4 Network Working Group G. Richards
5 Internet-Draft RSA Security UK Ltd.
6 Expires: December 4, 2006 June 2, 2006
10 draft-richards-otp-kerberos-00
14 By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
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16 have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
17 aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
19 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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35 This Internet-Draft will expire on December 4, 2006.
39 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
43 The Kerberos protocol provides a framework authenticating a client
44 using the exchange of pre-authentication data. This document
45 describes the use of this framework to carry out One Time Password
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62 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
63 2. Usage Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
64 2.1. Pre-Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
65 2.2. PIN Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
66 2.3. OTP Hardening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
67 2.4. Key Derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
68 3. OTP Kerberos Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
69 3.1. PA-OTP-CHALLENGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
70 3.2. PA-OTP-RESPONSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
71 3.3. PA-OTP-CONFIRM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
72 3.4. PA-ENC-PIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
73 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
74 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
75 5.1. Active attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
76 5.2. Denial of service attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
77 5.3. Use of Hardening Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
78 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
79 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
80 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
81 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
82 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 13
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118 A One-Time Password (OTP) token may be a handheld hardware device, a
119 hardware device connected to a personal computer through an
120 electronic interface such as USB, or a software module resident on a
121 personal computer, which generates one-time passwords that may be
122 used to authenticate a user towards some service. This document
123 describes an extensions to Kerberos V5 [RFC4120] to support pre-
124 authentication using a OTPs.
126 In this proposal, the KDC sends the client information on which token
127 to be used and how the OTP is to be generated. The client then uses
128 the OTP value instead of the conventional password to generate the
129 timestamp encryption key and sends the encrypted timestamp along with
130 information on the OTP to the KDC in in pre-authentication data of a
131 KRB_AS_REQ. The KDC then uses the OTP information provided by the
132 client to generate the same encryption key, allowing it to verify the
135 This proposal is partially based upon previous work on integrating
136 single-use authentication mechanisms into Kerberos [NeZoHo98] and
137 uses the existing password-change extensions to handle PIN change as
138 described in [RFC3244].
140 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
141 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
142 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
144 << This is the first draft of this document and so is liable to
145 change significantly. >>
150 2.1. Pre-Authentication
152 The approach uses pre-authentication data in KRB_AS_REQ, KRB_AS_REP
153 and KRB_ERROR. The client begins by sending an initial KRB_AS_REQ to
154 the KDC possibly containing pre-authentication data such as the
155 standard Kerberos password data. The KDC will then determine in an
156 implementation dependent fashion whether OTP authentication is
157 required and if it is, it will respond with a KRB_ERROR message with:
159 o An error code of KDC_ERR_PREAUTH_REQUIRED
160 o An e-data field containing PA-DATA with a PA-OTP-CHALLENGE.
162 The PA-OTP-CHALLENGE contains information on the type of OTP required
163 and the token to be used to generate it. The client uses this
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172 information to locate the token and generate the OTP which is used,
173 instead of the user's password, to generate an encryption key and
176 The encrypted timestamp is then sent to the KDC as pre-auth data in a
177 second KRB_AS_REQ in the standard manner but additional information
178 on the OTP and the key derivation is also sent in a PA-OTP-RESPONSE.
180 The KDC then uses the information in the PA-OTP-RESPONSE to generate
181 the same key as the client allowing it to validate the encrypted
182 timestamp. If the validation succeeds then the KDC returns the TGT
187 If, following successful validation of a PA-OTP-RESPONSE in a
188 KRB_AS_REQ, the KDC requires that the user changes their PIN then it
189 will return PA-DATA of type PA-OTP-PIN-CHANGE in the KRB_AS_REP.
