[RFC Home] [TEXT|PDF|HTML] [Tracker] [IPR] [Errata] [Info page]
PROPOSED STANDARD
Updated by: 8844 Errata ExistInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Lennox
Request for Comments: 8122 Vidyo
Obsoletes: 4572 C. Holmberg
Category: Standards Track Ericsson
ISSN: 2070-1721 March 2017
Connection-Oriented Media Transport over
the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
in the Session Description Protocol (SDP)
Abstract
This document specifies how to establish secure connection-oriented
media transport sessions over the Transport Layer Security (TLS)
protocol using the Session Description Protocol (SDP). It defines
the SDP protocol identifier, 'TCP/TLS'. It also defines the syntax
and semantics for an SDP 'fingerprint' attribute that identifies the
certificate that will be presented for the TLS session. This
mechanism allows media transport over TLS connections to be
established securely, so long as the integrity of session
descriptions is assured.
This document obsoletes RFC 4572 by clarifying the usage of multiple
fingerprints.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8122.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Changes from RFC 4572 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. SDP Operational Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Threat Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. The Need for Self-Signed Certificates . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4. Example SDP Description for TLS Connection . . . . . . . 6
4. Protocol Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Fingerprint Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.1. Multiple Fingerprints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. Endpoint Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.1. Certificate Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.2. Certificate Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
1. Introduction
The Session Description Protocol (SDP) [8] provides a general-purpose
format for describing multimedia sessions in announcements or
invitations. For many applications, it is desirable to establish, as
part of a multimedia session, a media stream that uses a connection-
oriented transport. RFC 4145, "TCP-Based Media Transport in the
Session Description Protocol (SDP)" [7], specifies a general
mechanism for describing and establishing such connection-oriented
streams; however, the only transport protocol it directly supports is
TCP. In many cases, session participants wish to provide
confidentiality, data integrity, and authentication for their media
sessions. Therefore, this document extends the TCP-Based Media
specification to allow session descriptions to describe media
sessions that use the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol [10].
The TLS protocol allows applications to communicate over a channel
that provides confidentiality and data integrity. The TLS
specification, however, does not specify how specific protocols
establish and use this secure channel; particularly, TLS leaves the
question of how to interpret and validate authentication certificates
as an issue for the protocols that run over TLS. This document
specifies such usage for the case of connection-oriented media
transport.
Complicating this issue, endpoints exchanging media will often be
unable to obtain authentication certificates signed by a well-known
root certification authority (CA). Most certificate authorities
charge for signed certificates, particularly host-based certificates;
additionally, there is a substantial administrative overhead to
obtaining signed certificates, as certification authorities must be
able to confirm that they are issuing the signed certificates to the
correct party. Furthermore, in many cases the endpoints' IP
addresses and host names are dynamic, for example, they may be
obtained from DHCP. It is impractical to obtain a CA-signed
certificate valid for the duration of a DHCP lease. For such hosts,
self-signed certificates are usually the only option. This
specification defines a mechanism that allows self-signed
certificates to be used securely, provided that the integrity of the
SDP description is assured. It allows for endpoints to include a
secure hash of their certificate, known as the "certificate
fingerprint", within the session description. Provided that the
fingerprint of the offered certificate matches the one in the session
description, end hosts can trust even self-signed certificates.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 3]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
The rest of this document is laid out as follows. An overview of the
problem and threat model is given in Section 3. Section 4 gives the
basic mechanism for establishing TLS-based connected-oriented media
in SDP. Section 5 describes the SDP fingerprint attribute, which,
assuming that the integrity of the SDP content is assured, allows the
secure use of self-signed certificates. Section 6 describes which
X.509 certificates are presented and how they are used in TLS.
Section 7 discusses additional security considerations.
1.1. Changes from RFC 4572
This document obsoletes RFC 4572 [20] but remains backwards
compatible with older implementations. The changes from RFC 4572
[20] are as follows:
o clarifies that multiple 'fingerprint' attributes can be used to
carry fingerprints (calculated using different hash functions)
associated with a given certificate and to carry fingerprints
associated with multiple certificates.
o clarifies the fingerprint matching procedure when multiple
fingerprints are provided.
o updates the preferred hash function with a stronger cipher suite
and removes the requirement to use the same hash function for
calculating a certificate fingerprint and certificate signature.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [3].
