RFC 6275
Mobility Support in IPv6
15.3. Binding Updates to Home Agent
Signaling between the mobile node and the home agent requires message integrity. This is necessary to assure the home agent that a Binding Update is from a legitimate mobile node. In addition, correct ordering and anti-replay protection are optionally needed. IPsec ESP protects the integrity of the Binding Updates and Binding Acknowledgements by securing mobility messages between the mobile node and the home agent. IPsec can provide anti-replay protection only if dynamic keying is used (which may not always be the case). IPsec does not guarantee correct ordering of packets, only that they have not been replayed. Because of this, sequence numbers within the Mobile IPv6 messages are used to ensure correct ordering (see Section 5.1). However, if the 16-bit Mobile IPv6 sequence number space is cycled through, or the home agent reboots and loses its state regarding the sequence numbers, replay and reordering attacks become possible. The use of dynamic keying, IPsec anti-replay protection, and the Mobile IPv6 sequence numbers can together prevent such attacks. It is also recommended that use of non-volatile storage be considered for home agents, to avoid losing their state. A sliding window scheme is used for the sequence numbers. The protection against replays and reordering attacks without a key management mechanism works when the attacker remembers up to a maximum of 2**15 Binding Updates. The above mechanisms do not show that the care-of address given in the Binding Update is correct. This opens the possibility for denial-of-service attacks against third parties. However, since the mobile node and home agent have a security association, the home agent can always identify an ill-behaving mobile node. This allows the home agent operator to discontinue the mobile node's service, and possibly take further actions based on the business relationship with the mobile node's owner. Note that the use of a single pair of manually keyed security associations conflicts with the generation of a new home address [21] for the mobile node, or with the adoption of a new home subnet prefix. This is because IPsec security associations are bound to the used addresses. While certificate-based automatic keying alleviates this problem to an extent, it is still necessary to ensure that a given mobile node cannot send Binding Updates for the address of another mobile node. In general, this leads to the inclusion of home addresses in certificates in the Subject AltName field. This again limits the introduction of new addresses without either manual or
automatic procedures to establish new certificates. Therefore, this
specification restricts the generation of new home addresses (for any
reason) to those situations where a security association or
certificate for the new address already exists.
Support for IKEv2 has been specified as optional. The following
should be observed about the use of manual keying:
o As discussed above, with manually keyed IPsec, only a limited form
of protection exists against replay and reordering attacks. A
vulnerability exists if either the sequence number space is cycled
through or the home agent reboots and forgets its sequence numbers
(and uses volatile memory to store the sequence numbers).
Assuming the mobile node moves continuously every 10 minutes, it
takes roughly 455 days before the sequence number space has been
cycled through. Typical movement patterns rarely reach this high
frequency today.
o A mobile node and its home agent belong to the same domain. If
this were not the case, manual keying would not be possible [42],
but in Mobile IPv6 only these two parties need to know the
manually configured keys. Similarly, we note that Mobile IPv6
employs standard block ciphers in IPsec, and is not vulnerable to
problems associated with stream ciphers and manual keying.
o It is expected that the owner of the mobile node and the
administrator of the home agent agree on the used keys and other
parameters with some off-line mechanism.
The use of IKEv2 with Mobile IPv6 is documented in more detail in
[20]. The following should be observed regarding the use of IKEv2:
o It is necessary to prevent a mobile node from claiming another
mobile node's home address. The home agent must verify that the
mobile node trying to negotiate the SA for a particular home
address is authorized for that home address. This implies that
even with the use of IKEv2, a policy entry needs to be configured
for each home address served by the home agent.
It may be possible to include home addresses in the Subject
AltName field of certificate to avoid this. However,
implementations are not guaranteed to support the use of a
particular IP address (care-of address) while another address
(home address) appears in the certificate. In any case, even this
approach would require user-specific tasks in the certificate
authority.
