RADIUS & Diameter Protocol

Presented By: Atul Kumar Srivastava(2017) Vishal sangale(2009) Prashant Pandey(2004)

RADIUS - Introduction :
RADIUS is an application level protocol that carries authentication, authorization and configuration information between a Network Access Server (NAS) and a Shared Authentication Server.

A standardized protocol is required between the access server and the user information repository in order to exchange authentication-, authorization-, and accounting-related information. The RADIUS protocol was designed to provide a simple, but efficient, way to deliver such AAA capability.

Key Features of RADIUS :

Client Server model Network Security Flexible Authentication mechanism Extensible protocol

Terminology :
Service Session Silently discard Access-Request Access-Accept

RADIUS Overview :

User

Radius Client Username & Password

Authentication Request

Radius Server

Authentication Acknowledgement

Authentication and Authorization :

Radius Client

Access Request Frame

Radius Server

Access-Reject or Access-Challenge or Access-Accept

Accounting
Built-in accounting schemes:
Unix accounting Accounting data are stored in files and can be viewed using radwho and radlast commands Detailed accounting The detailed accounting information is stored in plain text format. The resulting files can easily be parsed using standard text processing tool. SQL accounting information stores it in an SQL database, processed using standard SQL queries.

Radius is extensible

Packet Frame:

Details
Code Identifier

Length
Authenticator - Value used to authenticate the reply from the RADIUS server Attributes - The data

Client Server Sequence

NAS sends encrypted user info with access request Access accept with IP-address, network mask, allowed session time, etc Accounting Phase starts with Accounting Request When user logs out accounting phase ends with NAS sending an 'Accounting-request (Stop)' with some additional information. The RADIUS Server responds with an 'Accounting-response' when the accounting information is stored.

Limitations
Response Authenticator Based Shared Secret Attack Attacker listens to requests and server responses, and pre-compute MD5 state, which is the prefix of the response authenticator: MD5(Code+ID+Length+ReqAuth+Attrib) Perform an exhaustive search on shared secret, adding it to the above MD5 state each time. User-Password Attribute Based Shared Secret Attack Perform an exhaustive search on shared secret. The attacker attempts a connection to the NAS, and intercepts the accessrequest. User-Password Based Password Attack Performs an exhaustive / dictionary attack on password, XORing it with above MD5 and sending it each time in appropriate attribute. Possible due to no authentication on request packet.

Limitations

Continued

Shared Secret Hygiene Viewed as single client Small key size enabling easy attack Request Authenticator Based Attacks Passive User-Password Compromise through Repeated Request Authenticators Active User-Password Compromise through Repeated Request Authenticators
Attacker builds a dictionary as before. When he predicts he can cause NAS to use a certain ReqAuth, he tries to connect it and intercepts access-request.

Replay of Server Responses through Repeated Request Authenticators

The attacker builds a dictionary with ReqAuth, ID and entire server response. Most server responses will be access-accept.

Diameter - Introduction
The Diameter protocol was derived from the RADIUS protocol with a lot of

improvements in different aspects, and is generally believed to be the next generation Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) protocol. The Diameter protocol was widely used in the IMS architecture for IMS entities to exchange AAA-related information. Next generation Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) protocol

Diameter nodes and agents

Diameter is designed as a Peer-To-Peer architecture, and

every host who implements the Diameter protocol can act as either a client or a server depending on network deployment

THREE TYPES OF DIAMETER AGENTS Relay Agent

A Relay Agent is used to forward a message to the appropriate destination, depending on the information contained in the message. Proxy Agent A Proxy Agent can also be used to forward messages, but unlike a Relay Agent, a Proxy Agent can modify the message content and, therefore, provide value-added services, enforce rules on different messages, or perform administrative tasks for a specific realm.

Redirect Agent A Redirect Agent acts as a centralized configuration repository for other Diameter nodes. When it receives a message, it checks its routing table, and returns a response message along with redirection information to its original sender

Special agent
Translation Agent

In addition to these agents, there is a special agent called

Translation Agent. The responsibility of this agent, as you might have guessed, is to convert a message from one AAA protocol to another

Diameter packet format

Comparison of Diameter and RADIUS protocols

Diameter Transportation Protocol Security Radius Connection-Oriented Protocols (TCP and SCTP) Connectionless Protocol (UDP) Hop-to-Hop, End-to-End Hop-to-Hop

Agent Support

Relay, Proxy, Redirect, Translation

Implicit support, which means the agent behaviors might be implemented in a RADIUS server

Capabilities Negotiation Peer Discovery

Negotiate supported applications and security level Don't support Static configuration and dynamic lookup Supported. for example, reauthentication message, Session termination 16,777,215 octets Support both vendor-specific messages and attributes Static configuration

Server Initiated Message Maximum Attribute Data Size Vendor-specific Support

Don't support 255 octets Support vendor-specific attributes only

Summary
RADIUS is a remote authentication protocol. RADIUS is a de-facto standard for remote authentication. RADIUS is an extensible protocol, and can support many authentication

methods (e.g. EAP). RADIUS has several weaknesses.

Usage of stream cipher Transaction of Access-Request not authenticated at all The RADIUS specification should require each client use a different Shared Secret. It should also require the shared secret to be a random bit string at least 16 octets long that is generated by a PRNG.

DIAMETER brought in to replace RADIUS and fix some of the flaws

Uses TCP Better transmission level security using IPSEC

Cont..
In addition to SIP, Diameter is the other core protocol used

in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture, both in the service plane and the control plane. IMS defines a set of reference points between different IMS entities and some of them use Diameter as the underlying protocol to exchange subscription-, presence-, and billing-related messages. For example, the Sh reference point in IMS defined a set of Diameter messages for subscription and notification purposes.