3. Overview
This section discusses the threat model that motivates TLS transport
for connection-oriented media streams. It also discusses, in more
detail, the need for end systems to use self-signed certificates.
3.1. SDP Operational Modes
There are two principal operational modes for multimedia sessions:
advertised and offer-answer. Advertised sessions are the simpler
mode. In this mode, a server publishes, in some manner, an SDP
session description of a multimedia session it is making available.
The classic example of this mode of operation is the Session
Announcement Protocol (SAP) [15], in which SDP session descriptions
are periodically transmitted to a well-known multicast group.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 4]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
Traditionally, these descriptions involve multicast conferences, but
unicast sessions are also possible. (Obviously, connection-oriented
media cannot use multicast.) Recipients of a session description
connect to the addresses published in the session description. These
recipients may not have been previously known to the advertiser of
the session description.
Alternatively, SDP conferences can operate in offer-answer mode [4].
This mode allows two participants in a multimedia session to
negotiate the multimedia session between them. In this model, one
participant offers the other a description of the desired session
from its perspective, and the other participant answers with the
desired session from its own perspective. In this mode, each of the
participants in the session has knowledge of the other one. This is
the mode of operation used by the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
[17].
3.2. Threat Model
Participants in multimedia conferences often wish to guarantee
confidentiality, data integrity, and authentication for their media
sessions. This section describes various types of attackers and the
ways they attempt to violate these guarantees. It then describes how
the TLS protocol can be used to thwart the attackers.
The simplest type of attacker is one who listens passively to the
traffic associated with a multimedia session. This attacker might,
for example, be on the same local-area or wireless network as one of
the participants in a conference. This sort of attacker does not
threaten a connection's data integrity or authentication, and almost
any operational mode of TLS can provide media-stream confidentiality.
More sophisticated is an attacker who can send his own data traffic
over the network, but who cannot modify or redirect valid traffic.
In SDP's 'advertised' operational mode, this can barely be considered
an attack; media sessions are expected to be initiated from anywhere
on the network. In SDP's offer-answer mode, however, this type of
attack is more serious. An attacker could initiate a connection to
one or both of the endpoints of a session, thus impersonating an
endpoint or acting as a man in the middle to listen in on their
communications. To thwart these attacks, TLS uses endpoint
certificates. So long as the certificates' private keys have not
been compromised, the endpoints have an externally trusted mechanism
(most commonly, a mutually trusted certification authority) to
validate certificates. Because the endpoints know what certificate
identity to expect, endpoints can be certain that such an attack has
not taken place.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 5]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
Finally, the most serious type of attacker is one who can modify or
redirect session descriptions: for example, a compromised or
malicious SIP proxy server. Neither TLS itself nor any mechanisms
that use it can protect an SDP session against such an attacker.
Instead, the SDP description itself must be secured through some
mechanism; SIP, for example, defines how S/MIME [22] can be used to
secure session descriptions.
3.3. The Need for Self-Signed Certificates
SDP session descriptions are created by any endpoint that needs to
participate in a multimedia session. In many cases, such as SIP
phones, such endpoints have dynamically configured IP addresses and
host names and must be deployed with nearly zero configuration. For
such an endpoint, it is, for practical purposes, impossible to obtain
a certificate signed by a well-known certification authority.
If two endpoints have no prior relationship, self-signed certificates
cannot generally be trusted, as there is no guarantee that an
attacker is not launching a man-in-the-middle attack. Fortunately,
however, if the integrity of SDP session descriptions can be assured,
it is possible to consider those SDP descriptions themselves as a
prior relationship: certificates can be securely described in the
session description itself. This is done by providing a secure hash
of a certificate, or "certificate fingerprint", as an SDP attribute;
this mechanism is described in Section 5.
3.4. Example SDP Description for TLS Connection
Figure 1 illustrates an SDP offer that signals the availability of a
T.38 fax session over TLS. For the purpose of brevity, the main
portion of the session description is omitted in the example, showing
only the 'm' line and its attributes. (This example is the same as
the first one in RFC 4145 [7], except for the proto parameter and the
fingerprint attribute.) See the subsequent sections for explanations
of the example's TLS-specific attributes.
