust domain such an SSP may have with other SSPs.

2.  Security Threats Relevant to SPEERMINT

   This section enumerates potential security threats relevant to
   SPEERMINT.  A taxonomy of VoIP security threats is defined in
   [VOIPSATAXONOMY].  This taxonomy is comprehensive and also takes into
   account non-VoIP-specific threats (e.g., loss of power, etc.).
   Threats relevant to the boundaries of Layer 5 SIP networks are
   extracted from this taxonomy and mapped to the functions of the
   SPEERMINT architecture as defined in [RFC6406].  Moreover, additional
   threats for the SPEERMINT architecture are listed and detailed under
   the same classification of SPEERMINT functions and according to the
   CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability) triad:

   o  Lookup Function (LUF);

   o  Location Routing Function (LRF);

   o  Signaling Function (SF);

   o  Media Function (MF).

2.1.  Threats to the Lookup Function (LUF)

   For a given request, the LUF provides a mechanism to determine the
   identity of the requested resource on the terminating domain.  The
   returned identity can be used to look up Session Establishment Data
   (SED) using the Location Routing Function (LRF).  In direct peerings,
   the LUF is usually hosted locally, whereas in a federation context,
   this function may be offered by a third party.

   If the LUF is hosted locally, it is vulnerable to the same threats
   that affect database systems in general.  If the SSP relies on a
   remote third party to provide the LUF functionality, confidentiality,
   integrity, and authenticity of the responses are at risk.

2.1.1.  Threats to LUF Confidentiality

   For a given request, the Lookup Function (LUF) determines the target
   domain to which the request should be routed.  The following attacks
   are relevant with respect to eavesdropping on LUF messages:



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   o  SIP URI and peering domain harvesting - an attacker can exploit
      this weakness if the underlying database has a weak authentication
      system or if SIP messages are sent unencrypted, and then use the
      gained knowledge to launch other kinds of attacks.

   o  Third-party information - a LUF providing information to multiple
      companies / third parties can be attacked to obtain information
      about third party peering configurations and possible contracts.

2.1.2.  Threats to LUF Integrity

   The underlying database or LUF messages could be vulnerable to input/
   output message modification attacks:

   o  Injection attack - an attacker could manipulate statements
      performed on the database LUF messages sent to a third party.  A
      specific version of this attack is known as "SQL injection".  An
      SQL injection is a code insertion into the LUF due to incorrect
      input validation.

2.1.3.  Threats to LUF Availability

   The underlying database or third party LUF service could be
   vulnerable to:

   o  Denial-of-Service attacks - For example, an attacker makes
      incomplete requests causing the server to create an idle state for
      each of them, which causes memory to be exhausted.

2.2.  Threats to the Location Routing Function (LRF)

   The LRF determines the location of the Signaling Function (SF) for
   the target domain of a given request.  Optionally, it may return
   additional SED.

2.2.1.  Threats to LRF Confidentiality

   Similar to the LUF, the following attacks are related to
   eavesdropping on LRF messages:

   o  URI harvesting - the attacker harvests URIs and IP addresses of
      the existing User Endpoints (UEs) by issuing a multitude of
      location requests.  Direct intrusion against vulnerable UEs or
      telemarketing are possible attack scenarios that would use the
      gained knowledge.






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   o  SIP device enumeration - the attacker discovers the IP address of
      each intermediate signaling device by looking at the Via and
      Record-Route headers of a SIP message.  Targeting the discovered
      devices with subsequent attacks is a possible attack scenario.

2.2.2.  Threats to LRF Integrity

   An attacker may modify messages, e.g., by feeding bogus information
   to the LRF, if the routing data is not correctly validated or sent
   unencrypted.  Dynamic call routing discovery and establishment, as in
   the scope of SPEERMINT, introduce opportunities for attacks such as
   the following:

   o  Man-in-the-Middle attacks - the attacker inserts or has already
      inserted an unauthorized node in the signaling path modifying the
      SED.  The result is that the attacker is then able to read,
      insert, and modify the multimedia communications.

   o  Incorrect destinations - the attacker redirects the calls to an
      incorrect destination with the purpose of establishing fraud
      communications like voice phishing or DoS attacks.

2.2.3.  Threats to LRF Availability

   The LRF can be the object of DoS attacks.  DoS attacks to the LRF can
   be carried out by sending a large number of queries to the LRF or
   LUF, with the result of preventing an Originating SSP from looking up
   call routing data of any URI outside its administrative domain.  As
   an alternative, the attacker could target the DNS to disable
   resolution of SIP addresses.