o Due to the problems outlined in Section 11.3.2, the IKEv2 SA between the mobile node and its home agent is established using the mobile node's current care-of address. This implies that when the mobile node moves to a new location, it may have to re-establish an IKEv2 security association. A Key Management Mobility Capability (K) flag is provided for implementations that can update the IKEv2 endpoints without re-establishing an IKEv2 security association, but the support for this behavior is optional. o Nevertheless, even if per-mobile node configuration is required with IKEv2, an important benefit of IKEv2 is that it automates the negotiation of cryptographic parameters, including the Security Parameter Indices (SPIs), cryptographic algorithms, and so on. Thus, less configuration information is needed. o The frequency of movements in some link layers or deployment scenarios may be high enough to make replay and reordering attacks possible, if only manual keying is used. IKEv2 SHOULD be used in such cases. Potentially vulnerable scenarios involve continuous movement through small cells, or uncontrolled alternation between available network attachment points. o Similarly, in some deployment scenarios the number of mobile nodes may be very large. In these cases, it can be necessary to use automatic mechanisms to reduce the management effort in the administration of cryptographic parameters, even if some per- mobile node configuration is always needed. IKEv2 SHOULD also be used in such cases.15.4. Binding Updates to Correspondent Nodes
The motivation for designing the return routability procedure was to have sufficient support for Mobile IPv6, without creating significant new security problems. The goal for this procedure was not to protect against attacks that were already possible before the introduction of Mobile IPv6. The next sections will describe the security properties of the used method, both from the point of view of possible on-path attackers who can see those cryptographic values that have been sent in the clear (Sections 15.4.2 and 15.4.3) and from the point of view of other attackers (Section 15.4.6).
15.4.1. Overview
The chosen infrastructureless method verifies that the mobile node is "live" (that is, it responds to probes) at its home and care-of addresses. Section 5.2 describes the return routability procedure in detail. The procedure uses the following principles: o A message exchange verifies that the mobile node is reachable at its addresses, i.e., is at least able to transmit and receive traffic at both the home and care-of addresses. o The eventual Binding Update is cryptographically bound to the tokens supplied in the exchanged messages. o Symmetric exchanges are employed to avoid the use of this protocol in reflection attacks. In a symmetric exchange, the responses are always sent to the same address from which the request was sent. o The correspondent node operates in a stateless manner until it receives a fully authorized Binding Update. o Some additional protection is provided by encrypting the tunnels between the mobile node and home agent with IPsec ESP. As the tunnel also transports the nonce exchanges, the ability of attackers to see these nonces is limited. For instance, this prevents attacks from being launched from the mobile node's current foreign link, even when no link-layer confidentiality is available. The resulting level of security is in theory the same even without this additional protection: the return routability tokens are still exposed only to one path within the whole Internet. However, the mobile nodes are often found on an insecure link, such as a public access Wireless LAN. Thus, in many cases, this addition makes a practical difference. For further information about the design rationale of the return routability procedure, see [28] [35] [34] [43]. The mechanisms used have been adopted from these documents.15.4.2. Achieved Security Properties
The return routability procedure protects Binding Updates against all attackers who are unable to monitor the path between the home agent and the correspondent node. The procedure does not defend against attackers who can monitor this path. Note that such attackers are in any case able to mount an active attack against the mobile node when
it is at its home location. The possibility of such attacks is not an impediment to the deployment of Mobile IPv6 because these attacks are possible regardless of whether or not Mobile IPv6 is in use. This procedure also protects against denial-of-service attacks in which the attacker pretends to be mobile, but uses the victim's address as the care-of address. This would cause the correspondent node to send the victim some unexpected traffic. This procedure defends against these attacks by requiring at least the passive presence of the attacker at the care-of address or on the path from the correspondent to the care-of address. Normally, this will be the mobile node.15.4.3. Comparison to Regular IPv6 Communications
This section discusses the protection offered by the return routability method by comparing it to the security of regular IPv6 communications. We will divide vulnerabilities into three classes: (1) those related to attackers on the local network of the mobile node, home agent, or the correspondent node, (2) those related to attackers on the path between the home network and the correspondent node, and (3) off-path attackers, i.e., the rest of the Internet. We will now discuss the vulnerabilities of regular IPv6 communications. The on-link vulnerabilities of IPv6 communications include denial-of-service, masquerading, man-in-the-middle, eavesdropping, and other attacks. These attacks can be launched through spoofing Router Discovery, Neighbor Discovery, and other IPv6 mechanisms. Some of these attacks can be prevented with the use of cryptographic protection in the packets. A similar situation exists with on-path attackers. That is, without cryptographic protection, the traffic is completely vulnerable. Assuming that attackers have not penetrated the security of the Internet routing protocols, attacks are much harder to launch from off-path locations. Attacks that can be launched from these locations are mainly denial-of-service attacks, such as flooding and/or reflection attacks. It is not possible for an off-path attacker to become a man in the middle. Next, we will consider the vulnerabilities that exist when IPv6 is used together with Mobile IPv6 and the return routability procedure. On the local link, the vulnerabilities are the same as those in IPv6, but masquerade and man-in-the-middle attacks can now also be launched against future communications, and not just against current communications. If a Binding Update was sent while the attacker was present on the link, its effects remain for the lifetime of the
binding. This happens even if the attacker moves away from the link.
