title: TLS Encrypted Client Hello abbrev: TLS Encrypted Client Hello docname: draft-ietf-tls-esni-latest category: std
ipr: trust200902 area: General workgroup: tls keyword: Internet-Draft
stand_alone: yes pi: [toc, sortrefs, symrefs]
ins: E. Rescorla
name: Eric Rescorla
organization: RTFM, Inc.
email: ekr@rtfm.com
-
ins: K. Oku name: Kazuho Oku organization: Fastly email: kazuhooku@gmail.com -
ins: N. Sullivan name: Nick Sullivan organization: Cloudflare email: nick@cloudflare.com -
ins: C. A. Wood name: Christopher A. Wood organization: Cloudflare email: caw@heapingbits.net
normative: RFC2119: RFC7918:
informative: WHATWG-IPV4: title: "URL Living Standard - IPv4 Parser" target: https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#concept-ipv4-parser date: May 2021 ECH-Analysis: title: "A Symbolic Analysis of Privacy for TLS 1.3 with Encrypted Client Hello" date: November 2022 authors: - ins: K. Bhargavan org: Inria - ins: V. Cheval org: Inria - ins: C. Wood org: Cloudflare
--- abstract
This document describes a mechanism in Transport Layer Security (TLS) for encrypting a ClientHello message under a server public key.
--- middle
DISCLAIMER: This draft is work-in-progress and has not yet seen significant (or really any) security analysis. It should not be used as a basis for building production systems. This published version of the draft has been designated an "implementation draft" for testing and interop purposes.
Although TLS 1.3 {{!RFC8446}} encrypts most of the handshake, including the server certificate, there are several ways in which an on-path attacker can learn private information about the connection. The plaintext Server Name Indication (SNI) extension in ClientHello messages, which leaks the target domain for a given connection, is perhaps the most sensitive, unencrypted information in TLS 1.3.
The target domain may also be visible through other channels, such as plaintext client DNS queries or visible server IP addresses. However, DoH {{?RFC8484}} and DPRIVE {{?RFC7858}} {{?RFC8094}} provide mechanisms for clients to conceal DNS lookups from network inspection, and many TLS servers host multiple domains on the same IP address. Private origins may also be deployed behind a common provider, such as a reverse proxy. In such environments, the SNI remains the primary explicit signal used to determine the server's identity.
This document specifies a new TLS extension, called Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), that allows clients to encrypt their ClientHello to such a deployment. This protects the SNI and other potentially sensitive fields, such as the ALPN list {{?RFC7301}}. Co-located servers with consistent externally visible TLS configurations, including supported versions and cipher suites, form an anonymity set. Usage of this mechanism reveals that a client is connecting to a particular service provider, but does not reveal which server from the anonymity set terminates the connection.
ECH is only supported with (D)TLS 1.3 {{!RFC8446}} and newer versions of the protocol.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 {{RFC2119}} {{!RFC8174}} when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here. All TLS notation comes from {{RFC8446, Section 3}}.
This protocol is designed to operate in one of two topologies illustrated below, which we call "Shared Mode" and "Split Mode".
+---------------------+
| |
| 2001:DB8::1111 |
| |
Client <-----> | private.example.org |
| |
| public.example.com |
| |
+---------------------+
Server
(Client-Facing and Backend Combined)
{: #shared-mode title="Shared Mode Topology"}
In Shared Mode, the provider is the origin server for all the domains whose DNS records point to it. In this mode, the TLS connection is terminated by the provider.
+--------------------+ +---------------------+
| | | |
| 2001:DB8::1111 | | 2001:DB8::EEEE |
Client <----------------------------->| |
| public.example.com | | private.example.com |
| | | |
+--------------------+ +---------------------+
Client-Facing Server Backend Server
{: #split-mode title="Split Mode Topology"}
In Split Mode, the provider is not the origin server for private domains. Rather, the DNS records for private domains point to the provider, and the provider's server relays the connection back to the origin server, who terminates the TLS connection with the client. Importantly, the service provider does not have access to the plaintext of the connection beyond the unencrypted portions of the handshake.
In the remainder of this document, we will refer to the ECH-service provider as the "client-facing server" and to the TLS terminator as the "backend server". These are the same entity in Shared Mode, but in Split Mode, the client-facing and backend servers are physically separated.
A client-facing server enables ECH by publishing an ECH configuration, which is an encryption public key and associated metadata. The server must publish this for all the domains it serves via Shared or Split Mode. This document defines the ECH configuration's format, but delegates DNS publication details to {{!HTTPS-RR=I-D.ietf-dnsop-svcb-https}}. Other delivery mechanisms are also possible. For example, the client may have the ECH configuration preconfigured.
When a client wants to establish a TLS session with some backend server, it constructs a private ClientHello, referred to as the ClientHelloInner. The client then constructs a public ClientHello, referred to as the ClientHelloOuter. The ClientHelloOuter contains innocuous values for sensitive extensions and an "encrypted_client_hello" extension ({{encrypted-client-hello}}), which carries the encrypted ClientHelloInner. Finally, the client sends ClientHelloOuter to the server.
The server takes one of the following actions:
- If it does not support ECH or cannot decrypt the extension, it completes the handshake with ClientHelloOuter. This is referred to as rejecting ECH.
- If it successfully decrypts the extension, it forwards the ClientHelloInner to the backend server, which completes the handshake. This is referred to as accepting ECH.
Upon receiving the server's response, the client determines whether or not ECH was accepted ({{determining-ech-acceptance}}) and proceeds with the handshake accordingly. When ECH is rejected, the resulting connection is not usable by the client for application data. Instead, ECH rejection allows the client to retry with up-to-date configuration ({{rejected-ech}}).
The primary goal of ECH is to ensure that connections to servers in the same anonymity set are indistinguishable from one another. Moreover, it should achieve this goal without affecting any existing security properties of TLS 1.3. See {{goals}} for more details about the ECH security and privacy goals.
ECH uses HPKE for public key encryption {{!I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke}}.
The ECH configuration is defined by the following ECHConfig structure.
opaque HpkePublicKey<1..2^16-1>;
uint16 HpkeKemId; // Defined in I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke
uint16 HpkeKdfId; // Defined in I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke
uint16 HpkeAeadId; // Defined in I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke
struct {
HpkeKdfId kdf_id;
HpkeAeadId aead_id;
} HpkeSymmetricCipherSuite;
struct {
uint8 config_id;
HpkeKemId kem_id;
HpkePublicKey public_key;
HpkeSymmetricCipherSuite cipher_suites<4..2^16-4>;
} HpkeKeyConfig;
struct {
HpkeKeyConfig key_config;
uint8 maximum_name_length;
opaque public_name<1..255>;
Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>;
} ECHConfigContents;
struct {
uint16 version;
uint16 length;
select (ECHConfig.version) {
case 0xfe0d: ECHConfigContents contents;
}
} ECHConfig;
The structure contains the following fields:
version
: The version of ECH for which this configuration is used. Beginning with
draft-08, the version is the same as the code point for the
"encrypted_client_hello" extension. Clients MUST ignore any ECHConfig
structure with a version they do not support.
length : The length, in bytes, of the next field. This length field allows implementations to skip over the elements in such a list where they cannot parse the specific version of ECHConfig.
contents
: An opaque byte string whose contents depend on the version. For this
specification, the contents are an ECHConfigContents structure.
The ECHConfigContents structure contains the following fields:
key_config
: A HpkeKeyConfig structure carrying the configuration information associated
with the HPKE public key. Note that this structure contains the config_id
field, which applies to the entire ECHConfigContents.
maximum_name_length : The longest name of a backend server, if known. If not known, this value can be set to zero. It is used to compute padding ({{padding}}) and does not constrain server name lengths. Names may exceed this length if, e.g., the server uses wildcard names or added new names to the anonymity set.
public_name : The DNS name of the client-facing server, i.e., the entity trusted to update the ECH configuration. This is used to correct misconfigured clients, as described in {{rejected-ech}}.
: Clients MUST ignore any ECHConfig structure whose public_name is not
parsable as a dot-separated sequence of LDH labels, as defined in
{{!RFC5890, Section 2.3.1}} or which begins or end with an ASCII dot.
: Clients SHOULD ignore the ECHConfig if it contains an encoded IPv4 address.