2.3.  Threats to the Signaling Function (SF)

   The Signaling Function involves a great number of sensitive
   information.  Through the Signaling Function, User Agents (UAs)
   assert identities and operators authorize billable resources.
   Correct and trusted operation of Signaling Function is essential for
   service providers.  This section discusses potential security threats
   to the Signaling Function to detail the possible attack vectors.

2.3.1.  Threats to SF Confidentiality

   SF traffic is vulnerable to eavesdropping, in particular, when the
   data is moved across multiple SSPs having different levels of
   security policies.  Threats for the SF confidentiality are listed
   here:





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   o  Call pattern analysis - the attacker tracks the call patterns of
      the users violating his/her privacy (e.g., revealing the social
      network of various users, the daily phone usage, etc.); also,
      rival SSPs may infer information about the customer base of other
      SSPs in this way;

   o  Password cracking - the challenge-response authentication
      mechanism of SIP Digest can be attacked with offline dictionary
      attacks.  With such attacks, an attacker tries to exploit weak
      passwords that are used by incautious users.

   o  Network discovery - the attacker may learn information about the
      internal network structure of a peering partner that is directly
      or indirectly connected by looking at SIP routing information
      (i.e, Record-Route, Via or Contact headers).

2.3.2.  Threats to SF Integrity

   The integrity of the SF can be violated using SIP request spoofing,
   SIP reply spoofing, and SIP message tampering.

2.3.2.1.  SIP Request Spoofing

   Most SIP request spoofing attacks first require SIP message
   eavesdropping.  However, some of these attacks can be also performed
   by estimating certain fields in SIP headers (e.g., by exploiting the
   fact that weak implementations may generate predictable SIP Dialog
   parameters) or exploiting broken implementations that do not properly
   verify the content of certain headers.  Threats in this category are
   as follows:

   o  session teardown - an attacker can send CANCEL/BYE messages in
      order to tear down an existing call at the SIP layer; for such an
      attack, the attacker either needs to know (e.g., by eavesdropping
      a SIP INVITE message) the SIP Dialog of the call to be hijacked
      (To-tag, From-tag, Call-ID) or alternatively may rely on SIP
      implementations that do not properly authenticate requests based
      on the SIP Dialog;

   o  Billing fraud - the attacker can modify and replay an intercepted
      INVITE request in order to bill a call to a victim UE and avoid
      paying for the phone call;

   o  User ID spoofing - SSPs are responsible for asserting the
      legitimacy of a user ID; if an SSP fails to achieve the level of
      identity assertion that the federation to which it belongs
      expects, it may create an entry point for attackers to conduct
      user ID spoofing attacks;



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   o  Unwanted requests - the attacker sends requests to interfere with
      regular operation, e.g., by sending a REGISTER request in order to
      hijack calls.  The SPEERMINT architecture as defined in [RFC6406]
      does not require registrations between the Signaling Functions
      (SFs) of the connected SSPs.  Hence, superfluous requests like
      REGISTERs should be rejected.

2.3.2.2.  SIP Reply Spoofing

   Threats in this category are as follows:

   o  Forged 199 Response - the attacker sends a forged 199 response to
      terminate an early dialog.  The forged response will not terminate
      the entire session but may alter the direction of the session;

   o  Forged 200 Response - having seen the contents of an INVITE
      request, an eavesdropper can inject a 200 response, affecting the
      processing of the transaction of all proxies between the injection
      point and the originating UA and at the originating UA itself.  In
      the extreme case, this can result in a hijacked call.  In many
      cases, however, such an attack will leave signaling artifacts that
      may allow it to be detected (e.g., the element receiving the
      forged 200 response may also receive other SIP reply messages from
      the actual terminating UE);

   o  Forged 302 Response - having seen the contents of an INVITE
      request, an eavesdropper could also inject a forged "302 Moved
      Temporarily" reply, affecting the processing of the transaction at
      intermediate entities and the originating UA.  This may allow the
      attacker to successfully redirect the call to any destination UE
      of his choosing;

   o  Forged 404 Response - having seen the contents of an INVITE
      request, an eavesdropper could also inject a forged "404 Not
      Found" reply, affecting the processing of the transaction at
      intermediate entities and the originating UA.  Such an attack may
      result in disrupting the call establishment.