190 This pre-auth data can be used to return a new PIN to the user if the
191 KDC has updated the PIN or to indicate to the user that they must
194 In the latter case, user PIN change shall be handled by a PIN change
195 service supporting the ChangePasswdData in a KRB_AP_REQ as described
196 in [RFC3244]. If such a user PIN change is required then the KDC
197 SHALL return a TGT in the KRB_AS_REP but it is RECOMMENDED that it
198 only issues tickets for the PIN change service until the PIN has been
203 Since OTPs may be relatively short, it is important to slow down an
204 attacker sufficiently so that it is economically unattractive to
205 brute-force search for an OTP given an observed OTP-Kerberos
206 exchange. One way to do this is to derive the Kerberos user key from
207 the OTP instead of the password in the same manner as described in
208 [RFC3962] but to use a high number of iterated hashes of the OTP in
209 the PBKDF2 key derivation function from [RFC2898]. Another is for
210 the client to include a hardening value unknown to the attacker in
213 Unlike the a traditional "salt" value which is normally sent in the
214 clear, this hardening value will instead be transferred from the KDC
215 to the client in encrypted form. When the client receives a PA-OTP-
216 CHALLENGE from a KDC it will search for an associated hardening
217 value. If it finds a value then it will use it in the key derivation
218 as specified in Section 2.4.
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228 The use of a hardening value will influence the iteration count used
229 by the client in the random-to-key calculation. The value sent by
230 the KDC in the s2kparams of the ETYPE-INFO2 pre-authentication type
231 specifies the value used if there is no hardening value stored on the
232 client for the server. If the client has a hardening value stored
233 for the server, then the iteration count of 1 SHOULD be used as the
234 security of the scheme is provided through the hardening value. If
235 the client does not have a hardening value stored, then it SHOULD set
236 the iteration count in the key derivation to the maximum value that
237 is both supported by the KDC and permitted by any local policy
238 constraints. The identifier of any hardening value used and the
239 value of the iteration count are sent by the client to the KDC in a
240 PA-OTP_RESPONSE included in the KRB_AS_REQ.
242 When the KDC receives a PA-OTP-RESPONSE, it will use the identifier
243 to locate the hardening value. If a hardening value is found then it
244 will be used along with the iterationCount to generate the user key.
245 If the hardening value identifier is omitted then only the
246 iterationCount SHALL be used. If a hardening value identifier is
247 included but the corresponding value could not be found then the KDC
248 SHALL respond with a KDC_ERR_PREAUTH_REQUIRED error as described
249 above but SHALL set the noHardening flag in the PA-OTP-CHALLENGE.
251 The hardening value to be used by the client in the next KRB_AS_REQ
252 will be sent by the KDC in a PA-OTP-CONFIRM contained in the
253 KRB_AS_REP. The inclusion of a PA-OTP-CONFIRM is only REQUIRED if
254 the client did not use a hardening value to generate the timestamp
255 encryption key. However, it is RECOMMENDED that it be included in
256 all such responses to ensure that a new hardening value is used in
261 The encryption key used to encrypt the time stamp SHALL be generated
262 using the PBKDF2 password-based key derivation function as specified
263 in [RFC3962]. Conformant KDCs MUST support at least one of the
264 encryption types aes128-cts-hmac-sha1-96 and aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96
265 defined in [RFC3962] and MUST return PA-ETYPE-INFO2 pre-
266 authentication types with the corresponding etype values.
268 In order to use the hardening scheme described in Section 2.3, the
269 information provided by the KDC in the ETYPE-INFO2 pre-authentication
270 type SHALL be used by the client as follows:
272 o If the client does not have a hardening value associated with the
273 KDC then the number of iterations specified in the s2kparams SHALL
274 be used. If the client has a hardening value then an iteration
275 count of 1 SHALL be used instead.
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284 o The salt value SHALL have the hardening value concatenated if
285 there is one associated with the KDC.
