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Revision: 1.2
Committed: Tue Mar 15 19:23:33 2005 UTC (19 years, 2 months ago) by pcg
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.1: +48 -20 lines
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# Content
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131 .IX Title "GVPE.PROTOCOL 7"
132 .TH GVPE.PROTOCOL 7 "2005-03-15" "1.8" "GNU Virtual Private Ethernet"
133 .SH "The GNU-VPE Protocols"
134 .IX Header "The GNU-VPE Protocols"
135 .SH "Overview"
136 .IX Header "Overview"
137 \&\s-1GVPE\s0 can make use of a number of protocols. One of them is the \s-1GNU\s0 \s-1VPE\s0
138 protocol which is used to authenticate tunnels and send encrypted data
139 packets. This protocol is described in more detail the second part of this
140 document.
141 .PP
142 The first part of this document describes the transport protocols which
143 are used by \s-1GVPE\s0 to send it's data packets over the network.
144 .SH "PART 1: Tansport protocols"
145 .IX Header "PART 1: Tansport protocols"
146 .Sh "\s-1RAW\s0 \s-1IP\s0"
147 .IX Subsection "RAW IP"
148 .Sh "\s-1ICMP\s0"
149 .IX Subsection "ICMP"
150 .Sh "\s-1UDP\s0"
151 .IX Subsection "UDP"
152 .Sh "\s-1TCP\s0"
153 .IX Subsection "TCP"
154 .Sh "\s-1DNS\s0"
155 .IX Subsection "DNS"
156 .SH "PART 2: The GNU VPE protocol"
157 .IX Header "PART 2: The GNU VPE protocol"
158 This section, unfortunately, is not yet finished, although the protocol
159 is stable (until bugs in the cryptography are found, which will likely
160 completely change the following description). Nevertheless, it should give
161 you some overview over the protocol.
162 .Sh "Anatomy of a \s-1VPN\s0 packet"
163 .IX Subsection "Anatomy of a VPN packet"
164 The exact layout and field lengths of a \s-1VPN\s0 packet is determined at
165 compiletime and doesn't change. The same structure is used for all
166 transort protocols, be it \s-1RAWIP\s0 or \s-1TCP\s0.
167 .PP
168 .Vb 3
169 \& +------+------+--------+------+
170 \& | HMAC | TYPE | SRCDST | DATA |
171 \& +------+------+--------+------+
172 .Ve
173 .PP
174 The \s-1HMAC\s0 field is present in all packets, even if not used (e.g. in auth
175 request packets), in which case it is set to all zeroes. The checksum
176 itself is calculated over the \s-1TYPE\s0, \s-1SRCDST\s0 and \s-1DATA\s0 fields in all cases.
177 .PP
178 The \s-1TYPE\s0 field is a single byte and determines the purpose of the packet
179 (e.g. \s-1RESET\s0, \s-1COMPRESSED/UNCOMPRESSED\s0 \s-1DATA\s0, \s-1PING\s0, \s-1AUTH\s0 \s-1REQUEST/RESPONSE\s0,
180 \&\s-1CONNECT\s0 \s-1REQUEST/INFO\s0 etc.).
181 .PP
182 \&\s-1SRCDST\s0 is a three byte field which contains the source and destination
183 node ids (12 bits each). The protocol does not yet scale well beyond 30+
184 hosts, since all hosts must connect to each other once on startup. But if
185 restarts are rare or tolerable and most connections are on demand, much
186 larger networks are feasible.
187 .PP
188 The \s-1DATA\s0 portion differs between each packet type, naturally, and is the
189 only part that can be encrypted. Data packets contain more fields, as
190 shown:
191 .PP
192 .Vb 3
193 \& +------+------+--------+------+-------+------+
194 \& | HMAC | TYPE | SRCDST | RAND | SEQNO | DATA |
195 \& +------+------+--------+------+-------+------+
196 .Ve
197 .PP
198 \&\s-1RAND\s0 is a sequence of fully random bytes, used to increase the entropy of
199 the data for encryption purposes.