In contrast, an attacker who uses only plain IPv6 generally has to
stay on the link in order to continue the attack. Note that in order
to launch these new attacks, the IP address of the victim must be
known. This makes this attack feasible, mainly in the context of
well-known interface IDs, such as those already appearing in the
traffic on the link or registered in the DNS.
On-path attackers can exploit similar vulnerabilities as in regular
IPv6. There are some minor differences, however. Masquerade, man-
in-the-middle, and denial-of-service attacks can be launched with
just the interception of a few packets, whereas in regular IPv6 it is
necessary to intercept every packet. The effect of the attacks is
the same regardless of the method, however. In any case, the most
difficult task an attacker faces in these attacks is getting on the
right path.
The vulnerabilities for off-path attackers are the same as in regular
IPv6. Those nodes that are not on the path between the home agent
and the correspondent node will not be able to receive the home
address probe messages.
In conclusion, we can state the following main results from this
comparison:
o Return routability prevents any off-path attacks beyond those that
are already possible in regular IPv6. This is the most important
result, preventing attackers on the Internet from exploiting any
vulnerabilities.
o Vulnerabilities to attackers on the home agent link, the
correspondent node link, and the path between them are roughly the
same as in regular IPv6.
o However, one difference is that in basic IPv6 an on-path attacker
must be constantly present on the link or the path, whereas with
Mobile IPv6, an attacker can leave a binding behind after moving
away.
For this reason, this specification limits the creation of
bindings to at most MAX_TOKEN_LIFETIME seconds after the last
routability check has been performed, and limits the duration of a
binding to at most MAX_RR_BINDING_LIFETIME seconds. With these
limitations, attackers cannot take any practical advantages of
this vulnerability.
o There are some other minor differences, such as an effect to the
denial-of-service vulnerabilities. These can be considered to be
insignificant.
o The path between the home agent and a correspondent node is
typically easiest to attack on the links at either end, in
particular if these links are publicly accessible wireless LANs.
Attacks against the routers or switches on the path are typically
harder to accomplish. The security on layer 2 of the links plays
then a major role in the resulting overall network security.
Similarly, security of IPv6 Neighbor and Router Discovery on these
links has a large impact. If these were secured using some new
technology in the future, this could change the situation
regarding the easiest point of attack.
For a more in-depth discussion of these issues, see [43].
15.4.4. Replay Attacks
The return routability procedure also protects the participants
against replayed Binding Updates. The attacker is unable replay the
same message due to the sequence number that is a part of the Binding
Update. It is also unable to modify the Binding Update since the MAC
verification would fail after such a modification.
Care must be taken when removing bindings at the correspondent node,
however. If a binding is removed while the nonce used in its
creation is still valid, an attacker could replay the old Binding
Update. Rules outlined in Section 5.2.8 ensure that this cannot
happen.
15.4.5. Denial-of-Service Attacks
The return routability procedure has protection against resource
exhaustion denial-of-service attacks. The correspondent nodes do not
retain any state about individual mobile nodes until an authentic
Binding Update arrives. This is achieved through the construct of
keygen tokens from the nonces and node keys that are not specific to
individual mobile nodes. The keygen tokens can be reconstructed by
the correspondent node, based on the home and care-of address
information that arrives with the Binding Update. This means that
the correspondent nodes are safe against memory exhaustion attacks
except where on-path attackers are concerned. Due to the use of
symmetric cryptography, the correspondent nodes are relatively safe
against CPU resource exhaustion attacks as well.