2.3.2.3.  SIP Message Tampering

   This threat involves the alteration of important field values in a
   SIP message or in the Session Description Protocol (SDP) body.
   Examples of this threat could be the dropping or modification of
   handshake packets in order to avoid the establishment of a secure RTP
   session (SRTP).  The same approach could be used to degrade the
   quality of media session by letting a UE negotiate a poor quality
   codec.




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2.3.3.  Threats to SF Availability

   o  Flooding attack - a Signaling Path Border Element (SBE) is
      susceptible to message flooding attacks that may come from
      interconnected SSPs;

   o  Session blackholing - the attacker (assumed to be able to make
      Man-in-the-Middle attacks) intentionally drops essential packets,
      e.g., INVITEs, to prevent certain calls from being established;

   o  SIP Fuzzing attack - fuzzing tests and software can be used by
      attackers to discover and exploit vulnerabilities of a SIP entity.
      This attack may result in crashing a SIP entity.

2.4.  Threats to the Media Function (MF)

   The Media Function (MF) is responsible for the actual delivery of
   multimedia communication between the users and carries sensitive
   information.  Through the media function, the UE can establish secure
   communications and monitor the quality of conversations.  Correct and
   trusted operations of MF is essential for privacy and service-
   assurance issues.  This section discusses potential security threats
   to the MF to detail the possible attack vectors.

2.4.1.  Threats to MF Confidentiality

   The MF is vulnerable to eavesdropping in which the attacker may
   reconstruct the voice conversation or sensitive information (e.g.,
   PINs from DTMF tones).  Some SRTP key exchange mechanisms (e.g.,
   [RFC4568]) are vulnerable to bid-down attacks, where an attacker
   selectively changes key exchange protocol fields in order to enforce
   the establishment of a less secure or even non-secure communication.

2.4.2.  Threats to MF Integrity

   Both RTP and RTCP are vulnerable to integrity violation in many ways:

   o  Media injection - if an attacker can somehow detect an ongoing
      media session and eavesdrop a few RTP packets, he can start
      sending bogus RTP packets to one of the UEs involved using the
      same codec.  If the bogus RTP packets have consistently greater
      timestamps and sequence numbers (but within the acceptable range)
      than the legitimate RTP packets, the recipient UE may accept the
      bogus RTP packets and discard the legitimate ones.







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   o  Media session teardown - the attacker sends bogus RTCP BYE
      messages to a target UE signaling to tear down the media
      communication; please note that RTCP messages are normally not
      authenticated.

   o  Quality-of-Service (QoS) degradation - the attacker sends wrong
      RTCP reports advertising more packet loss or more jitter than
      actually experimented resulting in the usage of a poor quality
      codec degrading the overall quality of the call experience.

2.4.3.  Threats to MF Availability

   o  Malformed messages - the attacker tries to cause a crash or a
      reboot of the Data Path Border Element (DBE)/UE by sending RTP/
      RTCP malformed messages;

   o  Messages flooding - the attacker tries to exhaust the resources of
      the DBE/UE by sending many RTP/RTCP messages.

3.  Security Requirements

3.1.  Security Requirements from SPEERMINT Requirements Document

   The security requirements for SPEERMINT have been moved from an
   earlier version of this document to the SPEERMINT requirements
   [RFC6271].  The security requirements for SPEERMINT are the
   following, from [RFC6271]:

   o  Requirement #15: The protocols used to query the Lookup and
      Location Routing Functions SHOULD support mutual authentication.

   o  Requirement #16: The protocols used to query the Lookup and
      Location Routing Functions SHOULD provide support for data
      confidentiality and integrity.

   o  Requirement #17: The protocols used to enable session peering MUST
      NOT interfere with the exchanges of media security attributes in
      SDP.  Media attribute lines that are not understood by SBEs must
      be ignored and passed along the signaling path untouched.

3.2.  How to Fulfill the Security Requirements for SPEERMINT

   Requirements #15 and #16 state that the LUF and LRF should support
   mutual authentication, data confidentiality, and integrity.  In
   principle, these requirements can be fulfilled technically with
   Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Datagram TLS (DTLS) [RFC5246]
   [RFC4347] or IP layer security (IPsec) [RFC4301].  From a pure




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   security perspective both solutions fulfill the security requirements
   for SPEERMINT, just on a different layer, and both solutions are
   widely deployed.

