]> Trifecta Tech Foundation

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Trifecta Tech Foundation

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Internet Network Time Protocols NTP NTS The aim of this document is to describe a system for NTS pools that are able to be used by clients without any knowledge beyond plain NTS. The work here focuses purely on creating an intermediate NTS Key Exchange server that can be configured with the addresses of multiple servers and distribute load between them. The parts of pool operation dealing with managing the list of servers are left out of scope for this work. About This Document The latest revision of this draft can be found at . Status information for this document may be found at . Discussion of this document takes place on the Network Time Protocols Working Group mailing list (), which is archived at . Subscribe at . Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at .

Introduction NTS provides authenticity and limited confidentiality for NTP . However, the key exchange preceding the actual time exchange makes it hard to implement a pool for NTS supporting servers in a manner similar to the DNS resolution approach taken to provide the NTP Pool . This document provides extensions to the NTS Key Exchange sessions that allow for an implementation of a pool for NTS that:

• is usable without changes to the client,
• avoids constraining the time source's cookie format,
• avoids time sources having potential access to all traffic.

Conventions and Definitions Throughout the text, the terms client and server will refer to those roles in an NTS Key Exchange session as specified in . Please note that this means that the pool itself operates in both roles: As a server towards users of the pool, and as a client towards the time sources. Where further specificity of the role of a participant is needed, we will use the term user to indicate a user of a pool, the term pool to indicate the pool itself, and time source for the time servers that the pool delegates the actual providing of time to. This document follows the conventions used in for the layout of NTS records on the wire. 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 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

General pool architecture We propose a pool model where the pool provides an NTS Key Exchange service to the outside world. A major advantage of this model is that it avoids having to distribute certificates to all time sources. Contrary to , there is no direct TLS connection between the client and the selected time source. In , cookies are generated based on key material that is extracted from this TLS connection. Our proposed model instead establishes two TLS connections: between the client and the pool, and between the pool and the time source. Because cookies need to be generated using key material from the client, the pool extracts this key material and sends it to the time source. The time source uses this key material (rather than key material extracted from its connection with the pool) to generate cookies. This way, the pool can remain oblivious to the cookie format of the time source.

Session flow between client, pool and time source In our proposed pool model, a session of a client with the pool is handled through the following steps: 1) The client presents itself to the pools NTS key exchange server, sending it its request. 2) The pool parses this requests, and assigns a time source to the request. 3) The pool then asks that time source which protocols and algorithms it supports. 4) Based on that information, and the request of the client, the pool can now determine what the next protocol and algorithm should be given in the response to the client. It uses this information to extract the NTS client-to-server and server-to-client keys from the TLS session with the client. 5) The pool then sends a fixed key request to the time source, with the extracted keys and the selected next protocol and algorithm. The time source can then provide the pool with the cookies the client will need to succesfully connect to it. 6) Finally, the pool combines all the information generated through the process into the response to the client, telling it the selected next protocol, algorithm, providing it with the cookies, and telling it where to find the ntp server of the selected time source. This session flow requires additional information to be exchanged between the pool and the time source in steps 3 and 5, for which this draft provides records described in the sections below. The exchange of information with the time source from the pool is split into two steps because the information on supported protocols and algorithms needs to be available to the pool before it can actually send over the keys to the time source. In addition, this split then allows caching of the supported protocols and algorithm information for the time sources. This allows some load reduction on both the time source and the pool itself.

Communication between the pool and time sources To facilitate communication between the pool and the time sources, six new NTS records are defined in . Together these records provide a way for the pool to provide key exchange services to clients on behalf of the time sources. The Supported Next Protocol List (), Supported Algorithm List () and List Server Names () records allow the pool to ask a time source which protocols and algorithms it supports, and which server names are used in the NTP server records () it generates. This information can be requested by the pool at any time, and can be cached for short periods of time to improve efficiency. Using knowledge of a time source's supported protocols and algorithms, the pool can then handle client connections for that time source, using the clients indicated desires to choose a concrete next protocol and AEAD algorithm. The pool can then extract the keys from the TLS connection and use the Fixed Key record () to request cookies for these keys from the time source. The response to a request containing a Fixed Key record will be the same as that for any regular NTS Key Exchange response, with the exception that the keys will be taken from the Fixed Key record instead of being derived from the TLS connection. The list of server names provided by the time source can be used by the pool to honor requests by the client to not repeat a certain server. This allows more efficient retrieval of multiple sources from a pool. As it is wasteful to setup a new TLS session between the pool and the time source for each of these interactions. To facilitate reuse of the TLS sessions, we further introduce the Keep Alive record (). This record allows the pool to indicate to the time source a desire to keep the session alive for more than a single request-response interaction.

