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ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation

1. The product manuals must be consulted for additional details much is left out here Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 17 ESNETPKI 007 Vendor Evaluations ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Table 1 Features Summary Product Rainbow Chrysalis nCipher Features CryptoSwift Luna CA Security World FIPS 140 1 Yes Yes Yes Level 3 compliance Host Interface PCI PCI SCSI amp PCI Reliable with No Yes Yes Planet CMS 4 2 service pack 2 Key Pair No Data Based on Annex C of HSM nCipher Random ANSI X9 17 Pseudo hardware RNG Number Random Number Generation Generator RNG Hardware used Key USB port PED keys Smart Card to unlock the private key Utility kmu GUI based enabler command Keysafe GUI based line utility m of n 2 of 2 m of n k of n Authentication m n lt 16 k n lt 64 PKI Algorithm RSA 384 1024 RSA 512 4096 RSA 512 4096 amp Key Size DSA 512 1024 DSA 512 1024 Performance Random number No data 1024 Key Size Vendor Generation 18000 Key Pair Generation specifications Kee 7 sec Sign New RSA private key with Certificates 394 sec CRT performance Validate Signed 4 95ms operation at Request 1543 sec l Complete SSL handshake 393 sec Device Storage No data 256 KB Volatile No data Capacity Memory 1 MB non volatile memory Customer N A Good Satisfactory Good Reference Helm amp Muruganan
2. sniffer capture of this pass phrase doesn t buy any particular access the card must still be obtained as well In the nCipher system control of the smart cards is the crucial problem which seems to us like a reasonable one at this point The additional security offered by Luna does not offer enough value and also adds additional costs in our environment 3 3 4 Flexibility If for some reason you don t like the key pair OR the certificate you can delete those objects with Rainbow and nCipher But initialization is the only option Chrysalis provides to deal with the content of a token This is an awkward and dangerous way of dealing with deletion Chrysalis and Rainbow have some limitations on the number of objects their token could support There is no practical limit for the nCipher device It s not clear in our application whether the limits are important 3 3 5 Performance nCipher nShield is also a cryptographic accelerator see features list Luna performance statistics weren t available from the vendor and the vendor sells crypto accelerators as another add on product It was clear from our use that the Luna didn t improve the cryptographic performance of CMS at all perhaps reduced it On the other hand improvement was noticeable with nShield We could recover some of the cost of nShield in less expensive hardware platforms for the certificate authority and related products This is a minor consideration in our particu
3. you should exit browser before continuing this operation Type q lt enter gt to abort or lt enter gt to continue Creating secmod db done ssh test pkil shared bin modutil dbdir nocertdb add Hand2 libfile opt nfast toolkits pkes11 libcknfast so I had to know what operator card set I was going to use WARNING Performing this operation while the browser 1s running could cause corruption of your security databases If the browser is currently running you should exit browser before continuing this operation Type q lt enter gt to abort or lt enter gt to continue Using database directory ERROR Failed to add module Hand2 Now added driver amp c as in PKCS 11 install but this is too early CMS wouldn t start Had to remove everything and reboot What I did was restore out of sequence Start by rebuilding the ncipher security world first mkdir kmdata then new world using an existing administrator card This requires switching the new card to init state Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 39 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation new world 1 m 1 s 0 new world no card in module 1 slot O Insert an administrator card into module 1 slot 0 and press return Passphrase for administrator card 1 security world loaded hknso 51a454daaca39158e8955ea27ff1128609f4d45c No messages were displayed must be
4. We learned later that it is not possible to change the admin card configuration FIPS level 3 adds an additional element of complexity later usually seen in a need to specify the card reader module but also shows up in admin functions After the nshield device is prepared and the admin card set created the nshield device must be switched back to operational and the hardserver daemon must be restarted If you don t do this various errors occur in subsequent steps usually module failed Once the nshield card is reset to O create the operator card set with createocs described elsewhere Consider using the p persistent flag The F flag for FIPS 140 1 level 3 is required if you have created a security world FIPS compliant The details are described elsewhere Install the PKCS 11 library and reference in the Iplanet security database This is identical to the Chrysalis installation except for the naming of libraries In the course of doing this configuration I discovered a FIPS or security related problem that hadn t been noticed previously I found some of the smart cards just didn t work createocs would reject them and so would new world We subsequently learned that smart cards must be handled carefully OCS or user smart cards can only be erased and readied for re use by the admin card set controlling the active security world Admin cards from a different security world can be erased any time but the ser
5. gt 1 This could be solved using with nfast utility Lifetime of the smart card gold contact is questionable Solution could be making a sufficient number of ACS and OCS cards Smart card reader is proprietary This is probably unavoidable due to the security requirements placed on this device and software 6 4 References StrongAuth correspondent also formerly from Sun Microsystems Good experience Engineer used a mixed strategy at old site Chrysalis for the root nCipher for subordinate CA s but chose nCipher for all levels in the new site Pointed out less expensive FIPS 140 level 2 modules could be used for some subordinate CA s and remote RA hosts Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 24 ESNETPKI 007 Bibliography ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 7 Bibliography 7 1 Vendor These references may require contacting the vendor Luna PKI HSM Installation Guide Chrysalis ITS http www chrysalis its com 2001 Luna PKI HSM Planning amp Integration Guide Chrysalis ITS http www chrysalis its com 2002 CryptoSwift HSM User s Guide VEA Rainbow Technologies http www rainbow com 2001 CryptoSwift Cryptoki 3 xx Reference Guide VEA Rainbow Technologies http www rainbow com 2001 Getting Started Guide version 4 1 37 nCipher http www ncipher com 20 Mar 2002 nShield User Guide Solaris version 4 6 15 nCipher http Awww ncipher com
6. installing a token it won t automatically update its state Configuration of the PED keys is described in more detail elsewhere You are led through configuration of the domain key by key each key is inserted in the PED reader in turn and a password assigned to it You also have the opportunity to create m of n keys or duplicate keys I wasn t able to create a duplicate PED key perhaps because of a combination of errors If you hesitate too long in answering a query the software times out and the operation would have to be restarted from the beginning A 2 4 CMS Configuration and Operation CMS installation is in its initial phases identical to installation on a server without HSM After the initial set of servers are in place the crypto engine and the PKCS 11 library for it must be enabled The instructions for this are elsewhere The token must be activated The enabler application is also responsible for this and must be run if it lacks activate and deactivate token options in its menu then the etc Chrystoki conf file must be modified These instructions are elsewhere If the token is enabled and the PKCS 11 library and security module are configured then CMS can now be configured Do not chose to make a 4096 bit RSA key CMS 4 2 SP2 cannot handle a keysize gt 2048 bits A critical step is the configuration of the first CMS administrator which is the first principal that can issue certificates via the agent port If the
7. like the original token except that it must be a part of the domain of the original and so must use the original s red key to acquire the domain membership Since the token is initialized separately it can have its own gray blue and black keys or m of n policies This procedure does suggest that the red key is the critical resource and copies of this must be made to ensure that the domain can survive a catastrophe Objects are cloned from one token to another on a case by case basis It is really only necessary to clone the user objects because these are what are used in day to day operations I was able to successfully initialize clone and restart using the cloned token in about 5 minutes The Group Keys option in enabler allows you to build a multi token infrastructure with just one set of keys rather than a different key set user keys for each token However the operation of grouping and managing the pins for these keys and making sure the keys worked from token to token is quite complex I couldn t begin to explain it and didn t try it You can duplicate the user key if it is in an m of n configuration an option to duplicate is available through enabler Otherwise it appears that the only opportunity you have to create duplicates especially the all important red domain key is at the very beginning at token initialization time I did not appreciate this detail in full at the time I attempted to duplicate some of
8. password or name is forgotten it is necessary to remove the CMS and start over This can present a problem if you intend to make a CA with the same naming convention a key with this nickname already exists on the HSM There is no way to remove this key from the HSM except by re initializing the token Passwords only the single sign on password is real There are usually a couple of other fields that sometimes seem to have password fields that you can change but these are meaningless The real password is for the crypto module is through the enabler and the PED user key PIN The entire configuration operation Luna and CMS can be done in about 10 minutes What happens when the machine reboots Everything must be restarted The token must be started first so the CA can start Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 30 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation What happens if the token is ejected from its reader see picture This simulates the effect of token failure The CA stays running but an attempt to sign a certificate will result in an error on the CMS agent page Request has been completed but no certificate has been generated Additional information java security SignatureException The Certificate Management System logs may provide further information The request is lost however CMS provides a convenient method to clone the lost request and deal wit
9. products ESnet management is responsible for all our projects and personnel As such they reap the benefit or the blame for project outcomes However management does not perform day to day service activities does not delve into the depths of the software suites or do hands on systems configurations or why would they need the rest of us There is a fourth category in ESnet which includes sophisticated staff members or guests who might conceivably gain access to our CA s through technical expertise or circumstance but we intend that our security plan and various access control points will deal with this consideration Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 9 ESNETPKI 007 CA Patterns ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation We felt that we could make the most straightforward case for trustworthiness of our CA s by making access and control of the CA s as balanced as possible between the three interested parties systems administrators PKI project and ESnet management In other words we want CA actions to reflect ESnet policy minimizing the possibility that some kind of social engineering or insider attack might alter the CA s behavior Accordingly we look for patterns that reduce the access of the systems administrators and mitigate the capability of the knowledge that project members have These patterns include Key splitting or sharing between the parties Assigning roles to parties such as Giving ownership of tok
10. set Ok now can log in and the dap database is restored The one missing thing is the config database contents need to investigate this so as not to lose things The lesson here is to not use the CMS Iplanet server domain for anything else don t put other Idap infrastructure user logins amp c here Total time taken 2 hrs about 35 min for this later successful recovery A 3 6 Customer Support The company seemed to go through some reorganization while we were doing the evaluation and we kept losing contact and having to re establish the relationship with a new sales representative Curiously however the sales engineer was the one constant in this period nCipher s SE was very helpful in resolving some confusing points in smart card handling and role management that came up in the evaluation and while doing backup and recovery A 3 7 Comments nCipher has a lot of presence in this industry but it s not clear how much market penetration they have made The local SE is great but losing him could be bad if we chose this product On the other hand the other vendors didn t provide this kind of support at all The product is very simple and neat The card reader and cards can be removed after start up leaving a clean set up they are also reasonably compact and can probably be left in the rack without consuming a lot of space Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 41 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Eva