   However, from a more practical perspective, transport layer security
   (i.e., TLS or DTLS) has the advantage that the application using it
   is aware of whether or not security (or rather the corresponding
   security features) is enabled.  For instance, using TLS has the
   consequence that the connection fails if the corresponding connection
   endpoint cannot authenticate properly.

   While IPsec fulfills the same requirements from a security
   perspective, IPsec is somewhat de-coupling security from the
   application using it.  For instance, IPsec is often provided by
   dedicated entities in such a way that from the application layer, it
   cannot be recognized whether or not IPsec or certain security
   features are turned on ("bump-in-the-wire").

   In summary, TLS (or DTLS) has some notable advantages over IPsec for
   addressing the SPEERMINT security requirements.  In particular,
   transport layer security is preferable over IPsec for SPEERMINT
   because with TLS (or DTLS) security is more closely coupled to the
   LUF or LRF.  From a mere technical perspective, however, both
   solutions (transport layer security or IPsec) fulfill the SPEERMINT
   security requirements, and there may be particular cases where IPsec
   is a preferable solution.

4.  Suggested Countermeasures

   This section describes implementer-specific countermeasures against
   the threats described in the previous sections and for addressing the
   SPEERMINT security requirements described in [RFC6271].  The
   countermeasures listed in this section are not meant to be
   exhaustive; rather, the suggested countermeasures are aimed to serve
   as starting points and to give guidance for implementers that are
   trying to select appropriate countermeasures against certain threats.

   The following table provides a map of the relationships between
   threats and countermeasures.  The suggested countermeasures are
   discussed in detail in the subsequent subsections.











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   +-------+---------------+-------------------------------------------+
   | Group | Threat        | Suggested Countermeasure                  |
   +-------+---------------+-------------------------------------------+
   |  LUF  | Unauthorized  | database security BCPs (Section 4.1),     |
   |       | access        | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       |               | (Section 4.5)                             |
   |       | SQL injection | database security BCPs (Section 4.1),     |
   |       |               | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       |               | (Section 4.5)                             |
   |       | DoS to LUF    | database security BCPs (Section 4.1),     |
   |       |               | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       |               | (Section 4.5)                             |
   |  LRF  | URI           | privacy protection (Section 4.4), Secure  |
   |       | harvesting    | Exchange of SIP messages (Section 4.5)    |
   |       | SIP equipment | privacy protection (Section 4.4), Secure  |
   |       | enumeration   | Exchange of SIP messages (Section 4.5)    |
   |       | MitM attack   | DNSSEC (Section 4.2), Secure Exchange of  |
   |       |               | SIP messages (Section 4.5)                |
   |       | Incorrect     | DNSSEC (Section 4.2), Secure Exchange of  |
   |       | destinations  | SIP messages (Section 4.5)                |
   |       | DoS to LRF    | DNS replication (Section 4.3)             |
   |   SF  | Call pattern  | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       | analysis      | (Section 4.5), Securing Session           |
   |       |               | Establishment Data (Section 4.12)         |
   |       | Password      | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       | cracking      | (Section 4.5)                             |
   |       | Network       | Securing Session Establishment Data       |
   |       | discovery     | (Section 4.12), Topology Hiding           |
   |       |               | (Section 4.10)                            |
   |       | Session       | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       | teardown      | (Section 4.5), ingress filtering          |
   |       |               | (Section 4.6)                             |
   |       | Billing fraud | strong identity assertion (Section 4.7)   |
   |       | User ID       | strong identity assertion (Section 4.7)   |
   |       | spoofing      |                                           |
   |       | Forged 200    | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       | Response      | (Section 4.5), ingress filtering          |
   |       |               | (Section 4.6)                             |
   |       | Forged 302    | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       | Response      | (Section 4.5), ingress filtering          |
   |       |               | (Section 4.6)                             |
   |       | Forged 404    | Secure Exchange of SIP messages           |
   |       | Response      | (Section 4.5), ingress filtering          |
   |       |               | (Section 4.6)                             |
   |       | Flooding      | reliable border element pooling           |
   |       | attack        | (Section 4.8), rate limit (Section 4.9)   |
   |       | Session       | DNSSEC (Section 4.2)                      |
   |       | blackholing   |                                           |