Note: due to RFC formatting conventions, this document splits SDP
across lines whose content would exceed 72 characters. A backslash
character marks where this line folding has taken place. This
backslash and its trailing CRLF and whitespace would not appear in
actual SDP content.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 6]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
m=image 54111 TCP/TLS t38
c=IN IP4 192.0.2.2
a=setup:passive
a=connection:new
a=fingerprint:SHA-256 \
12:DF:3E:5D:49:6B:19:E5:7C:AB:4A:AD:B9:B1:3F:82:18:3B:54:02:12:DF: \
3E:5D:49:6B:19:E5:7C:AB:4A:AD
a=fingerprint:SHA-1 \
4A:AD:B9:B1:3F:82:18:3B:54:02:12:DF:3E:5D:49:6B:19:E5:7C:AB
Figure 1: Example SDP Description Offering a TLS Media Stream
4. Protocol Identifiers
The 'm' line in SDP specifies, among other items, the transport
protocol to be used for the media in the session. See the "Media
Descriptions" section of SDP [8] for a discussion on transport
protocol identifiers.
This specification defines the protocol identifier, 'TCP/TLS', which
indicates that the media described will use the Transport Layer
Security protocol [10] over TCP. (Using TLS over other transport
protocols is not discussed in this document.) The 'TCP/TLS' protocol
identifier describes only the transport protocol, not the upper-layer
protocol. An 'm' line that specifies 'TCP/TLS' MUST further qualify
the protocol using an fmt identifier to indicate the application
being run over TLS.
Media sessions described with this identifier follow the procedures
defined in RFC 4145 [7]. They also use the SDP attributes defined in
that specification, 'setup' and 'connection'.
5. Fingerprint Attribute
Parties to a TLS session indicate their identities by presenting
authentication certificates as part of the TLS handshake procedure.
Authentication certificates are X.509 [2] certificates, as profiled
by RFCs 3279 [5], 5280 [11], and 4055 [6].
In order to associate media streams with connections and to prevent
unauthorized barge-in attacks on the media streams, endpoints MUST
provide a certificate fingerprint. If the X.509 certificate
presented for the TLS connection matches the fingerprint presented in
the SDP, the endpoint can be confident that the author of the SDP is
indeed the initiator of the connection.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 7]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
A certificate fingerprint is a secure one-way hash of the
Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER) form of the certificate.
(Certificate fingerprints are widely supported by tools that
manipulate X.509 certificates; for instance, the command "openssl
x509 -fingerprint" causes the command-line tool of the openssl
package to print a certificate fingerprint, and the certificate
managers for Mozilla and Internet Explorer display them when viewing
the details of a certificate.)
A fingerprint is represented in SDP as an attribute (an 'a' line).
It consists of the name of the hash function used, followed by the
hash value itself. The hash value is represented as a sequence of
uppercase hexadecimal bytes, separated by colons. The number of
bytes is defined by the hash function. (This is the syntax used by
openssl and by the browsers' certificate managers. It is different
from the syntax used to represent hash values in, for example, HTTP
digest authentication [24], which uses unseparated lowercase
hexadecimal bytes. Consistency with other applications of
fingerprints was considered more important.)
The formal syntax of the fingerprint attribute is given in Augmented
Backus-Naur Form [9] in Figure 2. This syntax extends the BNF syntax
of SDP [8].
attribute =/ fingerprint-attribute
fingerprint-attribute = "fingerprint" ":" hash-func SP fingerprint
hash-func = "sha-1" / "sha-224" / "sha-256" /
"sha-384" / "sha-512" /
"md5" / "md2" / token
; Additional hash functions can only come
; from updates to RFC 3279
fingerprint = 2UHEX *(":" 2UHEX)
; Each byte in upper-case hex, separated
; by colons.
UHEX = DIGIT / %x41-46 ; A-F uppercase
Figure 2: Augmented Backus-Naur Syntax for the Fingerprint Attribute
Following RFC 3279 [5] as updated by RFC 4055 [6], the defined hash
functions are 'SHA-1' [1] [16], 'SHA-224' [1], 'SHA-256' [1], 'SHA-
384' [1], 'SHA-512' [1], 'MD5' [13], and 'MD2' [23], with 'SHA-256'
preferred. A new IANA registry, named "Hash Function Textual Names",
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 8]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
specified in Section 8, allows for the addition of future tokens, but
they may only be added if they are included in RFCs that update or
obsolete RFC 3279 [5].