200 .PP
201 \&\s-1SEQNO\s0 is a 32\-bit sequence number. It is negotiated at every connection
202 initialization and starts at some random 31 bit value. \s-1VPE\s0 currently uses
203 a sliding window of 512 packets/sequence numbers to detect reordering,
204 duplication and reply attacks.
205 .Sh "The authentification protocol"
206 .IX Subsection "The authentification protocol"
207 Before hosts can exchange packets, they need to establish authenticity of
208 the other side and a key. Every host has a private \s-1RSA\s0 key and the public
209 \&\s-1RSA\s0 keys of all other hosts.
210 .PP
211 A host establishes a simplex connection by sending the other host a
212 \&\s-1RSA\s0 encrypted challenge containing a random challenge (consisting of
213 the encryption key to use when sending packets, more random data and
214 \&\s-1PKCS1_OAEP\s0 padding) and a random 16 byte \*(L"challenge\-id\*(R" (used to detect
215 duplicate auth packets). The destination host will respond by replying
216 with an (unencrypted) \s-1RIPEMD160\s0 hash of the decrypted challenge, which
217 will authentify that host. The destination host will also set the outgoing
218 encryption parameters as given in the packet.
219 .PP
220 When the source host receives a correct auth reply (by verifying the
221 hash and the id, which will expire after 120 seconds), it will start to
222 accept data packets from the destination host.
223 .PP
224 This means that a host can only initate a simplex connection, telling the
225 other side the key it has to use when it sends packets. The challenge
226 reply is only used to set the current \s-1IP\s0 address of the other side and
227 protocol parameters.
228 .PP
229 This protocol is completely symmetric, so to be able to send packets the
230 destination host must send a challenge in the exact same way as already
231 described (so, in essence, two simplex connections are created per host
232 pair).
233 .Sh "Retrying"
234 .IX Subsection "Retrying"
235 When there is no response to an auth request, the host will send auth
236 requests in bursts with an exponential backoff. After some time it will
237 resort to \s-1PING\s0 packets, which are very small (8 bytes) and lightweight
238 (no \s-1RSA\s0 operations required). A host that receives ping requests from an
239 unconnected peer will respond by trying to create a connection.
240 .PP
241 In addition to the exponential backoff, there is a global rate-limit on
242 a per-IP base. It allows long bursts but will limit total packet rate to
243 something like one control packet every ten seconds, to avoid accidental
244 floods due to protocol problems (like a \s-1RSA\s0 key file mismatch between two
245 hosts).
246 .Sh "Routing and Protocol translation"
247 .IX Subsection "Routing and Protocol translation"
248 The gvpe routing algorithm is easy: there isn't any routing. \s-1GVPE\s0 always
249 tries to establish direct connections, if the protocol abilities of the
250 two hosts allow it.
251 .PP
252 If the two hosts should be able to reach each other (common protocol, ip
253 and port all known), but cannot (network down), then there will be no
254 connection, point.
255 .PP
256 A host can usually declare itself unreachable directly by setting it's
257 port number(s) to zero. It can declare other hosts as unreachable by using
258 a config-file that disables all protocols for these other hosts.
259 .PP
260 If two hosts cannot connect to each other because their \s-1IP\s0 address(es)
261 are not known (such as dialup hosts), one side will send a connection
262 request to a router (routers must be configured to act as routers!), which
263 will send both the originating and the destination host a connection info
264 request with protocol information and \s-1IP\s0 address of the other host (if
265 known). Both hosts will then try to establish a connection to the other
266 peer, which is usually possible even when both hosts are behind a \s-1NAT\s0
267 gateway.
268 .PP
269 If the hosts cannot reach each other because they have no common protocol,
270 the originator instead use the router with highest priority and matching
271 protocol as peer. Since the \s-1SRCDST\s0 field is not encrypted, the router host
272 can just forward the packet to the destination host. Since each host uses
273 it's own private key, the router will not be able to decrypt or encrypt
274 packets, it will just act as a simple router and protocol translator.
275 .PP
276 When no router is connected, the host will aggressively try to connect to
277 all routers, and if a router is asked for an unconnected host it will try
278 to ask another router to establish the connection.
279 .PP
280 \&... more not yet written about the details of the routing, please bug me
281 \&...