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   |       | SIP fuzzing   | border element hardening (Section 4.11)   |
   |       | attack        |                                           |
   |   MF  | Eavesdropping | Encryption and Integrity Protection of    |
   |       |               | Media Stream (Section 4.13)               |
   |       | Media         | Encryption and Integrity Protection of    |
   |       | injection     | Media Stream (Section 4.13)               |
   |       | Media session | Encryption and Integrity Protection of    |
   |       | teardown      | Media Stream (Section 4.13)               |
   |       | QoS           | Encryption and Integrity Protection of    |
   |       | degradation   | Media Stream (Section 4.13)               |
   |       | Malformed     | border element hardening (Section 4.11)   |
   |       | messages      |                                           |
   |       | Message       | rate limit (Section 4.9)                  |
   |       | flooding      |                                           |
   +-------+---------------+-------------------------------------------+

4.1.  Database Security BCPs

   Adequate security measures must be applied to the LUF to prevent it
   from being a target of attacks often seen on common database systems.
   Common security Best Current Practices (BCPs) for database systems
   include the use of strong passwords to prevent unauthorized access,
   parameterized statements to prevent SQL injections, and server
   replication to prevent any database from being a single point of
   failure. [DBSEC] is one of many existing documents that describe BCPs
   in this area.

4.2.  DNSSEC

   If DNS is used by the LRF, it is recommended to deploy the recent
   version of Domain Name System Security Extensions (informally called
   "DNSSEC-bis") defined by [RFC4033], [RFC4034], and [RFC4035].  DNSSEC
   has been designed to protect DNS against well-known attacks such as
   DNS cache poisoning or Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks on DNS
   queries.  Essentially, DNSSEC is a set of public key cryptography
   extensions to DNS that provide authentication of DNS data, integrity
   protection for DNS entries, and authenticated denial of existence
   regarding non-existing DNS entries.  In the context of SSP peering,
   DNSSEC can provide authentication and integrity regarding the
   location of a Signaling Function (SF) entity retrieved via DNS.
   Using DNSSEC can thus help to defend against MitM attacks on DNS
   queries invoked by the LRF, session blackholing and other attacks
   that lead traffic to incorrect destinations.

   DNSSEC has been deployed at the root level and in several top-level
   domains (e.g., .com and .net).  Although, at the time of this
   writing, DNSSEC is still not yet widely deployed on the Internet,
   even limited deployment can add significant integrity protection and



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   authentication to the LRF for Signaling Function locations received
   via DNS entries.  Neither end users nor terminals are involved in the
   DNS resolution process of the LRF.  Hence, if a) the sending SSP uses
   a DNS resolver that supports DNSSEC extensions, b) the receiving SSP
   stores the location of its Signaling Function cryptographically
   signed (using DNSSEC extensions) in the DNS, and c) the sending SSP
   can obtain an authentication chain (i.e., a series of linked DS and
   DNSKEY records) to the receiving SSP, the LRF can be secured with
   DNSSEC.  In the context of SPEERMINT, all three of these requirements
   can be fulfilled even in the case of partial DNSSEC deployment.  In
   particular, even without Internet-wide deployment of DNSSEC, it may
   be possible for a sending SSP to obtain a suitable trust anchor for
   verifying the receiving SSP's public key.  For instance, a suitable
   trust anchor could be configured for that specific SSP's top-level
   domain or for the particular SSP's domain directly.  If the sending
   and the receiving SSP use a common ENUM tree, DNSSEC use with the
   ENUM tree's trust anchor is "straightforward".

4.3.  DNS Replication

   DNS replication is a very important countermeasure to mitigate DoS
   attacks on the LRF.  Simultaneously bringing down multiple DNS
   servers that support the LRF is much more challenging than attacking
   a sole DNS server (single point of failure).

4.4.  Cross-Domain Privacy Protection

   Stripping Via and Record-Route headers, replacing the Contact header,
   and even changing Call-IDs are the mechanisms described in [RFC3323]
   to protect SIP privacy.  This practice allows an SSP to hide its SIP
   network topology, prevents intermediate signaling equipment from
   becoming the target of DoS attacks, as well as protects the privacy
   of UEs according to their preferences.  This practice is effective in
   preventing SIP equipment enumeration that exploits LRF.

4.5.  Secure Exchange of SIP Messages

   SIP can be used on top of UDP or TCP as transport protocol [RFC3261].
   However, look-up and SED data should be exchanged securely (see
   security requirements (Section 3.2)), e.g., to increase the
   difficulty of performing session teardown and forging responses (200,
   302, 404, etc).  If UDP is used to carry SIP messages, DTLS should be
   used to secure SIP message exchange between SSPs.  If TCP is used as
   a transport protocol, it can be secured with TLS.  Therefore,
   depending on the underlying transport protocol, SSPs should use
   either DTLS or TLS to secure SIP message delivery.





