A Voucher Artifact for Bootstrapping Protocols

5.1. Tree Diagram

The following tree diagram illustrates a high-level view of a voucher document. The notation used in this diagram is described in [RFC8340]. Each node in the diagram is fully described by the YANG module in Section 5.3. Please review the YANG module for a detailed description of the voucher format.¶

module: ietf-voucher

  grouping voucher-artifact-grouping
    +-- voucher
       +-- created-on                       yang:date-and-time
       +-- expires-on?                      yang:date-and-time
       +-- assertion                        enumeration
       +-- serial-number                    string
       +-- idevid-issuer?                   binary
       +-- pinned-domain-cert               binary
       +-- domain-cert-revocation-checks?   boolean
       +-- nonce?                           binary
       +-- last-renewal-date?               yang:date-and-time

5.2. Examples

This section provides voucher examples for illustration purposes. These examples conform to the encoding rules defined in [RFC8259].¶

The following example illustrates an ephemeral voucher (uses a nonce). The MASA generated this voucher using the 'logged' assertion type, knowing that it would be suitable for the pledge making the request.¶

{
  "ietf-voucher:voucher": {
    "created-on": "2016-10-07T19:31:42Z",
    "assertion": "logged",
    "serial-number": "JADA123456789",
    "idevid-issuer": "base64encodedvalue==",
    "pinned-domain-cert": "base64encodedvalue==",
    "nonce": "base64encodedvalue=="
  }
}

The following example illustrates a non-ephemeral voucher (no nonce). While the voucher itself expires after two weeks, it presumably can be renewed for up to a year. The MASA generated this voucher using the 'verified' assertion type, which should satisfy all pledges.¶

{
  "ietf-voucher:voucher": {
    "created-on": "2016-10-07T19:31:42Z",
    "expires-on": "2016-10-21T19:31:42Z",
    "assertion": "verified",
    "serial-number": "JADA123456789",
    "idevid-issuer": "base64encodedvalue==",
    "pinned-domain-cert": "base64encodedvalue==",
    "domain-cert-revocation-checks": "true",
    "last-renewal-date": "2017-10-07T19:31:42Z"
  }
}

5.3. YANG Module

Following is a YANG [RFC7950] module formally describing the voucher's JSON document structure.¶

<CODE BEGINS> file "ietf-voucher@2021-07-02.yang"
module ietf-voucher {
  yang-version 1.1;
  namespace "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-voucher";
  prefix vch;

  import ietf-yang-types {
    prefix yang;
    reference "RFC 6991: Common YANG Data Types";
  }
  import ietf-restconf {
    prefix rc;
    description
      "This import statement is only present to access
       the yang-data extension defined in RFC 8040.";
    reference "RFC 8040: RESTCONF Protocol";
  }

  organization
    "IETF ANIMA Working Group";
  contact
    "WG Web:   <https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/anima/>
     WG List:  <mailto:anima@ietf.org>
     Author:   Kent Watsen
               <mailto:kwatsen@juniper.net>
     Author:   Max Pritikin
               <mailto:pritikin@cisco.com>
     Author:   Michael Richardson
               <mailto:mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca>
     Author:   Toerless Eckert
               <mailto:tte+ietf@cs.fau.de>";
  description
    "This module defines the format for a voucher, which is produced by
     a pledge's manufacturer or delegate (MASA) to securely assign a
     pledge to an 'owner', so that the pledge may establish a secure
     connection to the owner's network infrastructure.

     The key words 'MUST', 'MUST NOT', 'REQUIRED', 'SHALL', 'SHALL
     NOT', 'SHOULD', 'SHOULD NOT', 'RECOMMENDED', 'NOT RECOMMENDED',
     'MAY', and 'OPTIONAL' in this document are to be interpreted as
     described in BCP 14 (RFC 2119) (RFC 8174) when, and only when, they
     appear in all capitals, as shown here.

     Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as
     authors of the code.  All rights reserved.

     Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
     modification, is permitted pursuant to, and subject to the license
     terms contained in, the Simplified BSD License set forth in Section
     4.c of the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
     (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).

     This version of this YANG module is part of RFC 8366; see the RFC
     itself for full legal notices.";

  revision 2021-07-04 {
    description
      "Initial version";
    reference "RFC ZZZZ Voucher Profile for Bootstrapping Protocols";
  }

  // Top-level statement
  rc:yang-data voucher-artifact {
    uses voucher-artifact-grouping;
  }

  // Grouping defined for future augmentations

  grouping voucher-artifact-grouping {
    description
      "Grouping to allow reuse/extensions in future work.";
    container voucher {
      description
        "A voucher assigns a pledge to an owner (pinned-domain-cert).";
      leaf created-on {
        type yang:date-and-time;
        mandatory true;
        description
          "A value indicating the date this voucher was created.  This
           node is primarily for human consumption and auditing. Future
           work MAY create verification requirements based on this
           node.";
      }
      leaf expires-on {
        type yang:date-and-time;
        must 'not(../nonce)';
        description
          "A value indicating when this voucher expires.  The node is
           optional as not all pledges support expirations, such as
           pledges lacking a reliable clock.

