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README.certificate

      1 See http://www.kame.net/newsletter/20001119b/
      2 

README.gssapi

      1 The gss-api authentication mechanism implementation for racoon was
      2 based on the ietf draft draft-ietf-ipsec-isakmp-gss-auth-06.txt.
      3 
      4 The implementation uses the Heimdal gss-api library, i.e. gss-api
      5 on top of Kerberos 5. The Heimdal gss-api library had to be modified
      6 to meet the requirements of using gss-api in a daemon. More specifically,
      7 the gss_acquire_cred() call did not work for other cases than
      8 GSS_C_NO_CREDENTIAL ("use default creds"). Daemons are often started
      9 as root, and have no Kerberos 5 credentials, so racoon explicitly
     10 needs to acquire its credentials. The usual method (already used
     11 by login authentication daemons) in these situations is to add
     12 a set of special credentials to be used. For example, authentication
     13 by daemons concerned with login credentials, uses 'host/fqdn' as
     14 its credential, where fqdn is the hostname on the interface that
     15 is being used. These special credentials need to be extracted into
     16 a local keytab from the kdc. The default value used in racoon
     17 is 'ike/fqdn', but it can be overridden in the racoon config file.
     18 
     19 The modification to the Heimdal gss-api library implements the
     20 mechanism above. If a credential other than GSS_C_NO_CREDENTIAL
     21 is specified to gss_acquire_cred(), it first looks in the default
     22 credential cache if it its principal matches the desired credential.
     23 If not, it extracts it from the default keytab file, and stores
     24 it in a memory-based credential cache, part of the gss credential
     25 structure.
     26 
     27 
     28 
     29 The modifcations to racoon itself are as follows:
     30 
     31 	* The racoon.conf config file accepts a new keyword, "gssapi_id",
     32 	  to be used inside a proposal specification. It specifies
     33 	  a string (a Kerberos 5 principal in this case), specifying the
     34 	  credential that racoon will try to acquire. The default value
     35 	  is 'ike/fqdn', where fqdn is the hostname for the interface
     36 	  being used for the exchange. If the id is not specified, no
     37 	  GSS endpoint attribute will be specified in the first SA sent.
     38 	  However, if the initiator does specify a GSS endpoint attribute,
     39 	  racoon will always respond with its own GSS endpoint name
     40 	  in the SA (the default one if not specified by this option).
     41 
     42 	* The racoon.conf file accepts "gssapi_krb" as authentication
     43 	  method inside a proposal specification. The number used
     44 	  for this method is 65001, which is a temporary number as
     45 	  specified in the draft.
     46 
     47 	* The cftoken.l and cfparse.y source files were modified to
     48 	  pick up the configuration options. The original sources
     49 	  stored algorithms in bitmask, which unfortunately meant
     50 	  that the maximum value was 32, clearly not enough for 65001.
     51 	  After consulting with the author (sakane (a] kame.net), it turned
     52 	  out that method was a leftover, and no longer needed. I replaced
     53 	  it with plain integers.
     54 
     55 	* The gss-api specific code was concentrated as much as possible
     56 	  in gssapi.c and gssapi.h. The code to call functions defined
     57 	  in these files is conditional on HAVE_GSSAPI, except for the
     58 	  config scan code. Specifying this flag on the compiler commandline
     59 	  is conditional on the --enable-gssapi option to the configure
     60 	  script.
     61 
     62 	* Racoon seems to want to send accepted SA proposals back to
     63 	  the initiator in a verbatim fashion, leaving no room to
     64 	  insert the (variable-length) GSS endpoint name attribute.
     65 	  I worked around this by re-assembling the extracted SA
     66 	  into a new SA if the gssapi_krb method is used, and the
     67 	  initiator sent the name attribute. This scheme should
     68 	  possibly be re-examined by the racoon maintainers, storing
     69 	  the SAs (the transformations, to be more precise) in a different
     70 	  fashion to allow for variable-length attributes to be
     71 	  re-inserted would be a good change, but I considered it to be
     72 	  beyond the scope of this project.
     73 
     74 	* The various state functions for aggressive and main mode
     75 	  (in isakmp_agg.c and isakmp_ident.c respectively) were
     76 	  changed to conditionally change their behavior if the
     77 	  gssapi_krb method is specified.
     78 
     79 
     80 This implementation tried to follow the specification in the ietf draft
     81 as close as possible. However, it has not been tested against other
     82 IKE daemon implementations. The only other one I know of is Windows 2000,
     83 and it has some caveats. I attempted to be Windows 2000 compatible.
     84 Should racoon be tried against Windows 2000, the gssapi_id option in
     85 the config file must be used, as Windows 2000 expects the GSS endpoint
     86 name to be sent at all times. I have my doubts as to the W2K compatibility,
     87 because the spec describes the GSS endpoint name sent by W2K as
     88 an unicode string 'xxx@domain', which doesn't seem to match the
     89 required standard for gss-api + kerberos 5 (i.e. I am fairly certain
     90 that such a string will be rejected by the Heimdal gss-api library, as it
     91 is not a valid Kerberos 5 principal).
     92 
     93 With the Heimdal gss-api implementation, the gssapi_krb authentication
     94 method will only work in main mode. Aggressive mode does not allow
     95 for the extra round-trips needed by gss_init_sec_context and
     96 gss_accept_sec_context when mutual authentication is requested.
     97 The draft specifies that the a fallback should be done to main mode,
     98 through the return of INVALID-EXCHANGE-TYPE if it turns out that
     99 the gss-api mechanisms needs more roundtrips. This is implemented.
    100 Unfortunately, racoon does not seem to properly fall back to
    101 its next mode, and this is not specific to the gssapi_krb method.
    102 So, to avoid problems, only specify main mode in the config file.
    103 
    104 
    105 	-- Frank van der Linden <fvdl (a] wasabisystems.com>
    106 
    107 