To determine if a public_name value is an IPv4 address, clients can invoke the
IPv4 parser algorithm in {{WHATWG-IPV4}}. It returns a value when the input is
an IPv4 address.
: See {{auth-public-name}} for how the client interprets and validates the public_name.
extensions : A list of extensions that the client must take into consideration when generating a ClientHello message. These are described below ({{config-extensions}}).
[[OPEN ISSUE: determine if clients should enforce a 63-octet label limit for public_name]] [[OPEN ISSUE: fix reference to WHATWG-IPV4]]
The HpkeKeyConfig structure contains the following fields:
config_id : A one-byte identifier for the given HPKE key configuration. This is used by clients to indicate the key used for ClientHello encryption. {{config-ids}} describes how client-facing servers allocate this value.
kem_id
: The HPKE KEM identifier corresponding to public_key. Clients MUST ignore any
ECHConfig structure with a key using a KEM they do not support.
public_key : The HPKE public key used by the client to encrypt ClientHelloInner.
cipher_suites : The list of HPKE KDF and AEAD identifier pairs clients can use for encrypting ClientHelloInner. See {{real-ech}} for how clients choose from this list.
The client-facing server advertises a sequence of ECH configurations to clients, serialized as follows.
ECHConfig ECHConfigList<1..2^16-1>;
The ECHConfigList structure contains one or more ECHConfig structures in
decreasing order of preference. This allows a server to support multiple
versions of ECH and multiple sets of ECH parameters.
A client-facing server has a set of known ECHConfig values, with corresponding private keys. This set SHOULD contain the currently published values, as well as previous values that may still be in use, since clients may cache DNS records up to a TTL or longer.
{{client-facing-server}} describes a trial decryption process for decrypting the
ClientHello. This can impact performance when the client-facing server maintains
many known ECHConfig values. To avoid this, the client-facing server SHOULD
allocate distinct config_id values for each ECHConfig in its known set. The
RECOMMENDED strategy is via rejection sampling, i.e., to randomly select
config_id repeatedly until it does not match any known ECHConfig.
It is not necessary for config_id values across different client-facing
servers to be distinct. A backend server may be hosted behind two different
client-facing servers with colliding config_id values without any performance
impact. Values may also be reused if the previous ECHConfig is no longer in the
known set.
ECH configuration extensions are used to provide room for additional functionality as needed. See {{config-extensions-guidance}} for guidance on which types of extensions are appropriate for this structure.
The format is as defined in {{RFC8446, Section 4.2}}. The same interpretation rules apply: extensions MAY appear in any order, but there MUST NOT be more than one extension of the same type in the extensions block. An extension can be tagged as mandatory by using an extension type codepoint with the high order bit set to 1.
Clients MUST parse the extension list and check for unsupported mandatory
extensions. If an unsupported mandatory extension is present, clients MUST
ignore the ECHConfig.
To offer ECH, the client sends an "encrypted_client_hello" extension in the ClientHelloOuter. When it does, it MUST also send the extension in ClientHelloInner.
enum {
encrypted_client_hello(0xfe0d), (65535)
} ExtensionType;
The payload of the extension has the following structure:
enum { outer(0), inner(1) } ECHClientHelloType;
struct {
ECHClientHelloType type;
select (ECHClientHello.type) {
case outer:
HpkeSymmetricCipherSuite cipher_suite;
uint8 config_id;
opaque enc<0..2^16-1>;
opaque payload<1..2^16-1>;
case inner:
Empty;
};
} ECHClientHello;
The outer extension uses the outer variant and the inner extension uses the
inner variant. The inner extension has an empty payload. The outer
extension has the following fields:
config_id : The ECHConfigContents.key_config.config_id for the chosen ECHConfig.
cipher_suite
: The cipher suite used to encrypt ClientHelloInner. This MUST match a value
provided in the corresponding ECHConfigContents.cipher_suites list.
enc
: The HPKE encapsulated key, used by servers to decrypt the corresponding
payload field. This field is empty in a ClientHelloOuter sent in response to
HelloRetryRequest.
payload : The serialized and encrypted ClientHelloInner structure, encrypted using HPKE as described in {{real-ech}}.
When a client offers the outer version of an "encrypted_client_hello"
extension, the server MAY include an "encrypted_client_hello" extension in its
EncryptedExtensions message, as described in {{client-facing-server}}, with the
following payload:
struct {
ECHConfigList retry_configs;
} ECHEncryptedExtensions;
The response is valid only when the server used the ClientHelloOuter. If the
server sent this extension in response to the inner variant, then the client
MUST abort with an "unsupported_extension" alert.
retry_configs : An ECHConfigList structure containing one or more ECHConfig structures, in decreasing order of preference, to be used by the client as described in {{rejected-ech}}. These are known as the server's "retry configurations".
Finally, when the client offers the "encrypted_client_hello", if the payload is
the inner variant and the server responds with HelloRetryRequest, it MUST
include an "encrypted_client_hello" extension with the following payload:
struct {
opaque confirmation[8];
} ECHHelloRetryRequest;
The value of ECHHelloRetryRequest.confirmation is set to
hrr_accept_confirmation as described in {{backend-server-hrr}}.
This document also defines the "ech_required" alert, which the client MUST send when it offered an "encrypted_client_hello" extension that was not accepted by the server. (See {{alerts}}.)
Before encrypting, the client pads and optionally compresses ClientHelloInner into a EncodedClientHelloInner structure, defined below:
struct {
ClientHello client_hello;
uint8 zeros[length_of_padding];
} EncodedClientHelloInner;
The client_hello field is computed by first making a copy of ClientHelloInner
and setting the legacy_session_id field to the empty string. Note this field
uses the ClientHello structure, defined in {{Section 4.1.2 of RFC8446}} which
does not include the Handshake structure's four byte header. The zeros field
MUST be all zeroes.
Repeating large extensions, such as "key_share" with post-quantum algorithms, between ClientHelloInner and ClientHelloOuter can lead to excessive size. To reduce the size impact, the client MAY substitute extensions which it knows will be duplicated in ClientHelloOuter. It does so by removing and replacing extensions from EncodedClientHelloInner with a single "ech_outer_extensions" extension, defined as follows:
enum {
ech_outer_extensions(0xfd00), (65535)
} ExtensionType;
ExtensionType OuterExtensions<2..254>;
OuterExtensions contains the removed ExtensionType values. Each value references the matching extension in ClientHelloOuter. The values MUST be ordered contiguously in ClientHelloInner, and the "ech_outer_extensions" extension MUST be inserted in the corresponding position in EncodedClientHelloInner. Additionally, the extensions MUST appear in ClientHelloOuter in the same relative order. However, there is no requirement that they be contiguous. For example, OuterExtensions may contain extensions A, B, C, while ClientHelloOuter contains extensions A, D, B, C, E, F.
The "ech_outer_extensions" extension can only be included in EncodedClientHelloInner, and MUST NOT appear in either ClientHelloOuter or ClientHelloInner.
Finally, the client pads the message by setting the zeros field to a byte
string whose contents are all zeros and whose length is the amount of padding
to add. {{padding}} describes a recommended padding scheme.
The client-facing server computes ClientHelloInner by reversing this process.
First it parses EncodedClientHelloInner, interpreting all bytes after
client_hello as padding. If any padding byte is non-zero, the server MUST
abort the connection with an "illegal_parameter" alert.
Next it makes a copy of the client_hello field and copies the
legacy_session_id field from ClientHelloOuter. It then looks for an
"ech_outer_extensions" extension. If found, it replaces the extension with the
corresponding sequence of extensions in the ClientHelloOuter. The server MUST
abort the connection with an "illegal_parameter" alert if any of the following
are true:
-
Any referenced extension is missing in ClientHelloOuter.
-
Any extension is referenced in OuterExtensions more than once.
-
"encrypted_client_hello" is referenced in OuterExtensions.
-
The extensions in ClientHelloOuter corresponding to those in OuterExtensions do not occur in the same order.
These requirements prevent an attacker from performing a packet amplification attack, by crafting a ClientHelloOuter which decompresses to a much larger ClientHelloInner. This is discussed further in {{decompression-amp}}.
Implementations SHOULD bound the time to compute a ClientHelloInner proportionally to the ClientHelloOuter size. If the cost is disproportionately large, a malicious client could exploit this in a denial of service attack. {{linear-outer-extensions}} describes a linear-time procedure that may be used for this purpose.