           If this field exists, then the pledges MUST ensure that
           the expires-on time has not yet passed. A pledge without
           an accurate clock cannot meet this requirement.

           The expires-on value MUST NOT exceed the expiration date
           of any of the listed 'pinned-domain-cert' certificates.";
      }
      leaf assertion {
        type enumeration {
          enum verified {
            description
              "Indicates that the ownership has been positively
               verified by the MASA (e.g., through sales channel
               integration).";
          }
          enum logged {
            description
              "Indicates that the voucher has been issued after
               minimal verification of ownership or control. The
               issuance has been logged for detection of
               potential security issues (e.g., recipients of
               vouchers might verify for themselves that unexpected
               vouchers are not in the log). This is similar to
               unsecured trust-on-first-use principles but with the
               logging providing a basis for detecting unexpected
               events.";
          }
          enum proximity {
            description
              "Indicates that the voucher has been issued after
               the MASA verified a proximity proof provided by the
               device and target domain. The issuance has been logged
               for detection of potential security issues. This is
               stronger than just logging, because it requires some
               verification that the pledge and owner are
               in communication but is still dependent on analysis of
               the logs to detect unexpected events.";
          }
        }
        mandatory true;
        description
          "The assertion is a statement from the MASA regarding how
           the owner was verified.  This statement enables pledges
           to support more detailed policy checks.  Pledges MUST
           ensure that the assertion provided is acceptable, per
           local policy, before processing the voucher.";
      }
      leaf serial-number {
        type string;
        mandatory true;
        description
          "The serial-number of the hardware.  When processing a
           voucher, a pledge MUST ensure that its serial-number
           matches this value.  If no match occurs, then the
           pledge MUST NOT process this voucher.";
      }
      leaf idevid-issuer {
        type binary;
        description
          "The Authority Key Identifier OCTET STRING (as defined in
           Section 4.2.1.1 of RFC 5280) from the pledge's IDevID
           certificate.  Optional since some serial-numbers are
           already unique within the scope of a MASA.
           Inclusion of the statistically unique key identifier
           ensures statistically unique identification of the hardware.
           When processing a voucher, a pledge MUST ensure that its
           IDevID Authority Key Identifier matches this value.  If no
           match occurs, then the pledge MUST NOT process this voucher.

           When issuing a voucher, the MASA MUST ensure that this field
           is populated for serial-numbers that are not otherwise unique
           within the scope of the MASA.";
      }
      leaf pinned-domain-cert {
        type binary;
        mandatory true;
        description
          "An X.509 v3 certificate structure, as specified by RFC 5280,
           using Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER) encoding, as defined
           in ITU-T X.690.

           This certificate is used by a pledge to trust a Public Key
           Infrastructure in order to verify a domain certificate
           supplied to the pledge separately by the bootstrapping
           protocol.  The domain certificate MUST have this certificate
           somewhere in its chain of certificates.  This certificate
           MAY be an end-entity certificate, including a self-signed
           entity.";
        reference
          "RFC 5280:
             Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate
             and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile.
           ITU-T X.690:
              Information technology - ASN.1 encoding rules:
              Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER),
              Canonical Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished
              Encoding Rules (DER).";
      }
      leaf domain-cert-revocation-checks {
        type boolean;
        description
          "A processing instruction to the pledge that it MUST (true)
           or MUST NOT (false) verify the revocation status for the
           pinned domain certificate.  If this field is not set, then
           normal PKIX behavior applies to validation of the domain
           certificate.";
      }
      leaf nonce {
        type binary {
          length "8..32";
        }
        must 'not(../expires-on)';
        description
          "A value that can be used by a pledge in some bootstrapping
           protocols to enable anti-replay protection.  This node is
           optional because it is not used by all bootstrapping
           protocols.

           When present, the pledge MUST compare the provided nonce
           value with another value that the pledge randomly generated
           and sent to a bootstrap server in an earlier bootstrapping
           message.  If the values do not match, then the pledge MUST
           NOT process this voucher.";
      }
      leaf last-renewal-date {
        type yang:date-and-time;
        must '../expires-on';
        description
          "The date that the MASA projects to be the last date it
           will renew a voucher on. This field is merely informative; it
           is not processed by pledges.

