1CAT working group                                              M. Swift 
2Internet Draft                                                J. Brezak 
3Document: draft-brezak-win2k-krb-rc4-hmac-00.txt              Microsoft 
4Category: Informational                                 September, 1999 
5 
6 
7           The Windows 2000 RC4-HMAC Kerberos encryption type 
8 
9 
10Status of this Memo 
11 
12   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with 
13   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [1]. Internet-Drafts are 
14   working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its 
15   areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also 
16   distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are 
17   draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be 
18   updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It 
19   is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to 
20   cite them other than as "work in progress." 
21     
22   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 
23   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt 
24 
25   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 
26   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 
27    
281. Abstract 
29    
30   The Windows 2000 implementation of Kerberos introduces a new 
31   encryption type based on the RC4 encryption algorithm and using an 
32   MD5 HMAC for checksum. This is offered as an alternative to using 
33   the existing DES based encryption types. 
34    
35   The RC4-HMAC encryption types are used to ease upgrade of existing 
36   Windows NT environments, provide strong crypto (128-bit key 
37   lengths), and provide exportable (meet United States government 
38   export restriction requirements) encryption. 
39    
40   The Windows 2000 implementation of Kerberos contains new encryption 
41   and checksum types for two reasons: for export reasons early in the 
42   development process, 56 bit DES encryption could not be exported, 
43   and because upon upgrade from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000, 
44   accounts will not have the appropriate DES keying material to do the 
45   standard DES encryption. Furthermore, 3DES is not available for 
46   export, and there was a desired to use a single flavor of encryption 
47   in the product for both US and international products. 
48    
49   As a result, there are two new encryption types and one new checksum 
50   type introduced in Windows 2000. 
51    
52    
532. Conventions used in this document 
54    
55
56  
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61 
62   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 
63   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in 
64   this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [2]. 
65    
663. Key Generation 
67    
68   On upgrade from existing Windows NT domains, the user accounts would 
69   not have a DES based key available to enable the use of DES base 
70   encryption types specified in RFC 1510. The key used for RC4-HMAC is 
71   the same as the existing Windows NT key for compatibility reasons. 
72   Once the account password is changed, the DES based keys are created 
73   and maintained. Once the DES keys are available DES based encryption 
74   types can be used with Kerberos.  
75    
76   The RC4-HMAC String to key function is defined as follow: 
77    
78   String2Key(password) 
79    
80        K = MD4(UNICODE(password)) 
81         
82   The RC4-HMAC keys are generated by using the Windows UNICODE version 
83   of the password. Each Windows UNICODE character is encoded in 
84   little-endian format of 2 octets each. Then performing an MD4 [6] 
85   hash operation on just the UNICODE characters of the password (not 
86   including the terminating zero octets). 
87    
884. Basic Operations 
89    
90   The MD5 HMAC function is defined in [3]. It is used in this 
91   encryption type for checksum operations. Refer to [3] for details on 
92   its operation. In this document this function is referred to as 
93   HMAC(Key, Data) returning the checksum using the specified key on 
94   the data. 
95    
96   The basic MD5 hash operation is used in this encryption type and 
97   defined in [7]. In this document this function is referred to as 
98   MD5(Key, Data) returning the checksum using the specified key on the 
99   data. 
100    
101   The basic RC4 encryption operation is used in this encryption type 
102   and defined in [8]. In this document the function is referred to as 
103   RC4(Key, Data) returning the encrypted data using the specified key 
104   on the data. 
105    
106   These encryption types use key derivation as defined in [9] (RFC-
107   1510BIS) in Section titled "Key Derivation". With each message, the 
108   message type (T) is used as a component of the keying material. 
109    
110   The lengths of ASCII encoded character strings include the trailing 
111   terminator character (0). 
112    
113   The concat(a,b,c,...) function will return the logical concatenation 
114   (left to right) of the values of the arguments. 