To prevent a network attacker from modifying the reconstructed ClientHelloInner
(see {{flow-clienthello-malleability}}), ECH authenticates ClientHelloOuter by
passing ClientHelloOuterAAD as the associated data for HPKE sealing and opening
operations. The ClientHelloOuterAAD is a serialized ClientHello structure,
defined in {{Section 4.1.2 of RFC8446}}, which matches the ClientHelloOuter
except the payload field of the "encrypted_client_hello" is replaced with a
byte string of the same length but whose contents are zeros. This value does
not include the four-byte header from the Handshake structure.
The client follows the procedure in {{encrypting-clienthello}} to first
construct ClientHelloOuterAAD with a placeholder payload field, then replace
the field with the encrypted value to compute ClientHelloOuter.
The server then receives ClientHelloOuter and computes ClientHelloOuterAAD by
making a copy and replacing the portion corresponding to the payload field
with zeros.
The payload and the placeholder strings have the same length, so it is not necessary for either side to recompute length prefixes when applying the above transformations.
The decompression process in {{encoding-inner}} forbids "encrypted_client_hello" in OuterExtensions. This ensures the unauthenticated portion of ClientHelloOuter is not incorporated into ClientHelloInner.
Clients that implement the ECH extension behave in one of two ways: either they offer a real ECH extension, as described in {{real-ech}}; or they send a GREASE ECH extension, as described in {{grease-ech}}. Clients of the latter type do not negotiate ECH. Instead, they generate a dummy ECH extension that is ignored by the server. (See {{dont-stick-out}} for an explanation.) The client offers ECH if it is in possession of a compatible ECH configuration and sends GREASE ECH otherwise.
To offer ECH, the client first chooses a suitable ECHConfig from the server's
ECHConfigList. To determine if a given ECHConfig is suitable, it checks that
it supports the KEM algorithm identified by ECHConfig.contents.kem_id, at
least one KDF/AEAD algorithm identified by ECHConfig.contents.cipher_suites,
and the version of ECH indicated by ECHConfig.contents.version. Once a
suitable configuration is found, the client selects the cipher suite it will
use for encryption. It MUST NOT choose a cipher suite or version not advertised
by the configuration. If no compatible configuration is found, then the client
SHOULD proceed as described in {{grease-ech}}.
Next, the client constructs the ClientHelloInner message just as it does a standard ClientHello, with the exception of the following rules:
- It MUST NOT offer to negotiate TLS 1.2 or below. This is necessary to ensure the backend server does not negotiate a TLS version that is incompatible with ECH.
- It MUST NOT offer to resume any session for TLS 1.2 and below.
- If it intends to compress any extensions (see {{encoding-inner}}), it MUST order those extensions consecutively.
- It MUST include the "encrypted_client_hello" extension of type
inneras described in {{encrypted-client-hello}}. (This requirement is not applicable when the "encrypted_client_hello" extension is generated as described in {{grease-ech}}.)
The client then constructs EncodedClientHelloInner as described in
{{encoding-inner}}. It also computes an HPKE encryption context and enc value
as:
pkR = DeserializePublicKey(ECHConfig.contents.public_key)
enc, context = SetupBaseS(pkR,
"tls ech" || 0x00 || ECHConfig)
Next, it constructs a partial ClientHelloOuterAAD as it does a standard ClientHello, with the exception of the following rules:
- It MUST offer to negotiate TLS 1.3 or above.
- If it compressed any extensions in EncodedClientHelloInner, it MUST copy the corresponding extensions from ClientHelloInner. The copied extensions additionally MUST be in the same relative order as in ClientHelloInner.
- It MUST copy the legacy_session_id field from ClientHelloInner. This allows the server to echo the correct session ID for TLS 1.3's compatibility mode (see Appendix D.4 of {{RFC8446}}) when ECH is negotiated.
- It MAY copy any other field from the ClientHelloInner except ClientHelloInner.random. Instead, It MUST generate a fresh ClientHelloOuter.random using a secure random number generator. (See {{flow-client-reaction}}.)
- The value of
ECHConfig.contents.public_nameMUST be placed in the "server_name" extension. - When the client offers the "pre_shared_key" extension in ClientHelloInner, it SHOULD also include a GREASE "pre_shared_key" extension in ClientHelloOuter, generated in the manner described in {{grease-psk}}. The client MUST NOT use this extension to advertise a PSK to the client-facing server. (See {{flow-clienthello-malleability}}.) When the client includes a GREASE "pre_shared_key" extension, it MUST also copy the "psk_key_exchange_modes" from the ClientHelloInner into the ClientHelloOuter.
- When the client offers the "early_data" extension in ClientHelloInner, it MUST also include the "early_data" extension in ClientHelloOuter. This allows servers that reject ECH and use ClientHelloOuter to safely ignore any early data sent by the client per {{RFC8446, Section 4.2.10}}.
Note that these rules may change in the presence of an application profile specifying otherwise.
The client might duplicate non-sensitive extensions in both messages. However, implementations need to take care to ensure that sensitive extensions are not offered in the ClientHelloOuter. See {{outer-clienthello}} for additional guidance.
Finally, the client encrypts the EncodedClientHelloInner with the above values, as described in {{encrypting-clienthello}}, to construct a ClientHelloOuter. It sends this to the server, and processes the response as described in {{determining-ech-acceptance}}.
Given an EncodedClientHelloInner, an HPKE encryption context and enc value,
and a partial ClientHelloOuterAAD, the client constructs a ClientHelloOuter as
follows.
First, the client determines the length L of encrypting EncodedClientHelloInner with the selected HPKE AEAD. This is typically the sum of the plaintext length and the AEAD tag length. The client then completes the ClientHelloOuterAAD with an "encrypted_client_hello" extension. This extension value contains the outer variant of ECHClientHello with the following fields:
config_id, the identifier corresponding to the chosen ECHConfig structure;cipher_suite, the client's chosen cipher suite;enc, as given above; andpayload, a placeholder byte string containing L zeros.
If configuration identifiers (see {{ignored-configs}}) are to be ignored,
config_id SHOULD be set to a randomly generated byte in the first
ClientHelloOuter and, in the event of HRR, MUST be left unchanged for
the second ClientHelloOuter.
The client serializes this structure to construct the ClientHelloOuterAAD. It then computes the final payload as:
final_payload = context.Seal(ClientHelloOuterAAD,
EncodedClientHelloInner)
Finally, the client replaces payload with final_payload to obtain
ClientHelloOuter. The two values have the same length, so it is not necessary
to recompute length prefixes in the serialized structure.
Note this construction requires the "encrypted_client_hello" be computed after all other extensions. This is possible because the ClientHelloOuter's "pre_shared_key" extension is either omitted, or uses a random binder ({{grease-psk}}).
When offering ECH, the client is not permitted to advertise PSK identities in the ClientHelloOuter. However, the client can send a "pre_shared_key" extension in the ClientHelloInner. In this case, when resuming a session with the client, the backend server sends a "pre_shared_key" extension in its ServerHello. This would appear to a network observer as if the the server were sending this extension without solicitation, which would violate the extension rules described in {{RFC8446}}. Sending a GREASE "pre_shared_key" extension in the ClientHelloOuter makes it appear to the network as if the extension were negotiated properly.
The client generates the extension payload by constructing an OfferedPsks
structure (see {{RFC8446, Section 4.2.11}}) as follows. For each PSK identity
advertised in the ClientHelloInner, the client generates a random PSK identity
with the same length. It also generates a random, 32-bit, unsigned integer to
use as the obfuscated_ticket_age. Likewise, for each inner PSK binder, the
client generates a random string of the same length.
Per the rules of {{real-ech}}, the server is not permitted to resume a connection in the outer handshake. If ECH is rejected and the client-facing server replies with a "pre_shared_key" extension in its ServerHello, then the client MUST abort the handshake with an "illegal_parameter" alert.
This section describes a deterministic padding mechanism based on the following observation: individual extensions can reveal sensitive information through their length. Thus, each extension in the inner ClientHello may require different amounts of padding. This padding may be fully determined by the client's configuration or may require server input.
By way of example, clients typically support a small number of application profiles. For instance, a browser might support HTTP with ALPN values ["http/1.1", "h2"] and WebRTC media with ALPNs ["webrtc", "c-webrtc"]. Clients SHOULD pad this extension by rounding up to the total size of the longest ALPN extension across all application profiles. The target padding length of most ClientHello extensions can be computed in this way.
