Contents

•Introduction
•Security basics
•PAP, CHAP, EAP
•Radius
•Examples
 AAA

•AAA
– Authentication, Authorization, Accounting
– RFC 2903 (Generic AAA Architecture)
– RFC 2904 (AAA Authorization Framework)

•AAAA
– AAA and Auditing

•Accounting and billing

– Accounting is gathering information for billing,
balancing, or other purposes
 Motivation for AAA
•Service organizations to host multiple organizations
requiring dial-in facilities

•User organizations to outsourcing their dial-in service to

one or more 3rd parties

•Agreements can be implemented using a standards

based protocol (RADIUS)

•RADIUS allows User organizations or Agents to migrate

to other Service Providers.

•An agent, using proxy AAA to change its service without

Scenarios: Remote Dial-In

AAA Server

Network
User
Access
Server (NAS)
 Scenarios: Mobile Dial-In

Visited ISP Home ISP

AAA Server AAA Server

Network
User
Access
Server (NAS)
USER SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

ISP A
User NETWO
RK
ACCESS
SERVER RADIUS
AAA USER HOME ORGANIZATIONS
User S
RADIUS
Internet AAA

AAA
ISP B
User NETWO RADIUS
RK
ACCESS
SERVER RADIUS
AAA
User S

Internet
Generic AAA Architecture (RFC2903)

Policy The point where policy

Decision
decisions are made.
Point
Policy
Reposit
ory
Request
Decision

Policy
The point where the policy
Enforcement
Point decisions are actually enforced.

GOAL: Allow policy decisions to be made by multiple PDP’s belonging to different

administrative domains.
 AAA Authorization Framework

Push sequence Pull sequence Agent sequence

Tokens, Tickets, NAS (remote access) Agents, Brokers,

AC’s etc. RSVP (network QoS) Proxy’s.

1
AAA AAA
1 AAA
2
User User 2 4 2
1 3 User
3 3

4 Service
4 Service Service
 AAAA

•Authentication
– Are you who you say you are?

•Authorization
– Are you allowed to do what you want to do?

•Accounting
– Keeping track of who is using how much of each
resource

•Auditing/Accountability
 Authentication

•Many authentication methods can be used

– IP address
• Easily forged
• May change
• Does not really identify a single end-host
– User ID and password
• Requires additional security measures to make it
work
• One-time pads support strong security
 Authentication II

•Challenge-response
– Require proof of password, ownership,
computational capability, perception, ..

•Shared secret
– Symmetric key in cryptography
– Never sent over the network
– Requires a way to derive keys
• Key negotiation protocols
– Diffie-Hellman

•Asymmeric keying / public key cryptography

 Authentication III

Strong

Token cards / soft tokens using one time pads

Secret key (one time pads)

Authentication Aging username / password

Static username / password

No username or password

Weak
Low High
Ease of use
 Need to know the message,
Digital Signatures digest, and algorithm (f.e.
SHA1)

Message
Message Message
Digest Digest

SIGN VERIFY
Signature Pass/Fail

Private Asymmetric Public

key Key Pair key
 Encryption

Encrypt Decrypt

Public Asymmetric Private

key Key Pair key
HTTPS, S/MIME, PGP,WS-Security, Radius, Diameter, SAML 2.0 ..

Application Application

Transport TSL, SSH, .. Transport

HIP

Network IPsec Network

PAP, CHAP, WEP, ..