           Circumstances may occur after a voucher is generated that
           may alter a voucher's validity period.  For instance, a
           vendor may associate validity periods with support contracts,
           which may be terminated or extended over time.";
      }
    } // end voucher
  } // end voucher-grouping
}
<CODE ENDS>

5.4. CMS Format Voucher Artifact

The IETF evolution of PKCS#7 is CMS [RFC5652]. A CMS-signed voucher, the default type, contains a ContentInfo structure with the voucher content. An eContentType of 40 indicates that the content is a JSON-encoded voucher.¶

The signing structure is a CMS SignedData structure, as specified by Section 5.1 of [RFC5652], encoded using ASN.1 Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER), as specified in ITU-T X.690 [ITU-T.X690.2015].¶

To facilitate interoperability, Section 8.3 in this document registers the media type "application/voucher-cms+json" and the filename extension ".vcj".¶

The CMS structure MUST contain a 'signerInfo' structure, as described in Section 5.1 of [RFC5652], containing the signature generated over the content using a private key trusted by the recipient. Normally, the recipient is the pledge and the signer is the MASA. Another possible use could be as a "signed voucher request" format originating from the pledge or registrar toward the MASA. Within this document, the signer is assumed to be the MASA.¶

Note that Section 5.1 of [RFC5652] includes a discussion about how to validate a CMS object, which is really a PKCS7 object (cmsVersion=1). Intermediate systems (such the Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key Infrastructures [BRSKI] registrar) that might need to evaluate the voucher in flight MUST be prepared for such an older format. No signaling is necessary, as the manufacturer knows the capabilities of the pledge and will use an appropriate format voucher for each pledge.¶

The CMS structure SHOULD also contain all of the certificates leading up to and including the signer's trust anchor certificate known to the recipient. The inclusion of the trust anchor is unusual in many applications, but third parties cannot accurately audit the transaction without it.¶

The CMS structure MAY also contain revocation objects for any intermediate certificate authorities (CAs) between the voucher issuer and the trust anchor known to the recipient. However, the use of CRLs and other validity mechanisms is discouraged, as the pledge is unlikely to be able to perform online checks and is unlikely to have a trusted clock source. As described below, the use of short-lived vouchers and/or a pledge-provided nonce provides a freshness guarantee.¶

6.1. Renewals Instead of Revocations

The lifetimes of vouchers may vary. In some bootstrapping protocols, the vouchers may be created and consumed immediately, whereas in other bootstrapping solutions, there may be a significant time delay between when a voucher is created and when it is consumed. In cases when there is a time delay, there is a need for the pledge to ensure that the assertions made when the voucher was created are still valid.¶

A revocation artifact is generally used to verify the continued validity of an assertion such as a PKIX certificate, web token, or a "voucher". With this approach, a potentially long-lived assertion is paired with a reasonably fresh revocation status check to ensure that the assertion is still valid. However, this approach increases solution complexity, as it introduces the need for additional protocols and code paths to distribute and process the revocations.¶

Addressing the shortcomings of revocations, this document recommends instead the use of lightweight renewals of short-lived non-revocable vouchers. That is, rather than issue a long-lived voucher, where the 'expires-on' leaf is set to some distant date, the expectation is for the MASA to instead issue a short-lived voucher, where the 'expires-on' leaf is set to a relatively near date, along with a promise (reflected in the 'last-renewal-date' field) to reissue the voucher again when needed. Importantly, while issuing the initial voucher may incur heavyweight verification checks ("Are you who you say you are?" "Does the pledge actually belong to you?"), reissuing the voucher should be a lightweight process, as it ostensibly only updates the voucher's validity period. With this approach, there is only the one artifact, and only one code path is needed to process it; there is no possibility of a pledge choosing to skip the revocation status check because, for instance, the OCSP Responder is not reachable.¶

While this document recommends issuing short-lived vouchers, the voucher artifact does not restrict the ability to create long-lived voucher, if required; however, no revocation method is described.¶

Note that a voucher may be signed by a chain of intermediate CAs leading up to the trust anchor certificate known by the pledge. Even though the voucher itself is not revocable, it may still be revoked, per se, if one of the intermediate CA certificates is revoked.¶

6.2. Voucher Per Pledge

The solution described herein originally enabled a single voucher to apply to many pledges, using lists of regular expressions to represent ranges of serial-numbers. However, it was determined that blocking the renewal of a voucher that applied to many devices would be excessive when only the ownership for a single pledge needed to be blocked. Thus, the voucher format now only supports a single serial-number to be listed.¶

