4 TLS Working Group N. Mavrogiannopoulos
5 Internet-Draft Independent Consultant
6 Expires: July 1, 2006 December 28, 2005
9 Using OpenPGP keys for TLS authentication
10 draft-ietf-tls-openpgp-keys-07
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35 This Internet-Draft will expire on July 1, 2006.
39 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
43 This memo proposes extensions to the TLS protocol to support the
44 OpenPGP trust model and keys. The extensions discussed here include
45 a certificate type negotiation mechanism, and the required
46 modifications to the TLS Handshake Protocol.
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62 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
63 2. Extension Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
64 3. Changes to the Handshake Message Contents . . . . . . . . . . 5
65 3.1. Client Hello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
66 3.2. Server Hello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
67 3.3. Server Certificate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
68 3.4. Certificate request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
69 3.5. Client certificate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
70 3.6. Server key exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
71 3.7. Certificate verify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
72 3.8. Finished . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
73 4. Cipher suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
74 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
75 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
76 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
77 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
78 Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
79 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
80 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 14
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118 At the time of writing, TLS [1] uses the PKIX [4] infrastructure, to
119 provide certificate services. Currently the PKIX protocols are
120 limited to a hierarchical key management and as a result,
121 applications which follow different - non hierarchical - trust
122 models, like the "web of trust" model, could not be benefited by TLS.
124 OpenPGP keys (sometimes called OpenPGP certificates), provide
125 security services for electronic communications. They are widely
126 deployed, especially in electronic mail applications, provide public
127 key authentication services, and allow distributed key management.
129 This document will extend the TLS protocol to support OpenPGP keys
130 and trust model using the existing TLS cipher suites. In brief this
131 would be achieved by adding a negotiation of the certificate type in
132 addition to the normal handshake negotiations. Then the required
133 modifications to the handshake messages, in order to hold OpenPGP
134 keys as well, will be described. The the normal handshake procedure
135 with X.509 certificates will not be altered, to preserve
136 compatibility with existing TLS servers and clients.
138 This document uses the same notation used in the TLS Protocol
141 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
142 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
143 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
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174 A new value, "cert_type(7)", is added to the enumerated
175 ExtensionType, defined in TLSEXT [3]. This value is used as the
176 extension number for the extensions in both the client hello message
177 and the server hello message. This new extension type will be used
178 for certificate type negotiation.
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228 3. Changes to the Handshake Message Contents
230 This section describes the changes to the TLS handshake message
231 contents when OpenPGP keys are to be used for authentication.
235 In order to indicate the support of multiple certificate types
236 clients will include an extension of type "cert_type" to the extended
237 client hello message. The hello extension mechanism is described in
240 This extension carries a list of supported certificate types the
241 client can use, sorted by client preference. This extension MAY be
242 omitted if the client only supports X.509 certificates. The
243 "extension_data" field of this extension will contain a
244 CertificateTypeExtension structure.
247 enum { client, server } ClientOrServerExtension;
249 enum { X.509(0), OpenPGP(1), (255) } CertificateType;
252 select(ClientOrServerExtension) {
254 CertificateType certificate_types<1..2^8-1>;
256 CertificateType certificate_type;
258 } CertificateTypeExtension;
262 Servers that receive an extended client hello containing the
263 "cert_type" extension, and have chosen a cipher suite that supports
264 certificates, then they MUST select a certificate type from the
265 certificate_types field in the extended client hello, or terminate
266 the connection with a fatal alert of type "unsupported_certificate".
268 The certificate type selected by the server, is encoded in a
269 CertificateTypeExtension structure, which is included in the extended
270 server hello message, using an extension of type "cert_type".
271 Servers that only support X.509 certificates MAY omit including the
272 "cert_type" extension in the extended server hello.
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284 3.3. Server Certificate
286 The contents of the certificate message sent from server to client
287 and vice versa are determined by the negotiated certificate type and
288 the selected cipher suite's key exchange algorithm.
290 If the OpenPGP certificate type is negotiated then it is required to
291 present an OpenPGP key in the Certificate message. The OpenPGP key
292 must contain a public key that matches the selected key exchange
293 algorithm, as shown below.
