1. Introduction

1. Introduction

This document assumes that the reader is familiar with the terms and concepts described in the "Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol" [Ken-Arch], hereafter referred to as the Security Architecture document. In particular, the reader should be familiar with the definitions of security services offered by the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) and the IP Authentication Header (AH), the concept of Security Associations, the ways in which ESP can be used in conjunction with AH, and the different key management options available for ESP and AH.

The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this document, are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [Bra97].

The Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) header is designed to provide a mix of security services in IPv4 and IPv6 [DH98]. ESP may be applied alone, in combination with AH [Ken-AH], or in a nested fashion (see the Security Architecture document [Ken-Arch]). Security services can be provided between a pair of communicating hosts, between a pair of communicating security gateways, or between a security gateway and a host. For more details on how to use ESP and AH in various network environments, see the Security Architecture document [Ken-Arch].

The ESP header is inserted after the IP header and before the next layer protocol header (transport mode) or before an encapsulated IP header (tunnel mode). These modes are described in more detail below.

ESP can be used to provide confidentiality, data origin authentication, connectionless integrity, an anti-replay service (a form of partial sequence integrity), and (limited) traffic flow confidentiality. The set of services provided depends on options selected at the time of Security Association (SA) establishment and on the location of the implementation in a network topology.

Using encryption-only for confidentiality is allowed by ESP. However, it should be noted that in general, this will provide defense only against passive attackers. Using encryption without a strong integrity mechanism on top of it (either in ESP or separately via AH) may render the confidentiality service insecure against some forms of active attacks [Bel96, Kra01]. Moreover, an underlying integrity service, such as AH, applied before encryption does not necessarily protect the encryption-only confidentiality against active attackers [Kra01]. ESP allows encryption-only SAs because this may offer considerably better performance and still provide adequate security, e.g., when higher-layer authentication/integrity protection is offered independently. However, this standard does not require ESP implementations to offer an encryption-only service.

Data origin authentication and connectionless integrity are joint services, hereafter referred to jointly as "integrity". (This term is employed because, on a per-packet basis, the computation being performed provides connectionless integrity directly; data origin authentication is provided indirectly as a result of binding the key used to verify the integrity to the identity of the IPsec peer. Typically, this binding is effected through the use of a shared, symmetric key.) Integrity-only ESP MUST be offered as a service selection option, e.g., it must be negotiable in SA management protocols and MUST be configurable via management interfaces. Integrity-only ESP is an attractive alternative to AH in many contexts, e.g., because it is faster to process and more amenable to pipelining in many implementations.

Although confidentiality and integrity can be offered independently, ESP typically will employ both services, i.e., packets will be protected with regard to confidentiality and integrity. Thus, there are three possible ESP security service combinations involving these services:

• confidentiality-only (MAY be supported)
• integrity only (MUST be supported)
• confidentiality and integrity (MUST be supported)

The anti-replay service may be selected for an SA only if the integrity service is selected for that SA. The selection of this service is solely at the discretion of the receiver and thus need not be negotiated. However, to make use of the Extended Sequence Number feature in an interoperable fashion, ESP does impose a requirement on SA management protocols to be able to negotiate this feature (see Section 2.2.1 below).

The traffic flow confidentiality (TFC) service generally is effective only if ESP is employed in a fashion that conceals the ultimate source and destination addresses of correspondents, e.g., in tunnel mode between security gateways, and only if sufficient traffic flows between IPsec peers (either naturally or as a result of generation of masking traffic) to conceal the characteristics of specific, individual subscriber traffic flows. (ESP may be employed as part of a higher-layer TFC system, e.g., Onion Routing [Syverson], but such systems are outside the scope of this standard.) New TFC features present in ESP facilitate efficient generation and discarding of dummy traffic and better padding of real traffic, in a backward-compatible fashion.

Section 7 provides a brief review of the differences between this document and RFC 2406.