Nevertheless, as [28] describes, there are situations in which it is impossible for the mobile and correspondent nodes to determine if they actually need a binding or whether they just have been fooled into believing so by an attacker. Therefore, it is necessary to consider situations where such attacks are being made. Even if route optimization is a very important optimization, it is still only an optimization. A mobile node can communicate with a correspondent node even if the correspondent refuses to accept any Binding Updates. However, performance will suffer because packets from the correspondent node to the mobile node will be routed via the mobile's home agent rather than a more direct route. A correspondent node can protect itself against some of these resource exhaustion attacks as follows. If the correspondent node is flooded with a large number of Binding Updates that fail the cryptographic integrity checks, it can stop processing Binding Updates. If a correspondent node finds that it is spending more resources on checking bogus Binding Updates than it is likely to save by accepting genuine Binding Updates, then it may silently discard some or all Binding Updates without performing any cryptographic operations. Layers above IP can usually provide additional information to help determine whether there is a need to establish a binding with a specific peer. For example, TCP knows if the node has a queue of data that it is trying to send to a peer. An implementation of this specification is not required to make use of information from higher protocol layers, but some implementations are likely to be able to manage resources more effectively by making use of such information. We also require that all implementations be capable of administratively disabling route optimization.15.4.6. Key Lengths
Attackers can try to break the return routability procedure in many ways. Section 15.4.2 discusses the situation where the attacker can see the cryptographic values sent in the clear, and Section 15.4.3 discusses the impact this has on IPv6 communications. This section discusses whether attackers can guess the correct values without seeing them. While the return routability procedure is in progress, 64-bit cookies are used to protect spoofed responses. This is believed to be sufficient, given that to blindly spoof a response a very large number of messages would have to be sent before success would be probable.
The tokens used in the return routability procedure provide together 128 bits of information. This information is used internally as input to a hash function to produce a 160-bit quantity suitable for producing the keyed hash in the Binding Update using the HMAC_SHA1 algorithm. The final keyed hash length is 96 bits. The limiting factors in this case are the input token lengths and the final keyed hash length. The internal hash function application does not reduce the entropy. The 96-bit final keyed hash is of typical size and is believed to be secure. The 128-bit input from the tokens is broken in two pieces, the home keygen token and the care-of keygen token. An attacker can try to guess the correct cookie value, but again this would require a large number of messages (an the average 2**63 messages for one or 2**127 for two). Furthermore, given that the cookies are valid only for a short period of time, the attack has to keep a high constant message rate to achieve a lasting effect. This does not appear practical. When the mobile node is returning home, it is allowed to use just the home keygen token of 64 bits. This is less than 128 bits, but attacking it blindly would still require a large number of messages to be sent. If the attacker is on the path and capable of seeing the Binding Update, it could conceivably break the keyed hash with brute force. However, in this case the attacker has to be on the path, which appears to offer easier ways for denial of service than preventing route optimization.15.5. Dynamic Home Agent Address Discovery
The dynamic home agent address discovery function could be used to learn the addresses of home agents in the home network. The ability to learn addresses of nodes may be useful to attackers because brute-force scanning of the address space is not practical with IPv6. Thus, they could benefit from any means that make mapping the networks easier. For example, if a security threat targeted at routers or even home agents is discovered, having a simple ICMP mechanism to easily find out possible targets may prove to be an additional (though minor) security risk. This document does not define any authentication mechanism for dynamic home agent address discovery messages. Therefore, the home agent cannot verify the home address of the mobile node that requested the list of home agents.
