





INTERNET-DRAFT                                              Ari Luotonen
Expires: August 1998                 Netscape Communications Corporation
<draft-luotonen-web-proxy-tunneling-00.txt>                February 1998


        Tunneling TCP based protocols through Web proxy servers


Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft.  Internet-Drafts are working
   documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
   and its working groups.  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.''

   To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
   ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
   Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe),
   munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or
   ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).


Abstract

   This document specifies a generic tunneling mechanism for TCP based
   protocols through Web proxy servers.  This tunneling mechanism was
   initially introduced for the SSL protocol [SSL] to allow secure Web
   traffic to pass through firewalls, but its utility is not limited to
   SSL.  Earlier drafts of this specification were titled ''Tunneling SSL
   through Web Proxy Servers'' <draft-luotonen-ssl-tunneling-XX.txt>.
   Implementations of this tunneling feature are commonly referred to as
   ''SSL tunneling'', although, again, it can be used for tunneling any
   TCP based protocol.

   A wide variety of existing client and proxy server implementations
   conform to this specification.  The purpose of this specification is
   to describe the current practice, to propose some good practices for
   implementing this specification, and to document the security
   considerations that are involved with this protocol.


Table of Contents




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     1.  Overview ................................................. 2
     2.  General Considerations ................................... 3
     3.  Functional Specification ................................. 3
     3.1.  Request ................................................ 3
     3.2.  Proxy Response ......................................... 4
     3.2.1.  Response Content-Type Field .......................... 5
     3.3.  Data Pipelining ........................................ 6
     4.  Extensibility ............................................ 7
     5.  Multiple Proxy Servers ................................... 7
     6.  Security Considerations .................................. 8
     7.  References ............................................... 8
     8.  Author's Address ......................................... 9


1. Overview

   The wide success of the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol made it
   vital for Web proxy servers to be able to tunnel requests performed
   over SSL.  The easiest, and perhaps the most elegant, way to
   accomplish this is to extend the HTTP/1.x protocol [HTTP/1.0,
   HTTP/1.1] in such a way that it will be able to intiate a tunnel
   through the proxy server.

   This document specifies the HTTP/1.x extension to implement the
   generic TCP protocol tunneling on Web proxy servers.  This extension
   may be used between clients and proxy servers, and between two
   proxies (in the case of daisy-chained proxies -- proxies that contact
   other proxies to perform requests).  This document focuses on the
   differences and additions to HTTP/1.x; refer to the HTTP/1.x
   specifications for a full specification of HTTP/1.x.

   Note that the HTTPS protocol, which is just HTTP on top of SSL, could
   alternatively be proxied in the same way that other protocols are
   handled by the proxies: to have the proxy (instead of the client)
   initiate the secure session with the remote HTTPS server, and then
   perform the HTTPS transaction on the client's part.  The response
   will be received and decrypted by the proxy, and sent to the client
   over (insecure) HTTP.  This is the way FTP and Gopher get handled by
   proxies.  However, this approach has several disadvantages and
   complications:

     * The connection between the client and the proxy is normal HTTP,
       and hence, not secure.  This may, however, often be acceptable if
       the clients are in a trusted subnetwork (behind a firewall).

     * The proxy will need to have full SSL implementation incorporated
       into it -- something this tunneling mechanism does not require.




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     * The client will not be able to perform SSL client authentication
       (authentication based on X509 certificates) to the remote server,
       as the proxy will be the authenticated party.  Future versions of
       SSL may, however, provide such delegated authentication.

   This specification defines a tunneling mechanism for Web proxy
   servers.  This mechanism is compatible with HTTP/1.x protocol, which
   is currently being used by Web proxies.

   Note that this mechanism, if used for SSL tunneling, does not require
   an implementation of SSL in the proxy.  The SSL session is
   established between the client generating the request, and the
   destination (secure) Web server; the proxy server in between is
   merely tunneling the encrypted data, and does not take any other part
   in the secure transaction.


2. General Considerations with Respect to SSL Tunneling

   When tunneling SSL, the proxy must not have access to the data being
   transferred in either direction, for the sake of security.  The proxy
   merely knows the source and destination addresses, and possibly, if
   the proxy supports user authentication, the name of the requesting
   user.

   In other words, there is a handshake between the client and the proxy
   to establish the connection between the client and the remote server
   through the proxy.  In order to make this extension be backward
   compatible, the handshake must be in the same format as HTTP/1.x
   requests, so that proxies without support for this feature can still
   cleanly determine the request as impossible for them to service, and
   give proper error responses (rather than e.g. get hung on the
   connection).


3. Functional Specification



3.1. Request

   The client connects to the proxy server, and uses the CONNECT method
   to specify the hostname and the port number to connect to.  The
   hostname and port number are separated by a colon, and both of them
   must be specified.