In contrast, clients do not know the longest SNI value in the client-facing
server's anonymity set without server input. Clients SHOULD use the ECHConfig's
maximum_name_length field as follows, where L is the maximum_name_length
value.
- If the ClientHelloInner contained a "server_name" extension with a name of length D, add max(0, L - D) bytes of padding.
- If the ClientHelloInner did not contain a "server_name" extension (e.g., if the client is connecting to an IP address), add L + 9 bytes of padding. This is the length of a "server_name" extension with an L-byte name.
Finally, the client SHOULD pad the entire message as follows:
- Let L be the length of the EncodedClientHelloInner with all the padding computed so far.
- Let N = 31 - ((L - 1) % 32) and add N bytes of padding.
This rounds the length of EncodedClientHelloInner up to a multiple of 32 bytes, reducing the set of possible lengths across all clients.
In addition to padding ClientHelloInner, clients and servers will also need to pad all other handshake messages that have sensitive-length fields. For example, if a client proposes ALPN values in ClientHelloInner, the server-selected value will be returned in an EncryptedExtension, so that handshake message also needs to be padded using TLS record layer padding.
As described in {{server-behavior}}, the server may either accept ECH and use ClientHelloInner or reject it and use ClientHelloOuter. This is determined by the server's initial message.
If the message does not negotiate TLS 1.3 or higher, the server has rejected ECH. Otherwise, it is either a ServerHello or HelloRetryRequest.
If the message is a ServerHello, the client computes accept_confirmation as
described in {{backend-server}}. If this value matches the last 8 bytes of
ServerHello.random, the server has accepted ECH. Otherwise, it has rejected
ECH.
If the message is a HelloRetryRequest, the client checks for the
"encrypted_client_hello" extension. If none is found, the server has rejected
ECH. Otherwise, if it has a length other than 8, the client aborts the handshake
with a "decode_error" alert. Otherwise, the client computes
hrr_accept_confirmation as described in {{backend-server-hrr}}. If this value
matches the extension payload, the server has accepted ECH. Otherwise, it has
rejected ECH.
[[OPEN ISSUE: Depending on what we do for issue#450, it may be appropriate to change the client behavior if the HRR extension is present but with the wrong value.]]
If the server accepts ECH, the client handshakes with ClientHelloInner as described in {{accepted-ech}}. Otherwise, the client handshakes with ClientHelloOuter as described in {{rejected-ech}}.
If the server accepts ECH, the client proceeds with the connection as in {{RFC8446}}, with the following modifications:
The client behaves as if it had sent ClientHelloInner as the ClientHello. That is, it evaluates the handshake using the ClientHelloInner's preferences, and, when computing the transcript hash ({{Section 4.4.1 of RFC8446}}), it uses ClientHelloInner as the first ClientHello.
If the server responds with a HelloRetryRequest, the client computes the updated ClientHello message as follows:
-
It computes a second ClientHelloInner based on the first ClientHelloInner, as in {{Section 4.1.4 of RFC8446}}. The ClientHelloInner's "encrypted_client_hello" extension is left unmodified.
-
It constructs EncodedClientHelloInner as described in {{encoding-inner}}.
-
It constructs a second partial ClientHelloOuterAAD message. This message MUST be syntactically valid. The extensions MAY be copied from the original ClientHelloOuter unmodified, or omitted. If not sensitive, the client MAY copy updated extensions from the second ClientHelloInner for compression.
-
It encrypts EncodedClientHelloInner as described in {{encrypting-clienthello}}, using the second partial ClientHelloOuterAAD, to obtain a second ClientHelloOuter. It reuses the original HPKE encryption context computed in {{real-ech}} and uses the empty string for
enc.The HPKE context maintains a sequence number, so this operation internally uses a fresh nonce for each AEAD operation. Reusing the HPKE context avoids an attack described in {{flow-hrr-hijack}}.
The client then sends the second ClientHelloOuter to the server. However, as above, it uses the second ClientHelloInner for preferences, and both the ClientHelloInner messages for the transcript hash. Additionally, it checks the resulting ServerHello for ECH acceptance as in {{determining-ech-acceptance}}. If the ServerHello does not also indicate ECH acceptance, the client MUST terminate the connection with an "illegal_parameter" alert.
If the server rejects ECH, the client proceeds with the handshake, authenticating for ECHConfig.contents.public_name as described in {{auth-public-name}}. If authentication or the handshake fails, the client MUST return a failure to the calling application. It MUST NOT use the retry configurations. It MUST NOT treat this as a secure signal to disable ECH.
If the server supplied an "encrypted_client_hello" extension in its EncryptedExtensions message, the client MUST check that it is syntactically valid and the client MUST abort the connection with a "decode_error" alert otherwise. If an earlier TLS version was negotiated, the client MUST NOT enable the False Start optimization {{RFC7918}} for this handshake. If both authentication and the handshake complete successfully, the client MUST perform the processing described below then abort the connection with an "ech_required" alert before sending any application data to the server.
If the server provided "retry_configs" and if at least one of the values contains a version supported by the client, the client can regard the ECH keys as securely replaced by the server. It SHOULD retry the handshake with a new transport connection, using the retry configurations supplied by the server. The retry configurations may only be applied to the retry connection. The client MUST NOT use retry configurations for connections beyond the retry. This avoids introducing pinning concerns or a tracking vector, should a malicious server present client-specific retry configurations in order to identify the client in a subsequent ECH handshake.
If none of the values provided in "retry_configs" contains a supported version, or an earlier TLS version was negotiated, the client can regard ECH as securely disabled by the server, and it SHOULD retry the handshake with a new transport connection and ECH disabled.
Clients SHOULD implement a limit on retries caused by receipt of "retry_configs" or servers which do not acknowledge the "encrypted_client_hello" extension. If the client does not retry in either scenario, it MUST report an error to the calling application.
When the server rejects ECH, it continues with the handshake using the plaintext "server_name" extension instead (see {{server-behavior}}). Clients that offer ECH then authenticate the connection with the public name, as follows:
-
The client MUST verify that the certificate is valid for ECHConfig.contents.public_name. If invalid, it MUST abort the connection with the appropriate alert.
-
If the server requests a client certificate, the client MUST respond with an empty Certificate message, denoting no client certificate.
In verifying the client-facing server certificate, the client MUST interpret the public name as a DNS-based reference identity. Clients that incorporate DNS names and IP addresses into the same syntax (e.g. {{?RFC3986, Section 7.4}} and {{WHATWG-IPV4}}) MUST reject names that would be interpreted as IPv4 addresses. Clients that enforce this by checking and rejecting encoded IPv4 addresses in ECHConfig.contents.public_name do not need to repeat the check at this layer.
Note that authenticating a connection for the public name does not authenticate it for the origin. The TLS implementation MUST NOT report such connections as successful to the application. It additionally MUST ignore all session tickets and session IDs presented by the server. These connections are only used to trigger retries, as described in {{rejected-ech}}. This may be implemented, for instance, by reporting a failed connection with a dedicated error code.
If the client attempts to connect to a server and does not have an ECHConfig structure available for the server, it SHOULD send a GREASE {{?RFC8701}} "encrypted_client_hello" extension in the first ClientHello as follows:
-
Set the
config_idfield to a random byte. -
Set the
cipher_suitefield to a supported HpkeSymmetricCipherSuite. The selection SHOULD vary to exercise all supported configurations, but MAY be held constant for successive connections to the same server in the same session. -
Set the
encfield to a randomly-generated valid encapsulated public key output by the HPKE KEM. -
Set the
payloadfield to a randomly-generated string of L+C bytes, where C is the ciphertext expansion of the selected AEAD scheme and L is the size of the EncodedClientHelloInner the client would compute when offering ECH, padded according to {{padding}}.
If sending a second ClientHello in response to a HelloRetryRequest, the client copies the entire "encrypted_client_hello" extension from the first ClientHello. The identical value will reveal to an observer that the value of "encrypted_client_hello" was fake, but this only occurs if there is a HelloRetryRequest.
If the server sends an "encrypted_client_hello" extension in either HelloRetryRequest or EncryptedExtensions, the client MUST check the extension syntactically and abort the connection with a "decode_error" alert if it is invalid. It otherwise ignores the extension. It MUST NOT save the "retry_config" value in EncryptedExtensions.