Apart from discovering the address(es) of home agents, attackers will not be able to learn much from this information, and mobile nodes cannot be tricked into using wrong home agents, as all other communication with the home agents is secure. In cases where additional security is needed, one may consider instead the use of MIPv6 bootstrapping [22], (based on DNS SRV Resource Records [10]) in conjunction with security mechanisms suggested in these specifications. In that solution, security is provided by the DNS Security (DNSSEC) [13] framework. The needed pre-configured data on the mobile node for this mechanism is the domain name of the mobile service provider, which is marginally better than the home subnet prefix. For the security, a trust anchor that dominates the domain is needed.15.6. Mobile Prefix Discovery
The mobile prefix discovery function may leak interesting information about network topology and prefix lifetimes to eavesdroppers; for this reason, requests for this information have to be authenticated. Responses and unsolicited prefix information needs to be authenticated to prevent the mobile nodes from being tricked into believing false information about the prefixes and possibly preventing communications with the existing addresses. Optionally, encryption may be applied to prevent leakage of the prefix information.15.7. Tunneling via the Home Agent
Tunnels between the mobile node and the home agent can be protected by ensuring proper use of source addresses, and optional cryptographic protection. These procedures are discussed in Section 5.5. Binding Updates to the home agents are secure. When receiving tunneled traffic, the home agent verifies that the outer IP address corresponds to the current location of the mobile node. This acts as a weak form of protection against spoofing packets that appear to come from the mobile node. This is particularly useful, if no end- to-end security is being applied between the mobile and correspondent nodes. The outer IP address check prevents attacks where the attacker is controlled by ingress filtering. It also prevents attacks when the attacker does not know the current care-of address of the mobile node. Attackers who know the care-of address and are not controlled by ingress filtering could still send traffic through the home agent. This includes attackers on the same local link as the mobile node is currently on. But such attackers could send packets that appear to come from the mobile node without attacking
the tunnel; the attacker could simply send packets with the source address set to the mobile node's home address. However, this attack does not work if the final destination of the packet is in the home network, and some form of perimeter defense is being applied for packets sent to those destinations. In such cases it is recommended that either end-to-end security or additional tunnel protection be applied, as is usual in remote access situations. Home agents and mobile nodes may use IPsec ESP to protect payload packets tunneled between themselves. This is useful for protecting communications against attackers on the path of the tunnel. When a unique-local address (ULA, RFC 4193 [15]) is used as a home address, reverse tunneling can be used to send local traffic from another location. Administrators should be aware of this when allowing such home addresses. In particular, the outer IP address check described above is not sufficient against all attackers. The use of encrypted tunnels is particularly useful for these kinds of home addresses.15.8. Home Address Option
When the mobile node sends packets directly to the correspondent node, the Source Address field of the packet's IPv6 header is the care-of address. Therefore, ingress filtering [27] works in the usual manner even for mobile nodes, as the Source Address is topologically correct. The Home Address option is used to inform the correspondent node of the mobile node's home address. However, the care-of address in the Source Address field does not survive in replies sent by the correspondent node unless it has a binding for this mobile node. Also, not all attacker tracing mechanisms work when packets are being reflected through correspondent nodes using the Home Address option. For these reasons, this specification restricts the use of the Home Address option. It may only be used when a binding has already been established with the participation of the node at the home address, as described in Sections 5.5 and 6.3. This prevents reflection attacks through the use of the Home Address option. It also ensures that the correspondent nodes reply to the same address that the mobile node sends traffic from. No special authentication of the Home Address option is required beyond the above, but note that if the IPv6 header of a packet is covered by IPsec Authentication Header, then that authentication covers the Home Address option as well. Thus, even when authentication is used in the IPv6 header, the security of the Source Address field in the IPv6 header is not compromised by the presence
of a Home Address option. Without authentication of the packet, any field in the IPv6 header including the Source Address field or any other part of the packet and the Home Address option can be forged or modified in transit. In this case, the contents of the Home Address option is no more suspect than any other part of the packet.15.9. Type 2 Routing Header
The definition of the type 2 routing header is described in Section 6.4. This definition and the associated processing rules have been chosen so that the header cannot be used for what is traditionally viewed as source routing. In particular, the home address in the routing header will always have to be assigned to the home address of the receiving node; otherwise, the packet will be dropped. Generally, source routing has a number of security concerns. These include the automatic reversal of unauthenticated source routes (which is an issue for IPv4, but not for IPv6). Another concern is the ability to use source routing to "jump" between nodes inside, as well as outside, a firewall. These security concerns are not issues in Mobile IPv6, due to the rules mentioned above. In essence the semantics of the type 2 routing header is the same as a special form of IP-in-IP tunneling where the inner and outer source addresses are the same. This implies that a device that implements the filtering of packets should be able to distinguish between a type 2 routing header and other routing headers, as required in Section 8.3. This is necessary in order to allow Mobile IPv6 traffic while still having the option of filtering out other uses of routing headers.15.10. SHA-1 Secure Enough for Mobile IPv6 Control Messages
This document relies on hash-based message authentication codes (HMAC) computed using the SHA-1 [11] hash algorithm for the home keygen token and care-of keygen token, as well as the authentication fields in the binding update and binding authorization data (see Section 5.2.4). While SHA-1 has been deprecated for some cryptographic mechanisms, SHA-1 is considered secure for the foreseeable future when used as specified here. For additional details, see [39].