Authenticating the pool to time sources Allowing arbitrary clients to keep connections alive for more that a single request-response interaction could open up the server to denial of service due to resource exhaustion. To prevent this, a pool wishing to use the keep alive functionality MUST authenticate itself to the time source using an Authentication Token record (). Time sources MUST check that the content of the Authentication Token record matches the authentication string of a client that is on the list of requestors allowed to use the keep alive mechanism. By default, the list of requestors allowed to use the keep alive mechanism MUST be empty Furthermore, time sources MAY choose to also restrict the Fixed Key, Supported Next Protocol List and Supported Algorithm List to authenticated clients. If this choice is made, it is suggested that the server treat these records as unrecognized critical records on unauthenticated client's connections.

Communication between clients and the pool A client requesting time from the pool can make a normal NTS Key Exchange request to the pool. In the response to the client the pool needs to tell which NTP server is to be used to get the time. This can be done through the already existing NTP Server Record. However, the pool needs to ensure it is present, and therefore MUST add such a record to the response unless one is already provided by the time source. Clients that are aware they are talking to a pool may want to get multiple independent time sources from that pool. For this, they need to be able to tell the pool which time sources they already have, otherwise they might get a time source that they are already talking to. To achieve this, a client can use the NTP Server Deny record () to indicate it would rather not receive a particular server. Clients MUST use the precise name given by the pool in a previous NTP Server record, otherwise the pool may not recognize which time source the client is referring to.

New NTS record types

Keep Alive Record Type Number: 8 Critical bit: 0 Indicates a desire to keep the TLS connection active for more than one message exchange. This can be used by a pool to reuse connections to a time source's NTS Key Exchange servers multiple times, reducing load on both the pool and time sources. When a client sends this record the body MUST have size 0. A client MUST NOT use Keep Alive unless the request contains a record type allowing the use of Keep Alive. Within this specification, that is limited to the Supported Protocol List and Fixed Key Request records. A server SHOULD ignore any body for the Keep Alive record. When supported by a server and allowed for the request in question, the server MAY include a Keep Alive record with a body of size 0 in the response and keep the TLS connection active after the response to handle further requests from the client. A client SHOULD ignore any body for the Keep Alive record. As keeping a connection active requires additional resources on the server, a server SHOULD NOT respond with a Keep Alive record to unauthenticated clients. When included in the request or response, the client respectively server MAY, contrary to the requirements in , send another request or response. Any TLS "close_notify" SHALL be sent only after the last request or response respectively to use the connection. Once a Keep Alive record has been sent by a client, or honored by a server, the TLS connection over which it was sent MUST NOT be used for key extraction. Doing so anyway can result in the reuse of keys and may result in loss of confidentiality or authenticity of the resulting NTP exchanges.

Supported Next Protocol List Record Type Number: 9 Critical bit: 1 This record can be used by a pool to query time sources about which next protocols they support. When a client sends this record the body MUST have size 0. Clients MAY use Keep Alive in combination with this record. Contrary to , a request with this record SHOULD NOT include a "Next Protocol Negotiation", "AEAD Algorithm Negotiation" or "Fixed Key Request" record. When receiving this record, servers MUST ignore any client body sent and MUST send in the response a Supported Next Protocol List record with as data a list of 16-bit integers, giving the protocol IDs the server supports. When receiving this record, a server MUST NOT negotiate a next protocol, AEAD algorithm, or keys for this request. A server MAY treat this record as unknown for clients that are not authenticated as described in .