Offering a GREASE extension is not considered offering an encrypted ClientHello for purposes of requirements in {{real-ech}}. In particular, the client MAY offer to resume sessions established without ECH.
Servers that support ECH play one of two roles, depending on the payload of the "encrypted_client_hello" extension in the initial ClientHello:
-
If
ECHClientHello.typeisouter, then the server acts as a client-facing server and proceeds as described in {{client-facing-server}} to extract a ClientHelloInner, if available. -
If
ECHClientHello.typeisinner, then the server acts as a backend server and proceeds as described in {{backend-server}}. -
Otherwise, if
ECHClientHello.typeis not a validECHClientHelloType, then the server MUST abort with an "illegal_parameter" alert.
If the "encrypted_client_hello" is not present, then the server completes the handshake normally, as described in {{RFC8446}}.
Upon receiving an "encrypted_client_hello" extension in an initial ClientHello, the client-facing server determines if it will accept ECH, prior to negotiating any other TLS parameters. Note that successfully decrypting the extension will result in a new ClientHello to process, so even the client's TLS version preferences may have changed.
First, the server collects a set of candidate ECHConfig values. This list is determined by one of the two following methods:
- Compare ECHClientHello.config_id against identifiers of each known ECHConfig and select the ones that match, if any, as candidates.
- Collect all known ECHConfig values as candidates, with trial decryption below determining the final selection.
Some uses of ECH, such as local discovery mode, may randomize the ECHClientHello.config_id since it can be used as a tracking vector. In such cases, the second method should be used for matching the ECHClientHello to a known ECHConfig. See {{ignored-configs}}. Unless specified by the application profile or otherwise externally configured, implementations MUST use the first method.
The server then iterates over the candidate ECHConfig values, attempting to decrypt the "encrypted_client_hello" extension:
The server verifies that the ECHConfig supports the cipher suite indicated by the ECHClientHello.cipher_suite and that the version of ECH indicated by the client matches the ECHConfig.version. If not, the server continues to the next candidate ECHConfig.
Next, the server decrypts ECHClientHello.payload, using the private key skR corresponding to ECHConfig, as follows:
context = SetupBaseR(ECHClientHello.enc, skR,
"tls ech" || 0x00 || ECHConfig)
EncodedClientHelloInner = context.Open(ClientHelloOuterAAD,
ECHClientHello.payload)
ClientHelloOuterAAD is computed from ClientHelloOuter as described in
{{authenticating-outer}}. The info parameter to SetupBaseR is the
concatenation "tls ech", a zero byte, and the serialized ECHConfig. If
decryption fails, the server continues to the next candidate ECHConfig.
Otherwise, the server reconstructs ClientHelloInner from
EncodedClientHelloInner, as described in {{encoding-inner}}. It then stops
iterating over the candidate ECHConfig values.
Upon determining the ClientHelloInner, the client-facing server checks that the
message includes a well-formed "encrypted_client_hello" extension of type
inner and that it does not offer TLS 1.2 or below. If either of these checks
fails, the client-facing server MUST abort with an "illegal_parameter" alert.
If these checks succeed, the client-facing server then forwards the ClientHelloInner to the appropriate backend server, which proceeds as in {{backend-server}}. If the backend server responds with a HelloRetryRequest, the client-facing server forwards it, decrypts the client's second ClientHelloOuter using the procedure in {{client-facing-server-hrr}}, and forwards the resulting second ClientHelloInner. The client-facing server forwards all other TLS messages between the client and backend server unmodified.
Otherwise, if all candidate ECHConfig values fail to decrypt the extension, the client-facing server MUST ignore the extension and proceed with the connection using ClientHelloOuter, with the following modifications:
-
If sending a HelloRetryRequest, the server MAY include an "encrypted_client_hello" extension with a payload of 8 random bytes; see {{dont-stick-out}} for details.
-
If the server is configured with any ECHConfigs, it MUST include the "encrypted_client_hello" extension in its EncryptedExtensions with the "retry_configs" field set to one or more ECHConfig structures with up-to-date keys. Servers MAY supply multiple ECHConfig values of different versions. This allows a server to support multiple versions at once.
Note that decryption failure could indicate a GREASE ECH extension (see {{grease-ech}}), so it is necessary for servers to proceed with the connection and rely on the client to abort if ECH was required. In particular, the unrecognized value alone does not indicate a misconfigured ECH advertisement ({{misconfiguration}}). Instead, servers can measure occurrences of the "ech_required" alert to detect this case.
After sending or forwarding a HelloRetryRequest, the client-facing server does not repeat the steps in {{client-facing-server}} with the second ClientHelloOuter. Instead, it continues with the ECHConfig selection from the first ClientHelloOuter as follows:
If the client-facing server accepted ECH, it checks the second ClientHelloOuter also contains the "encrypted_client_hello" extension. If not, it MUST abort the handshake with a "missing_extension" alert. Otherwise, it checks that ECHClientHello.cipher_suite and ECHClientHello.config_id are unchanged, and that ECHClientHello.enc is empty. If not, it MUST abort the handshake with an "illegal_parameter" alert.
Finally, it decrypts the new ECHClientHello.payload as a second message with the previous HPKE context:
EncodedClientHelloInner = context.Open(ClientHelloOuterAAD,
ECHClientHello.payload)
ClientHelloOuterAAD is computed as described in {{authenticating-outer}}, but using the second ClientHelloOuter. If decryption fails, the client-facing server MUST abort the handshake with a "decrypt_error" alert. Otherwise, it reconstructs the second ClientHelloInner from the new EncodedClientHelloInner as described in {{encoding-inner}}, using the second ClientHelloOuter for any referenced extensions.
The client-facing server then forwards the resulting ClientHelloInner to the backend server. It forwards all subsequent TLS messages between the client and backend server unmodified.
If the client-facing server rejected ECH, or if the first ClientHello did not include an "encrypted_client_hello" extension, the client-facing server proceeds with the connection as usual. The server does not decrypt the second ClientHello's ECHClientHello.payload value, if there is one. Moreover, if the server is configured with any ECHConfigs, it MUST include the "encrypted_client_hello" extension in its EncryptedExtensions with the "retry_configs" field set to one or more ECHConfig structures with up-to-date keys, as described in {{client-facing-server}}.
Note that a client-facing server that forwards the first ClientHello cannot include its own "cookie" extension if the backend server sends a HelloRetryRequest. This means that the client-facing server either needs to maintain state for such a connection or it needs to coordinate with the backend server to include any information it requires to process the second ClientHello.
Upon receipt of an "encrypted_client_hello" extension of type inner in a
ClientHello, if the backend server negotiates TLS 1.3 or higher, then it MUST
confirm ECH acceptance to the client by computing its ServerHello as described
here.
The backend server embeds in ServerHello.random a string derived from the inner handshake. It begins by computing its ServerHello as usual, except the last 8 bytes of ServerHello.random are set to zero. It then computes the transcript hash for ClientHelloInner up to and including the modified ServerHello, as described in {{RFC8446, Section 4.4.1}}. Let transcript_ech_conf denote the output. Finally, the backend server overwrites the last 8 bytes of the ServerHello.random with the following string:
accept_confirmation = HKDF-Expand-Label(
HKDF-Extract(0, ClientHelloInner.random),
"ech accept confirmation",
transcript_ech_conf,
8)
where HKDF-Expand-Label is defined in {{RFC8446, Section 7.1}}, "0" indicates a string of Hash.length bytes set to zero, and Hash is the hash function used to compute the transcript hash.
The backend server MUST NOT perform this operation if it negotiated TLS 1.2 or below. Note that doing so would overwrite the downgrade signal for TLS 1.3 (see {{RFC8446, Section 4.1.3}}).
When the backend server sends HelloRetryRequest in response to the ClientHello, it similarly confirms ECH acceptance by adding a confirmation signal to its HelloRetryRequest. But instead of embedding the signal in the HelloRetryRequest.random (the value of which is specified by {{RFC8446}}), it sends the signal in an extension.
The backend server begins by computing HelloRetryRequest as usual, except that it also contains an "encrypted_client_hello" extension with a payload of 8 zero bytes. It then computes the transcript hash for the first ClientHelloInner, denoted ClientHelloInner1, up to and including the modified HelloRetryRequest. Let transcript_hrr_ech_conf denote the output. Finally, the backend server overwrites the payload of the "encrypted_client_hello" extension with the following string:
hrr_accept_confirmation = HKDF-Expand-Label(
HKDF-Extract(0, ClientHelloInner1.random),
"hrr ech accept confirmation",
transcript_hrr_ech_conf,
8)
In the subsequent ServerHello message, the backend server sends the accept_confirmation value as described in {{backend-server}}.