16. Contributors
Work done by Tuomas Aura, Mike Roe, Greg O'Shea, Pekka Nikander, Erik Nordmark, and Michael Thomas shaped the return routability protocols described in [35]. Significant contributions were made by members of the Mobile IPv6 Security Design Team, including (in alphabetical order) Gabriel Montenegro, Pekka Nikander, and Erik Nordmark.17. Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the members of the Mobile IP, Mobility Extensions for IPv6, and IPng Working Groups for their comments and suggestions on this work. We would particularly like to thank (in alphabetical order) Fred Baker, Josh Broch, Samita Chakrabarti, Robert Chalmers, Noel Chiappa, Jean-Michel Combes, Greg Daley, Vijay Devarapalli, Rich Draves, Francis Dupont, Ashutosh Dutta, Arnaud Ebalard, Wesley Eddy, Thomas Eklund, Jun-Ichiro Itojun Hagino, Brian Haley, Marc Hasson, John Ioannidis, James Kempf, Rajeev Koodli, Suresh Krishnan, Krishna Kumar, T.J. Kniveton, Joe Lau, Aime Le Rouzic, Julien Laganier, Jiwoong Lee, Benjamin Lim, Vesa-Matti Mantyla, Kevin Miles, Glenn Morrow, Ahmad Muhanna, Thomas Narten, Karen Nielsen, Simon Nybroe, David Oran, Mohan Parthasarathy, Basavaraj Patil, Brett Pentland, Lars Henrik Petander, Alexandru Petrescu, Mattias Petterson, Ken Powell, Ed Remmell, Phil Roberts, Patrice Romand, Luis A. Sanchez, Pekka Savola, Jeff Schiller, Arvind Sevalkar, Keiichi Shima, Tom Soderlund, Hesham Soliman, Jim Solomon, Tapio Suihko, Dave Thaler, Pascal Thubert, Benny Van Houdt, Jon-Olov Vatn, Ryuji Wakikawa, Kilian Weniger, Carl E. Williams, Vladislav Yasevich, Alper Yegin, and Xinhua Zhao, for their detailed reviews of earlier versions of this document. Their suggestions have helped to improve both the design and presentation of the protocol. We would also like to thank the participants of the Mobile IPv6 testing event (1999), implementers who participated in Mobile IPv6 interoperability testing at Connectathons (2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003), and the participants at the ETSI interoperability testing (2000, 2002). Finally, we would like to thank the TAHI project that has provided test suites for Mobile IPv6.18. References
18.1. Normative References
[1] Krawczyk, H., Bellare, M., and R. Canetti, "HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication", RFC 2104, February 1997.
[2] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [3] Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005. [4] Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302, December 2005. [5] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)", RFC 4303, December 2005. [6] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998. [7] Conta, A. and S. Deering, "Generic Packet Tunneling in IPv6 Specification", RFC 2473, December 1998. [8] Johnson, D. and S. Deering, "Reserved IPv6 Subnet Anycast Addresses", RFC 2526, March 1999. [9] Deering, S., Fenner, W., and B. Haberman, "Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) for IPv6", RFC 2710, October 1999. [10] Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782, February 2000. [11] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Secure Hash Standard", FIPS PUB 180-1, April 1995, <http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip180-1.htm>. [12] Arkko, J., Devarapalli, V., and F. Dupont, "Using IPsec to Protect Mobile IPv6 Signaling Between Mobile Nodes and Home Agents", RFC 3776, June 2004. [13] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements", RFC 4033, March 2005. [14] Eastlake, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, "Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086, June 2005. [15] Hinden, R. and B. Haberman, "Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Addresses", RFC 4193, October 2005. [16] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture", RFC 4291, February 2006.
[17] Conta, A., Deering, S., and M. Gupta, "Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6) for the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Specification", RFC 4443, March 2006. [18] Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman, "Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 4861, September 2007. [19] Thomson, S., Narten, T., and T. Jinmei, "IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration", RFC 4862, September 2007. [20] Devarapalli, V. and F. Dupont, "Mobile IPv6 Operation with IKEv2 and the Revised IPsec Architecture", RFC 4877, April 2007. [21] Narten, T., Draves, R., and S. Krishnan, "Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6", RFC 4941, September 2007. [22] Giaretta, G., Kempf, J., and V. Devarapalli, "Mobile IPv6 Bootstrapping in Split Scenario", RFC 5026, October 2007. [23] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, May 2008. [24] Kaufman, C., Hoffman, P., Nir, Y., and P. Eronen, "Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)", RFC 5996, September 2010.18.2. Informative References
[25] Perkins, C., "IP Encapsulation within IP", RFC 2003, October 1996. [26] Perkins, C., "Minimal Encapsulation within IP", RFC 2004, October 1996. [27] Ferguson, P. and D. Senie, "Network Ingress Filtering: Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source Address Spoofing", BCP 38, RFC 2827, May 2000. [28] Aura, T. and J. Arkko, "MIPv6 BU Attacks and Defenses", Work in Progress, March 2002. [29] Krishnan, S. and G. Tsirtsis, "MIPv6 Home Link Detection", Work in Progress, March 2008. [30] Reynolds, J., "Assigned Numbers: RFC 1700 is Replaced by an On- line Database", RFC 3232, January 2002.