README.plainrsa

      1 HOW-TO use plainrsa auth, contributed by Simon Chang <simonychang (a] gmail.com>
      2 
      3 Before you begin, you should understand that the RSA authentication
      4 mechanism hinges upon the idea of a split cryptographic key:  one used
      5 by the public, the other readable only to you.  Any data that is
      6 encrypted by a public key can be decrypted only by the corresponding
      7 private key, so that the private key user can be assured that the
      8 content of the transmission has not been examined by unauthorized
      9 parties.  Similarly, any data encrypted by the private key can be
     10 decrypted by the public key so that the public knows that this
     11 transmission came from this user and nobody else (this idea is called
     12 non-repudiation).  Also, the longer the key length, the more difficult
     13 it would be for potential attacker to conduct brute-force discovery of
     14 the keys.  So, what all this means for the security administrator is
     15 that the setup needs a pair of reasonably long keys for each host that
     16 wishes to authenticate in this manner.
     17 
     18 With this in mind, it should be relatively straightforward to set up
     19 RSA authentication.  For the purpose of this document, we assume that
     20 we are setting up RSA authentication between two networked hosts
     21 called Boston and Chicago.  Unless otherwise noted, all steps should
     22 be performed on both hosts with corresponding key names.  Here are the
     23 steps:
     24 
     25 1)  Included in each default installation of ipsec-tools is a binary
     26 called plainrsa-gen.  This executable is used to generate a pair of
     27 RSA keys for the host.  There are only two parameters that you should
     28 be concerned about: -b, which sets the number of bits for the keys,
     29 and -f, which specifies the output file for plainrsa-gen to send the
     30 results.  On an ordinary Pentium-II with 128 MB of RAM, it takes only
     31 seconds to generate keys that are 2048 bits long, and only slightly
     32 longer to generate 4096-bit keys.  Either key length should be
     33 sufficient; any longer key length actually reduces performance and
     34 does not increase security significantly.  You should therefore run it
     35 as:
     36 
     37 	plainrsa-gen -b 2048 -f /var/tmp/boston.keys
     38 
     39 2)  When the process completes, you should have a text file that
     40 includes both public and private keys.  GUARD THIS FILE CAREFULLY,
     41 because once a private key is compromised it is no longer any good,
     42 and you must generate a new pair from scratch.  Reading the file
     43 itself, you should see several very long lines of alphanumeric data.
     44 The only line you should be concerned with is the line towards the top
     45 of the output file that begins with "# pubkey=0sAQPAmBdT/" or
     46 something to that effect.  This line is your public key, which should
     47 be made available to the other host that you are setting up.  Copy
     48 this line to a separate file called "boston.pub" and change the
     49 beginning of the line so that it reads ": PUB 0sAQPAmBdT/".
     50 Alternatively, you can also grab the first line of the boston.keys
     51 file and uncomment the line so that it reads the same as above.  Now
     52 rename the file you generated initially to "boston.priv".
     53 
     54 3)  You should now have two files, boston.priv and boston.pub
     55 (chicago.priv and chicago.pub on Chicago).  The first file contains
     56 your private key and the second file your public key.  Next you should
     57 find a way to get the public key over to the other host involved.
     58 Boston should have (1) its own key pair, and (2) Chicago's public key
     59 ONLY.  Do not copy Chicago's private key over to Boston, because (a)
     60 it is not necessary, and (b) you would now have two potential places
     61 for losing control of your private key.
     62 
     63 4)  You should now configure the racoon.conf configuration file for
     64 each host to (a) turn on RSA authentication, and (b) designate each
     65 host's private key and the remote host(s)'s public key(s).  Take all
     66 your keys and place it in one directory and use the global directive
     67 "path certificate" to specify the location of the keys.  This step is
     68 especially important if you are running racoon with privilege
     69 separation, because if racoon cannot find the keys inside the
     70 directory you have just specified it will fail the authentication
     71 process.  So, write the directive like the following:
     72 
     73 	path certificate "/etc/racoon";
     74 
     75 Next, you need to specify the host's own private key and the public
     76 keys of all the remote peers involved. For your local private key and 
     77 remote public key(s), you should use the following directives:
     78 
     79 	certificate_type plain_rsa "/etc/racoon/boston.priv";
     80 	peers_certfile plain_rsa "/etc/racoon/chicago.pub";
     81 
     82 Notice the option "plain_rsa" for both directives.
     83 
     84 Finally, under the "proposal" statement section, you should specify
     85 the "rsasig" option for "authentication_method".
     86 
     87 5)  You have finished configuring the host for RSA authentication.
     88 Now use racoonctl to reload the configuration or simply restart the
     89 machine and you should be all set.
     90 
     91 TROUBLESHOOTING
     92 
     93 In the event that the hosts fail to communicate, first go back to the
     94 instructions above and make sure that:
     95 
     96 1)  You have placed all the keys in the directory that is specified by
     97 the "path certificate" directive.  Keep in mind that privilege
     98 separation will force racoon to look into that directory and nowhere
     99 else.
    100 2)  You have specified correctly the host's own private key and the
    101 remote peer's public key.
    102 3)  You have specified the "rsasig" method for authentication in the
    103 proposal statement.
    104 
    105 If you run into any further problems, you should try to use "racoon
    106 -v" to debug the setup, and send a copy of the debug messages to the
    107 mailing list so that we can help you determine what the problem is.
    108 
    109 Last modified: $Date: 2006/12/10 05:51:14 $
    110