Unlike most TLS extensions, placing the SNI value in an ECH extension is not interoperable with existing servers, which expect the value in the existing plaintext extension. Thus server operators SHOULD ensure servers understand a given set of ECH keys before advertising them. Additionally, servers SHOULD retain support for any previously-advertised keys for the duration of their validity.
However, in more complex deployment scenarios, this may be difficult to fully guarantee. Thus this protocol was designed to be robust in case of inconsistencies between systems that advertise ECH keys and servers, at the cost of extra round-trips due to a retry. Two specific scenarios are detailed below.
It is possible for ECH advertisements and servers to become inconsistent. This may occur, for instance, from DNS misconfiguration, caching issues, or an incomplete rollout in a multi-server deployment. This may also occur if a server loses its ECH keys, or if a deployment of ECH must be rolled back on the server.
The retry mechanism repairs inconsistencies, provided the server is authoritative for the public name. If server and advertised keys mismatch, the server will reject ECH and respond with "retry_configs". If the server does not understand the "encrypted_client_hello" extension at all, it will ignore it as required by {{Section 4.1.2 of RFC8446}}. Provided the server can present a certificate valid for the public name, the client can safely retry with updated settings, as described in {{rejected-ech}}.
Unless ECH is disabled as a result of successfully establishing a connection to the public name, the client MUST NOT fall back to using unencrypted ClientHellos, as this allows a network attacker to disclose the contents of this ClientHello, including the SNI. It MAY attempt to use another server from the DNS results, if one is provided.
When connecting through a TLS-terminating proxy that does not support this extension, {{RFC8446, Section 9.3}} requires the proxy still act as a conforming TLS client and server. The proxy must ignore unknown parameters, and generate its own ClientHello containing only parameters it understands. Thus, when presenting a certificate to the client or sending a ClientHello to the server, the proxy will act as if connecting to the public name, without echoing the "encrypted_client_hello" extension.
Depending on whether the client is configured to accept the proxy's certificate as authoritative for the public name, this may trigger the retry logic described in {{rejected-ech}} or result in a connection failure. A proxy which is not authoritative for the public name cannot forge a signal to disable ECH.
In the absence of an application profile standard specifying otherwise, a compliant ECH application MUST implement the following HPKE cipher suite:
- KEM: DHKEM(X25519, HKDF-SHA256) (see {{!I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke, Section 7.1}})
- KDF: HKDF-SHA256 (see {{!I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke, Section 7.2}})
- AEAD: AES-128-GCM (see {{!I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke, Section 7.3}})
ECH considers two types of attackers: passive and active. Passive attackers can read packets from the network, but they cannot perform any sort of active behavior such as probing servers or querying DNS. A middlebox that filters based on plaintext packet contents is one example of a passive attacker. In contrast, active attackers can also write packets into the network for malicious purposes, such as interfering with existing connections, probing servers, and querying DNS. In short, an active attacker corresponds to the conventional threat model for TLS 1.3 {{RFC8446}}.
Given these types of attackers, the primary goals of ECH are as follows.
- Security preservation. Use of ECH does not weaken the security properties of TLS without ECH.
- Handshake privacy. TLS connection establishment to a host with a specific ECHConfig and TLS configuration is indistinguishable from a connection to any other host with the same ECHConfig and TLS configuration. (The set of hosts which share the same ECHConfig and TLS configuration is referred to as the anonymity set.)
- Downgrade resistance. An attacker cannot downgrade a connection that attempts to use ECH to one that does not use ECH.
These properties were formally proven in {{ECH-Analysis}}.
With regards to handshake privacy, client-facing server configuration determines the size of the anonymity set. For example, if a client-facing server uses distinct ECHConfig values for each host, then each anonymity set has size k = 1. Client-facing servers SHOULD deploy ECH in such a way so as to maximize the size of the anonymity set where possible. This means client-facing servers should use the same ECHConfig for as many hosts as possible. An attacker can distinguish two hosts that have different ECHConfig values based on the ECHClientHello.config_id value. This also means public information in a TLS handshake should be consistent across hosts. For example, if a client-facing server services many backend origin hosts, only one of which supports some cipher suite, it may be possible to identify that host based on the contents of unencrypted handshake messages.
Beyond these primary security and privacy goals, ECH also aims to hide, to some extent, the fact that it is being used at all. Specifically, the GREASE ECH extension described in {{grease-ech}} does not change the security properties of the TLS handshake at all. Its goal is to provide "cover" for the real ECH protocol ({{real-ech}}), as a means of addressing the "do not stick out" requirements of {{?RFC8744}}. See {{dont-stick-out}} for details.
In comparison to {{?I-D.kazuho-protected-sni}}, wherein DNS Resource Records are signed via a server private key, ECH records have no authenticity or provenance information. This means that any attacker which can inject DNS responses or poison DNS caches, which is a common scenario in client access networks, can supply clients with fake ECH records (so that the client encrypts data to them) or strip the ECH record from the response. However, in the face of an attacker that controls DNS, no encryption scheme can work because the attacker can replace the IP address, thus blocking client connections, or substitute a unique IP address which is 1:1 with the DNS name that was looked up (modulo DNS wildcards). Thus, allowing the ECH records in the clear does not make the situation significantly worse.
Clearly, DNSSEC (if the client validates and hard fails) is a defense against this form of attack, but DoH/DPRIVE are also defenses against DNS attacks by attackers on the local network, which is a common case where ClientHello and SNI encryption are desired. Moreover, as noted in the introduction, SNI encryption is less useful without encryption of DNS queries in transit via DoH or DPRIVE mechanisms.
A malicious client-facing server could distribute unique, per-client ECHConfig structures as a way of tracking clients across subsequent connections. On-path adversaries which know about these unique keys could also track clients in this way by observing TLS connection attempts.
The cost of this type of attack scales linearly with the desired number of target clients. Moreover, DNS caching behavior makes targeting individual users for extended periods of time, e.g., using per-client ECHConfig structures delivered via HTTPS RRs with high TTLs, challenging. Clients can help mitigate this problem by flushing any DNS or ECHConfig state upon changing networks.
Ignoring configuration identifiers may be useful in scenarios where clients and client-facing servers do not want to reveal information about the client-facing server in the "encrypted_client_hello" extension. In such settings, clients send a randomly generated config_id in the ECHClientHello. Servers in these settings must perform trial decryption since they cannot identify the client's chosen ECH key using the config_id value. As a result, ignoring configuration identifiers may exacerbate DoS attacks. Specifically, an adversary may send malicious ClientHello messages, i.e., those which will not decrypt with any known ECH key, in order to force wasteful decryption. Servers that support this feature should, for example, implement some form of rate limiting mechanism to limit the potential damage caused by such attacks.
Unless specified by the application using (D)TLS or externally configured, implementations MUST NOT use this mode.
Any information that the client includes in the ClientHelloOuter is visible to passive observers. The client SHOULD NOT send values in the ClientHelloOuter which would reveal a sensitive ClientHelloInner property, such as the true server name. It MAY send values associated with the public name in the ClientHelloOuter.
In particular, some extensions require the client send a server-name-specific value in the ClientHello. These values may reveal information about the true server name. For example, the "cached_info" ClientHello extension {{?RFC7924}} can contain the hash of a previously observed server certificate. The client SHOULD NOT send values associated with the true server name in the ClientHelloOuter. It MAY send such values in the ClientHelloInner.
A client may also use different preferences in different contexts. For example, it may send a different ALPN lists to different servers or in different application contexts. A client that treats this context as sensitive SHOULD NOT send context-specific values in ClientHelloOuter.
Values which are independent of the true server name, or other information the client wishes to protect, MAY be included in ClientHelloOuter. If they match the corresponding ClientHelloInner, they MAY be compressed as described in {{encoding-inner}}. However, note the payload length reveals information about which extensions are compressed, so inner extensions which only sometimes match the corresponding outer extension SHOULD NOT be compressed.
Clients MAY include additional extensions in ClientHelloOuter to avoid signaling unusual behavior to passive observers, provided the choice of value and value itself are not sensitive. See {{dont-stick-out}}.
