+++ /dev/null
-==============================================
-Session Authentication for the Cephx Protocol
-==============================================
-Peter Reiher
-7/30/12
-
-The original Cephx protocol authenticated the client to the authenticator and set up a session
-key used to authenticate the client to the server it needs to talk to. It did not, however,
-authenticate the ongoing messages between the client and server. Based on the fact that they
-share a secret key, these ongoing session messages can be easily authenticated by using the
-key to sign the messages.
-
-This document describes changes to the code that allow such ongoing session authentication.
-The changes allow for future changes that permit other authentication protocols (and the
-existing null NONE and UNKNOWN protocols) to handle signatures, but the only protocol that
-actually does signatures, at the time of the writing, is the Cephx protocol.
-
-Introduction
--------------
-
-This code comes into play after the Cephx protocol has completed. At this point, the client and
-server share a secret key. This key will be used for authentication. For other protocols, there
-may or may not be such a key in place, and perhaps the actual procedures used to perform
-signing will be different, so the code is written to be general.
-
-The "session" here is represented by an established pipe. For such pipes, there should be a
-``session\_security`` structure attached to the pipe. Whenever a message is to be sent on the
-pipe, code that handles the signature for this kind of session security will be called. On the
-other end of the pipe, code that checks this kind of session security's message signatures will
-be called. Messages that fail the signature check will not be processed further. That implies
-that the sender had better be in agreement with the receiver on the session security being used,
-since otherwise messages will be uniformly dropped between them.
-
-The code is also prepared to handle encryption and decryption of session messages, which would
-add secrecy to the integrity provided by the signatures. No protocol currently implemented
-encrypts the ongoing session messages, though.
-
-For this functionality to work, several steps are required. First, the sender and receiver must have
-a successful run of the cephx protocol to establish a shared key. They must store that key somewhere
-that the pipe can get at later, to permit messages to be signed with it. Sent messages must be
-signed, and received messages must have their signatures checked.
-
-The signature could be computed in a variety of ways, but currently its size is limited to 64 bits.
-A message's signature is placed in its footer, in a field called ``sig``.
-
-The signature code in Cephx can be turned on and off at runtime, using a Ceph boolean option called
-``cephx\_sign\_messages``. It is currently set to false, by default, so no messages will be signed. It
-must be changed to true to cause signatures to be calculated and checked.
-
-Storing the Key
----------------
-
-The key is needed to create signatures on the sending end and check signatures on the receiving end.
-In the future, if asymmetric crypto is an option, it's possible that two keys (a private one for
-this end of the pipe and a public one for the other end) would need to be stored. At this time,
-messages going in both directions will be signed with the same key, so only that key needs to be
-saved.
-
-The key is saved when the pipe is established. On the client side, this happens in ``connect()``,
-which is located in ``msg/Pipe.cc``. The key is obtained from a run of the Cephx protocol,
-which results in a successfully checked authorizer structure. If there is such an authorizer
-available, the code calls ``get\_auth\_session\_handler()`` to create a new authentication session handler
-and stores it in the pipe data structure. On the server side, a similar thing is done in
-``accept()`` after the authorizer provided by the client has been verified.
-
-Once these things are done on either end of the connection, session authentication can start.
-
-These routines (``connect()`` and ``accept()``) are also used to handle situations where a new
-session is being set up. At this stage, no authorizer has been created yet, so there's no key.
-Special cases in the code that calls the signature code skip these calls when the
-``CEPH\_AUTH\_UNKNOWN`` protocol is in use. This protocol label is on the pre-authorizer
-messages in a session, indicating that negotiation on an authentication protocol is ongoing and
-thus signature is not possible. There will be a reliable authentication operation later in this
-session before anything sensitive should be passed, so this is not a security problem.
-
-Signing Messages
-----------------
-
-Messages are signed in the ``write\_message`` call located in ``msg/Pipe.cc``. The actual
-signature process is to encrypt the CRCs for the message using the shared key. Thus, we must
-defer signing until all CRCs have been computed. The header CRC is computed last, so we
-call ``sign\_message()`` as soon as we've calculated that CRC.