[31] Droms, R., Bound, J., Volz, B., Lemon, T., Perkins, C., and M. Carney, "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6)", RFC 3315, July 2003. [32] Perkins, C., "IP Mobility Support for IPv4, Revised", RFC 5944, November 2010. [33] Draves, R., "Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 3484, February 2003. [34] Nordmark, E., "Securing MIPv6 BUs using return routability (BU3WAY)", Work in Progress, November 2001. [35] Roe, M., "Authentication of Mobile IPv6 Binding Updates and Acknowledgments", Work in Progress, March 2002. [36] Chowdhury, K. and A. Yegin, "MIP6-bootstrapping for the Integrated Scenario", Work in Progress, April 2008. [37] Savola, P., "Use of /127 Prefix Length Between Routers Considered Harmful", RFC 3627, September 2003. [38] Savola, P., "Security of IPv6 Routing Header and Home Address Options", Work in Progress, March 2002. [39] Polk, T., Chen, L., Turner, S., and P. Hoffman, "Security Considerations for the SHA-0 and SHA-1 Message-Digest Algorithms", RFC 6194, March 2011. [40] Manner, J. and M. Kojo, "Mobility Related Terminology", RFC 3753, June 2004. [41] Vida, R. and L. Costa, "Multicast Listener Discovery Version 2 (MLDv2) for IPv6", RFC 3810, June 2004. [42] Bellovin, S. and R. Housley, "Guidelines for Cryptographic Key Management", BCP 107, RFC 4107, June 2005. [43] Nikander, P., Arkko, J., Aura, T., Montenegro, G., and E. Nordmark, "Mobile IP Version 6 Route Optimization Security Design Background", RFC 4225, December 2005. [44] Nordmark, E., Chakrabarti, S., and J. Laganier, "IPv6 Socket API for Source Address Selection", RFC 5014, September 2007. [45] Abley, J., Savola, P., and G. Neville-Neil, "Deprecation of Type 0 Routing Headers in IPv6", RFC 5095, December 2007.
Appendix A. Future Extensions
A.1. Piggybacking
This document does not specify how to piggyback payload packets on the binding-related messages. However, it is envisioned that this can be specified in a separate document when issues such as the interaction between piggybacking and IPsec are fully resolved (see also Appendix A.3). The return routability messages can indicate support for piggybacking with a new mobility option.A.2. Triangular Routing
Due to the concerns about opening reflection attacks with the Home Address destination option, this specification requires that this option be verified against the Binding Cache, i.e., there must be a Binding Cache entry for the home address and care-of address. Future extensions may be specified that allow the use of unverified Home Address destination options in ways that do not introduce security issues.A.3. New Authorization Methods
While the return routability procedure provides a good level of security, there exist methods that have even higher levels of security. Second, as discussed in Section 15.4, future enhancements of IPv6 security may cause a need to also improve the security of the return routability procedure. Using IPsec as the sole method for authorizing Binding Updates to correspondent nodes is also possible. The protection of the Mobility Header for this purpose is easy, though one must ensure that the IPsec SA was created with appropriate authorization to use the home address referenced in the Binding Update. For instance, a certificate used by IKEv2 to create the security association might contain the home address. A future specification may specify how this is done.A.4. Neighbor Discovery Extensions
Future specifications may improve the efficiency of Neighbor Discovery tasks, which could be helpful for fast movements. One factor is currently being looked at: the delays caused by the Duplicate Address Detection mechanism. Currently, Duplicate Address Detection needs to be performed for every new care-of address as the mobile node moves, and for the mobile node's link-local address on every new link. In particular, the need and the trade-offs of re-performing Duplicate Address Detection for the link-local address every time the mobile node moves on to new links will need to be