11. these keys but without success perhaps due to time out or mis Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 32 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation handling the blue SO key As a result I had no duplicates and was unable to use a duplicate domain key in disaster recovery A 2 6 Customer Support I didn t need much customer support there were a few areas I should have clarified My contacts with their sales engineering staff were favorable A 2 7 Comments The system is somewhat old fashioned appears to be solid and conservative but is rather complex and has many roles that don t seem necessary for our operation at this time I had the feeling that some of the functionality group keys m of n domains was sort of layered in later on adding more complexity This system by its nature is FIPS 140 1 level 3 If implementation choices were kept simple it would be a great root CA or offline CA solution The value in this device is the absolute integrity of the signing private key This would also be a good online CA device for an institution requiring a very high degree of assurance about its CA keys and content to support the complexity of operation required I am puzzled by the critical nature of the red domain key and the lack of ability to copy this key for disaster recovery Probably there is something that I missed The cloning operation is simple and straightforw
12. used to unlock authorizations everywhere The trustworthiness of these certificates is directly related to the trustworthiness of the CA itself The CA presumably follows a set of policies that allow it to sign certification requests but the CA as a computer application may be subject to various kinds of security attacks The principal asset the CA must protect is its signing private key If this key is disclosed or compromised made available for use to unauthorized parties the CA may sign certificates outside its policy and may help enable damage or loss to relying parties in various ways We undertook an investigation of hardware security modules HSM s which promise to substantially reduce the threat from some security attacks on the CA s private key These are physical devices that control the use of the CA s signing private key The CA or other applications access the device through PKCS 11 API s a widely used standard for interfacing to cryptographic modules hardware or software The hardware storage module may limit some PKCS 11 functionality to improve the security of the key The HSM may provide additional functionality including key generation cryptographic algorithm acceleration and key life cycle and management functions This document discusses the technical details of Chrysalis nCipher and Rainbow Hardware Security Module products We conducted this investigation in order to identify a product or products we c
13. was able to load the security world using the ACS and the kmdata directory The step by step procedure can be found in another document or you could refer the nCipher manual Then I configured the nCipher PKCS 11 library for CMS as anexternal token Then I configured the CMS instance as a root CA using software token Now I ran the cmsrestore utility with the CMS backup zip file This operation gives several options by which we can do complete recovery or module by module recovery This procedure was available in the Planet Command Line utility document I spent about an hour on restore operation and it was successful We could also use different operator card I exercised the recovery operation with the following Assumptions Operator Card set was persistent Used the same Operator Card for recovery For example Card 1 out of 5 cards All the port numbers were as same as the original CMS instance All the passwords were same as the original B 3 5 Customer Support The sales engineer was helpful providing information for our problems We did ask the Tech Support for help with the FIPS compliance issue we had with the CMS They were prompt and helpful B 3 6 Comments The local SE is great but losing him could be bad if we chose this product On the other hand the other vendors didn t provide this kind of support at all The product is very simple and neat although I felt dealing with the security world was complex co
14. 29 Apr 2002 Globus 2 2 Admin Guide The Globus Project http www globus org gt2 2 admin index html 2002 Planet Certificate Management System Installation and Setup Guide CMS 4 2 SP2 iPlanet Sun Microsystems http docs sun com source 8 16 5541 10 index html 2001 7 2 Standards SECURITY REQUIREMENTS FOR CRYPTOGRAPHIC MODULES FEDERAL INFORMATION PROCESSING STANDARDS PUBLICATION FIPS PUB 140 2 National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST http csrc nist gov publications fips fips 140 2 fips1402 pdf May 25 2001 Most of our products certified under 140 1 FIPS 140 1 and FIPS 140 2 Cryptographic Modules Validation List National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST http csrc nist gov cryptval 140 1 1401val htm 2002 Changes regularly PKCS 11 Cryptographic Token Interface Standard v2 11 RSA Laboratories http www rsasecurity com rsalabs pkcs pkcs 11 index html November 2001 website has additional information besides this document 7 3 Miscellaneous Schiller Jeff Protecting a Private Key in a CA Context Internet 2 Middleware http middleware internet2 edu hepki tag private key prot html 2000 A useful discussion of the issues and patterns Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 25 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Appendix A Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience A 1 R
15. ESNETPKI 007 Helm amp Muruganantham ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation September 2002 Public Key Infrastructure ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation September 2002 Overview The Certificate Authority signing private key 1s 1ts most important asset Protecting this key from unauthorized use or disclosure is essential Relying parties need assurances that this signing private key is secure Hardware Security Modules HSM offer protection from certain kinds of attacks We evaluated several vendors products and selected the nCipher product for our PKI project The issues and our evaluation experiences with these products are discussed Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 1 ESNETPKI 007 Table of Contents ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Table of Contents OVERVIEW A sporsa souiser estors sodoi ihostasi os s edors okok kaos isss vassos se doesiso rossi 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS u aa ssscarteenunsecuecsseetesssecceneddssesevesseat sscseussseneecescsussssesdecdcccssccsesvesacccseeste 2 1 INTRODUCTION tisecceccscecss ccssessascesesds ccesesdvcceseosascesescosueiesteccesoesoscescosscssseeseccesenss cancelen Sestese sesu anii 5 1 1 SCOPEIOF PROBEEM eights chy aru e E ee ed ee E dee 6 1 2 WHAT GAN WE DO EE 7 1 3 PRESA la e ae Siok nek RO i Se ee ER ee el Hee REO ee 7 1 4 FIPS LADEN E E 8 2 CA PATTERNS Su lw SW chectseveusccsssevuccvceucucssedcsveseusees deed ENEE 9 2 1 ROLES dereen Eelere Savleiadceeobesponeaeaine
16. HOME admin serv config folder On completion of any CMS instance install these files are copied into CMS_HOME lt CMS instance gt folder wd key3 db wd cert7 db amp wd secmod db From this point onwards these files are specific to this CMS instance s keys and certificates This behavior is specific to iPlanet CMS and nothing to do with the External Tokens Assume that you already have a CMS instance which was configured to use internal software token If you want to change this internal token to an external token then you should configure the wd secmod db under CMS_ HOME lt cms instance gt folder Initially we were given a small number of smart cards So I configured OCS with 3 smart cards and 1 card is required for operation I went through the full CMS configuration cycle without any problem I have used 2048 bit RSA key Once the CMS is up and running then we could also remove the OCS card from card reader if it is configured persistent I continued the evaluation with different m of n OCS combination I chose 2 of 5 OCS i e minimum 2 operator cards are required out of 5 This exposed a defect in the CMS product I was not able to configure the CMS because of an error message Invalid Password The CMS configuration UI was not designed to accept more than one password for external token One other problem could be the CMS was not able to handle the response from the Security World Ideally in this scenario security worl
17. LANEOUS citrico 25 APPENDIX A MIKE S HSM EVALUATION EXPERIENCE 26 A l RAINBOW CRYPTOS WIET i penil Rece EE cadets tada 26 Ada EE 26 A 1 2 Software Jnstolletton n nnnsnssssssnsssnssnnnssnasssnssassssss 26 ALS Device TEE 26 Al4 ET 26 EE WT 29 A L Customer SuppPoOrticiiin iba ista 29 ATT COMMISSION era 29 A 2 CHRY SALISSIS UNAS S n ica ida de dee 29 A2 Hardware Installation ia 29 A 2 2 RU A aaa n qan ua D ana huahua ass 29 A 2 3 Device Configuration n nnnsssssssssssnsssssssssssnssssassss 29 A 2 4 CMS Configuration and Operation n nnnnsnsssssssssassssssss 30 ADIOS EE 32 A206 Customer ET 33 AIDA e 33 A INCIPHER NSHIELD ic sasa k nuk ak aS Su C am a a aska 34 AL Hardware Installation alado 34 A 3 2 Software Installatioun seini i E EE AEA E aaa Ea EARE EERE 34 A 3 3 Device Configuration me ua anadi eee Eaa a a upyanayki EAER E Sa 34 7 O AO TES AN 35 AID 5 17 177 A LON A EE eegen ege A Q h ti a IEA Ai 37 A30 CUSTOMER SUPpOTE EEN 4 ADAL COMME ls A A a de LUN do 4 Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 3 ESNETPKI 007 Table of Contents ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation APPENDIX B DHIVA S HSM EVALUATION EXPERIENCE 43 B 1 RAINBOW ERYPTOS WIET E 43 B 1 1 Hardware Software Installation ooo nnnninninvnnanln niiannnnandomononnnccc 43 B1 2 Device COnpigur Quon u a h
18. Muruganantham September 2002 Page 22 ESNETPKI 007 nCipher Security World ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 6 nCipher Security World nCipher has developed a construct called a security world that provides secure life cycle management for keys These procedures and protocols include the generation distribution use storage destruction and optional archiving and disaster recovery of cryptographic keys The nShield board does most of the cryptographic work but security of the service is highly dependent on the security of the smart cards 6 1 Security World Components See nCipher Components 56 for several views of the hardware modules described in this section 6 1 1 One or more nShield modules The nShield module is a proprietary PCI or SCSI card where all cryptographic functions take place 6 1 2 Smart cards and smart card reader Set of smart cards used to authorize cryptographic functions Smart cards are grouped into two sets the administrative card set ACS which manages the security world and the operator card set OCS which enables applications to use the cryptographic services see The smart card reader is a proprietary reader attached cabled to the nShield module It uses the host computer s keyboard for input The smart cards are Gem Plus cards 6 1 3 Encrypted data stored on host computer The nCipher security world uses the host s file system for long term storage of keys Keys are store
19. SM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation A 1 5 Backup Recovery I was unable to get the backup and recovery scheme described in the configuration manual to work A 1 6 Customer Support I made many attempts to reach customer support engineers with very little success The company seemed to go through some reorganization while we were doing the evaluation and we kept losing contact and having to re establish the relationship I was unable to resolve the problems preventing us from using this device A 1 7 Comments Simplicity is very attractive Unit doesn t work in our environment External comment not one of the other vendors suggests that the PKCS 11 library is incomplete and thus not usable by Iplanet CMS This is not proved The user manual talks about FIPS 140 1 level 3 but I am not sure it is certified at level 3 but rather at level 2 Nevertheless it probably meets level 3 requirements or nearly A 2 Chrysalis Luna A 2 1 Hardware Installation A 2 2 Software Installation I was not involved directly in the initial hardware token and software installation This appeared to be a simple matter of installing the PCI card in a slot and installing software packages from the CD In addition an external reader and at times a PED key and keypad device are attached I verified that that the PCI device was present in the Solaris host a conventional PCI install Also verified the presence of the softwa