Implementations compliant with this specification MUST NOT use the
MD2 and MD5 hash functions to calculate fingerprints or to verify
received fingerprints that have been calculated using them.
Note: The MD2 and MD5 hash functions are listed in this specification
so that implementations can recognize them. Implementations that log
unused hash functions might log occurrences of these algorithms
differently to unknown hash algorithms.
The fingerprint attribute may be either a session-level or a media-
level SDP attribute. If it is a session-level attribute, it applies
to all TLS sessions for which no media-level fingerprint attribute is
defined.
5.1. Multiple Fingerprints
Multiple SDP fingerprint attributes can be associated with an 'm'
line. This can occur if multiple fingerprints have been calculated
for a certificate using different hash functions. It can also occur
if one or more fingerprints associated with multiple certificates
have been calculated. This might be needed if multiple certificates
will be used for media associated with an 'm' line (e.g., if separate
certificates are used for RTP and the RTP Control Protocol (RTCP)) or
where it is not known which certificate will be used when the
fingerprints are exchanged. In such cases, one or more fingerprints
MUST be calculated for each possible certificate.
An endpoint MUST, as a minimum, calculate a fingerprint using both
the 'SHA-256' hash function algorithm and the hash function used to
generate the signature on the certificate for each possible
certificate. Including the hash from the signature algorithm ensures
interoperability with strict implementations of RFC 4572 [20].
Either of these fingerprints MAY be omitted if the endpoint includes
a hash with a stronger hash algorithm that it knows that the peer
supports, if it is known that the peer does not support the hash
algorithm, or if local policy mandates use of stronger algorithms.
If fingerprints associated with multiple certificates are calculated,
the same set of hash functions MUST be used to calculate fingerprints
for each certificate associated with the 'm' line.
An endpoint MUST select the set of fingerprints that use its most
preferred hash function (out of those offered by the peer) and verify
that each certificate used matches one fingerprint out of that set.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 9]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
If a certificate does not match any such fingerprint, the endpoint
MUST NOT establish the TLS connection.
Note: The SDP fingerprint attribute does not contain a reference to a
specific certificate. Endpoints need to compare the fingerprint with
a certificate hash in order to look for a match.
6. Endpoint Identification
6.1. Certificate Choice
An X.509 certificate binds an identity and a public key. If SDP
describing a TLS session is transmitted over a mechanism that
provides integrity protection, a certificate asserting any
syntactically valid identity MAY be used. For example, an SDP
description sent over HTTP/TLS [14] or secured by S/MIME [22] MAY
assert any identity in the certificate securing the media connection.
Security protocols that provide only hop-by-hop integrity protection
(e.g., the SIPS scheme [17], SIP over TLS) are considered
sufficiently secure to allow the mode in which any valid identity is
accepted. However, see Section 7 for a discussion of some security
implications of this fact.
In situations where the SDP is not integrity-protected, the
certificate provided for a TLS connection MUST certify an appropriate
identity for the connection. In these scenarios, the certificate
presented by an endpoint MUST certify either the SDP connection
address or the identity of the creator of the SDP message, as
follows:
o If the connection address for the media description is specified
as an IP address, the endpoint MAY use a certificate with an
iPAddress subjectAltName that exactly matches the IP in the
connection-address in the session description's 'c' line.
Similarly, if the connection address for the media description is
specified as a fully qualified domain name, the endpoint MAY use a
certificate with a dNSName subjectAltName matching the specified
'c' line connection-address exactly. (Wildcard patterns MUST NOT
be used.)
o Alternately, if the SDP session description of the session was
transmitted over a protocol (such as SIP [17]) for which the
identities of session participants are defined by Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URIs), the endpoint MAY use a certificate with a
uniformResourceIdentifier subjectAltName corresponding to the
identity of the endpoint that generated the SDP. The details of
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 10]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
what URIs are valid are dependent on the transmitting protocol.
(For more details on the validity of URIs, see Section 7.