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   In general, encryption and integrity protection of signaling messages
   can be achieved on the transport layer (with TLS or DTLS) or on the
   network layer (with IPsec).  Both solutions are technically sound,
   but transport layer security has some advantages.  Please refer to
   the subsection on fulfilling the SPEERMINT security requirements
   (Section 3.2) for a discussion on using TLS/DTLS or IPsec for
   protecting the confidentiality and integrity of signaling messages.
   Similar to strong identity assertion, a Public Key Infrastructure
   (PKI) is assumed to be in place for TLS/DTLS (or IPsec) deployment so
   that SSPs can obtain and trust the keys necessary to decrypt messages
   and verify signatures sent by other SSPs.

   Message-oriented protection such as [RFC3261] authentication does not
   fulfill the SPEERMINT requirements (e.g., mutual authentication).

4.6.  Ingress Filtering / Reverse-Path Filtering

   Ingress filtering, i.e., blocking all traffic coming from a host that
   has a source address different than the addresses that have been
   assigned to that host (see [RFC2827]), can effectively prevent UEs
   from sending packets with a spoofed source IP address.  This can be
   achieved by reverse-path filtering, i.e., only accepting ingress
   traffic if responses would take the same path.  This practice is
   effective in preventing session teardown and forged SIP replies (200,
   302, 404, etc.), if the recipient correctly verifies the source IP
   address for the authenticity of each incoming SIP message.

4.7.  Strong Identity Assertion

   "Caller ID spoofing" can be achieved thanks to the weak identity
   assertion on the From URI of an INVITE request.  In a single SSP
   domain, strong identity assertion can be easily achieved by
   authenticating each INVITE request.  However, in the context of
   SPEERMINT, only the Originating SSP is able to verify the identity
   directly.  In order to overcome this problem, there are currently
   only two major approaches: transitive trust and cryptographic
   signature.  The transitive trust approach builds a chain of trust
   among different SSP domains.  One example of this approach is a
   combined mechanism specified in [RFC3324] and [RFC3325].  Using this
   approach in a transit peering network scenario, the terminating SSP
   must establish a trust relationship with all SSP domains on the path,
   which can be seen as an underlying weakness.  The use of
   cryptographic signatures is an alternative approach.  "Session
   Initiation Protocol (SIP) Authenticated Identity Body (AIB) Format"
   is specified in [RFC3893].  [RFC4474] introduces two new header
   fields, IDENTITY and IDENTITY-INFO, that allow a SIP server in the
   Originating SSP to digitally sign an INVITE request after
   authenticating the sending UE.  The terminating SSP can verify if the



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   INVITE request is signed by a trusted SSP domain.  Although this
   approach does not require the terminating SSP to establish a trust
   relationship with all transit SSPs on the path, a PKI is assumed to
   be in place.

4.8.  Reliable Border Element Pooling

   It is advisable to implement reliable pooling on border elements.  An
   architecture and protocols for the management of server pools
   supporting mission-critical applications are addressed in the
   RSERPOOL WG.  Using such mechanisms and protocols (see [RFC5351]
   [RFC5352] [RFC5353] for details), a UE can effectively increase its
   capacity in handling flooding attacks.

4.9.  Rate limit

   Flooding attacks on SFs and MFs can also be mitigated by limiting the
   rate of incoming traffic through policing or queuing.  In this way,
   legitimate clients can be denied the service since their traffic may
   be discarded.  Rate limiting can also be applied on a per-source-IP
   basis under the assumption that the source IP of each attack packet
   is not spoofed dynamically.  Limitations related to NAT and mobility
   issues apply and may result in false positives (i.e., source IP
   addresses blocked) when multiple legitimate clients are located
   behind the same NAT IP address.  It may be preferable to limit the
   number of concurrent 'sessions', i.e., ongoing calls instead of the
   messaging associated with it (since sessions use more resources on
   backend-systems).  When calculating rate limits, all entities along
   the session path should be taken into account.  SIP entities on the
   receiving end of a call may be the limiting factor (e.g., the number
   of ISDN channels on PSTN gateways) rather than the ingress limiting
   device.