20. a v option somewhere ssh test pkil etc init d nfast stop etc init d nfast start reset to operational etc init d nfast stop etc init d nfast start nFast server now running Now I put in one of my operator cards cardpp s 0 m 1 check Passphrase for card AceOfSpades 1 of cardset Hand2 cardpp passphrase for card AceOfSpades 1 of cardset Hand2 OK Now back to CMS install Oops created the new instances of cms and its ldap database with the wrong instance names this may not be bad won t be visible to customers but would be confusing junk these cms ldap instances and reinstall Then do the CMS restore cmsrestore var tmp CMS_MCr_BACKUP 20020917160706 zip Would you like to c ompletely restore ALL data specified in the package or would you like to be p rompted Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 40 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation to restore SELECTED data from the package c omplete p rompted q uit c Please enter single sign on password KKKKKKKK Waiting for server to start Error CMS failed to start Token Handl not found Please enter single sign on password Is passwd cache there Yes Doesn t like the other cardset something is screwed up Whoops cfg still has Hand1 in it from card recovery experiments The password cache must be edited using the cms tool to include the name of the right OCS card
21. a CA3 is just like any other Solaris Package install The manual has the instruction for connecting the Dock Controller card DOCK card reader and PED device together To verify the software amp hardware install I ran the utility usr luna bin lunadiag which confirms the successful installation B 2 2 Device Configuration The heart of the Luna CA is the enabler application which has the complete control over the HSM unit Luna PKI HSM Planning amp Integration Guide has the complete details about the enabler application usr luna bin enabler Preparation of Luna CA token Preparation of a Luna token starts with the Initialization phase It is required to know about the PED keys and Pin Entry Device from this point onwards You need to have PED device PED keys token and PIN for every operation Installation Guide has the information about these peripherals I have gone through the following operations for Luna CA preparation Ran the enabler application Chose the initialize a token Inserted a Token into slot 1 Chose freeze as a name of the token Subsequently provided the required PED keys GRAY BLUE BLACK and RED Also I have decided the PIN for BLUE amp BLACK keys BLUE key isa Security Officer key and the BLACK key is User key I have also explored m of n keys using the GREEN keys and exercised key cloning using the RED keys If you choose the m of n security option then most o
22. ace In particular one of the OCS card has to be in card reader There are situations where one of these smart cards becomes bad we can t use it anymore FIPS compliant ACS and OCS cards cannot be recycled by a non FIPS compliant Security World So we must erase all ACS and OCS cards before we trash the security world We could reuse the ACS cards with the new security world by overwriting it But OCS cards are tightly bound to the Security World where they were born If we decide to trash the security world then we should first erase all the OCS cards Otherwise we wil not be able to use them with the new Security World Sometimes smart cards just go bad by themselves Note the installation process sets up the nfast hardserver daemon to start automatically on reboot Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 49 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation B 3 3 CMS Configuration CMS installation was similar to installation on a server without HSM After the initial set of servers are in place the crypto engine and the PKCS 11 library for it must be enabled You must provide 1 OCS card in the card reader during the nCipher PKCS 11 driver configuration Note There are three database files for maintaining the key certificates and the security tokens Key3 db cert7 db and secmod ule db are those files and specific to Planet CMS Initially these files are placed under SCMS_
23. ainbow CryptoSwift A 1 1 Hardware Installation A 1 2 Software Installation I was partly involved in the initial hardware token and software installation This was a simple matter of installing the PCI card in a slot and installing software packages from the CD A 1 3 Device Configuration The device was quite easy to test and configure the manual covers this completely The vendor provides a very nice X11 UI with a java backend that manages logins admin and user roles key lookup and other functions It was necessary to install the appropriate JVM eg JRE 1 4 on the server for this function The original units could create up to 1024 bit keys After some time 6 weeks or so we were able to get a driver update which helped the CMS install process along see CMS Configuration and also allowed the device to create and manage 2048 bit keys A 1 4 CMS Configuration CMS installation is in its initial phases identical to installation on a server without HSM After the initial set of servers are in place the crypto engine and the PKCS 11 library for it must be enabled The instructions for this are in the Cryptoswift manual PKCS 11 instructions were somewhat different than those for other HSM s I was then able to start the CMS configuration I had the CMS create its self signed cert and SSL server cert and was able to start the CMS server Initially those keys didn t appear in the module s operator console but after re
24. ard but since the keys only inhabit the tokens it would be quite easy for things to get out of phase over time The tokens will likely be dispersed geographically and this introduces another set of problems into the management Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 33 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation A 3 NCipher nShield A 3 1 Hardware Installation A 3 2 Software Installation I was not involved directly in the initial hardware token and software installation Hardware installation is a conventional matter of installing the PCI card and driver and software installation a simple matter of installing the packages from the distribution CD The device relies on a daemon nfast which it calls the hardware server This needs a tcp port currently uses port no 9000 not clear why opt nfast bin enquiry shows card state the smart card reader can be tested with opt nfast bin slotinfo lt module number gt lt slot number gt A 3 3 Device Configuration Device configuration requires manipulation of the nshield card and creation of a new security world Security world creation will include the creation of the administration role cards The basic procedures are described elsewhere Two critical decisions are made at this point FIPS 140 1 level 3 compliance and the number and nature of administrator cards It is possible to have an m of n admin card configuration
25. backup zip file and the required PED keys I was able to install the CMS and Luna software successfully I was also able to activate the token spring for CMS application Though the backup token has a different name I was able to use the same PIN and same PED keys to authorize token I wanted to use the same PIN and PED keys especially because it was backup I was able to complete the cmsrestore operation But the CMS instance didn t start because the internal database has a reference to a token name freeze for all key pairs and certificates it uses Tthere are some workaround available if you want to use a different name for the backup token You have to find and replace the token name in CMS cfg configuration file I started the backup and recovery exercise all over again and named the backup token as same as original token Then I was able to restore the CMS and the Luna Token environment successfully B 2 5 Customer Support As I have mentioned earlier I was in touch with Tech support for Chrystoki conf file changes The technical support team was good B 2 6 Comments This system by its nature is FIPS 140 1 level 3 Facts about the Enabler Application Anybody can destroy the token if they have access to the enabler application and the GRAY key it doesn t require any password or authorization activate token option was good as well as bad Good because it was self contained so that we don t have to prov
26. cate authority signing key pairs This is a reasonable key size for the next few years Planet CMS and the Solaris Sparc platform are requirements based on our infrastructure and other project commitments The CMS product uses PKCS 11 API s to manage the interface to cryptographic modules such as hardware storage devices We also needed to make sure our choice was acceptable to ESnet system administrators who retain control over our systems day to day operations and are responsible for service and maintenance issues Because of our hardware support requirements the IBM product could not be considered Baltimore or possibly a related company AEP Systems offers an HSM but this product appears to be tied to Baltimore s UniCert CA we were not sure that this product was available at the time of our evaluation The Rainbow product was unable to meet our 2048 bit key size requirement However the simplicity and cost of the unit are attractive and we felt 1t might be useful for components that did not require this key size such as a registration manager so we Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 13 ESNETPKI 007 ESnet Evaluation and Choice ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation continued the evaluation in order to determine whether it would work with our CA product Two products nCipher and Chrysalis Luna met all of our requirements Both would meet our needs see the extensive discussion in the evaluation sec
27. d should be asking for card no 2 and relative password but CMS has only one password field in its UI and was not able to ask the user for another card it could still be giving the same password I also tried the card set as non persistent This would be the right choice for the Root CA Persistent card set could work well for Subordinate online CA Persistent card set is a good choice for running multiple CMS instance on a single machine B 3 4 Backup and Recovery Ran the cmsbackup and got the zip file as a backup The zip file contains the CMS internal data and CMS configuration including its Admin server We also need to archive the opt nfast kmdata directory for nCipher generated key pair objects I moved the kmdata directory and the cmsbackup zip file into AFS shared file system As I mentioned earlier the persistent card can be removed and kept in a safe locker along with the other card set I had started the recovery operation on the same machine with all the above components Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 50 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation I uninstalled the CMS and the nCipher software on the host I started the recovery operation by installing nCipher software and the CMS software from the distribution Then initialized the nCipher device and restarted the hard server Security World can be loaded from the kmdata directory for recovery purpose I
28. d in Triple DES 3DES format and never appear in plain text on the host computer keys are converted from encrypted form to a usable form plaintext after they are downloaded to the nShield module and unlocked by the operater card set OCS smart card s 6 2 Utilities Tools The nCipher Security World has a large number of utilities and tools that support operations Some of the typical tools used were nfast the hardware server a daemon started on bootup to represent the hardware device createocs creates the operator card set OCS new world creates the security world and the administrative card set ACS Refer to the nShield User guide for more information See nCipher Architecture on page 57 Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 23 ESNETPKI 007 nCipher Security World ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 6 3 Hardware Management 8 Developer Experience 6 3 1 Pros Key Management tools Key Backup and Key Restore process is simple to follow Device Capacity which is cost effective Singe device can be used for multiple CMS instances on a same host Optimal hardware to maintain smart cards card reader amp PCI device Smart cards are industry standard devices Gem Plus Security World backup is just like any other software backup 6 3 2 Cons Installation and Configuration is relatively complex Though it provides k of n multifactor token authentication Planet CMS 4 2 sp2 could not handle k
29. e CryptoSWIFT Low level Interface Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 55 ESNETPKI 007 HSM Pictures ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation C 5 n oher Components Ya zo 2 A DOMM 23 s y ft Z I MARA rl Aua Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 56 ESNETPKI 007 HSM Pictures ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation C 6 nCipher Architecture Application T aver Libraries Low level Interface Helm amp Muruganantham Planet CMS nFast Library MWMALM11N s AA y ea Firmware kmdata nCipher nShield nCipher Smart e A Cards September 2002 Page 57