   The host:port part is followed by a space and a string specifying the
   HTTP version number, e.g. HTTP/1.0, and the line terminator (CR LF



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   pair.  Note that some applications may use just a LF on its own, and
   it is recommended that applications be tolerant of this behavior.
   When this document refers to CR LF pair, in all cases should a LF on
   its own be treated the same as a CR LF pair).

   After that there is a series of zero or more of HTTP request header
   lines, followed by an empty line.  Each of those header lines is also
   terminated by the CR LF pair.  The empty line is simply another CR LF
   pair.

   After the empty line, if the handshake to establish the connection
   was successful, the tunnelled (SSL or other) data transfer can begin.
   Before the tunneling begins, the proxy will respond, as described in
   the next section (Section 3.2).

   Example of an SSL tunneling request to host home.netscape.com, to
   HTTPS port (443):

         CONNECT home.netscape.com:443 HTTP/1.0
         User-agent: Mozilla/4.0

         ...data to be tunnelled to the server...

   Note that the "...data to be tunnelled to the server..." is not a
   part of the request.  It is shown here only to make the point that
   once the tunnel is established, the same connection is used for
   transferring the data that is to be tunnelled.

   The advantage of extending the HTTP/1.x protocol in this manner (a
   new method) is that this protocol is freely extensible just like
   HTTP/1.x is.  For example, the proxy authentication may be used just
   like with any other request to the proxy:

         CONNECT home.netscape.com:443 HTTP/1.0
         User-agent: Mozilla/4.0
         Proxy-authorization: basic dGVzdDp0ZXN0

         ...data to be tunnelled to the server...


3.2. Proxy Response

   After the empty line in the request, the client will wait for a
   response from the proxy.  The proxy will evaluate the request, make
   sure that it is valid, and that the user is authorized to request
   such a connection.  If everything is in order, the proxy will make a
   connection to the destination server, and, if successful, send a "200
   Connection established" response to the client.  Again, the response



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   follows the HTTP/1.x protocol, so the response line starts with the
   protocol version specifier, and the response line is followed by zero
   or more response headers, followed by an empty line.  The line
   separator is CR LF pair.

   Example of a response:

         HTTP/1.0 200 Connection established
         Proxy-agent: Netscape-Proxy/1.1

         ...data tunnelled from the server...

   After the empty line, the proxy will start passing data from the
   client connection to the remote server connection, and vice versa.
   At any time, there may be data coming from either connection, and
   that data must be forwarded to the other connection immediately.

   Note that since the tunnelled protocol is opaque to the proxy server,
   the proxy cannot make any assumptions about which connection the
   first, or any subsequent, packets will arrive.  In other words, the
   proxy server must be prepared to accept packets from either of the
   connections at any time.  Otherwise, a deadlock may occur.

   If at any point either one of the peers gets disconnected, any
   outstanding data that came from that peer will be passed to the other
   one, and after that also the other connection will be terminated by
   the proxy.  If there is outstanding data to that peer undelivered,
   that data will be discarded.


   An example of a tunneling request/response in an interleaved
   multicolumn format:

     CLIENT -> SERVER                        SERVER -> CLIENT
     --------------------------------------  -----------------------------------
     CONNECT home.netscape.com:443 HTTP/1.0
     User-agent: Mozilla/4.0
     <<< empty line >>>
                                             HTTP/1.0 200 Connection established
                                             Proxy-agent: Netscape-Proxy/1.1
                                             <<< empty line >>>
                  <<< data tunneling to both directions begins >>>


3.2.1. Response Content-Type Field

   The proxy response does not necessarily have a Content-Type field,
   which is otherwise mandatory in HTTP/1.x responses.  Currently there



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   is no content media type assigned to a tunnel.  Future versions of
   this specification may introduce a standard media type, for example
   "application/tunnel".  For forward compatibility, a Content-type
   field should be allowed, but for backward compatibitity, one should
   not be required by clients.


3.3. Data Pipelining

   It is legal for the client to send some data intended for the server
   before the "200 Connection established" (or any other success or
   error code) is received.  This allows for reduced latency and
   increased efficiency when any handshake data intended for the remote
   server can be sent in the same TCP packet as the proxy request.  This
   allows the proxy to immediately forward the data once the connection
   to the remote server is established, without waiting for two round-
   trip times to the client (sending 200 to client; waiting for the next
   packet from client).

   This means that the proxy server cannot assume that reading from the
   client socket descriptor would only return the proxy request.
   Rather, there may be any amount of opaque data following the proxy
   request that must be forwarded to the server once the connection is
   established.  However, if the connection to the remote server fails,
   or if it is disallowed by the proxy server, the data intended to the
   remote server will be discarded by the proxy.

