This section contains brief transport and security descriptions of various security protocols currently used to protect data being sent over a network. These protocols are grouped based on where in the protocol stack they are implemented, which influences which parts of a packet they protect: Generic application payload, application payload for specific application-layer protocols, both application payload and transport headers, or entire IP packets.
Note that not all security protocols can be easily categorized, e.g., as some protocols can be used in different ways or in combination with other protocols. One major reason for this is that channel security protocols often consist of two components:
-
A handshake protocol, which is responsible for negotiating parameters, authenticating the endpoints, and establishing shared keys.
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A record protocol, which is used to encrypt traffic using keys and parameters provided by the handshake protocol.
For some protocols, such as tcpcrypt, these two components are tightly integrated. In contrast, for IPsec, these components are implemented in separate protocols: AH and the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) are record protocols, which can use keys supplied by the handshake protocol Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2), by other handshake protocols, or by manual configuration. Moreover, some protocols can be used in different ways: While the base TLS protocol as defined in [
RFC 8446] has an integrated handshake and record protocol, TLS or DTLS can also be used to negotiate keys for other protocols, as in DTLS-SRTP, or the handshake protocol can be used with a separate record layer, as in QUIC [
QUIC-TRANSPORT].
The following protocols provide security that protects application payloads sent over a transport. They do not specifically protect any headers used for transport-layer functionality.
TLS (Transport Layer Security) [
RFC 8446] is a common protocol used to establish a secure session between two endpoints. Communication over this session prevents "eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery." TLS consists of a tightly coupled handshake and record protocol. The handshake protocol is used to authenticate peers, negotiate protocol options such as cryptographic algorithms, and derive session-specific keying material. The record protocol is used to marshal and, once the handshake has sufficiently progressed, encrypt data from one peer to the other. This data may contain handshake messages or raw application data.
DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security) [
RFC 6347] [
DTLS-1.3] is based on TLS, but differs in that it is designed to run over unreliable datagram protocols like UDP instead of TCP. DTLS modifies the protocol to make sure it can still provide equivalent security guarantees to TLS with the exception of order protection/non-replayability. DTLS was designed to be as similar to TLS as possible, so this document assumes that all properties from TLS are carried over except where specified.
The following protocols provide application-specific security by protecting application payloads used for specific use cases. Unlike the protocols above, these are not intended for generic application use.
Secure RTP (SRTP) is a profile for RTP that provides confidentiality, message authentication, and replay protection for RTP data packets and RTP control protocol (RTCP) packets [
RFC 3711]. SRTP provides a record layer only, and requires a separate handshake protocol to provide key agreement and identity management.
The commonly used handshake protocol for SRTP is DTLS, in the form of DTLS-SRTP [
RFC 5764]. This is an extension to DTLS that negotiates the use of SRTP as the record layer and describes how to export keys for use with SRTP.
ZRTP [
RFC 6189] is an alternative key agreement and identity management protocol for SRTP. ZRTP Key agreement is performed using a Diffie-Hellman key exchange that runs on the media path. This generates a shared secret that is then used to generate the master key and salt for SRTP.
The following security protocols provide protection for both application payloads and headers that are used for Transport Services.
QUIC is a new standards-track transport protocol that runs over UDP, loosely based on Google's original proprietary gQUIC protocol [
QUIC-TRANSPORT] (See
Section 3.3.2 for more details). The QUIC transport layer itself provides support for data confidentiality and integrity. This requires keys to be derived with a separate handshake protocol. A mapping for QUIC of TLS 1.3 [
QUIC-TLS] has been specified to provide this handshake.
Google QUIC (gQUIC) is a UDP-based multiplexed streaming protocol designed and deployed by Google following experience from deploying SPDY, the proprietary predecessor to HTTP/2. gQUIC was originally known as "QUIC"; this document uses gQUIC to unambiguously distinguish it from the standards-track IETF QUIC. The proprietary technical forebear of IETF QUIC, gQUIC was originally designed with tightly integrated security and application data transport protocols.
Tcpcrypt [
RFC 8548] is a lightweight extension to the TCP protocol for opportunistic encryption. Applications may use tcpcrypt's unique session ID for further application-level authentication. Absent this authentication, tcpcrypt is vulnerable to active attacks.
MinimaLT [
MinimaLT] is a UDP-based transport security protocol designed to offer confidentiality, mutual authentication, DoS prevention, and connection mobility. One major goal of the protocol is to leverage existing protocols to obtain server-side configuration information used to more quickly bootstrap a connection. MinimaLT uses a variant of TCP's congestion control algorithm.
CurveCP [
CurveCP] is a UDP-based transport security that, unlike many other security protocols, is based entirely upon public key algorithms. CurveCP provides its own reliability for application data as part of its protocol.
The following protocols provide protection for IP packets. These are generally used as tunnels, such as for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Often, applications will not interact directly with these protocols. However, applications that implement tunnels will interact directly with these protocols.
IKEv2 [
RFC 7296] and ESP [
RFC 4303] together form the modern IPsec protocol suite that encrypts and authenticates IP packets, either for creating tunnels (tunnel-mode) or for direct transport connections (transport-mode). This suite of protocols separates out the key generation protocol (IKEv2) from the transport encryption protocol (ESP). Each protocol can be used independently, but this document considers them together, since that is the most common pattern.
WireGuard [
WireGuard] is an IP-layer protocol designed as an alternative to IPsec for certain use cases. It uses UDP to encapsulate IP datagrams between peers. Unlike most transport security protocols, which rely on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for peer authentication, WireGuard authenticates peers using pre-shared public keys delivered out of band, each of which is bound to one or more IP addresses. Moreover, as a protocol suited for VPNs, WireGuard offers no extensibility, negotiation, or cryptographic agility.
OpenVPN [
OpenVPN] is a commonly used protocol designed as an alternative to IPsec. A major goal of this protocol is to provide a VPN that is simple to configure and works over a variety of transports. OpenVPN encapsulates either IP packets or Ethernet frames within a secure tunnel and can run over either UDP or TCP. For key establishment, OpenVPN can either use TLS as a handshake protocol or use pre-shared keys.