Supported Algorithm List Record Type Number: 10 Critical bit: 1 This record can be used by a pool to query time sources about which AEAD algorithms they support. When a client sends this record the body MUST have size 0. Clients MAY use Keep Alive in combination with this record. Contrary to , a request with this record SHOULD NOT include a "Next Protocol Negotiation", "AEAD Algorithm Negotiation" or "Fixed Key Request" record. When receiving this record, servers MUST ignore any client body sent and MUST send in the response a Supported Algorithm List record with as data a list of tuples of two 16-bit integers, the first giving an algorithm ID for the AEAD and the second giving the length of the key for that algorithm ID. When receiving this record, a server MUST NOT negotiate a next protocol, AEAD algorithm, or keys for this request. A server MAY treat this record as unknown for clients that are not authenticated as described in . We include the algorithm key size in the response so that a pool does not itself need knowledge of which AEAD algorithms exist, and what their key sizes are. Instead, it can use the provided key length when extracting keys from the TLS connection between end user and pool. This allows adoption of new AEAD algorithms without any changes to the pool software.

List Server Names Record Type Number: 11 Critical bit: 1 This record can be used by a pool to query time sources about which server names they use in NTP server records in their responses. When a client sends this record the body MUST have size 0. Clients MAY use Keep Alive in combination with this record. Contrary to , a request with this record SHOULD NOT include a "Next Protocol Negotiation", "AEAD Algorithm Negotiation" or "Fixed Key Request" record. Servers MUST NOT include this record in a response. When receiving this record, servers MUST ignore any body of this record sent by the client, and MUST send in the response one NTP server record for each server name the server may use responses to fixed key requests. If a server never sends a NTP server record in response to a fixed key request, it MAY opt to not provide one in response to this record. When receiving this record, a server MUST NOT negotiate a next protocol, AEAD algorithm, or keys for this request. A server MAY treat this record as unknown for clients that are not authenticated as described in .

Fixed Key Request Record Type Number: 12 Critical Bit: 1 When a client is properly authenticated, the server SHOULD NOT perform Key Extraction but rather use the keys provided by the client in the extension field. In all other aspects, the response SHALL be the same as that from a regular key exchange session as specified in . This allows a pool to do key negotiation on behalf of its users with the time source's NTS Key Exchange servers, even though it terminates the TLS connection. When used, the client MUST provide an AEAD Algorithm Negotiation record with precisely one algorithm, and a Next Protocol Negotiation record with precisely one next protocol. The data in the Fixed Key Request record must have length twice the key length N of the AEAD algorithm in the AEAD Algorithm Negotiation record. The first N bytes MUST be the C2S Key and the second set of N bytes MUST be the S2C key. Clients MAY use Keep Alive in combination with this record. This record MUST NOT be sent by a server. A server MAY treat this record as unknown for clients that are not authenticated as described in .

NTP Server Deny Record Type Number: 13 Critical Bit: 0 When provided by a client, indicates a desire to connect to a server other than the server specified in the record. This can be used to ensure a client receives independent NTP servers from one NTS Key Exchange server without having to potentially try multiple times to get a new server. A client MAY send multiple of these records if desired. The data in the record SHOULD match that given through an NTPv4 Server Negotiation received in an earlier response from the same NTS Key Exchange server. MUST NOT be sent by a server. Server MAY at its discretion ignore the request from the client and still provide the given server in an NTPv4 Server Negotiation record.

Authentication Token Record Type Number: 14 Critical Bit: 0 When provided by a client, gives a proof of their identity through a pre-shared secret token. This can be used to allow only certain clients, for example pools, to use certain functionality of an NTS key exchange server. In particular, it can be used to prevent misuse of the keep alive mechanism by clients other than the pool, preventing resource exhaustion denial of service attack. This record MUST be sent before records that may be refused if not properly authenticated. A client MUST NOT send more than 1 of this record. The data in the record should be an ASCII string that MUST NOT be null terminated, previously agreed through an out of scope mechanism. The Authentication Token record MUST NOT be sent by a server. A server MAY use the record to gate acceptance of other records such as the Keep Alive, Fixed Key Request, List Server Names, Supported Algorithm List and Supported Next Protocol List records. A server supporting this record MUST support keys of length at least 64 characters. Keys SHOULD be chosen such that they have at least 128 bits of entropy. When using only letters and numbers this corresponds to at least 22 characters, and when using only hexadecimal digits, at least 32 characters.

