IETF RFC 5925 PDF

Introduction

The TCP MD5 Signature (TCP MD5) is a TCP option that authenticates TCP segments, including the TCP IPv4 pseudoheader, TCP header, and TCP data. It was developed to protect BGP sessions from spoofed TCP segments, which could affect BGP data or the robustness of the TCP connection itself [RFC2385][RFC4953].

There have been many recent concerns about TCP MD5. Its use of a simple keyed hash for authentication is problematic because there have been escalating attacks on the algorithm itself [Wa05]. TCP MD5 also lacks both key-management and algorithm agility. This document adds the latter, and provides a simple key coordination mechanism giving the ability to move from one key to another within the same connection. It does not however provide for complete cryptographic key management to be handled in band of TCP, because TCP SYN segments lack sufficient remaining space to handle such a negotiation (see Section 7.6). This document obsoletes the TCP MD5 option with a more general TCP Authentication Option (TCP-AO). This new option supports the use of other, stronger hash functions, provides replay protection for long-lived connections and across repeated instances of a single connection, coordinates key changes between endpoints, and provides a more explicit recommendation for external key management. The result is compatible with IPv6, and is fully compatible with proposed requirements for a replacement for TCP MD5 [Ed07].

TCP-AO obsoletes TCP MD5, although a particular implementation may support both mechanisms for backward compatibility. For a given connection, only one can be in use. TCP MD5-protected connections cannot be migrated to TCP-AO because TCP MD5 does not support any changes to a connection's security algorithm once established.