Identity matching is performed using the matching rules specified by
RFC 5280 [11]. If more than one identity of a given type is present
in the certificate (e.g., more than one dNSName name), a match in any
one of the set is considered acceptable. To support the use of
certificate caches, as described in Section 7, endpoints SHOULD
consistently provide the same certificate for each identity they
support.
6.2. Certificate Presentation
In all cases, an endpoint acting as the TLS server (i.e., one taking
the 'setup:passive' role, in the terminology of connection-oriented
media) MUST present a certificate during TLS initiation, following
the rules presented in Section 6.1. If the certificate does not
match the original fingerprint, the client endpoint MUST terminate
the media connection with a bad_certificate error.
If the SDP offer/answer model [4] is being used, the client (the
endpoint with the 'setup:active' role) MUST also present a
certificate following the rules of Section 6.1. The server MUST
request a certificate; if the client does not provide one, or if the
certificate does not match a provided fingerprint, the server
endpoint MUST terminate the media connection with a bad_certificate
error.
Note that when the offer/answer model is being used, it is possible
for a media connection to outrace the answer back to the offerer.
Thus, if the offerer has offered a 'setup:passive' or 'setup:actpass'
role, it MUST (as specified in RFC 4145 [7]) begin listening for an
incoming connection as soon as it sends its offer. However, it MUST
NOT assume that the data transmitted over the TLS connection is valid
until it has received a matching fingerprint in an SDP answer. If
the fingerprint, once it arrives, does not match the client's
certificate, the server endpoint MUST terminate the media connection
with a bad_certificate error, as stated in the previous paragraph.
If offer/answer is not being used (e.g., if the SDP was sent over the
Session Announcement Protocol [15]), there is no secure channel
available for clients to communicate certificate fingerprints to
servers. In this case, servers MAY request client certificates,
which SHOULD be signed by a well-known certification authority, or
MAY allow clients to connect without a certificate.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 11]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
7. Security Considerations
This entire document concerns itself with security. The problem to
be solved is addressed in Section 1, and a high-level overview is
presented in Section 3. See the SDP specification [8] for security
considerations applicable to SDP in general.
Offering a TCP/TLS connection in SDP (or agreeing to one in the SDP
offer/answer mode) does not create an obligation for an endpoint to
accept any TLS connection with the given fingerprint. Instead, the
endpoint must engage in the standard TLS negotiation procedure to
ensure that the TLS stream cipher and MAC algorithm chosen meet the
security needs of the higher-level application. (For example, an
offered stream cipher of TLS_NULL_WITH_NULL_NULL SHOULD be rejected
in almost every application scenario.)
Like all SDP messages, SDP messages describing TLS streams are
conveyed in an encapsulating application protocol (e.g., SIP, Media
Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), etc.). It is the responsibility of
the encapsulating protocol to ensure the integrity of the SDP
security descriptions. Therefore, the application protocol SHOULD
either invoke its own security mechanisms (e.g., secure multiparts)
or, alternatively, utilize a lower-layer security service (e.g., TLS
or IPsec). This security service SHOULD provide strong message
authentication as well as effective replay protection.
However, such integrity protection is not always possible. For these
cases, end systems SHOULD maintain a cache of certificates that other
parties have previously presented using this mechanism. If possible,
users SHOULD be notified when an unsecured certificate associated
with a previously unknown end system is presented and SHOULD be
strongly warned if a different unsecured certificate is presented by
a party with which they have communicated in the past. In this way,
even in the absence of integrity protection for SDP, the security of
this document's mechanism is equivalent to that of the Secure Shell
(SSH) protocol [18], which is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks
when two parties first communicate but can detect ones that occur
subsequently. (Note that a precise definition of the "other party"
depends on the application protocol carrying the SDP message.) Users
SHOULD NOT, however, in any circumstances be notified about
certificates described in the SDP descriptions sent over an
integrity-protected channel.
To aid interoperability and deployment, security protocols that
provide only hop-by-hop integrity protection (e.g., the SIPS scheme
[17], SIP over TLS) are considered sufficiently secure to allow the
mode in which any syntactically valid identity is accepted in a
certificate. This decision was made because SIPS is currently the
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 12]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
integrity mechanism most likely to be used in deployed networks in
the short to medium term. However, in this mode, SDP integrity is
vulnerable to attacks by compromised or malicious middleboxes, e.g.,
SIP proxy servers. End systems MAY warn users about SDP sessions
that are secured in only a hop-by-hop manner, and definitions of
media formats running over TCP/TLS MAY specify that only end-to-end
integrity mechanisms be used.