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120 
121    
122   The nonce(n) function returns a pseudo-random number of "n" octets. 
123    
1245. Checksum Types 
125    
126   There is one checksum type used in this encryption type. The 
127   Kerberos constant for this type is: 
128        #define KERB_CHECKSUM_HMAC_MD5 (-138) 
129    
130   The function is defined as follows: 
131    
132   K - is the Key 
133   T - the message type, encoded as a little-endian four byte integer 
134    
135   CHKSUM(K, T, data) 
136    
137        Ksign = HMAC(K, "signature key")  //includes zero octet at end 
138        tmp = MD5(Ksign, concat(T, data)) 
139        CHKSUM = HMAC(K, tmp) 
140    
141    
1426. Encryption Types 
143    
144   There are two encryption types used in these encryption types. The 
145   Kerberos constants for these types are: 
146        #define KERB_ETYPE_RC4_HMAC             23 
147        #define KERB_ETYPE_RC4_HMAC_EXP         24 
148    
149   The basic encryption function is defined as follow: 
150    
151   T = the message type, encoded as a little-endian four byte integer. 
152    
153   ENCRYPT(K, T, data) 
154        if (K.enctype == KERB_ETYPE_RC4_HMAC_EXP) 
155                L = "fiftysixbits" //includes zero octet at end 
156        Else 
157                L = ""  // one octet of zero 
158        Ksign = HMAC(K, concat(L, T)) 
159        Confounder = nonce(8) // get an 8 octet nonce for a confounder 
160        Checksum = HMAC(Ksign, concat(Confounder, data)) 
161        Ke = Ksign 
162        if (L == "fiftysixbits") memset(&Ke[7], 0x0ab, 9) 
163        Ke2 = HMAC(Ke, Checksum) 
164        data = RC4(Ke2, data) 
165    
166   The header field on the encrypted data in KDC messages is: 
167    
168        typedef struct _RC4_MDx_HEADER { 
169            UCHAR Checksum[16]; 
170            UCHAR Confounder[8]; 
171        } RC4_MDx_HEADER, *PRC4_MDx_HEADER; 
172    
173
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179 
180   The character constant "fiftysixbits" evolved from the time when a 
181   56-bit key length was all that was exportable from the United 
182   States. It is now used to recognize that the key length is of 
183   "exportable" length. 
184    
1857. Key Strength Negotiation 
186    
187   A Kerberos client and server can negotiate over key length if they 
188   are using mutual authentication. If the client is unable to perform 
189   full strength encryption, it may propose a key in the "subkey" field 
190   of the authenticator, using a weaker encryption type. The server 
191   must then either return the same key or suggest its own key in the 
192   subkey field of the AP reply message. The key used to encrypt data 
193   is derived from the key returned by the server. If the client is 
194   able to perform strong encryption but the server is not, it may 
195   propose a subkey in the AP reply without first being sent a subkey 
196   in the authenticator. 
197 
1988. GSSAPI Kerberos V5 Mechanism Type  
199 
2008.1 Mechanism Specific Changes 
201    
202   The GSSAPI per-message tokens also require new checksum and 
203   encryption types. The GSS-API per-message tokens must be changed to 
204   support these new encryption types (See [5] Section 1.2.2). The 
205   sealing algorithm identifier (SEAL_ALG) for an RC4 based encryption 
206   is: 
207        Byte 4..5 SEAL_ALG      0x10 0x00 - RC4 
208    
209   The signing algorithm identifier (SGN_ALG) for MD5 HMAC is: 
210        Byte 2..3 SGN ALG       0x11 0x00 - HMAC 
211    
212   The only support quality of protection is: 
213        #define GSS_KRB5_INTEG_C_QOP_DEFAULT    0x0 
214    
215   In addition, when using an RC4 based encryption type, the sequence 
216   number is sent in big-endian rather than little-endian order. 