30. e other hand enables the cryptographic module independently so the system can reboot without affecting the state of the module applications are not involved in enabling the device see appendix for our experience Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 14 ESNETPKI 007 ESnet Evaluation and Choice ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation with this Luna will not recover from a scenario where power is lost to the whole rack or area where the devices are stored It s not a likely scenario but it gives a slight operational edge to nCipher 3 3 3 Security considerations It is axiomatically accepted that simpler is better in security and for the most part Luna leads here The PED keys functions are distinguished by color although one of these function is difficult to understand The private key never appears on the host system instead separate devices manage all operations Keys are kept on physical tokens PED PIN entry is through a hand held separate device not through the keyboard On the other hand an internal hardware random number generator generates nCipher keys The signing key is stored on disk wrapped by a 3DES key generated by the nCipher device operators do not have direct access to the plaintext key or to the 3DES key that unlocks it it is locked to a smart card set Smart card passwords can be long complex pass phrases or whatever suits the owner but pass phrase entry is through the system keyboard However
31. edition I had tried and failed with in May I got to where the CMS generates its self signed cert but then get error back via java that keypair generation on token failed see below 2002 09 12 16 33 53 get LDAPConnection successfully gt netscape ldap LDAPConnection031b4c3 localhost 38901 cn Directory Manager 2002 09 12 16 33 53 caTokenName Arcenciel 2002 09 12 16 33 53 Start removing key and cert 2002 09 12 16 33 53 token name gt Arcenciel algorithm gt RSA key len 512 Token Error com netscape jss crypto TokenException Keypair Generation failed on token at com netscape certsrv security KeyCertUtil generateKeyPair K eyCertUtil java 534 at com netscape certsetup daemon CreateCertificateProcessor pr ocessRequest CreateCertificateProcessor java 147 at com netscape certsetup daemon InstallWizardDaemon processRe quest InstallWizardDaemon java 278 at com netscape certsetup daemon InstallWizardDaemon handleCon n InstallWizardDaemon java 258 at com netscape certsetup daemon InstallWizardDaemon run Insta llWizardDaemon java 191 at com netscape certsetup daemon InstallWizardDaemon main Inst allWizardDaemon java 465 ErrorResponse Sent terminating null Key pairs are slowly accumulating on token from the kmu fancy UI I also tried to generate a key pair cert with the internal token but that doesn t work either Hangs forever Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 28 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s H
32. elm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 31 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Perhaps the driver detected something and interpreted some mechanical thermodynamic or electrical fluctuation as an attempt to enter codes on the PED keypad or as an attack and would time out or lock We don t know but we had more reliable performance once the PED keypad was removed A 2 5 Backup Recovery For true disaster recovery a LUNA installation will require duplicate PED readers PCI boards and token readers We only have one unit for evaluation so we cannot test a scenario involving different hardware The domain backup will require multiple token cards and PED keys Copies of the drivers and CMS must also be available Backup and recovery of a LUNA installation involves backing up the CMS installation using its internal backup procedures see Iplanet doc and nCipher below copying PED keys copying tokens Since the private keys never leave a LUNA token by conventional means tokens must be cloned beforehand shortly after the CA is configured is a good time since the token now contains the keys it uses in daily operations If these are changed then the cloned token must be updated too The LUNA token reader has two slots and is designed to handle cloning The procedures are described in chapter 6 of the Luna Planning Guide The clone or destination token must be initialized just
33. ens or smart cards to one party Giving decryption of tokens to a second party Given power of creation of tokens to a third party Assigning identities and specific roles to individual members and others outside the scope of this document 2 2 Types of Certificate Authorities We anticipate creating several different kinds of certificate authorities which may each require different patterns and security policies Our list is not complete there are many other configurations and others may be of interest to ESnet at a later date Some configurations under consideration today include An off line off net root self signed certificate authority which may not be used very often and which may be taken apart or even stored off site for long periods While never on the network the physical integrity of the components of this system is a serious issue A root CA of this type typically signs subordinate CA s If this root CA were stolen and duplicated rogue subordinate CA s could be created These CA s could hijack transitive trust expectations These rogue CA s could even be used to impersonate legitimate subordinates This root CA system would probably be secured in a safe in a physically secure location during its inactive periods An off network subordinate CA This CA signs end entity certificates but is disconnected from the network for security reasons In this case operators would have ready access to this system The phy
34. evice Configuration Device configuration involves creation of security world and creation of Admin Card Set ACS and Operator Card Set OCS ACS and OCS are sets of smart cards ACS is used for functions such as backup and restore OCS is used for other cryptographic functions such as key generation certificate creation and signing Security world creation will include the creation of the administration role cards ACS The basic procedures are described in the nShield manual The security world can be created with FIPS 140 1 level 3 compliance If the Security world is FIPS 140 1 level 3 compliant then OCS creation needs ACS authorization Otherwise OCS can be generated without any authorization But you need to have a hard server running with a security world for OCS generation It is possible to have an m of n admin card configuration Once the security world is in place with ACS then change the device state to operational I have learned that it was better to restart the hard server at this point and then proceed to OCS creation OCS creation is explained in the User Manual OCS can also be m of n configuration We can also have a persistent OCS Now the nCipher device is ready for CMS as an External Cryptographic Token We can install the PKCS 11 library and reference in the Iplanet security database Unlike the other devices we cannot install the nCipher PKCS 11 library at any time We must have a Security World ACS and OCS in pl
35. eys from compromise The FIPS 140 standard was written and is maintained by NIST and they certify testing authorities who test and rate HSM vendor products Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 8 ESNETPKI 007 CA Patterns ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 2 CA Patterns We identified a number of patterns or operational scenarios that were troublesome to us in various ways HSM evaluation included examination of the effect ofthe HSM on CA s operated in these ways or included evaluations of the positive and negative consequences an HSM had on these scenarios 2 1 Roles We identified three parties in our operation that influenced and could control how a CA would operate Systems administrators own and maintain all the computer systems hardware and software in ESnet All day to day operations and activities are dependent on their work They have physical access to all machines It might be better put that the technical services group decides how its personnel manages the ESnet computer systems This group also manages internal network resources PKI Project personnel developed the architecture installed the CA software configured and managed the CA and HSM and have advised network and systems personnel on details related to the PKI project computer systems Project members are also responsible for day to day activities of the CA services In other words this party knows too much They know the ins and outs of the
36. f the SO and User operations requires minimum of m keys along with the SO amp User keys Though the manual explains about these operations I got confused with the following message on PED device Do you wish to use a group PED key Y N and Are you duplicating the PED Key Y N So most of the time I had to back track the sequence to move forward This is because I had to deal with many numbers of keys in five different colors Sometimes I did overwrite the key with the new pin If you overwrite the key then you will not be able to access the associated objects stored in a token Probably those objects live in a token as garbage The Planning and Integration Guide doesn t have enough information about configuration for iPlanet CMS Apache and other products The enabler application does have options like activate token and deactivate token for external application Initially when I ran the enabler application it didn t show up those options I was able to fix this Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 46 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation problem with the help of Chrysalis Tech Support They replied in time for my queries I needed to include the following changes in Chrystoki conf configuration file Misc NetscapeCustomi ze 1023 AppIdMajor 2 AppIdMinor 4 Please note that you need to make changes to the file under etc folde
37. h it when the token problem has been resolved CMS restart triggers black user key request sequence on the PED reader but not reliably and too long a delay results in lock out failure It seems best to enable the token with enabler and start CMS separately There is no easy provision for some kind of automated start up The user keys do not need to be in the PED reader for normal operation Long hesitations in answering the request for the black key whether by the CA or by enabler are a bad thing The driver seems to time these out and then locks the unit it has to be deactivated reactivated and the process restarted Sometimes this doesn t work I also tested multiple CMS instances against a token This works the management user black key enabler of the token is completely separate from CMS and once the token is enabled the new instance of CMS can create keys and certificates However this instance s keys must have distinctly different friendly names from any other instance s keys We discovered a curious phenomenon related to the PED reader Once you have enabled the token ie had the black key or user m of n keys log in the keys can be put away And so can the PED reader We found that the PED reader should be removed after installation because over time its presence seemed to perturb the module somehow it appeared it would lock up and the CA would be unable to sign or do other operations H
38. he CMS key pair generation had failed with the following error message from the CMS log file RSA key length 2048 Token Error Keypair Generation failed on token Later on I came to learn that the 2048 bit key size was never supported Rainbow does have the driver for 2048 size but it wasn t approved by FIPS It also requires a cryptoSWIFT firmware upgrade Rainbow Tech support team requested the CMS distribution for themselves to simulate the problem I sent them the distribution but never got a response back from Rainbow Tech Support about this B 1 4 Backup Recovery I was able to do the backup as described in the manual However I was unable follow the recovery scheme as described Wrap key needs to be generated by SO in order to create the Backup The backup archive was a xxxx oar file with 3DES encryption using the Wrap key The Recovery operation requires the Rainbow HSM device new iKeys SO amp User and from the backup the xxxx oar blob and CODE xx iKeys The CODE xx keys are basically labeled as CODE SO and CODE USER The manual has the instructions about Split amp Combine operation of the Wrap key But it doesn t have enough information about the CODE xx iKeys and the Recovery Procedure Rainbow Sales Engineer responded to my query about the Recovery procedure The CODE SO and the CODE USER Keys are attached to the SO and User Roles and not the actual keys This means the same Wrap key and the Backup data can be du
39. his inactive CA might also be stolen and used When a CA is finished can we do a better job assuring everyone involved that it is really gone for good We think the HSM as a physical device may reduce the opportunity for unauditable or neglected duplications of the private key and eliminating the HSM or its tokens might be a way of guaranteeing the CA is incapable of signing any more certificates See the previous discussion for another viewpoint Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 12 ESNETPKI 007 ESnet Evaluation and Choice ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 3 ESnet Evaluation and Choice 3 1 Choice ESnet chose the nCipher product for its PKI project 3 2 Requirements 3 2 1 Security System security compromise does not endanger CA s private key defense against electronic or physical theft FIPS 140 level 2 or better Device generated keys not host generated No access to plaintext private key even by system administrators 2048 bit RSA key size 3 2 2 Operational Online CA Planet CMS 4 2 SP2 support PKCS 11 Solaris 8 sparc platform Acceptable to ESnet system administrators Adequate vendor support 3 3 Evaluation results There are only a limited number of HSM vendors on the market Our requirements eliminated some products The 2048 bit RSA key size was a requirement brought in by our collaboration with European Data Grid EDG CA s This grid requires a 2048 bit key size for certifi
