================================= BitTorrent DHT security extension ================================= :Author: Arvid Norberg, arvid@rasterbar.com :Version: 1.0.0 .. contents:: Table of contents :depth: 2 :backlinks: none BitTorrent DHT security extension --------------------------------- The purpose of this extension is to make it harder to launch a few specific attacks against the BitTorrent DHT and also to make it harder to snoop the network. Specifically the attack this extension intends to make harder is launching 8 or more DHT nodes which node-IDs selected close to a specific target info-hash, in order to become the main nodes hosting peers for it. Currently this is very easy to do and lets the attacker not only see all the traffic related to this specific info-hash but also block access to it by other peers. The proposed guard against this is to enforce restrictions on which node-ID a node can choose, based on its external IP address. considerations -------------- One straight forward scheme to tie the node ID to an IP would be to hash the IP and force the node ID to share the prefix of that hash. One main draw back of this approach is that an entities control over the DHT key space grows linearly with its control over the IP address space. In order to successfully launch an attack, you just need to find 8 IPs whose hash will be *closest* to the target info-hash. Given the current size of the DHT, that is quite likely to be possible by anyone in control of a /8 IP block. The size of the DHT is approximately 8.4 million nodes. This is estmiated by observing that a typical routing table typically has about 20 of its top routing table buckets full. That means the key space is dense enough to contain 8 nodes for every combination of the 20 top bits of node IDs. ``2^20 * 8 = 8388608`` By controlling that many IP addresses, an attacker could snoop any info-hash. By controlling 8 times that many IP addresses, an attacker could actually take over any info-hash. With IPv4, snooping would require a /8 IP block, giving access to 16.7 million Ips. Another problem with hashing the IP is that multiple users behind a NAT are forced to run their DHT nodes on the same node ID. Node ID restriction ------------------- In order to avoid the number node IDs controlled to grow linearly by the number of IPs, as well as allowing more than one node ID per external IP, the node ID can be restricted at each class level of the IP. Another important property of the restriction put on node IDs is that the distribution of the IDs remoain uniform. This is why CRC32 was chosen as the hash function. See `comparisons of hash functions`__. __ http://blog.libtorrent.org/2012/12/dht-security/ The expression to calculate a valid ID prefix (from an IPv4 address) is:: crc32((ip & 0x01071f7f) .. r) And for an IPv6 address (``ip`` is the high 64 bits of the address):: crc32((ip & 0x000103070f1f3f7f) .. r) ``r`` is a random number in the range [0, 7]. The resulting integer, representing the masked IP address is supposed to be big-endian before hashed. The ".." means concatenation. The details of implementing this is to evaluate the expression, store the result in a big endian 64 bit integer and hash those 8 bytes with CRC32. The first 4 bytes of the node ID used in the DHT MUST match the first 4 bytes in the resulting hash. The last byte of the hash MUST match the random number (``r``) used to generate the hash. .. image:: ip_id_v4.png .. image:: ip_id_v6.png Example code code for calculating a valid node ID:: uint8_t* ip; // our external IPv4 or IPv6 address (network byte order) int num_octets; // the number of octets to consider in ip (4 or 8) uint8_t node_id[20]; // resulting node ID uint8_t v4mask[] = { 0x01, 0x07, 0x1f, 0x7f }; uint8_t v6mask[] = { 0x00, 0x01, 0x03, 0x07, 0x0f, 0x1f, 0x3f, 0x7f }; uint8_t* mask = num_octets == 4 ? v4_mask : v8_mask; for (int i = 0; i < num_octets; ++i) ip[i] &= mask[i]; uint32_t rand = rand() & 0xff; uint8_t r = rand & 0x7; uint32_t crc = crc32(0, NULL, 0); crc = crc32(crc, ip, num_octets); crc = crc32(crc, &r, 1); node_id[0] = (crc >> 24) & 0xff; node_id[1] = (crc >> 16) & 0xff; node_id[2] = (crc >> 8) & 0xff; node_id[3] = crc & 0xff; for (int i = 4; i < 19; ++i) node_id[i] = std::rand(); node_id[19] = rand; test vectors: .. parsed-literal:: IP rand example node ID ============ ===== ========================================== 124.31.75.21 1 **1712f6c7** 0c5d6a4ec8a88e4c6ab4c28b95eee4 **01** 21.75.31.124 86 **946406c1** 4e7a08645677bbd1cfe7d8f956d532 **56** 65.23.51.170 22 **fefd9220** bc8f112a3d426c84764f8c2a1150e6 **16** 84.124.73.14 65 **af1546dd** 1bb1fe518101ceef99462b947a01ff **41** 43.213.53.83 90 **a9e920bf** 5b7c4be0237986d5243b87aa6d5130 **5a** The bold parts of the node ID are the important parts. The rest are random numbers. bootstrapping ------------- In order to set ones initial node ID, the external IP needs to be known. This is not a trivial problem. With this extension, *all* DHT responses SHOULD include a *top-level* field called ``ip``, containing a compact binary representation of the requestor's IP and port. That is big endian IP followed by 2 bytes of big endian port. The IP portion is the same byte sequence used to verify the node ID. It is important that the ``ip`` field is in the top level dictionary. Nodes that enforce the node-ID will respond with an error message ("y": "e", "e": { ... }), whereas a node that supports this extension but without enforcing it will respond with a normal reply ("y": "r", "r": { ... }). A DHT node which receives an ``ip`` result in a request SHOULD consider restarting its DHT node with a new node ID, taking this IP into account. Since a single node can not be trusted, there should be some mechanism to determine whether or not the node has a correct understanding of its external IP or not. This could be done by voting, or only restart the DHT once at least a certain number of nodes, from separate searches, tells you your node ID is incorrect. enforcement ----------- Once enforced, write tokens from peers whose node ID does not match its external IP should be considered dropped. In other words, a peer that uses a non-matching ID MUST never be used to store information on, regardless of which request. In the original DHT specification only ``announce_peer`` stores data in the network, but any future extension which stores data in the network SHOULD use the same restriction. Any peer on a local network address is exempt from this node ID verification. This includes the following IP blocks: 10.0.0.0/8 reserved for local networks 172.16.0.0/12 reserved for local networks 192.168.0.0/16 reserved for local networks 169.254.0.0/16 reserved for self-assigned IPs 127.0.0.0/8 reserved for loopback backwards compatibility and transition -------------------------------------- During some transition period, this restriction should not be enforced, and peers whose node ID does not match this formula relative to their external IP should not be blocked. Requests from peers whose node ID does not match their external IP should always be serviced, even after the transition period. The attack this protects from is storing data on an attacker's node, not servicing an attackers request. forward compatibility --------------------- If the total size of the DHT grows to the point where the inherent size limit in this proposal is too small, the modulus constants can be updated in a new proposal, and another transition period where both sets of modulus constants are accepted.