217    
2188.2 GSSAPI Checksum Type 
219    
220   The GSSAPI checksum type and algorithm is defined in Section 5. Only 
221   the first 8 octets of the checksum are used. The resulting checksum 
222   is stored in the SGN_CKSUM field (See [5] Section 1.2) for 
223   GSS_GetMIC() and GSS_Wrap(conf_flag=FALSE). 
224    
2258.3 GSSAPI Encryption Types 
226    
227   There are two encryption types for GSSAPI message tokens, one that 
228   is 128 bits in strength, and one that is 56 bits in strength as 
229   defined in Section 6. 
230    
231
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238 
239   All padding is rounded up to 1 byte. One byte is needed to say that 
240   there is 1 byte of padding. The DES based mechanism type uses 8 byte 
241   padding. See [5] Section 1.2.2.3. 
242    
243   The encryption mechanism used for GSS based messages is as follow: 
244    
245   GSS-ENCRYPT(K, T, data) 
246        IV = SND_SEQ 
247        K = XOR(K, 0xf0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0f0) 
248        if (K.enctype == KERB_ETYPE_RC4_HMAC_EXP) 
249                L = "fortybits" //includes zero octet at end 
250        else 
251                L = "" // one octet of zero 
252        Ksign = HMAC(K, concat(L, T)) 
253        Ke = Ksign 
254        if (L == "fortybits") memset(&Ke[7], 0x0ab, 9) 
255        Ke2 = HMAC(Ke, IV) 
256        Data = RC4(Ke2, data) 
257        SND_SEQ = RC4(Ke, seq#) 
258         
259   The sequence number (SND_SEQ) and IV are used as defined in [5] 
260   Section 1.2.2. 
261    
262   The character constant "fortybits" evolved from the time when a 40-
263   bit key length was all that was exportable from the United States. 
264   It is now used to recognize that the key length is of "exportable" 
265   length. 
266    
2678. Security Considerations 
268 
269   Care must be taken in implementing this encryption type because it 
270   uses a stream cipher. If a different IV isn�t used in each direction 
271   when using a session key, the encryption is weak. By using the 
272   sequence number as an IV, this is avoided. 
273    
2749. References 
275 
276   1  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 
277      9, RFC 2026, October 1996. 
278    
279   2  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement 
280      Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 
281    
282   3  Krawczyk, H., Bellare, M., Canetti, R.,"HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for 
283      Message Authentication", RFC 2104, February 1997 
284    
285   4  Kohl, J., Neuman, C., "The Kerberos Network Authentication 
286      Service (V5)", RFC 1510, September 1993 
287 
288   5  Linn, J., "The Kerberos Version 5 GSS-API Mechanism", RFC-1964, 
289      June 1996 
290 
291 
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297 
298 
299   6  R. Rivest, "The MD4 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC-1320, April 
300      1992 
301 
302   7  R. Rivest, "The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC-1321, April 
303      1992 
304 
305   8  RC4 is a proprietary encryption algorithm available under license 
306             from RSA Data Security Inc.  For licensing information, 
307      contact: 
308             RSA Data Security, Inc. 
309             100 Marine Parkway 
310             Redwood City, CA 94065-1031 
311 
312   9  Neuman, C., Kohl, J., Ts'o, T., "The Kerberos Network 
313      Authentication Service (V5)", draft-ietf-cat-kerberos-revisions-
314      04.txt, June 25, 1999 
315 
316    
31710. Author's Addresses 
318    
319   Mike Swift 
320   Microsoft 
321   One Microsoft Way 
322   Redmond, Washington 
323   Email: mikesw@microsoft.com  
324    
325   John Brezak 
326   Microsoft 
327   One Microsoft Way 
328   Redmond, Washington 
329   Email: jbrezak@microsoft.com 
330    
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357    
35811. Full Copyright Statement 
359 
360   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved. 
361    
362   This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to 
363   others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it 
364   or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published 
365   and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any 
366   kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph 
367   are included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this   
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374   English. 
375    
376   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be 
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378    
379   This document and the information contained herein is provided on an 
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384   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE." 
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