4.10.  Topology Hiding

   Topology hiding applies to both the signaling and media plane and
   consists of limiting the amount of topology information exposed to
   peering partners.  Topology hiding requires back-to-back user agent
   (B2BUA) functionality.  The most common way is the use of a Session
   Border Controller (SBC) as SBE.  Topology hiding is explained in
   [RFC5853].

4.11.  Border Element Hardening

   To prevent attacks that exploit vulnerabilities (such as buffer
   overflows, format string vulnerabilities, etc.) in SPEERMINT border
   elements, these implementations should be security hardened.  For
   instance, fuzz testing is a common black box testing technique used



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   in software engineering.  Also, security vulnerability tests can be
   carried out preventively to assure a UE/SBE/DBE can handle unexpected
   data correctly without crashing.  [RFC4475] and [PROTOS] are examples
   of torture test cases specific for SIP devices and freely available
   security testing tools, respectively.  These type of tests needs to
   be carried out before product release and in addition throughout the
   product life cycle.

4.12.  Securing Session Establishment Data

   Session Establishment Data (SED) contains critical information for
   the routing of SIP sessions.  In order to prevent attacks such as
   service hijacking and denial of service that exploit SED, SSPs should
   adopt a secure transport protocol that provides authentication,
   confidentiality and integrity to exchange SED among themselves.
   Further details can be found in [DRINKS-SPPROV].

4.13.  Encryption and Integrity Protection of Media Stream

   The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) [RFC3711] prevents
   eavesdropping on plain RTP by encrypting the data flow.  It uses AES
   as the default cipher and defines two modes of operation (Segmented
   Integer Counter Mode and f8-mode), which is agreed upon after
   negotiation.  It also uses HMAC-SHA1 and index keeping to enable
   message authentication/integrity and replay protection required to
   prevent media injection attacks.  Secure RTCP (SRTCP) provides the
   same security-related features to RTCP as SRTP does for RTP.  SRTCP
   is described in [RFC3711] as optional.  In order to prevent media
   session teardown, it is recommended to turn this feature on.  The
   choice of the external key management protocol is left to the
   deployment, a PKI is necessary to implement the security requirements
   of the SPEERMINT requirements document.

5.  Conclusions

   This document presented the different SPEERMINT security threats
   classified in groups related to the LUF, LRF, SF, and MF,
   respectively.  The multiple instances of the threats were presented
   with a brief explanation.  Finally, suggested countermeasures for
   SPEERMINT were outlined together with possible mitigation of the
   existing threats by means of them.

6.  Security Considerations

   This document is entirely focused on the security threats for
   SPEERMINT.





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7.  Acknowledgements

   This document was originally inspired by the VOIPSA VoIP Security and
   Privacy Threat Taxonomy.  The authors would like to thank VOIPSA for
   having produced a comprehensive taxonomy as the starting point of
   this document.  Additionally, the authors would like to thank Cullen
   Jennings, Jon Peterson, David Schwartz, Hadriel Kaplan, Peter Koch,
   Daryl Malas, Jason Livingood, and Robert Sparks for useful comments
   to previous editions of this document on the mailing list as well as
   during IETF meetings.

   Jan Seedorf and Saverio Niccolini are partially supported by the
   DEMONS project, a research project supported by the European
   Commission under its 7th Framework Program (contract no. 257315).
   The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors
   and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the
   official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of
   the DEMONS project or the European Commission.

8.  Informative References

   [DBSEC]    Gertz, M. and S. Jajodia, "Handbook of Database Security:
              Applications and Trends",  Springer, 2008.

   [DRINKS-SPPROV]
              Mule, J., Cartwright, K., Ali, S., and A. Mayrhofer,
              "Session Peering Provisioning Protocol", Work in Progress,
              September 2011.

   [PROTOS]   Wieser, C., Laakso, M., and H. Schulzrinne, "SIP
              Robustness Testing for Large-Scale Use",  First
              International Workshop on Software Quality (SOQUA 2004),
              September 2004.

   [RFC2827]  Ferguson, P. and D. Senie, "Network Ingress Filtering:
              Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source
              Address Spoofing", BCP 38, RFC 2827, May 2000.

   [RFC3261]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
              A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
              Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
              June 2002.

   [RFC3323]  Peterson, J., "A Privacy Mechanism for the Session
              Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 3323, November 2002.

   [RFC3324]  Watson, M., "Short Term Requirements for Network Asserted
              Identity", RFC 3324, November 2002.