287 tkey = random-to-key(PBKDF2(OTP, salt|hardening,
288 iteration_count, key_length))
289 key = DK(tkey, "kerberos")
292 3. OTP Kerberos Types
294 3.1. PA-OTP-CHALLENGE
296 This is a pre-authentication type sent by the KDC to the client in a
297 KRB_ERROR. It contains information for the client on how to generate
298 an OTP and how to use the OTP in the generation of the key used to
299 encrypt the pre-authentication data.
301 PA-OTP-CHALLENGE ::= SEQUENCE {
303 otp-challenge[0] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL,
304 otp-length [1] INTEGER OPTIONAL,
305 otp-service [2] UTF8String OPTIONAL,
306 otp-keyID [3] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL,
307 otp-algID [4] INTEGER OPTIONAL
309 ChallengeFlags ::= KerberosFlags
313 If the noHardening flag is set then the client MUST NOT use any
314 stored hardening value in the key derivation. Instead, it MUST
315 use the iteration count provided by the KDC.
317 The otp-challenge is used by the KDC to send a challenge value for
318 use in the OTP calculation. The challenge is an optional octet
319 string that SHOULD be uniquely generated for each request it is
320 present in, and SHOULD be eight octets or longer when present.
321 When the challenge is not present, the OTP will be calculated on
322 the current token state only. The client MAY ignore a provided
323 challenge if and only if the OTP token the client is interacting
324 with is not capable of including a challenge in the OTP
325 calculation. In this case, KDC policies will determine whether to
326 accept a provided OTP value or not.
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341 The otp-length is used by the KDC to specify the desired length of
345 An identifier of the service supported by the KDC. This value can
346 be used by the client to locate information such as the hardening
347 value and OTP key to use.
350 The identifier of the OTP key to be used in the OTP calculation.
351 If this value is not present then the client SHOULD use other
352 values such as the otp-service and otp-algiID to locate the
355 The identifier of the algorithm to use when generating the OTP.
359 This is a pre-authentication type sent by the client to the KDC in a
360 KRB_AS_REQ containing the encrypted pre-authentication data. It
361 contains information on the OTP used and how the key was generated
362 that encrypts the pre-authentication data. This information will
363 then allow the KDC to generate the same key and validate the pre-
366 PA-OTP-RESPONSE ::= SEQUENCE {
367 iterationCount[0] INTEGER OPTIONAL,
368 identifier [1] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL,
369 otp-challenge [2] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL,
370 otp-time [2] KerberosTime OPTIONAL,
371 otp-counter [3] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL,
372 otp-format [4] OTPFormat OPTIONAL,
373 otp-keyID [5] OCTET STRING OPTIONAL
376 OTPFormat ::= INTEGER {
384 The actual value of the iteration count used by the client in the
385 key derivation. If omitted then the specified or default
386 iteration count is used. If present then it will generally be
387 less than the value used in the string-to-key parameters if a
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396 hardening value is used.
399 An octet string identifying the hardening value used by the client
400 in the key derivation. If omitted then no hardening was used.
403 Value used by the client to send the challenge used in the OTP
404 calculation. It MUST be sent to the KDC if and only if the value
405 would otherwise be unknown to the KDC. For example, the token or
406 client modified or generated challenge.
409 Value used by the client to send the time used in the OTP
413 The counter value used in the OTP calculation. Use of this
414 element is OPTIONAL but it MAY be used by a client to simplify the
415 OTP calculations of the KDC to contain the counter value as
416 reported by the OTP token.
419 The format of the generated OTP.
422 The identifier of the OTP key used.
426 Pre-authentication type returned by the KDC in a KRB_AS_REP if the
427 client requires a new hardening value.
429 PA-OTP-CONFIRM ::= SEQUENCE {
430 identifier OCTET STRING,
431 encHardeningValue EncryptedData -- EncHardeningValue
433 EncHardeningValue ::= OCTET STRING SIZE (16..MAX)
436 An octet string identifying the hardening value used by the client
437 in the key derivation.