Depending on how SDP messages are transmitted, it is not always
possible to determine whether or not a subjectAltName presented in a
remote certificate is expected for the remote party. In particular,
given call forwarding, third-party call control, or session
descriptions generated by endpoints controlled by the Gateway Control
Protocol [21], it is not always possible in SIP to determine what
entity ought to have generated a remote SDP response. In general,
when not using authenticity and integrity protection of the SDP
descriptions, a certificate transmitted over SIP SHOULD assert the
endpoint's SIP Address of Record as a uniformResourceIndicator
subjectAltName. When an endpoint receives a certificate over SIP
asserting an identity (including an iPAddress or dNSName identity)
other than the one to which it placed or received the call, it SHOULD
alert the user and ask for confirmation. This applies whether
certificates are self-signed or signed by certification authorities;
a certificate for "sip:bob@example.com" may be legitimately signed by
a certification authority, but it may still not be acceptable for a
call to "sip:alice@example.com". (This issue is not one specific to
this specification; the same consideration applies for S/MIME-signed
SDP carried over SIP.)
This document does not define a mechanism for securely transporting
RTP and RTCP packets over a connection-oriented channel. Please see
RFC 7850 [19] for more details.
TLS is not always the most appropriate choice for secure connection-
oriented media; in some cases, a higher- or lower-level security
protocol may be appropriate.
This document improves security from RFC 4572 [20]. It updates the
preferred hash function from SHA-1 to SHA-256 and deprecates the
usage of the MD2 and MD5 hash functions.
By clarifying the usage and handling of multiple fingerprints, the
document also enables hash agility and incremental deployment of
newer and more secure hash functions.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 13]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
8. IANA Considerations
IANA has updated the registrations defined in RFC 4572 [20] to refer
to this specification.
This document defines an SDP proto value: 'TCP/TLS'. Its format is
defined in Section 4. This proto value has been registered by IANA
under the "proto" registry within the "Session Description Protocol
(SDP) Parameters" registry.
This document defines an SDP session and media-level attribute:
'fingerprint'. Its format is defined in Section 5. This attribute
has been registered by IANA under the "att-field (both session and
media level)" registry within the "Session Description Protocol (SDP)
Parameters" registry.
The SDP specification [8] states that specifications defining new
proto values, like the 'TCP/TLS' proto value defined in this one,
must define the rules by which their media format (fmt) namespace is
managed. For the TCP/TLS protocol, new formats SHOULD have an
associated MIME registration. Use of an existing MIME subtype for
the format is encouraged. If no MIME subtype exists, it is
RECOMMENDED that a suitable one be registered through the IETF
process [12] by production of, or reference to, a Standards Track RFC
that defines the transport protocol for the format.
IANA has updated the "Hash Function Textual Names" registry (which
was originally created in [20]) to refer to this document.
The names of hash functions used for certificate fingerprints are
registered by the IANA. Hash functions MUST be defined by Standards
Track RFCs that update or obsolete RFC 3279 [5].
When registering a new hash function textual name, the following
information MUST be provided:
o The textual name of the hash function.
o The Object Identifier (OID) of the hash function as used in X.509
certificates.
o A reference to the Standards Track RFC that updates or obsoletes
RFC 3279 [5] and defines the use of the hash function in X.509
certificates.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 14]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
Table 1 contains the initial values of this registry.
+--------------------+------------------------+-----------+
| Hash Function Name | OID | Reference |
+--------------------+------------------------+-----------+
| "md2" | 1.2.840.113549.2.2 | RFC 3279 |
| "md5" | 1.2.840.113549.2.5 | RFC 3279 |
| "sha-1" | 1.3.14.3.2.26 | RFC 3279 |
| "sha-224" | 2.16.840.1.101.3.4.2.4 | RFC 4055 |
| "sha-256" | 2.16.840.1.101.3.4.2.1 | RFC 4055 |
| "sha-384" | 2.16.840.1.101.3.4.2.2 | RFC 4055 |
| "sha-512" | 2.16.840.1.101.3.4.2.3 | RFC 4055 |
+--------------------+------------------------+-----------+
Table 1: IANA Hash Function Textual Name Registry
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[1] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Secure Hash
Standard (SHS)", FIPS PUB 180-4, DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4,
August 2015, <http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/FIPS/
NIST.FIPS.180-4.pdf>.