ECH requires encrypted DNS to be an effective privacy protection mechanism. However, verifying the server's identity from the Certificate message, particularly when using the X509 CertificateType, may result in additional network traffic that may reveal the server identity. Examples of this traffic may include requests for revocation information, such as OCSP or CRL traffic, or requests for repository information, such as authorityInformationAccess. It may also include implementation-specific traffic for additional information sources as part of verification.
Implementations SHOULD avoid leaking information that may identify the server. Even when sent over an encrypted transport, such requests may result in indirect exposure of the server's identity, such as indicating a specific CA or service being used. To mitigate this risk, servers SHOULD deliver such information in-band when possible, such as through the use of OCSP stapling, and clients SHOULD take steps to minimize or protect such requests during certificate validation.
Attacks that rely on non-ECH traffic to infer server identity in an ECH connection are out of scope for this document. For example, a client that connects to a particular host prior to ECH deployment may later resume a connection to that same host after ECH deployment. An adversary that observes this can deduce that the ECH-enabled connection was made to a host that the client previously connected to and which is within the same anonymity set.
{{Section 4.2.2 of RFC8446}} defines a cookie value that servers may send in HelloRetryRequest for clients to echo in the second ClientHello. While ECH encrypts the cookie in the second ClientHelloInner, the backend server's HelloRetryRequest is unencrypted.This means differences in cookies between backend servers, such as lengths or cleartext components, may leak information about the server identity.
Backend servers in an anonymity set SHOULD NOT reveal information in the cookie which identifies the server. This may be done by handling HelloRetryRequest statefully, thus not sending cookies, or by using the same cookie construction for all backend servers.
Note that, if the cookie includes a key name, analogous to Section 4 of {{?RFC5077}}, this may leak information if different backend servers issue cookies with different key names at the time of the connection. In particular, if the deployment operates in Split Mode, the backend servers may not share cookie encryption keys. Backend servers may mitigate this by either handling key rotation with trial decryption, or coordinating to match key names.
To signal acceptance, the backend server overwrites 8 bytes of its ServerHello.random with a value derived from the ClientHelloInner.random. (See {{backend-server}} for details.) This behavior increases the likelihood of the ServerHello.random colliding with the ServerHello.random of a previous session, potentially reducing the overall security of the protocol. However, the remaining 24 bytes provide enough entropy to ensure this is not a practical avenue of attack.
On the other hand, the probability that two 8-byte strings are the same is non-negligible. This poses a modest operational risk. Suppose the client-facing server terminates the connection (i.e., ECH is rejected or bypassed): if the last 8 bytes of its ServerHello.random coincide with the confirmation signal, then the client will incorrectly presume acceptance and proceed as if the backend server terminated the connection. However, the probability of a false positive occurring for a given connection is only 1 in 2^64. This value is smaller than the probability of network connection failures in practice.
Note that the same bytes of the ServerHello.random are used to implement downgrade protection for TLS 1.3 (see {{RFC8446, Section 4.1.3}}). These mechanisms do not interfere because the backend server only signals ECH acceptance in TLS 1.3 or higher.
{{?RFC8744}} lists several requirements for SNI encryption. In this section, we re-iterate these requirements and assess the ECH design against them.
Since servers process either ClientHelloInner or ClientHelloOuter, and because ClientHelloInner.random is encrypted, it is not possible for an attacker to "cut and paste" the ECH value in a different Client Hello and learn information from ClientHelloInner.
This design depends upon DNS as a vehicle for semi-static public key distribution. Server operators may partition their private keys however they see fit provided each server behind an IP address has the corresponding private key to decrypt a key. Thus, when one ECH key is provided, sharing is optimally bound by the number of hosts that share an IP address. Server operators may further limit sharing by publishing different DNS records containing ECHConfig values with different keys using a short TTL.
This design requires servers to decrypt ClientHello messages with ECHClientHello extensions carrying valid digests. Thus, it is possible for an attacker to force decryption operations on the server. This attack is bound by the number of valid TCP connections an attacker can open.
As a means of reducing the impact of network ossification, {{?RFC8744}} recommends SNI-protection mechanisms be designed in such a way that network operators do not differentiate connections using the mechanism from connections not using the mechanism. To that end, ECH is designed to resemble a standard TLS handshake as much as possible. The most obvious difference is the extension itself: as long as middleboxes ignore it, as required by {{!RFC8446}}, the rest of the handshake is designed to look very much as usual.
The GREASE ECH protocol described in {{grease-ech}} provides a low-risk way to evaluate the deployability of ECH. It is designed to mimic the real ECH protocol ({{real-ech}}) without changing the security properties of the handshake. The underlying theory is that if GREASE ECH is deployable without triggering middlebox misbehavior, and real ECH looks enough like GREASE ECH, then ECH should be deployable as well. Thus, our strategy for mitigating network ossification is to deploy GREASE ECH widely enough to disincentivize differential treatment of the real ECH protocol by the network.
Ensuring that networks do not differentiate between real ECH and GREASE ECH may not be feasible for all implementations. While most middleboxes will not treat them differently, some operators may wish to block real ECH usage but allow GREASE ECH. This specification aims to provide a baseline security level that most deployments can achieve easily, while providing implementations enough flexibility to achieve stronger security where possible. Minimally, real ECH is designed to be indifferentiable from GREASE ECH for passive adversaries with following capabilities:
- The attacker does not know the ECHConfigList used by the server.
- The attacker keeps per-connection state only. In particular, it does not track endpoints across connections.
- ECH and GREASE ECH are designed so that the following features do not vary: the code points of extensions negotiated in the clear; the length of messages; and the values of plaintext alert messages.
This leaves a variety of practical differentiators out-of-scope. including, though not limited to, the following:
- the value of the configuration identifier;
- the value of the outer SNI;
- the TLS version negotiated, which may depend on ECH acceptance;
- client authentication, which may depend on ECH acceptance; and
- HRR issuance, which may depend on ECH acceptance.
These can be addressed with more sophisticated implementations, but some mitigations require coordination between the client and server. These mitigations are out-of-scope for this specification.
This design is not forward secret because the server's ECH key is static. However, the window of exposure is bound by the key lifetime. It is RECOMMENDED that servers rotate keys frequently.
This design permits servers operating in Split Mode to forward connections directly to backend origin servers. The client authenticates the identity of the backend origin server, thereby avoiding unnecessary MiTM attacks.
Conversely, assuming ECH records retrieved from DNS are authenticated, e.g., via DNSSEC or fetched from a trusted Recursive Resolver, spoofing a client-facing server operating in Split Mode is not possible. See {{plaintext-dns}} for more details regarding plaintext DNS.
Authenticating the ECHConfig structure naturally authenticates the included public name. This also authenticates any retry signals from the client-facing server because the client validates the server certificate against the public name before retrying.
This design has no impact on application layer protocol negotiation. It may affect connection routing, server certificate selection, and client certificate verification. Thus, it is compatible with multiple application and transport protocols. By encrypting the entire ClientHello, this design additionally supports encrypting the ALPN extension.
Variations in the length of the ClientHelloInner ciphertext could leak information about the corresponding plaintext. {{padding}} describes a RECOMMENDED padding mechanism for clients aimed at reducing potential information leakage.
This section describes the rationale for ECH properties and mechanics as defenses against active attacks. In all the attacks below, the attacker is on-path between the target client and server. The goal of the attacker is to learn private information about the inner ClientHello, such as the true SNI value.
This attack uses the client's reaction to an incorrect certificate as an oracle. The attacker intercepts a legitimate ClientHello and replies with a ServerHello, Certificate, CertificateVerify, and Finished messages, wherein the Certificate message contains a "test" certificate for the domain name it wishes to query. If the client decrypted the Certificate and failed verification (or leaked information about its verification process by a timing side channel), the attacker learns that its test certificate name was incorrect. As an example, suppose the client's SNI value in its inner ClientHello is "example.com," and the attacker replied with a Certificate for "test.com". If the client produces a verification failure alert because of the mismatch faster than it would due to the Certificate signature validation, information about the name leaks. Note that the attacker can also withhold the CertificateVerify message. In that scenario, a client which first verifies the Certificate would then respond similarly and leak the same information.