40. iance is capable of booting up automatically and enabling access to the CA signing key Can we support a semi automatic configuration where operators can enable disable the CA signing key by providing removing a special token Most HSM products have a smart card component that could serve Can we provide staged or time based access orders signing requests approvals can be taken at any time but fulfillment signing only occurs in the presence of operators regular business hours An on line CA might be subject to network based attacks and the host or even the CA software might be compromised Is a key managed by an HSM a hardware object or a software component Replacing a CA s key pairs and all its certificates in the event of any suspected or proved compromise is a severe blow to a PKI and serious questions might be raised about the cost and efficiency or even the efficacy of this practice in a grid environment If the key pairs may be classified as hardware objects there may be many scenarios where compromise of a CA does not automatically result in replacement of the PKI The grid environments with which are involved are loosely coupled enterprises where distributed management is the rule and the middleware has been tuned to appeal to relying parties instead of or at the expense of central management and coordination One of the side effects of grid configuration is only minimal ability to revoke certificates reliably and this a
41. ical key the electrical contacts are in the key notches used as a portable access control device in compatible systems Different keys for different functions 4 1 5 Dock Reader Controller This is a PCI interface card which controls the DOCK reader 4 2 Utilities Tools 4 2 1 Enabler application Enabler as its name suggests enables other application programs and Luna token products to work together iPlanet CMS 4 2 sp2 uses the Luna token as a secure generator and repository for keys certificates and other data objects that are created and manipulated during the CMS configuration The enabler application has to initialize and activate the token for use by Planet CMS 4 2 sp2 Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 19 ESNETPKI 007 Chrysalis Luna CA3 ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Refer to the Luna PKI HSM installation Guide for detailed information See Luna CA Architecture on page 53 4 3 Hardware Management amp Developer Experience 4 3 1 Pros Installation and CMS configuration are relatively simple Private key is never copied from the Luna CA token to the host in any form enabler key management application gives complete control over the token Token authorization is controlled by Luna CA devices PIN PED keys and PED External application like Planet CMS don t need to manage this information This allows an m of n authorization before enabling Planet CMS access to the token Defau
42. ide the password OR pin when we come through an external application such as CMS At the same time this means anybody who has access to that machine can use the TOKEN for similar cryptographic function For example I could set up another CMS instance and still use the same token for the key pairs and certificate because I don t need to know any password OR pin to access the token Luna environment was too complicated to maintain particularly the different set of keys and their duplicates along with different passwords and PIN Two slots are available with the Token Reader We could opt for high availability token environment If the token in Slot one got corrupted then the application could use another token available on Slot two for cryptographic functions Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 48 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation B 3 NCipher nShield B 3 1 Hardware Software Installation I was not involved in the initial hardware token and software installation The driver installation of this nCipher is just like any other Solaris Package install The nCipher environment is called Security World and the hardserver is the heart of this world There are few command line utilities available under opt nfast bin folder to check the status of the security world and token status enquiry slotinfo and nfkminfo are a few of them B 3 2 D
43. ike smart cards It turned out that the associated reset utilities only work on certain old Windows operating systems like Windows 98 or NT 4 0 None of these are currently supported at ESnet or exist for that matter Windows 2000 and Windows XP weren t able to run these applications I was only able to reset these tokens because I have machines running these old operating systems at home The above events occurred around 01 June I gave this unit another try in mid September By this time we had had some progress on clearing up this problem and on getting the driver or firmware updated to handle creation and management of 2048 bit keys When problems occurred in CMS operation see below I tried rebuilding the service using the same admin secmod build that the other HSM s used without any change in behavior I had to re init the card and for this I had to use the administrator I Key This left the card in a state where it wanted to be reinitialized as soon as it was examined again which I did Curiously the I Keys seemed to remember and require their old passwords I thought that re initialization would clear them but apparently they are tied to the I Key device There is a nice password changing utility Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 27 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation This round or edition of the Cryptoswift software was even worse than the original
44. istent 2 Hand2 8 8 1 of 2 persistent I did a quite elaborate and complete service backup and recovery which included simulating recovering the CA service from a fresh install To some extent tt got a little tangled up with the OCS card recovery work e tarred up kmdata amp netscape server4 e did cmsbackup moved to var tmp e did config ldap backup moved to var tmp e did database backups of two Idap servers moved to var tmp e copied admin config to var tmp e stopped all the servers Forgot to copy slapd basic configs Then I moved kmdata amp netscape server4 and rebooted the server host Re installed Iplanet CMS with original download used parameters from backed up config files for ports and other config items e Restored the test pkil config directory e restarted Idap server e restarted admin server admin server has same config diff br config var tmp admin config config Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 38 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Only in var tmp admin config config secmod db diff config secmodule db No such file or directory setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH usr netscape server4 lib Built a fresh security module Shared bin modutil dbdir nocertdb create WARNING Performing this operation while the browser is running could cause corruption of your security databases If the browser is currently running
45. lar application and debatable due to the large impact of CMS JVM on host performance This consideration might be more important in some future development or use in a more demanding on line certificate authority service Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 15 ESNETPKI 007 ESnet Evaluation and Choice ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 3 3 6 ESnet review NCipher received a better review by our engineering staff The relative complexity of operations with Chrysalis and the custom input devices were not as well received as the simple nCipher card readers In order to evaluate the Chrysalis product we had to buy a unit for evaluation It wasn t possible to acquire a loaner or demonstration module We were not too happy with this arrangement Other vendors were willing to offer evaluation units not always their top level products 3 3 7 Summary Both nCipher and Chrysalis Luna are reasonable choices They both met our requirements We have some concerns about both companies as they are small and their market is obviously a very select one We remain interested in both nCipher was chosen because its operational characteristics and flexibility were felt to be a better match to our working environment at this time 3 4 Pattern evaluations HSM s cannot fulfill every feature of every pattern and scenario described but all the candidate products support many of the necessary features All implement roles in various wa
46. lt Timeout The HSM token will lock if expected operations don t complete in a timely fashion This prevents the unit from being inadvertently left in some maintenance state 4 3 2 Cons Complex PED Key management SO key User Key Domain Key Init Key amp m of n key Key management is not flexible Initialization is the only way to remove the content from the Luna Token Limitation on token s storage capacity 256 KB Volatile Memory Every CMS instance backup requires its own Luna token which is expensive 4 4 References Engineer from USPS Good experience with product on Solaris project completed and no longer in use VeriSign VeriSign has a long history with this company and is a Chrysalis shop Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 20 ESNETPKI 007 Rainbow CryptoSWIFT ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 5 Rainbow CryptoSWIFT The CryptoSwift HSM hardware security module is a FIPS 140 1 Level 3 compliant secure storage device The CryptoSwift HSM uses a secure hardware area that is protected against external tampering and any sensitive information that is transferred over the card s PCI bus is encrypted so that it never is exposed as plain text This device has a simpler workflow than the other products security of the product is highly dependent on securing the Key components See Rainbow Components on page 54 5 1 CryptoSwift Hardware Components 5 1 1 CryptoSwift card CyptoSwift HSM is a
47. luation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation On the other hand the architecture is complex The best way to deal with this is to take the minimum set from the architecture Storing the private keys on disk in the kmdata part of the security world is going to be hard to explain nCipher appears to use a hardware rather than a pseudo random number generator and these important keys are both generated and wrapped by 3DES keys based on the RNG but the disk copy of these keys is bound to make some people very nervous Security world management is very flexible Smart card management is unexpectedly more complex The cards are also somewhat prone to failure in my experience One has to invest in a lot of cards and duplicates At least one has an alternative source for these cards in Gemplus m of n is not possible for user operator keys in this service I do not understand why the nfast service needs a tcp port Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 42 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Appendix B Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience B 1 Rainbow CryptoSwift B 1 1 Hardware Software Installation I was not involved in the initial hardware token and software installation Driver installation from the CD seems to be simple like any other Solaris PKG install B 1 2 Device Configuration Device configuration was simple The Key Management Utility KMU
48. m sa a a k a n d a T n a im uY 20 5 RAINBOW CRY PTOS WIE T siscccsiccsdecccocsccetucctssesssecceesaccsdactvecsssstsectnssvsecteasssesceosvestecessesteseteceacsesses 21 5 1 CRYPTOSWIFT HARDWARE COMPONENTS n nn susunan 21 ILD SCrypioSwifl Crd asic spe aa k h EE 21 Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 2 ESNETPKI 007 Table of Contents ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation A EE 21 5 2 UTILITIES FOOLS ese eye E I E AE A eed bees testenedtebeeees tes diia 21 5 2 1 EMU application key management vlt 21 5 3 HARDWARE MANAGEMENT amp DEVELOPER ESPERIENCE n annassa 21 KEE E NEE 21 DL EN 21 5 4 REFERENCES iere 22 6 NCIPHER SECURITY WORLL 23 6 1 SECURITY WORLD COMPONENTS aeiaai wu h ili ua aaa 23 6 1 1 One or more nShield modules 23 6 1 2 Smart cards and smart card redder ocio 23 6 1 3 Encrypted data stored on host computer cccccecscceseeseseecnseeeceseeseesenseeseeseteesecnseescnseeseeaeeaes 23 6 2 UTILITIES TOOLS ncn ds oh nha aie ie ah die eins A E uuu 23 6 3 HARDWARE MANAGEMENT amp DEVELOPER ESPERIENCE n n nnnnaasassssa 24 E SRVOS ects aaah cA eee atas E E ad dc a ie e 24 E E EE 24 6 4 REFERENCES suitte A A aa a mapa a es 24 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY siicoscsccsuctusscscesssencsetucssdenssecosdussscotedeneseSugcodessvocuesesveseauesvanes SKEN eo io SE EEK ieo eo 25 7 1 VENDOR phh a e ea a a iea 25 7 2 STANDARDS a q 25 7 3 MISCEL