440 The hardening value that the client SHOULD use in future key
441 derivations. It is encrypted as described in section 5.2.9 of
442 [RFC4120] using the current user key as derived by the KDC from
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454 Pre-authentication type returned by the KDC in a KRB_AS_REP if the
455 user must change their PIN or if the user's PIN has been changed.
457 PA-ENC-PIN ::= EncryptedData -- PA-ENC-PIN-ENC
458 PA-ENC-PIN-ENC ::= SEQUENCE {
460 pin [0] UTF8String OPTIONAL
461 minLength [1] INTEGER OPTIONAL
462 maxLength [2] INTEGER OPTIONAL
465 PinFlags ::= KerberosFlags
468 If the systemSetPin flag is set then the pin field MUST be present
469 and the presence of this pre-auth type indicates that the user's PIN
470 has been changed to the value contained within the pin field.
472 If the pin field is omitted then this pre-auth type indicates that
473 the user must change their PIN using the PIN change service and that
474 the KDC will only issue tickets for the PIN change service until the
475 PIN has been changed.
477 If the pin field is present and the systemPin flag is not set then
478 the user must change their PIN subject to the restrictions of the
479 other fields or may alternatively use the returned PIN.
482 4. IANA Considerations
484 A registry may be required for the otp-AlgID values as introduced in
485 Section 3.1. No other IANA actions are anticipated.
488 5. Security Considerations
492 <<TBD: Could an attacker change the iteration count in the PA-
495 5.2. Denial of service attacks
497 An active attacker may replace the iteration count value in the PA-
498 OTP-RESPONSE sent by the client to slow down an authentication
499 server. Authentication servers SHOULD protect against this, e.g. by
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508 disregarding PA-OTP-RESPONSE elements with an iteration count value
509 higher than some pre- or dynamically- (depending on load) set number.
511 5.3. Use of Hardening Value
513 As described in Section 2.3, the use of a hardening value will slow
514 down an attacker's search for a matching OTP. The ability to
515 transfer a hardening value in encrypted form from the KDC to the
516 client means that, even though there may be an initial computational
517 cost for the KDC to authenticate the user due to a high iteration
518 count, subsequent authentications will be efficient, while at the
519 same time more secure, since a pre-shared, 128 bits long, hardening
520 value will not be easily found by an attacker.
522 If a client does not have a hardening value for a KDC then it will
523 have to generate the user key using only an iteration count. An
524 attacker observing such a KRB_AS_REQ may, depending on available
525 resources, be able to successfully attack that request. Once the
526 correct OTP has been found, eavesdropping on the KDC's PA_OTP_CONFIRM
527 will potentially give the attacker access to the server-provided
528 hardening value. For this reason, initial exchanges with KDC servers
529 SHOULD occur in a secure environment, and if not, the iteration count
530 MUST be significantly higher than for messages where a pre-shared
531 hardening value is used. The lifetime of this value must also be
532 calculated with this in mind. Finally, the value MUST be securely
533 stored by the client and the KDC, associated with the user.
538 6.1. Normative References
540 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
541 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
543 [RFC2898] Kaliski, B., "PKCS #5: Password-Based Cryptography
544 Specification Version 2.0", RFC 2898, September 2000.
546 [RFC3244] Swift, M., Trostle, J., and J. Brezak, "Microsoft Windows
547 2000 Kerberos Change Password and Set Password Protocols",
548 RFC 3244, February 2002.
550 [RFC3962] Raeburn, K., "Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
551 Encryption for Kerberos 5", RFC 3962, February 2005.
553 [RFC4120] Neuman, C., Yu, T., Hartman, S., and K. Raeburn, "The
554 Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5)", RFC 4120,
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564 6.2. Informative References
567 Neuman, C., Zorn, G., Trostle, J., and K. Horstein,
568 "Integrating Single-use Authentication Mechanisms with
569 Kerberos", draft-ietf-cat-kerberos-password-04 (work in
570 progress), November 1998.
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626 Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1RT
629 Email: grichards@rsasecurity.com
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