296 Key Exchange Algorithm OpenPGP Key Type
298 RSA RSA public key which can be used for
301 DHE_DSS DSS public key.
303 DHE_RSA RSA public key which can be used for
306 An OpenPGP public key appearing in the Certificate message will be
307 sent using the binary OpenPGP format. The term public key is used to
308 describe a composition of OpenPGP packets to form a block of data
309 which contains all information needed by the peer. This includes
310 public key packets, user ID packets and all the fields described in
311 "Transferable Public Keys" section in OpenPGP [2].
313 The option is also available to send an OpenPGP fingerprint, instead
314 of sending the entire key. The process of fingerprint generation is
315 described in OpenPGP [2]. The peer shall respond with a
316 "certificate_unobtainable" fatal alert if the key with the given key
317 fingerprint cannot be found. The "certificate_unobtainable" fatal
318 alert is defined in section 4 of TLSEXT [3].
320 If the key is not valid, expired, revoked, corrupt, the appropriate
321 fatal alert message is sent from section A.3 of the TLS
322 specification. If a key is valid and neither expired nor revoked, it
323 is accepted by the protocol. The key validation procedure is a local
324 matter outside the scope of this document.
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341 key_fingerprint (0), key (1), (255)
342 } PGPKeyDescriptorType;
344 opaque PGPKeyFingerprint<16..20>;
346 opaque PGPKey<0..2^24-1>;
349 PGPKeyDescriptorType descriptorType;
350 select (descriptorType) {
351 case key_fingerprint: PGPKeyFingerprint;
356 3.4. Certificate request
358 The semantics of this message remain the same as in the TLS
359 specification. However the structure of this message has been
360 modified for OpenPGP keys. The PGPCertificateRequest structure will
361 only be used if the negotiated certificate type is OpenPGP.
365 rsa_sign(1), dss_sign(2), (255)
366 } ClientCertificateParamsType;
369 ClientCertificateParamsType certificate_params_types<1..2^8-1>;
370 } PGPCertificateRequest;
372 The certificate_params_types is a list of accepted client certificate
373 parameter types, sorted in order of the server's preference.
375 3.5. Client certificate
377 This message is only sent in response to the certificate request
378 message. The client certificate message is sent using the same
379 formatting as the server certificate message and it is also required
380 to present a certificate that matches the negotiated certificate
381 type. If OpenPGP keys have been selected, and no key is available
382 from the client, then a Certificate that contains an empty PGPKey
383 should be sent. The server may respond with a "handshake_failure"
384 fatal alert if client authentication is required. This transaction
385 follows the TLS specification.
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396 3.6. Server key exchange
398 The server key exchange message for OpenPGP keys is identical to the
401 3.7. Certificate verify
403 The certificate verify message for OpenPGP keys is identical to the
408 The finished message for OpenPGP keys is identical to the description
409 in the specification.
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454 No new cipher suites are required to use OpenPGP keys. OpenPGP keys
455 can be combined with existing cipher suites defined in TLS [1],
456 except the ones marked as "Exportable". Exportable cipher suites
457 SHOULD NOT be used with OpenPGP keys.
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508 5. Security Considerations
510 As with X.509 ASN.1 formatted keys, OpenPGP keys need specialized
511 parsers. Care must be taken to make those parsers safe against
512 maliciously modified keys, that could cause arbitrary code execution.
514 Security considerations about the use of the web of trust or the
515 verification procedure are outside the scope of this document and
516 they are considered an issue to be handled by local policy.
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566 6.1. Normative References
568 [1] Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol", RFC 2246,
571 [2] Callas, J., Donnerhacke, L., Finey, H., and R. Thayer, "OpenPGP
572 Message Format", RFC 2440, November 1998.
574 [3] Blake-Wilson, S., Nystrom, M., Hopwood, D., Mikkelsen, J., and
575 T. Wright, "TLS Extensions", RFC 3546, June 2003.
577 6.2. Informative References
579 [4] Housley, R., Ford, W., Polk, W., and D. Solo, "Internet X.509
580 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation
581 List (CRL) Profile", RFC 3280, April 2002.
583 [5] "Recommendation X.509: The Directory - Authentication
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620 Appendix A. Acknowledgements
622 The author wishes to thank Werner Koch, David Taylor and Timo Schulz
623 for their suggestions on improving this document.
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678 Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos
679 Independent Consultant
681 Halandri, Attiki 15234
684 Email: nmav@gnutls.org
685 URI: http://www.gnutls.org/
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