49. mpared to other products The generated key pairs are stored in the hard disk in a 3DES encrypted format Security world management is very flexible Smart card management is simple This could be because I haven t gone through replacing the OCS and ACS cards Though the Security World provides m of n keys for Operator Card Set it is not compatible with Planet CMS This could be resolved by using the with nfast command line utility This tool was basically like the enabler application with Luna We are working with nCipher Tech Support on this Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 51 ESNETPKI 007 HSM Pictures ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Appendix C HSM Pictures C 1 Luna CA Components Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 52 ESNETPKI 007 HSM Pictures ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation C 2 Luna CA Architecture Application Layer Libraries Low level Interface Helm amp Muruganantham Planet CMS Luna Library DIZ MOLH411 Firmware Luna CA Dock Luna CA Dock Reader September 2002 Page 53 ESNETPKI 007 HSM Pictures ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation C 3 Rainbow Components Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 54 ESNETPKI 007 HSM Pictures ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation C 4 Rainbow Architecture Planet CMS USB port Application T aver Cryptoki T ihrarv Libraries Firmwar
50. nsys 9 2 2 TYPES OF CERTIFICATE AUTHORITIES Sal n m Sa suas ia an desencanto geesde 10 2 3 DESTROYING ACCA os Goose hates cece odie Shee vice twats dw tte ani 11 3 ESNET EVALUATION AND CHOICE 13 3 1 CHOICE EE 13 3 2 REQUIREMENTS a ia 13 RN EE 13 3 22 Operational nka it EE 13 3 3 EVALUATION RESULTS tl Bakes 13 3 3 1 Management and operational considerations sete teee cee teseeuaeeaeeaeeeeeeaeeestees 14 3 3 2 Onmeda dt edil iii rias 14 3 3 3 EE 15 SITE PAN AAA 15 KE SE 15 IN IA A TN 16 33 7 A A ERE A RR 16 3 4 PATTERN EVALUATIONS siivecsdoclesoussuatistec akawa apupa taa haah a ayanta Zana 16 VENDOR EVALUATIONS uuu 1 centeno descceceesescesceseetsscbsesseduescedesectesvosceseetascssesceseedosectecsesseocases 17 4 CHRYSALIS LUNA GAS a A A ta 19 4 1 LUNA CA3 COMPONENTS Za n T Gal cduccdsdcesuatasdeccedeccedasdeddnceusutdeceasudivesececsneeds 19 AP Hardwa re Tokent uy ua n Qu Ee EE ee 19 4 1 2 Token reader Dock reader u a suan n n ua naqa W uwa hq au 19 41 3 Pin Entry Device PED u aa a asua l aaa aaa A 19 ALAC Pin Entry Dei ce EE 19 ALI Dock Reader Controller il Sium ana au kanaka ipsa un daqa RS 19 4 2 UTE OO e e ll qaqaia los aksa 19 421 TE 19 4 3 HARDWARE MANAGEMENT amp DEVELOPER BNXPERIEMCE a 20 4 3 1 ER ee ace Re SAG A EAE EE IER SbCl Ee 20 4 3 2 CA EC 20 4 4 REFERENCES ZZ I saa a naha hi
51. oduct Passwords are cached on the disk of a CMS server encrypted using the single sign on password which ordinarily is not on disk But one can operate without this password cache or one can try running the service with multiple operator crypto module passwords for example putting a unique password on each operator card or putting a bogus password in the password cache CMS will then try to do a password query from the console This wanted to present an X11 UI for password but some defect in it prevents it from using the X11 MIT authentication cookie and so the password query fails For the time being until this problem is investigated in CMS an operator card set is restricted to a single password it must match what s in the CMS password cache and the cache must be used There are some other possible configurations that weren t tried but this one works and avoids pitfalls I was able to bring up many instances of CMS with separate host SSL keys using RSA 1024 2048 and DSA 1024 keys and simultaneously do certificate operations with them 2048 bit SSL server key pairs worked quite well I did not test the limits of the SSL accelerator that this product includes The nfast hardserver daemon is critical If it exits the token seems to be logged out Restarting the daemon doesn t seem to be enough to restore the CMS to operational it seems to be necessary to restart CMS I chose to make the card sets persistent This wo
52. oing into the details of the iPlanet CMS software the registration manager and the certificate manager are meant to be on line services available to customers subscribers registration authority agents and administrators at all times The servers that support these functions are web servers adapted by the vendor to support these functions While some of these services can be operated off line off the net this is not an optimal configuration for the product nor is it practical for ESnet or the grid projects we are serving An on line web server has some serious security issues The web server may have configuration problems or internal defects that enable a compromise The underlying operating system may similarly be vulnerable Other support software or networking software in routine use in the LAN may become compromised and allow an attacker to gain privileges on the online CA The CA server may be subject to physical attack This kind of attack applies to any server whether it is online server or one kept off the network The server may be stolen or destroyed The disks may be physically removed and copied Input devices may be trojaned Personnel who have physical access to the server may be able to gain privileges on the CA Personnel who have physical access to server backups may be able to mount attacks on the CA private key Any successful hacking attack on a CA puts the CA signing key in jeopardy If the key is not encr
53. on ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 4 Introduction Computational grid projects are typically composed of diverse individuals and organizations These elements have different security environments and policies which must be made to work together if the grid in question is to work at all Projects and software developers have made a substantial investment in X 509 based public key infrastructure PKI technology in order to meet this requirement The infrastructure component of the X 509 PKI is the certificate and certificate management techniques X 509 was designed with the expectation that a small number of certificate signers certificate authorities or CA s would sign certificates for large numbers of subscribers Relying parties those with a resource on offer would trust the CA s to sign certificates under reasonable criteria proven identity or proven membership for example and would accept these subscribers keys because a trusted CA had signed it These key pairs might then be used as part of a login transaction including authentication and authorization steps The grid security paradigm separates the authentication and authorization steps Grid CA s for the most part provide a kind of identity certification the certificates are used to authenticate users User authorization is performed in a separate step Grid security depends on the integrity of these identity certificates however as these are
54. ould use in our Certificate Authority project in support of DOE Office of Sciences computational grids The investment DOE made in our project justified the time and expense of bringing this CA up to a higher standard of trustworthiness We were able to identify some usable products and selected nCipher for our use and this is described below The experience we went through may be of benefit to others and any discussion provoked by this report may be of benefit to us Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 5 ESNETPKI 007 Introduction ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 1 1 Scope of Problem The heart of the PKI is the Certificate Authority CA A certificate authority signs objects such as subscribers public keys these objects are then trusted by relying parties What that trust means is a matter left to the Certificate Policy CP document and the relying parties themselves and perhaps other agreements or statutory limitations The CA Signing Key is used to sign all certificates that are issued by that particular CA as well as certificate revocation lists CRLs and other objects The very foundation of the PKI is based on the integrity of that root key If the signing key is compromised all certificates and CRLs within that specific CA service are suspect and the Certificate Authority s overall credibility is brought into serious question In addition ESnet needs to run some of the CA services on line Without g
55. plicated to any number cryptoSWIFT for any SO and USER The SO and the USER needs to authorize the Combine Key amp Recovery operation I was able to restore the CMS and Rainbow environment successfully B 1 5 Customer Support Considering the problems solutions and tech support response as described above from my point of view the customer support was OK Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 44 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation B 1 6 Comments Very simple to install and configure Unit works fine for only 1024 key pair token We could consider this unit for Remote Registration Manager Remote Registration Manager is a special kind of entity and it doesn t need to have 2048 size key pair The two black split keys attached to the SO amp User roles instead of SO amp User is a surprise to know I am worried about the lifetime and the reliability of the USB base Keys Rainbow does not have the strategy to duplicate this Key and keep it in a safe vault If you lose the SO password then you cannot de initialize initialize the unit Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 45 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation B 2 Chrysalis Luna CA3 B 2 1 Hardware Software Installation I was not involved in the initial hardware token and software installation The driver installation of this Lun
56. pplies as much to CA certificates as to end entity certificates PGP has an analogous problem that might shed some light on our situation 2 3 Destroying a CA Typically a software based cryptographic module is used to store CA signing key pairs Example iPlanet CMS uses db files as mentioned elsewhere openssl uses a Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 11 ESNETPKI 007 CA Patterns ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation configuration file and specially encoded key files Backup and disaster recovery policies usually result in duplication of the private key either plaintext or encrypted and duplication of the private key s security key if used When a certificate authority ceases operation its signing key must be removed from service To insure this key is never used again at least during whatever validity remains to its signing certificate the corresponding private key could be destroyed Assurance that the private key s backup copies and security keys have been totally disabled and destroyed is quite difficult to achieve This situation is particularly difficult with self signed CA certificates with very long lifetimes The uncertainty period from cessation of operation to expiration of the signing certificate might be very long One paradoxical result might be to chose to keep the old CA keys but in an inactive state in order to defend against a possible duplication The CA operator must assume the risk that t
57. proprietary PCI card It has a serial port a Universal Serial Bus USB port and LED for indicating status The USB port is used for authentication and the initialization of the cryptographic authentication token a Rainbow iKey 5 1 2 iKey The Rainbow Technologies iKey is a smaller USB based cryptographic token that is used as part of the authentication process There are separate iKeys for two types of operator roles one for the Security Officer role SO and another for the User role 5 2 Utilities Tools 5 2 1 KMU application key management utility The KMU will allow users to interface with CryptoSwift and CryptoSwift HSM cards and other non CryptoSwift cards that comply with the PKCS 11 v 2 10 specification Refer to the CryptoSwift HSM user guide for detailed information See Rainbow Architecture on page 55 5 3 Hardware Management amp Developer Experience 5 3 1 Pros Simple install and configuration procedure Simple Key management SO key User Key and 2 factor authentication Key USB compatible Key for secure authentication 5 3 2 Cons Compatibility issue with iPlanet CMS 4 2 sp2 Limited support for m of n authorization in Key Management Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 21 ESNETPKI 007 Rainbow CryptoSWIFT ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Limited PKI algorithm and Key Size support Lifetime of the USB compatible Key is questionable 5 4 References None provided Helm amp
58. r usr luna etc is another folder where you can find a Chrystoki conf file but the application was using the file etc Chrystoki conf After these changes I was able to activate the token for CMS use This basically opens a session for a CMS application to connect via PKCS 11 library to do cryptographic operations This action requires PED device operation and subsequently it also requires USER key and USER PIN authorization The long hesitations in answering the request for the black key whether by the CA or by enabler are a bad thing The driver seems to time these out and then locks the unit it has to be deactivated reactivated and the process restarted Sometimes this doesn t work B 2 3 CMS Configuration and Operation CMS installation is in its initial phases identical to installation on a server without HSM Then I configured the Chrysalis PKCS 11 driver as an External Token with iPlanet CMS The Luna token must be activated before the CMS key generation event Once the Token is activated we can close the enabler application CMS internal key generation requires a password to be assigned to the signing key pair a mandatory field in the UI Since the enabler application opened up a session for CMS we don t have to provide the real Luna User password during the key pair generation But we need to give some bogus password because the CMS won t allow empty password I was able to continue the CMS configuration and genera