examined. Improvements in this area are, however, generally applicable and progress independently from the Mobile IPv6 specification. Future functional improvements may also be relevant for Mobile IPv6 and other applications. For instance, mechanisms that would allow recovery from a Duplicate Address Detection collision would be useful for link-local, care-of, and home addresses.Appendix B. Changes since RFC 3775
The following issues were identified during the evolution of the current document. Discussion about most of the issues can be found on the [mext] working group page http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/mext/trac/report/6 Issue #1 Last Accepted SQN [Ahmad Muhanna] Solution: specify that the mobile node update its binding sequence number to match the sequence number given in the Binding Acknowledgement (if the Binding Acknowledgement correctly passes authentication and the status is 135 (Sequence Number out of window). See Section 11.7.3. Issue #4 Remove references to site-local addresses [George Tsirtsis]. Fixed. Issue #5 Wrong protocol number (2 instead of 135) used in discussion about checksum pseudo-header. Fixed. See Section 6.1.1. Issue #8 Application using the care-of address [Julien Laganier] Cite IPv6 Socket API for Source Address Selection specification [44]. See Section 11.3.4. Issue #10 The usage of "HA lifetime" [Ryuji Wakikawa] The mobile node SHOULD store the list of home agents for later use in case the home agent currently managing the mobile node's care-of address forwarding should become unavailable. See Section 11.4.1.
Issue #11 De-registration when returning home [Vijay Devarapalli]
To be able to send and receive packets using its home address from
the home link, the mobile node MUST send a Binding Update to its
home agent to instruct its home agent to no longer intercept or
tunnel packets for it. Until the mobile node sends such a
de-registration Binding Update, it MUST NOT attempt to send and
receive packets using its home address from the home link. See
Section 11.5.5.
Issue #12 BErr sent by HA too, not only by CN [Alexandru Petrescu]
Fixed. See Section 4.2.
Issue #13 Home Link Detection [Suresh Krishnan]
Proposal: Add Section 11.5.2 for Home Link Detection, drawing on
"MIPv6 Home Link Detection" [29].
Issue #14 References to bootstrapping [Vijay Devarapalli]
Cite "Mobile IPv6 Bootstrapping in Split Scenario" [22] and "MIP6-
bootstrapping for the Integrated Scenario" [36]. See Section 4.1.
Issue #17 Multi-homed mobile node can cause routing loop between
home agents [Benjamin Lim]
Added security advisory in Section 15.1, to highlight risk of
routing loop among HAs (e.g., in 3GPP):
A malicious mobile node associated to multiple home agents could
create a routing loop amongst them. This would happen when a
mobile node binds one home address located on a first home agent
to another home address on a second home agent.
Issue #18 Subject: Issues regarding Home Address Option and ICMP /
Binding Errors [Fabian Mauchle]
Proposal: Use the value in the Next Header field {50 (ESP), 51
(AH), 135 (Mobility Header)} to determine, if a Binding Cache
entry is required. See Section 9.3.1.
Proposal: If the Binding Error message was sent by the home agent,
the mobile node SHOULD send a Binding Update to the home agent
according to Section 11.7.1. See Section 11.3.6.
Issue #19 BU de-registration race condition [Kilian Weniger]
Problem arises if de-registration arrives at home agent before an
immediately preceding Binding Update.
Solution: Home agent defers BCE removal after sending the Binding
Acknowledgement. See Section 10.3.2.
Issue #6 Minor editorial corrections and updates.
Update IPsec and IKE references to the revised IPsec architecture
and IKEv2.
Update HMAC_SHA1 [1] to Normative instead of Informational.
Include discussion (see Section 15.10) to inform implementers that
HMAC_SHA1 is considered to offer sufficient protection for control
messages as required by Mobile IPv6.
Authors' Addresses
Charles E. Perkins (editor)
Tellabs, Inc.
4555 Great America Parkway, Suite 150
Santa Clara CA 95054
USA
EMail: charliep@computer.org
David B. Johnson
Rice University
Dept. of Computer Science, MS 132
6100 Main Street
Houston TX 77005-1892
USA
EMail: dbj@cs.rice.edu
Jari Arkko
Ericsson
Jorvas 02420
Finland
EMail: jari.arkko@ericsson.com