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RFC 6404          SPEERMINT Threats and Countermeasures    November 2011


   [RFC3325]  Jennings, C., Peterson, J., and M. Watson, "Private
              Extensions to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for
              Asserted Identity within Trusted Networks", RFC 3325,
              November 2002.

   [RFC3711]  Baugher, M., McGrew, D., Naslund, M., Carrara, E., and K.
              Norrman, "The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)",
              RFC 3711, March 2004.

   [RFC3893]  Peterson, J., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
              Authenticated Identity Body (AIB) Format", RFC 3893,
              September 2004.

   [RFC4033]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
              RFC 4033, March 2005.

   [RFC4034]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions",
              RFC 4034, March 2005.

   [RFC4035]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security
              Extensions", RFC 4035, March 2005.

   [RFC4301]  Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the
              Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005.

   [RFC4347]  Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
              Security", RFC 4347, April 2006.

   [RFC4474]  Peterson, J. and C. Jennings, "Enhancements for
              Authenticated Identity Management in the Session
              Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 4474, August 2006.

   [RFC4475]  Sparks, R., Hawrylyshen, A., Johnston, A., Rosenberg, J.,
              and H. Schulzrinne, "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
              Torture Test Messages", RFC 4475, May 2006.

   [RFC4568]  Andreasen, F., Baugher, M., and D. Wing, "Session
              Description Protocol (SDP) Security Descriptions for Media
              Streams", RFC 4568, July 2006.

   [RFC4732]  Handley, M., Rescorla, E., and IAB, "Internet Denial-of-
              Service Considerations", RFC 4732, December 2006.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.



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   [RFC5351]  Lei, P., Ong, L., Tuexen, M., and T. Dreibholz, "An
              Overview of Reliable Server Pooling Protocols", RFC 5351,
              September 2008.

   [RFC5352]  Stewart, R., Xie, Q., Stillman, M., and M. Tuexen,
              "Aggregate Server Access Protocol (ASAP)", RFC 5352,
              September 2008.

   [RFC5353]  Xie, Q., Stewart, R., Stillman, M., Tuexen, M., and A.
              Silverton, "Endpoint Handlespace Redundancy Protocol
              (ENRP)", RFC 5353, September 2008.

   [RFC5486]  Malas, D. and D. Meyer, "Session Peering for Multimedia
              Interconnect (SPEERMINT) Terminology", RFC 5486,
              March 2009.

   [RFC5853]  Hautakorpi, J., Camarillo, G., Penfield, R., Hawrylyshen,
              A., and M. Bhatia, "Requirements from Session Initiation
              Protocol (SIP) Session Border Control (SBC) Deployments",
              RFC 5853, April 2010.

   [RFC6271]  Mule, J-F., "Requirements for SIP-Based Session Peering",
              RFC 6271, June 2011.

   [RFC6406]  Malas, D., Ed. and J. Livingood, Ed., "Session PEERing for
              Multimedia INTerconnect (SPEERMINT) Architecture",
              RFC 6406, November 2011.

   [VOIPSATAXONOMY]
              Zar, J. and et al, "VOIPSA VoIP Security and Privacy
              Threat Taxonomy, Public Release 1.0",
               http://www.voipsa.org/Activities/taxonomy.php,
              October 2005.


















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Authors' Addresses

   Jan Seedorf
   NEC Laboratories Europe, NEC Europe,  Ltd.
   Kurfuersten-Anlage 36
   Heidelberg  69115
   Germany

   Phone: +49 (0) 6221 4342 221
   EMail: jan.seedorf@neclab.eu
   URI:   http://www.neclab.eu


   Saverio Niccolini
   NEC Laboratories Europe, NEC Europe, Ltd.
   Kurfuersten-Anlage 36
   Heidelberg  69115
   Germany

   Phone: +49 (0) 6221 4342 118
   EMail: saverio.niccolini@.neclab.eu
   URI:   http://www.neclab.eu


   Eric Chen
   Information Sharing Platform Laboratories, NTT
   3-9-11 Midori-cho
   Musashino, Tokyo  180-8585
   Japan

   EMail: eric.chen@lab.ntt.co.jp
   URI:   http://www.ntt.co.jp/index_e.html


   Hendrik Scholz
   VOIPFUTURE GmbH
   Wendenstrasse 4
   Hamburg  20097
   Germany

   Phone: +49 (0) 40 688 900 163
   EMail: hendrik.scholz@voipfuture.com
   URI:   http://voipfuture.com








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