59. re install packages provide by Chrysalis on distribution CD Next ran usr luna bin lunadiag which provides a large number of tests of the module configuration A 2 3 Device Configuration Ran enabler to configure the module for use enabler is clearly a little dangerous since it can be used to reset the module Chose the initialization phase to reset the module and build a new configuration The UI for enabler is a simple text based menu of choices It is not clear that this application could be scripted Now must deal with FIVE 5 separate physical PED keys the little colored keys that look like baby toys The gray key is the token master and is used to re initialize the token The blue key is the SO Security Officer key and is used for ordinary administrative functions mainly user configuration The black key is the ordinary user key The red key is a domain key Why this had to be created is something of a Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 29 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation mystery but it has to do with key cloning The green keys are the m of n key sets These apply to both SO and user keys if configured I chose to do simple configurations and did not explore m of n or key cloning It is necessary to ask the enabler to refresh its configuration before doing any major work on the token If you ve manipulated the reader in any way such as
60. requires Java Runtime Environment 1 3 0 Please note that KMU graphical Interface shows up even with the lower version of JRE But it doesn t recognize any HSM device attached to the host First time Invocation of KMU starts the Initialization process of the Device Subsequently it leads to role management operations Security Officer and User setup The original unit has the capability to create key pairs up to 1024 bit keys B 1 3 CMS Configuration CMS installation is in its initial phases identical to installation on a server without HSM Rainbow PKCS 11 library has to be enabled as an External Token for CMS so that CMS can use the Rainbow Device The instructions were given in CMS installation manual And this is common for most of the HSM devices Finding the PKCS 11 driver library is important for this step I was able to run thru the rest of the CMS configuration I was able to create the Self Signed Root CA certificate and Self signed SSL certificate for my CMS instance Till this point I haven t encountered any problem OR any unusual instruction to follow The problem was with First Agent Cert As I doing the configuration I need to get a first Agent certificate so that I can approve other request I was able to get this Certificate installed with my Web browser successfully But the service was not able to authenticate this certificate as an Agent The web browser shows the following error message The server could not ve
61. rify your identity The CMS log file has the following error message File Access denied Failed to Authenticate java net SocketException Error in SSL handshake Peers certificate has an invalid signature This error message led me in the wrong direction I ran through the RootCA and SSL cert creation cycle again to make sure that I hadn t selected any unwanted extensions Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 43 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Also tried equating the HSM user password CMS token password and the Single Sign on password I also checked the file system permissions But none of these tries worked I couldn t find any information in the manual and the FAQ section On this occasion I lost the password and as a result the Keys got locked they are configured to lock after several unsuccessful password attempts I had to gave them to Mike to reset the iKeys Mike had installed the required software on his Win 98 machine which is the only platform on which these administrator utilities seem to work Rainbow Customer Support responded and they come up with a new driver I have received the FTP download information from the Rainbow Sales Engineer According to Mike s discussion with Rainbow I was informed I was under the impression that the new driver does support 2048 bit key t So I tried to complete the CMS install with 2048 key size T
62. sary and cynically we are all vulnerable to various forms of coercion or rubber hose cryptography HSM7 s may help us with some of the following scenarios A hacked on line CA server is not compromised Depending on the privileges extended an attacker may gain control of some CA services but cannot gain access to the private key The CA may be able to continue operation once the CA system is restored it may be possible to assess the compromise issues with earlier certificates without re initializing the entire PKI Privileges and access to the machine can be separated We exercise finer grained control over some signing operations or some configuration operations Physical access to the server does not elevate privileges A system administrator or a craft worker may have complete physical access to the machine but the HSM should eliminate this person s ability to gain control of the private key The product should defend itself from attacks and show evidence of attacks whether physical or electronic contrast to a disk file or bits in memory which might be copied on some systems without any audit trail NIST wrote a standard FIPS 140 1 now 2 to cover some of these security issues and vendors of interest build and test to this standard see below We chose to evaluate the ability of products to meet by technical means some requirements and support some scenarios typical of our working environment HSM s do no
63. see above for details I exercised the OCS duplication capability as well as I could I lacked sufficient cards to do a complex experiment such as changing the nature of the OCS card set adding more cards changing persistence value I lacked cards to do an administrative card recovery this is essentially replacement Here is the cardset after the creation of a new cardset all the keys originally started out in Hand1 and after using rocs they were migrated to Hand2 rocs gt list keys No Name App Protected by 1 caSigningCert cert MCr pkcsll Hand2 2 caSigningCert cert MCr pkcs1l module Hand2 3 ocspSigningCert cert MCr pkcsll Hand2 4 ocspSigningCert cert MCr pkcsll module Hand2 5 Server Cert cert MCr pkcs11 Hand2 6 Server Cert cert MCr pkcsll module Hand2 7 Remote Admin Server Cert pkcsll Hand2 8 Remote Admin Server Cert pkcs11 module Hand2 9 caSigningCert cert yoyo pkcs1l Hand2 10 caSigningCert cert yoyo pkcs1l module Hand2 11 ocspSigningCert cert yoy pkcs11 Hand2 12 ocspSigningCert cert yoy pkcsll module Hand2 13 Server Cert cert yoyo pkcsll Hand2 14 Server Cert cert yoyo pkcsll module Hand2 15 Remote Admin Server Cert pkcsll Hand2 Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 37 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 16 Remote Admin Server Cert pkcs11 module Hand2 rocs gt list cardsets No Name Keys recov Sharing 1 Handl 0 0 1 of 2 pers
64. sical security issues are greater for this configuration since the system would be more accessible to an attacker interested in hijacking keys compromising the system or trojaning the hardware or software The system may need to be in an office environment where physical access control is difficult more difficult than a computer server room An on line subordinate CA which supports on demand signing of certificate signing requests One form of this configuration is the typical iPlanet CMS configuration where customers use a web front end to post signing requests directly to the CA and signing agents use an authenticating front end to order the CA to sign these requests Another form might be an on line credential issuing appliance such as Globus proposed CAS service a subscriber logs in to the service with an accepted credential and then the server issues a Globus proxy certificate including some built in authorization extensions These servers have physical integrity issues comparable to any system in a computing facility The server room may have physical access controls but nevertheless many Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 10 ESNETPKI 007 CA Patterns ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation people may have incidental or occasional access to such a facility including systems administrators selected staff vendors craft workers and fire or public safety personnel In addition these servers will have long
65. starting refreshing the keys were listed I was able to create the first administrator cert but I was unable to use it When I would connect to the service s agent port I would get this error The server could not verify your identity Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 26 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation The CMS s log file says 12164 https conn 24 30 May 2002 15 57 03 GMT 08 00 4 0 Accepted client connection 12164 https conn 24 30 May 2002 15 57 03 GMT 08 00 4 0 Initialized connection from fionn es net 198 128 1 30 user agent null 12164 https conn 24 30 May 2002 15 57 13 GMT 08 00 4 1 File Access denied Failed to Authenticate java net SocketException Error in SSL handshake Peers certificate has an invalid signature Customer support was unable to help me shortly after this we lost contact with the company A few weeks later we learned our sales rep had left the company when a new sales rep contacted me These events had a couple of unusual side effects Because the error message suggests something is wrong and the most likely cause of it in non HSM environments would be a bad password we wound up killing the operator I Key by trying to log in with too many bad passwords This led me to explore Rainbow s token reset software This software resets the USB based tokens that Rainbow provides they function l
66. t completely satisfy these desires nor they are a complete security solution allowing us to forego policy access controls and other security methods 1 3 PKCS 11 PKCS 11 is a standard API and library used by iPlanet and other vendors of cryptographic products PKCS 11 is a set of standards documents describing an API called Cryptoki PKCS 11 isolates an application from the details of the cryptographic device thus the application must employ an interface for PKCS 1 1 compliant cryptographic devices usually provided by the device vendor analogous to a device driver The HSM device must carefully limit the cryptoki capability exposed to prevent plaintext transmission of the key data to the computer host as might be the mode of operation of an SSL accelerator board The iPlanet CMS application must be capable of using the HSM vendor s cryptoki library This means the vendor must provide a reasonable implementation must provide tools to interface the vendor s library to CMS and must have some understanding of the CMS product in order to support our implementation Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 7 ESNETPKI 007 Introduction ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 1 4 FIPS 140 1 levels To protect the PKI the keys must be stored and managed in a highly secure and tamper resistant hardware environment Current best practice is to use FIPS 140 1 level 3 hardware security modules to help protect private k
67. t pkcsll OO orn GA PF emee GA P k OH LO PA PO Fa CO LO OO O o N N Po 0 PP list cardsets No Name Keys recov 1 Hand 0 0 persistent 2 Hand2 8 8 persistent Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Protected by Hand2 module Hand2 module Hand2 module Hand2 module Hand2 module Hand2 module Hand2 module Hand2 module Monkey module Monkey module Monkey module Monkey module Sharing 1 of 2 lof 2 Hand2 Hand2 Hand2 Hand2 Hand2 Hand2 Hand2 Hand2 Monkey Monkey Monkey Monkey Page 36 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 3 Monkey 0 0 1 of 2 4 Monkey 4 4 1 of 2 persistent If the right card isn t present in the reader you get a single sign on error which seems like the wrong error message it s not the single sign on that s the problem It is possible to configure the operator cards to be persistent but to require a re login after a set time I didn t test this it is not clear how CMS would react to this configuration A 3 5 Backup Recovery For true disaster recovery an nCipher installation will require duplicate card readers and PCI boards We only have one unit for evaluation so we cannot test a scenario involving different hardware Quite a bit of time was spent studying the card backup problem
68. ted Key pair and certificate of 2048 bit key size with Luna Token After that I was able to generate the Agent certificate and sign a request The long hesitations in answering the request for the black user key whether by the CA or by enabler are a bad thing The driver seems to time these out and then locks the unit it has to be deactivated reactivated and the process restarted Sometimes this doesn t work I wanted to use the same token for another CMS instance but it didn t work The CMS throws an error saying Token was already found on the token So I had to reinitialize the token B 2 4 Backup and Recovery The backup procedure was explained in the iPlanet CMS manual I ran the cmsbackup utility for CMS backup For the Luna Token backup we need to clone the Token This Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 47 ESNETPKI 007 Dhiva s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation is because the enabler doesn t provide any function to export the token content in any form The Luna CA Token can be cloned for disaster recovery All the PED keys can also be duplicated for disaster recovery We must have the RED PED key to clone the token I did clone the Luna Token using the enabler application I named the backup token as spring The original token name was freeze Then I uninstalled the CMS software and Luna driver I started the recovery process with the backup token cms