   At the same time this means that a client pipelining data intended
   for the remote server immediately after sending the proxy request (or
   in the same packet), must be prepared to re-issue the request and
   re-compose any data that it had already sent, in case the proxy fails
   the request, or challenges the client for authentication credentials.
   This is due to the fact that HTTP by its nature may require the
   request to be re-issued, accompanied by authentication credentials or
   other data that was either missing or invalid in the original
   request.

   Note that it is not recommended to pipeline more data than the amount
   that can fit to the remainder of the TCP packet that the proxy
   request is in.  Pipelining more data can cause a TCP reset if the
   proxy fails or challenges the request, and subsequently closes the
   connection before all pipelined TCP packets are received by the proxy
   server host.  A TCP reset will cause the proxy server's response to
   be discarded, and not be available to the client -- thus being unable
   to determine whether the failure was due to a network error, access
   control, or an authentication challenge.





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4. Extensibility

   The tunneling handshake is freely extensible using the HTTP/1.x
   headers; as an example, to enforce authentication for the proxy the
   proxy will simply use the 407 status code and the Proxy-authenticate
   response header (as defined by the HTTP/1.x specification) to ask the
   client to send authentication information:

         HTTP/1.0 407 Proxy authentication required
         Proxy-authenticate: ...


   The client would then reperform the request, and send the
   authentication information in the Proxy-authorization header:

         CONNECT home.netscape.com:443 HTTP/1.0
         User-agent: ...
         Proxy-authorization: ...

         ...data to be tunnelled to the server...


   The full example displayed in an interleaved multicolumn format:

     CLIENT -> SERVER                        SERVER -> CLIENT
     --------------------------------------  -----------------------------------
     CONNECT home.netscape.com:443 HTTP/1.0
     User-agent: Mozilla/4.0
     <<< empty line >>>
                                             HTTP/1.0 407 Proxy auth required
                                             Proxy-agent: Netscape-Proxy/1.1
                                             Proxy-authenticate: ...
                                             <<< empty line >>>
     CONNECT home.netscape.com:443 HTTP/1.0
     User-agent: Mozilla/4.0
     Proxy-authorization: ...
     <<< empty line >>>
                                             HTTP/1.0 200 Connection established
                                             Proxy-agent: Netscape-Proxy/1.1
                                             <<< empty line >>>
                  <<< data tunneling to both directions begins >>>


5. Multiple Proxy Servers

   This specification applies equally to proxy servers talking to other
   proxy servers.  As an example, double firewalls make this necessary.
   In this case, the inner proxy is simply considered a client with



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   respect to the outer proxy.


6. Security Considerations

   The CONNECT tunneling mechanism is really a lower-level function than
   the rest of the HTTP methods, kind of an escape mechanism for saying
   that the proxy should not interfere with the transaction, but merely
   forward the data.  In the case of SSL tunneling, this is because the
   proxy should not need to know the entire URI that is being accessed
   (privacy, security), only the information that it explicitly needs
   (hostname and port number) in order to carry out its part.

   Due to this fact, the proxy cannot necessarily verify that the
   protocol being spoken is really what it is supposed to tunnel (SSL
   for example), and so the proxy configuration should explicitly limit
   allowed connections to well-known ports for that protocol (such as
   443 for HTTPS, 563 for SNEWS, as assigned by IANA, the Internet
   Assigned Numbers Authority).

   Ports of specific concern are such as the telnet port (port 23), SMTP
   port (port 25) and many UNIX specific service ports (range 512-600).
   Allowing such tunnelled connections to e.g. the SMTP port might
   enable sending of uncontrolled E-mail ("spam").


7. References

   [HTTP/1.0] T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, and H. Frystyk.
              Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0.
              RFC 1945, MIT/LCS, UC Irvine, May 1996.

   [HTTP/1.1] R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. C. Mogul, H. Frystyk, and
              T. Berners-Lee.  Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1.
              RFC 2068, UC Irvine, DEC, MIT/LCS, January, 1997.

   [TLS]      T. Dierks, C. Allen, A. O. Freier, P. L. Karlton, and P. Kocher.
              The TLS (Transport Layer Security) Protocol.
              Internet-Draft draft-ietf-tls-protocol-05.txt,
              Consensus Development, Netscape Communications,
              November 12, 1997.

   [SSL]      K. Hickman, T. Elgamal, "The SSL Protocol",
              draft-hickman-netscape-ssl-01.txt, Netscape Communications
              Corporation, June 1995.

   [SSL3]     A. O. Freier, P. Karlton, Paul C. Kocher,
              "The SSL Protocol -- Version 3.0",



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              draft-ietf-tls-ssl-version3-00.txt, November 18, 1996.

8. Author's Address:

   Ari Luotonen                                       <ari@netscape.com>
   Mail-Stop MV-068
   Netscape Communications Corporation
   501 East Middlefield Road
   Mountain View, CA 94043
   USA









































Luotonen                                                        [Page 9]