-
-``sign\_message()`` is a virtual function defined in ``auth/AuthSessionHandler.h``. Thus,
-a specific version of it must be written for each authentication protocol supported. Currently,
-only UNKNOWN, NONE and CEPHX are supported. So there is a separate version of ``sign\_message()`` in
-``auth/unknown/AuthUnknownSessionHandler.h``, ``auth/none/AuthNoneSessionHandler.h`` and
-``auth/cephx/CephxSessionHandler.cc``. The UNKNOWN and NONE versions simply return 0, indicating
-success.
-
-The CEPHX version is more extensive. It is found in ``auth/cephx/CephxSessionHandler.cc``.
-The first thing done is to determine if the run time option to handle signatures (see above) is on.
-If not, the Cephx version of ``sign\_message()`` simply returns success without actually calculating
-a signature or inserting it into the message.
-
-If the run time option is enabled, ``sign\_message()`` copies all of the message's CRCs (one from the
-header and three from the footer) into a buffer. It calls ``encode\_encrypt()`` on the buffer,
-using the key obtained from the pipe's ``session\_security`` structure. 64 bits of the encrypted
-result are put into the message footer's signature field and a footer flag is set to indicate that
-the message was signed. (This flag is a sanity check. It is not regarded as definitive
-evidence that the message was signed. The presence of a ``session\_security`` structure at the
-receiving end requires a signature regardless of the value of this flag.) If this all goes well,
-``sign\_message()`` returns 0. If there is a problem anywhere along the line and no signature
-was computed, it returns ``SESSION\_SIGNATURE\_FAILURE``.
-
-Checking Signatures
--------------------
-
-The signature is checked by a routine called ``check\_message\_signature()``. This is also a
-virtual function, defined in ``auth/AuthSessionHandler.h``. So again there are specific versions
-for supported authentication protocols, such as UNKNOWN, NONE and CEPHX. Again, the UNKNOWN and
-NONE versions are stored in ``auth/unknown/AuthUnknownSessionHandler.h`` and
-``auth/none/AuthNoneSessionHandler.h``, respectively, and again they simply return 0, indicating
-success.
-
-The CEPHX version of ``check\_message\_signature()`` performs a real signature check. This routine
-(stored in ``auth/cephx/CephxSessionHandler.cc``) exits with success if the run time option has
-disabled signatures. Otherwise, it takes the CRCs from the header and footer, encrypts the result,
-and compares it to the signature stored in the footer. Since an earlier routine has checked that
-the CRCs actually match the contents of the message, it is unnecessary to recompute the CRCs
-on the raw data in the message. The encryption is performed with the same ``encode\_encrypt()``
-routine used on the sending end, using the key stored in the local ``session\_security``
-data structure.
-
-If everything checks out, the CEPHX routine returns 0, indicating succcess. If there is a
-problem, the routine returns ``SESSION\_SIGNATURE\_FAILURE``.
-
-Adding New Session Authentication Methods
------------------------------------------
-
-For the purpose of session authentication only (not the basic authentication of client and
-server currently performed by the Cephx protocol), in addition to adding a new protocol, that
-protocol must have a ``sign\_message()`` routine and a ``check\_message\_signature`` routine.
-These routines will take a message pointer as a parameter and return 0 on success. The procedure
-used to sign and check will be specific to the new method, but probably there will be a
-``session\_security`` structure attached to the pipe that contains a cryptographic key. This
-structure will be either an ``AuthSessionHandler`` (found in ``auth/AuthSessionHandler.h``)
-or a structure derived from that type.
-
-Adding Encryption to Sessions
------------------------------
-
-The existing code is partially, but not fully, set up to allow sessions to have their packets
-encrypted. Part of adding encryption would be similar to adding a new authentication method.
-But one would also need to add calls to the encryption and decryption routines in ``write\_message()``
-and ``read\_message()``. These calls would probably go near where the current calls for
-authentication are made. You should consider whether you want to replace the existing calls
-with something more general that does whatever the chosen form of session security requires,
-rather than explicitly saying ``sign`` or ``encrypt``.
-
-Session Security Statistics
----------------------------
-
-The existing Cephx authentication code keeps statistics on how many messages were signed, how
-many message signature were checked, and how many checks succeeded and failed. It is prepared
-to keep similar statistics on encryption and decryption. These statistics can be accessed through
-the call ``printAuthSessionHandlerStats`` in ``auth/AuthSessionHandler.cc``.
-
-If new authentication or encryption methods are added, they should include code that keeps these
-statistics.
Code Review / stor4nfv.git / blobdiff