The Echo Cookie TCP Option
draft-briscoe-tcpm-echo-cookie-00

Abstract

This document specifies a TCP Option called EchoCookie. It provides a single field that a TCP server can use to store opaque cookie data 'in flight' rather than in memory. As new TCP options are defined, they can require that implementations support the EchoCookie option. Then if a server's SYN queue is under pressure from a SYN flooding attack, it can ask clients to echo its connection state in their acknowledgement. This facility is similar to the classic SYN Cookie, but it provides enough space for connection state associated with TCP options. In contrast, the classic location for a SYN Cookie only provides enough space for a degraded encoding of the Maximum Segment Size (MSS) TCP option and no others.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on April 28, 2015.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 1.1. Terminology
• 2. Echo Cookie TCP Option
• 3. IANA Considerations
• 4. Security Considerations
• 5. Acknowledgements
• 6. References
• 6.1. Normative References
• 6.2. Informative References
• Appendix A. Protocol Design Issues (to be Deleted before Publication)
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

In order to initiate a connection, a TCP client sends a SYN segment to a TCP server. The server normally allocates memory to hold the required connection state then responds with a SYN/ACK segment to the address the client claims to be sending from. If a TCP server is under SYN flood attack, it can resort to including a SYN Cookie in the SYN/ACK [RFC4987] and not holding any connection state until the client follows through with an echo of the SYN Cookie. Therefore, a SYN Cookie effectively allows a TCP server to store its connection state 'in flight' for a round. Then while it is testing which client addresses correctly complete the handshake, it can protect its memory from exhaustion.

The limited size of a SYN Cookie is a known limitation. SYN Cookies are not standardised (and don't need to be), but typically the server encodes its SYN Cookie into the 16 bits of the Initial Sequence Number (ISN) [RFC0793] and the 9 least significant bits of the timestamp option [RFC7323] (if supported by the client). These fields are only large enough to hold a few common TCP options, such as a degraded record of the client's maximum segment size (MSS), the window scale option and SACK-ok. Therefore, SYN Cookies only protect a rudimentary TCP connection service—they do not protect all the facilities provided by TCP options during an attack.

These 41 bits are the only space available for SYN cookies. A server can only exploit fields that it can set to any value it chooses and that are naturally echoed by all (or at least most) TCP clients. Ideally, the server would be able to place a cookie of any reasonable size in a new generic EchoCookie TCP option on the SYN/ACK and the client would be required to echo it back in the following ACK. However, that would be of little use until most clients supported it.

A simple solution to this problem is to require that EchoCookie support must be implemented with any TCP options defined from now on. A new capability to extend the TCP option space on SYN/ACK segments, e.g. [I-D.touch-tcpm-tcp-syn-ext-opt] or [I-D.briscoe-tcpm-inner-space], could also require that the EchoCookie mechanism must be implemented with it.

1.1. Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. These words only have such normative significance when in ALL CAPS, not when in lower case.

2. Echo Cookie TCP Option

If a TCP server's SYN queue is under pressure from a SYN flood attack, it MAY send an EchoCookie TCP option on the SYN/ACK, instead of consuming memory to hold connection state.

 0                   1                   2
 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3   /|   ...
+---------------+---------------+-----------------/ | /---------+
|  EchoCookie   |    Length     |  OpaqueCookie   /||/  ...     |
+---------------+---------------+----------------/ | /----------+
                                                   |/