[tor-dev] Proposal: Bridge Detection Resistance against MITM-capable Adversaries

[George Kadianakis]

Filename: XXX-mitm-bridge-detection-resistance.txt
Title: Bridge Detection Resistance against MITM-capable Adversaries
Author: George Kadianakis
Created: 07 Nov 2011
Status: Open

1. Overview

   Proposals 187, 189 and 190 make the first steps toward scanning
   resistant bridges. They attempt to block attacks from censoring
   adversaries who provoke bridges into speaking the Tor protocol.

   An attack vector that hasn't been explored in those previous
   proposals is that of an adversary capable of performing Man In The
   Middle attacks to Tor clients. At the moment, Tor clients using the
   v3 link protocol have no way to detect such an MITM attack, and
   will gladly send an VERSIONS or an AUTHORIZE cell to the MITMed
   connection, thereby revealing the Tor protocol and thus the bridge.

   This proposal introduces a way for clients to detect an MITMed SSL
   connection, allowing them to protect against the above attack.

2. Motivation

   When the v3 link handshake protocol is performed, Tor's SSL
   handshake is performed with the server sending a self-signed
   certificate and the client blindly accepting it. This allows the
   adversary to perform an MITM attack.

   A Tor client must detect the MITM attack before he initializes the
   Tor protocol by sending a VERSIONS or an AUTHORIZE cell. A good
   moment to detect such an MITM attack is during the SSL handshake.

   To achieve that, bridge operators provide their bridge users with a
   hash digest of the public-key certificate their bridge is using for
   SSL. Bridge clients store that hash digest locally and associate it
   with that specific bridge. Bridge clients who have "pinned" a
   bridge to a certificate "fingerprint" can thereafter validate that
   their SSL connection peer is the intended bridge.

   Of course, the hash digest must be provided to users out-of-band
   and before the actual SSL handshake. Usually, the bridge operator
   gives the hash digest to her bridge users along with the rest of
   the bridge credentials, like the bridge's address and port.

3. Security implications

   Bridge clients who have pinned a bridge to a certificate
   fingerprint will be able to detect an MITMing adversary in timely
   fashion. If after detection they act as an innocuous Internet
   client, they can successfully remove suspicion from the SSL
   connection and subvert bridge detection.

   Pinning a certificate fingerprint and detecting an MITMing attacker
   does not automatically aleviate suspicions from the bridge or the
   client. Clients must have a behavior to follow after detecting the
   MITM attack so that they look like innocent Netizens. This proposal
   does not try to specify such a behavior.

   Implementation and use of this scheme does not render bridges and
   clients immune to scanning or DPI attacks. This scheme should be
   used along with bridge client authorization schemes like the ones
   detailed in proposal 190.

4. Tor Implementation

4.1. Certificate fingerprint creation

   The certificate fingerprints used on this scheme MUST be computed
   by applying the SHA256 cryptographic hash function upon the ASN.1
   DER encoding of a public-key certificate.

4.2. Bridge side implementation

   Tor bridge implementations SHOULD provide a command line option
   that exports a fully equipped Bridge line containing the bridge
   address and port, the link certificate fingerprint and any other
   enabled Bridge options, so that bridge operators can easily send it
   to their users.

   In the case of expiring SSL certificates, Tor bridge
   implementations SHOULD warn the bridge operator a sensible amount
   of time before the expiration, so that she can warn her clients and
   potentially rotate the certificate herself.

4.3. Client side implementation

   Tor client implementations MUST extend their Bridge line format to
   support bridge SSL certificate fingerprints. The new format is:
     Bridge <method> <address:port> [["keyid="]<id-fingerprint>] \
       ["shared_secret="<shared_secret>] ["link_cert_fpr="<fingerprint>]

   where <fingerprint> is the bridge's SSL certificate fingerprint in
   hexademical encoding.

   Tor clients who use bridges and want to pin their SSL certificates
   must specify the bridge's SSL certificate fingerprint as in:
     Bridge 12.34.56.78 shared_secret=934caff420aa7852b855 \
         link_cert_fpr=38b0712e90bed729df81f2a22811d3dd89e91406d2522f4482ae4079e5245187

4.4. Implementation prerequisites

   Tor bridges currently rotate their SSL certificates every 2
   hours. This not only acts as a fingerprint for the bridges, but it
   also acts as a blocker for this proposal.

   Tor trac ticket #4390 and proposal YYY were created to resolve this
   issue.

5. Acknowledgements

   Thanks to Robert Ransom for his great help and suggestions on
   devising this scheme and writing this proposal!