Security Considerations

Pool's position In the pool design presented above, the pool effectively acts as a man in the middle between the user and the ultimate time source during the NTS Key Exchange portion of the session. This means that the pool has access to the key material of these sessions. Although this is a small additional risk, we consider this acceptable because the pool could already always assign sessions for a user to time servers it controls anyway. The fact that the pool also gets access to key material makes it less advisable to have a pool as a time source for another pool, as this increases the number of actors with access to the key material even further. The design above does avoid sharing key material between all time sources. As a consequence, a time source in the pool will not be able to break confidentiality or authenticity of traffic with other time sources of the pool. Furthermore, any traffic directly with the time source has no key material involved that is known to the pool. It must be noted that clients need to trust the pool to check the TLS certificates of the time sources. It is imperative that the pool does this correctly, and that it has a trusted source of time to be able to do revocation checks.

Keep alive and denial of service attack risk The Keep Alive NTS record allows a client to keep an NTS key exchange connection open for significantly longer than usual. If arbitrary clients were allowed to do this, they could use it trivially run a server out of resources such as file descriptors. It is therefore important that public servers restrict keeping connections alive to a limited set of trusted clients. The recommended mechanism for doing this is through token authentication via the authentication token record . The token used in token authentication is a symmetric authentication secret, known to both the pool and the time source. Its security in transit is guaranteed by the protections from the TLS connection. Pools SHOULD provide methods for updating these keys to provide time sources an option should the used authentication token leak. Updating these keys is presumed to be done using an out of band method out of scope for this text.

Unwanted addition to a pool This document does not specify an explicit mechanism for pools to identify whether a timesource wants to be part of the pool. Such a mechanism is considered out of scope. However, clients that wish to restrict their inclusion in pools of the type described in this document may choose to also enforce the token authentication for use of the Fixed Key Request record from , and the Supported Protocol and Supported Algorithm records from and . Doing so effectively prevents the time source from being included in a pool without explicit configuration, providing control for the time source operator over which pools their time source is included in.

Error handling To avoid giving multiple time sources access to the key material of the end user, it is important that the keys extracted from the TLS session between the user and the pool are sent to at most one time source. If an error occurs after sending the Fixed Key Request record, either with the TLS connection between the pool and the time source, or by being explicitly reported by the time source to the pool, the pool SHOULD return an error to the user. Retrying with a different time source during the same TLS session may unintentionally leave the user vulnerable to the operator of the originally selected time source.

IANA Considerations IANA has early-allocated, and is requested to permanently allocate, the following entries in the Network Time Security Key Establishment Record Types registry :

Record Type Number	Description	Reference
8	Keep Alive	[[this memo]]
9	Supported Next Protocol List	[[this memo]]
10	Supported Algorithm List	[[this memo]]
11	List Server Names	[[this memo]]
12	Fixed Key Request	[[this memo]]
13	NTP Server Deny	[[this memo]]
14	Authentication Token	[[this memo]]

References Normative References This document specifies version 1.3 of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. TLS allows client/server applications to communicate over the Internet in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. This document updates RFCs 5705 and 6066, and obsoletes RFCs 5077, 5246, and 6961. This document also specifies new requirements for TLS 1.2 implementations. This memo specifies Network Time Security (NTS), a mechanism for using Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) to provide cryptographic security for the client-server mode of the Network Time Protocol (NTP). NTS is structured as a suite of two loosely coupled sub-protocols. The first (NTS Key Establishment (NTS-KE)) handles initial authentication and key establishment over TLS. The second (NTS Extension Fields for NTPv4) handles encryption and authentication during NTP time synchronization via extension fields in the NTP packets, and holds all required state only on the client via opaque cookies. In many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. RFC 2119 specifies common key words that may be used in protocol specifications. This document aims to reduce the ambiguity by clarifying that only UPPERCASE usage of the key words have the defined special meanings. Informative References The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is widely used to synchronize computer clocks in the Internet. This document describes NTP version 4 (NTPv4), which is backwards compatible with NTP version 3 (NTPv3), described in RFC 1305, as well as previous versions of the protocol. NTPv4 includes a modified protocol header to accommodate the Internet Protocol version 6 address family. NTPv4 includes fundamental improvements in the mitigation and discipline algorithms that extend the potential accuracy to the tens of microseconds with modern workstations and fast LANs. It includes a dynamic server discovery scheme, so that in many cases, specific server configuration is not required. It corrects certain errors in the NTPv3 design and implementation and includes an optional extension mechanism. n.d.

Acknowledgments The authors thank Marlon Peeters, Folkert de Vries and Watson Ladd for their input and discussions during the writing of this document.