7.1. Clock Sensitivity

An attacker could use an expired voucher to gain control over a device that has no understanding of time. The device cannot trust NTP as a time reference, as an attacker could control the NTP stream.¶

There are three things to defend against this: 1) devices are required to verify that the expires-on field has not yet passed, 2) devices without access to time can use nonces to get ephemeral vouchers, and 3) vouchers without expiration times may be used, which will appear in the audit log, informing the security decision.¶

This document defines a voucher format that contains time values for expirations, which require an accurate clock in order to be processed correctly. Vendors planning on issuing vouchers with expiration values must ensure that devices have an accurate clock when shipped from manufacturing facilities and take steps to prevent clock tampering. If it is not possible to ensure clock accuracy, then vouchers with expirations should not be issued.¶

7.2. Protect Voucher PKI in HSM

Pursuant the recommendation made in Section 6.1 for the MASA to be deployed as an online voucher signing service, it is RECOMMENDED that the MASA's private key used for signing vouchers is protected by a hardware security module (HSM).¶

7.3. Test Domain Certificate Validity When Signing

If a domain certificate is compromised, then any outstanding vouchers for that domain could be used by the attacker. The domain administrator is clearly expected to initiate revocation of any domain identity certificates (as is normal in PKI solutions).¶

Similarly,they are expected to contact the MASA to indicate that an outstanding (presumably short lifetime) voucher should be blocked from automated renewal. Protocols for voucher distribution are RECOMMENDED to check for revocation of domain identity certificates before the signing of vouchers.¶

7.4. YANG Module Security Considerations

The YANG module specified in this document defines the schema for data that is subsequently encapsulated by a CMS signed-data content type, as described in Section 5 of [RFC5652]. As such, all of the YANG modeled data is protected from modification.¶

Implementations should be aware that the signed data is only protected from external modification; the data is still visible. This potential disclosure of information doesn't affect security so much as privacy. In particular, adversaries can glean information such as which devices belong to which organizations and which CRL Distribution Point and/or OCSP Responder URLs are accessed to validate the vouchers. When privacy is important, the CMS signed-data content type SHOULD be encrypted, either by conveying it via a mutually authenticated secure transport protocol (e.g., TLS [RFC5246]) or by encapsulating the signed-data content type with an enveloped-data content type (Section 6 of [RFC5652]), though details for how to do this are outside the scope of this document.¶

The use of YANG to define data structures, via the 'yang-data' statement, is relatively new and distinct from the traditional use of YANG to define an API accessed by network management protocols such as NETCONF [RFC6241] and RESTCONF [RFC8040]. For this reason, these guidelines do not follow template described by Section 3.7 of [YANG-GUIDE].¶

8.1. The IETF XML Registry

This document registers a URI in the "IETF XML Registry" [RFC3688]. IANA has registered the following:¶

   URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-voucher
   Registrant Contact: The ANIMA WG of the IETF.
   XML: N/A, the requested URI is an XML namespace.

8.2. The YANG Module Names Registry

This document registers a YANG module in the "YANG Module Names" registry [RFC6020]. IANA has registered the following:¶

   name:         ietf-voucher
   namespace:    urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-voucher
   prefix:       vch
   reference:    RFC 8366

8.3. The Media Types Registry

This document registers a new media type in the "Media Types" registry [RFC6838]. IANA has registered the following:¶

Type name:

application¶

Subtype name:

voucher-cms+json¶

Required parameters:

none¶

Optional parameters:

none¶

Encoding considerations:

CMS-signed JSON vouchers are ASN.1/DER encoded.¶

Security considerations:

See Section 7¶

Interoperability considerations:

The format is designed to be broadly interoperable.¶

Published specification:

RFC 8366¶

Applications that use this media type:

ANIMA, 6tisch, and NETCONF zero-touch imprinting systems.¶

Fragment identifier considerations:

none¶

Additional information:

Deprecated alias names for this type:

none¶

Magic number(s):

None¶

File extension(s):

.vcj¶

Macintosh file type code(s):

none¶

Person and email address to contact for further information:

IETF ANIMA WG¶

Intended usage:

LIMITED¶

Restrictions on usage:

NONE¶

Author:

ANIMA WG¶

Change controller:

IETF¶

Provisional registration? (standards tree only):

NO¶

8.4. The SMI Security for S/MIME CMS Content Type Registry

IANA has registered the following OID in the "SMI Security for S/MIME CMS Content Type (1.2.840.113549.1.9.16.1)" registry:¶

            Decimal  Description                             References
            -------  --------------------------------------  ----------
            40       id-ct-animaJSONVoucher                  RFC 8366