Link Link

Physical Physical
 Attacks against authentication

•Eavesdropping passwords and credentials

•Password guessing / brute force (sniffing)
•Replaying credentials
•Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM)
– Opportunistic protocols are prone
– Solved using mutual authentication
• Authenticated diffie-hellman

•Resource exhaustion
– Any exhaustion attack on resources
 Eavesdropping

An eavesdropping attack, which are also known as a

sniffing or snooping attack, is an incursion where
someone tries to steal information that
computers, smart phones, or other devices transmit
over a network. An eavesdropping attack takes
advantage of unsecured network communications in
order to access the data being sent and received.
Eavesdropping attacks are difficult to detect because
they do not cause network transmissions to appear to
be operating abnormally.
 Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM)

•a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) is an attack where

the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the
communication between two parties who believe they
are directly communicating with each other. One
example of man-in-the-middle attacks is
active eavesdropping, in which the attacker makes
independent connections with the victims and relays
messages between them to make them believe they are
talking directly to each other over a private connection,
when in fact the entire conversation is controlled by the
attacker. The attacker must be able to intercept all
Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM)
 Replaying credentials

•A replay attack (also known as playback attack) is a

form of network attack in which a valid data
transmission is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or
delayed. This is carried out either by the originator or by
an adversary who intercepts the data and re-transmits
it.
Replaying credentials
 Authorization

•After a user has been authenticated, authorization is

used to grant privileges for performing certain actions

•Mapping from user identity and system state to

authorized actions is needed

•Many techniques
– Physical presence
– Token-based authorization
– PKI-based authorization

•Current systems rely on assertions

 PAP and CHAP
•Password Authentication Protocol (PAP)
– Originally described in RFC 1334 for use with the
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
– Username/passphrase challenge-response protocol
– Authenticator sends a challenge to the client, and the
response is validated by the authenticator

•Authentication during initial connection attempt

•CHAP is detailed in RFC 1334 as a more secure alternative to PAP
– Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol
– Periodic challenges during a session
– Protection against replay attacks
– Usernames as clear, passwords as hash values
CHAP 3-way handhake

User Server

Link layer connectivity

Challenge (random bitstring)

Hash(password,challenge)

Ack
 EAP
•Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) is defined in RFC
3748

•Set of guidelines authentication message formats

– Universal authentication framework

•EAP Transport Layer security (EAP-TLS)

– Client-side certificates
– Strong authentication methods through the use of PKI
– Peers exchange certificates and use public key crypto to
share keying material

•EAP Tunneled Transport Layer Security (EAP-TTLS)

 802.1X Security

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/8021X-Overview.png
 Radius

•Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)

is defined in RFC 2865

•Designed to authenticate dial-in-access customers

– Used for dial-in lines and 3G networks

•Idea to have a centralized user database for

passwords and other user information
– Cost efficient
– Easy to configure

•Radius is used together with an authentication protocol

 Radius

•A client-server protocol
– Network Access Server (NAS) is the client
– Radius Server is a server

•Security based on previously shared secret

•More than one server can serve a single client
•A server can act as a proxy
•Based on UDP on efficiency reasons
 Parameters for NAS

•The specific IP address to be assigned to the user

•The address pool from which the user's IP should be
chosen

•The maximum length that the user may remain

connected

•An access list, priority queue or other restrictions on a

user's access

•Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) parameters (for

 Accounting

•NAS can use RADIUS accounting packets to notify the

RADIUS server of events such as
– The user's session start
– The user's session end
– Total packets transferred during the session
– Volume of data transferred during the session
– Reason for session ending
 Radius and CHAP

Radius
User NAS
server

Link layer connectivity

Challenge (random bitstring)

Hash(password,challenge)
Hash(password,challenge)
Ack
Ack
 Steps

•CHAP authentication challenge to the user

•User responds with a password using a one-way hash
function

•NAS wraps the challenge and response in a RADIUS

access-request

•RADIUS searches the password corresponding to the

user ID and computes hash values corresponding to the
password and the challenge

•If a hash value matches the user response, the

 Radius Limitations
•Scalability
– No explicit support for agents, proxies, ..
– Manual configuration of shared secrets

•Reliability
– UDP not reliable, accounting info may be lost

•Does not define failover mechanisms

– Implementation specific

•Mobility support
•Security
– Applied usually in trusted network segments or
 Summary

•AAA and AAAA are integral parts of today’s networks

•Policy Decision Points, Policy Enforcement Points
•RADIUS
•PAP, CHAP, EAP