69. term presence on the network and may employ a web server or other well known services as part of the customer interface We can reasonably expect that these services will be subject to attack and that vulnerabilities may exist that would allow an attacker to gain access or control of the host An on line registration manager RM This is a special service of Planet CMS that allows the signing authorization to be separated from the actual signing of the certificate In the Planet configuration the RM is a special trusted entity but does not actually sign the certificate itself The issues are nearly identical to those of the online CA The RM keys do not appear in any relying party s trust chain so replacing them is not as serious an operational problem as replacing a compromised CA s key In each of these cases we are also looking for opportunities to change the balance of control and increase the integrity of both the signing key and the key s uses These include Shared control of key generation copying destruction Shared access m of n to signing key usage operations Identity based access to signing key usage Our on line configurations are meant to run unattended for long periods We do not fully understand the trust and security implications of running a public CA online for a long period We are exploring different scenarios for controlling the problems that this seems to imply Can we support a scenario where an online appl
70. tham September 2002 Page 18 ESNETPKI 007 Chrysalis Luna CA3 ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation 4 Chrysalis Luna CA The Chrysalis ITS Luna CA safeguards digital key management by protecting keys in a hardware device and offloads sensitive operations from the CA server key generation verification storage signing and deletion remain safe from compromise See Luna CA Components on page 52 4 1 Luna CA3 Components The Luna CA product consists of rugged hardware components designed with security considerations in mind The private key is generated on the custom token and never appears on the host The signing key is essentially identical to this token and back ups of the private key are achieved by using special hardware and security components to clone one token to another 4 1 1 Hardware Tokens A proprietary hardware device that implements cryptographic functions and stores keys for use by suitably capable application programs 4 1 2 Token reader Dock reader A special purpose card reader device intended only for use with Luna Tokens Controlled by a proprietary PCI bus card Luna DOCK enhances the speed of token interactions and permits chaining of multiple units 4 1 3 Pin Entry Device PED A Personal Identification Number PIN Entry Device for use with Luna token products Requires the Luna DOCK Card Reader 4 1 4 Pin Entry Device Keys An electronically reprogrammable device in the shape of a phys
71. tions in the appendix Despite the great differences between the products it is difficult to choose between them The Luna product is simpler to explain the private key is managed in a separate device period NCipher has a more complicated story its security world where keys reside in encrypted form on hosts and careful design downloads these encrypted blobs to the cryptographic module in a secure fashion The Luna product because of its independence completely separates all the authorization functions from the application nCipher is partly integrated into CMS and relies on CMS UI to interface the smart card to the nShield board 3 3 1 Management and operational considerations Management and operational considerations distinguish the two products The nCipher product has fewer components and one of them the smart cards is available from a well known third party nCipher also has considerably more configuration choices The nCipher product security is completely dependent on these smart cards if the nShield board is stolen or the computer system is stolen the thief will not be able to use any of the keys without access to the appropriate card set On the other hand CA operations can resume with any available nShield board and a backup of key data and CMS data Disaster recovery recovery from a fire or other system loss is simple Luna backs up keys by cloning tokens additional tokens are quite expensive Providing eno
72. ugh redundancy to survive a fire token failure and similar contingencies would be more costly The Luna hardware modules are all custom or proprietary from the PED keys to the hardware tokens to the PCI board This leads us to consider the effect on our operations should the hardware vendor change business plans or go out of business It would be much more difficult for a small operation like ours to continue if the vendor s proprietary hardware was no longer available 3 3 2 On Line CA We require the ability to run an on line CA This requirement is probably also of interest to others in our community who are considering authentication gateways and authorization services of various kinds We are not sure if we can avoid 24 7 uptime requirements in the future as more dependence on CA services validity revocation checking appears Maintenance and unscheduled reboots need to be accommodated somehow There are cases where we would prefer the online CA to automatically reboot and restart the CA services in these scenarios we will trust that our physical access controls prevent unauthorized access to this service and allow the token to remain logged in nCipher has a slight advantage here in that a card can remain in the smart card reader and the system security world and CMS can be configured to log in automatically on reboot Based on our current understanding of the product we do not think that Luna offers this flexibility Luna on th
73. uldn t be the right choice under every circumstance but it may be useful for an online CA that expects only occasional reboots The card is used for the initial CMS start up and then it may be removed from the card reader and secured in a safe In fact the reader can be removed as well In the case Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 35 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation above where multiple instances ran some CMS instances used one card set and some used another all were configured as persistent cards and removed from the device after CMS start up Here is how the cardsets looked after that experiment rocs gt list keys No Name App caSigningCert cert MCr pkcs11 caSigningCert cert MCr pkcs11 ocspSigningCert cert MCr pkcs11 ocspSigningCert cert MCr pkcs11 Server Cert cert MCr pkcs11 Server Cert cert MCr pkcs11 Remote Admin Server Cert pkcs11 Remote Admin Server Cert pkcs1ll caSigningCert cert yoyo pkcs11 caSigningCert cert yoyo pkcs11 ocspSigningCert cert yoy pkcs11 ocspSigningCert cert yoy pkcsll Server Cert cert yoyo pkcs11 Server Cert cert yoyo pkcs11 Remote Admin Server Cert pkcsll Remote Admin Server Cert pkcs11 caSigningCert cert Monke pkcs11 caSigningCert cert Monke pkcs11 ocspSigningCert cert Mon pkcs11 ocspSigningCert cert Mon pkcs11 Server Cert cert Monkey pkcsll Server Cert cert Monkey pkcsll Remote Admin Server Cert pkcs11 Remote Admin Server Cer
74. unt aiii tu asas 43 BALI CMS Configurations as accuses shes eel Wels is ld rd 43 BLA Backup Recovery cases isle A A A Ra asc ede ee en acta eee ie 44 BLS Customer SHDDOTE s 2 aun it 44 BBO COMME A a E i a l m asp u E 45 B 2 CHRYSALIS BE 46 B 2 1 Hardware Software Installation ccccccccccccecsescecesseeseeseeeecuseesceseseeeceseeseeseceeecneeeeenseeseeaeeaes 46 B 2 2 D eytee Confienrgtiohr y aa uu a a A m a N Q a R erien unas is 46 B 2 3 CMS Configuration and Operation 47 LE 47 B 2 3 gt Customer Utada unu eles a ku NCI edi r au BNE bas be aka a 48 BDO gt COMMONS ii AA AA A A baad 48 B 3 NCIPHER NSHIELD i EE 49 B 3 1 Hardware Software Installation ccccccecccccesecssesenseesceseeseeecseveecuseeseeseeseeseceeecnseeeenseeseeseeaes 49 B 3 2 Device Configuration m Q u a E a aQ a Anasa E Na 49 B 3 3 CMS Configuration suu m au u am u a a a au aia 50 B i34 _Ba kup and ER 50 EE 51 BI20 COMME AS AA QA yaya 51 APPENDIX C HSM PICTURES 52 C 1 LUNA GA COMPONENTS ados 52 C 2 UNA CA ARCHITECTURE suicida EE 53 C 3 RAINBOW COMPONENTS oraren ae E Sa Q R E Sau u una 3 54 C 4 RAINBOW ARCHITECTURES isscciessocessscsagsdsesecceseosozeacsedycsosesdonaccetdeoonssedssasnanshtenses scenes einexssiee Sizes es 55 C 5 INGIPHER COMPONENTS A IS 56 C 6 NCIPHER OR E 57 Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 4 ESNETPKI 007 Introducti
75. vice will not erase admin cards from its own set without some special handling Once admin cards are all erased remaining OCS cards are useless they cannot be used and they cannot be erased and prepared for re use I managed to burn up quite a few cards before I realized Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 34 ESNETPKI 007 Mike s HSM Evaluation Experience ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation what was happening and we had to suspend testing for a few days while we acquired new cards We also learned that nCipher uses only a particular type of Gemplus card our old Gemplus 159 s from smart card experiments last year were rejected Note the installation process sets up the nfast hardserver daemon to start automatically on reboot A 3 4 CMS Configuration CMS installation is in its initial phases identical to installation on a server without HSM After the initial set of servers are in place the crypto engine and the PKCS 11 library for it must be enabled The instructions for this are elsewhere If the nfast or hardserver daemon is running and the PKCS 11 library and security module are configured then CMS can now be configured Do not chose to make a 4096 bit RSA key CMS 4 2 SP2 cannot handle a keysize gt 2048 bits Passwords Both the single sign on and the crypto module password are real the crypto module password must match the password of the operator card set This exposed a defect in the CMS pr
76. ypted it is difficult not to conclude that the CA is compromised Even if the key is encrypted the possibility exists that a plaintext exposure could occur because of trojanned software or other techniques or an attack on the key encryption itself The CA itself is finished at this point and can no longer be trusted to sign additional certificates or keys Community expectations do not allow for a graceful check pointing of this failure and the general expectation is that the CA and ALL of its certificates should be revoked The iPlanet Certificate Management System CMS 4 2 SP2 provides internal tokens for generating key pairs and certificates and these data are stored on a host machine in the Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 6 ESNETPKI 007 Introduction ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation form of db files keyX db and certX db CMS 4 2 SP2 also has provision to use PKCS 11 compatible external hardware tokens In case of external tokens the key pair are generated and stored in an external HSM device the db file maintains a reference to the HSM device See below for information on PKCS 11 1 2 What can we do We cannot solve every edge case problem by technical means For example it is possible that a vendor s software may be internally compromised The operating system software is not certified to be free from security risks our building site is not designed to be impervious to attack by a determined adver
77. ys FIPS 140 requirement but these roles are not an exact match for our organizational roles HSM s implement various controls and checkpoints that support the various kinds of CA s described Both vendors products result in a private key that is better described as a hardware device than a software object Many technical and operational issues remain no product offers a perfect solution for the online CA problem but we have improved the trustworthiness of our current deployment We have more confidence that we can remove an old CA from service with assurance that it cannot be recreated More work on these issues and protocol with the vendors is needed Some of the details pertaining to these patterns appears in the following sections where more in depth discussion of the vendor products and evaluations are to be found Helm amp Muruganantham September 2002 Page 16 ESNETPKI 007 Vendor Evaluations ESnet Hardware Security Module Evaluation Vendor Evaluations We evaluated three products the Chrysalis Luna CA Rainbow CryptoSWIFT and nCipher Security World the latter is the architecture name but the product must be analyzed as part of a whole system Each section describes the hardware and software components provides a picture of the hardware components provides a diagram of the architecture and summarizes evaluation experiences with a pros and cons list The full evaluation notes for the three products are in the appendix

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