[2] International Organization for Standardization, "Information
technology -- Open Systems Interconnection -- The Directory --
Part 8: Public-key and attribute certificate frameworks",
ISO/IEC 9594-8:2014, March 2014,
<https://www.iso.org/standard/64854.html>.
[3] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[4] Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "An Offer/Answer Model with
Session Description Protocol (SDP)", RFC 3264,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3264, June 2002,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3264>.
[5] Bassham, L., Polk, W., and R. Housley, "Algorithms and
Identifiers for the Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure
Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile",
RFC 3279, DOI 10.17487/RFC3279, April 2002,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3279>.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 15]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
[6] Schaad, J., Kaliski, B., and R. Housley, "Additional Algorithms
and Identifiers for RSA Cryptography for use in the Internet
X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate
Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 4055, DOI 10.17487/RFC4055,
June 2005, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4055>.
[7] Yon, D. and G. Camarillo, "TCP-Based Media Transport in the
Session Description Protocol (SDP)", RFC 4145,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4145, September 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4145>.
[8] Handley, M., Jacobson, V., and C. Perkins, "SDP: Session
Description Protocol", RFC 4566, DOI 10.17487/RFC4566, July
2006, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4566>.
[9] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, DOI 10.17487/RFC5234,
January 2008, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.
[10] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, DOI 10.17487/RFC5246, August
2008, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5246>.
[11] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley, R.,
and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure
Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile",
RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.
[12] Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC 6838,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6838, January 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6838>.
9.2. Informative References
[13] Rivest, R., "The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC 1321,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1321, April 1992,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1321>.
[14] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, DOI 10.17487/RFC2818,
May 2000, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2818>.
[15] Handley, M., Perkins, C., and E. Whelan, "Session Announcement
Protocol", RFC 2974, DOI 10.17487/RFC2974, October 2000,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2974>.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 16]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
[16] Eastlake 3rd, D. and P. Jones, "US Secure Hash Algorithm 1
(SHA1)", RFC 3174, DOI 10.17487/RFC3174, September 2001,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3174>.
[17] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A.,
Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E. Schooler, "SIP:
Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, DOI 10.17487/RFC3261,
June 2002, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3261>.
[18] Ylonen, T. and C. Lonvick, Ed., "The Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol
Architecture", RFC 4251, DOI 10.17487/RFC4251, January 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4251>.
[19] Lazzaro, J., "Framing Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) and RTP
Control Protocol (RTCP) Packets over Connection-Oriented
Transport", RFC 4571, DOI 10.17487/RFC4571, July 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4571>.
[20] Lennox, J., "Connection-Oriented Media Transport over the
Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol in the Session
Description Protocol (SDP)", RFC 4572, DOI 10.17487/RFC4572,
July 2006, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4572>.
[21] Taylor, T., "Reclassification of RFC 3525 to Historic",
RFC 5125, DOI 10.17487/RFC5125, February 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5125>.
[22] Ramsdell, B. and S. Turner, "Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (S/MIME) Version 3.2 Message Specification",
RFC 5751, DOI 10.17487/RFC5751, January 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5751>.
[23] Turner, S. and L. Chen, "MD2 to Historic Status", RFC 6149,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6149, March 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6149>.
[24] Shekh-Yusef, R., Ed., Ahrens, D., and S. Bremer, "HTTP Digest
Access Authentication", RFC 7616, DOI 10.17487/RFC7616,
September 2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7616>.
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 17]
RFC 8122 Comedia over TLS in SDP March 2017
Acknowledgments
This document included significant contributions by Cullen Jennings,
Paul Kyzivat, Roman Shpount, and Martin Thomson. Elwyn Davies
performed the Gen-ART review of the document.
Authors' Addresses
Jonathan Lennox
Vidyo
Email: jonathan@vidyo.com
Christer Holmberg
Ericsson
Email: christer.holmberg@ericsson.com
Lennox & Holmberg Standards Track [Page 18]