Client Attacker Server
ClientHello
+ key_share
+ ech ------> (intercept) -----> X (drop)
ServerHello
+ key_share
{EncryptedExtensions}
{CertificateRequest*}
{Certificate*}
{CertificateVerify*}
<------
Alert
------>
{: #flow-diagram-client-reaction title="Client reaction attack"}
ClientHelloInner.random prevents this attack. In particular, since the attacker does not have access to this value, it cannot produce the right transcript and handshake keys needed for encrypting the Certificate message. Thus, the client will fail to decrypt the Certificate and abort the connection.
This attack aims to exploit server HRR state management to recover information about a legitimate ClientHello using its own attacker-controlled ClientHello. To begin, the attacker intercepts and forwards a legitimate ClientHello with an "encrypted_client_hello" (ech) extension to the server, which triggers a legitimate HelloRetryRequest in return. Rather than forward the retry to the client, the attacker attempts to generate its own ClientHello in response based on the contents of the first ClientHello and HelloRetryRequest exchange with the result that the server encrypts the Certificate to the attacker. If the server used the SNI from the first ClientHello and the key share from the second (attacker-controlled) ClientHello, the Certificate produced would leak the client's chosen SNI to the attacker.
Client Attacker Server
ClientHello
+ key_share
+ ech ------> (forward) ------->
HelloRetryRequest
+ key_share
(intercept) <-------
ClientHello
+ key_share'
+ ech' ------->
ServerHello
+ key_share
{EncryptedExtensions}
{CertificateRequest*}
{Certificate*}
{CertificateVerify*}
{Finished}
<-------
(process server flight)
{: #flow-diagram-hrr-hijack title="HelloRetryRequest hijack attack"}
This attack is mitigated by using the same HPKE context for both ClientHello messages. The attacker does not possess the context's keys, so it cannot generate a valid encryption of the second inner ClientHello.
If the attacker could manipulate the second ClientHello, it might be possible for the server to act as an oracle if it required parameters from the first ClientHello to match that of the second ClientHello. For example, imagine the client's original SNI value in the inner ClientHello is "example.com", and the attacker's hijacked SNI value in its inner ClientHello is "test.com". A server which checks these for equality and changes behavior based on the result can be used as an oracle to learn the client's SNI.
This attack aims to leak information about secret parts of the encrypted ClientHello by adding attacker-controlled parameters and observing the server's response. In particular, the compression mechanism described in {{encoding-inner}} references parts of a potentially attacker-controlled ClientHelloOuter to construct ClientHelloInner, or a buggy server may incorrectly apply parameters from ClientHelloOuter to the handshake.
To begin, the attacker first interacts with a server to obtain a resumption ticket for a given test domain, such as "example.com". Later, upon receipt of a ClientHelloOuter, it modifies it such that the server will process the resumption ticket with ClientHelloInner. If the server only accepts resumption PSKs that match the server name, it will fail the PSK binder check with an alert when ClientHelloInner is for "example.com" but silently ignore the PSK and continue when ClientHelloInner is for any other name. This introduces an oracle for testing encrypted SNI values.
Client Attacker Server
handshake and ticket
for "example.com"
<-------->
ClientHello
+ key_share
+ ech
+ ech_outer_extensions(pre_shared_key)
+ pre_shared_key
-------->
(intercept)
ClientHello
+ key_share
+ ech
+ ech_outer_extensions(pre_shared_key)
+ pre_shared_key'
-------->
Alert
-or-
ServerHello
...
Finished
<--------
{: #tls-clienthello-malleability title="Message flow for malleable ClientHello"}
This attack may be generalized to any parameter which the server varies by server name, such as ALPN preferences.
ECH mitigates this attack by only negotiating TLS parameters from ClientHelloInner and authenticating all inputs to the ClientHelloInner (EncodedClientHelloInner and ClientHelloOuter) with the HPKE AEAD. See {{authenticating-outer}}. An earlier iteration of this specification only encrypted and authenticated the "server_name" extension, which left the overall ClientHello vulnerable to an analogue of this attack.
Client-facing servers must decompress EncodedClientHelloInners. A malicious attacker may craft a packet which takes excessive resources to decompress or may be much larger than the incoming packet:
-
If looking up a ClientHelloOuter extension takes time linear in the number of extensions, the overall decoding process would take O(M*N) time, where M is the number of extensions in ClientHelloOuter and N is the size of OuterExtensions.
-
If the same ClientHelloOuter extension can be copied multiple times, an attacker could cause the client-facing server to construct a large ClientHelloInner by including a large extension in ClientHelloOuter, of length L, and an OuterExtensions list referencing N copies of that extension. The client-facing server would then use O(N*L) memory in response to O(N+L) bandwidth from the client. In split-mode, an O(N*L) sized packet would then be transmitted to the backend server.
ECH mitigates this attack by requiring that OuterExtensions be referenced in order, that duplicate references be rejected, and by recommending that client-facing servers use a linear scan to perform decompression. These requirements are detailed in {{encoding-inner}}.
IANA is requested to create the following entries in the existing registry for ExtensionType (defined in {{!RFC8446}}):
- encrypted_client_hello(0xfe0d), with "TLS 1.3" column values set to "CH, HRR, EE", and "Recommended" column set to "Yes".
- ech_outer_extensions(0xfd00), with the "TLS 1.3" column values set to "", and "Recommended" column set to "Yes".
IANA is requested to create an entry, ech_required(121) in the existing registry for Alerts (defined in {{!RFC8446}}), with the "DTLS-OK" column set to "Y".
Any future information or hints that influence ClientHelloOuter SHOULD be specified as ECHConfig extensions. This is primarily because the outer ClientHello exists only in support of ECH. Namely, it is both an envelope for the encrypted inner ClientHello and enabler for authenticated key mismatch signals (see {{server-behavior}}). In contrast, the inner ClientHello is the true ClientHello used upon ECH negotiation.
--- back
Alternative approaches to encrypted SNI may be implemented at the TLS or application layer. In this section we describe several alternatives and discuss drawbacks in comparison to the design in this document.
In this variant, TLS Client Hellos are tunneled within early data payloads belonging to outer TLS connections established with the client-facing server. This requires clients to have established a previous session -— and obtained PSKs —- with the server. The client-facing server decrypts early data payloads to uncover Client Hellos destined for the backend server, and forwards them onwards as necessary. Afterwards, all records to and from backend servers are forwarded by the client-facing server -- unmodified. This avoids double encryption of TLS records.
Problems with this approach are: (1) servers may not always be able to distinguish inner Client Hellos from legitimate application data, (2) nested 0-RTT data may not function correctly, (3) 0-RTT data may not be supported -- especially under DoS -- leading to availability concerns, and (4) clients must bootstrap tunnels (sessions), costing an additional round trip and potentially revealing the SNI during the initial connection. In contrast, encrypted SNI protects the SNI in a distinct Client Hello extension and neither abuses early data nor requires a bootstrapping connection.
In this variant, client-facing and backend servers coordinate to produce "combined tickets" that are consumable by both. Clients offer combined tickets to client-facing servers. The latter parse them to determine the correct backend server to which the Client Hello should be forwarded. This approach is problematic due to non-trivial coordination between client-facing and backend servers for ticket construction and consumption. Moreover, it requires a bootstrapping step similar to that of the previous variant. In contrast, encrypted SNI requires no such coordination.
In this variant, clients request secondary certificates with CERTIFICATE_REQUEST HTTP/2 frames after TLS connection completion. In response, servers supply certificates via TLS exported authenticators {{!I-D.ietf-tls-exported-authenticator}} in CERTIFICATE frames. Clients use a generic SNI for the underlying client-facing server TLS connection. Problems with this approach include: (1) one additional round trip before peer authentication, (2) non-trivial application-layer dependencies and interaction, and (3) obtaining the generic SNI to bootstrap the connection. In contrast, encrypted SNI induces no additional round trip and operates below the application layer.
The following procedure processes the "ech_outer_extensions" extension (see {{encoding-inner}}) in linear time, ensuring that each referenced extension in the ClientHelloOuter is included at most once:
-
Let I be zero and N be the number of extensions in ClientHelloOuter.
-
For each extension type, E, in OuterExtensions:
-
If E is "encrypted_client_hello", abort the connection with an "illegal_parameter" alert and terminate this procedure.
-
While I is less than N and the I-th extension of ClientHelloOuter does not have type E, increment I.
-
If I is equal to N, abort the connection with an "illegal_parameter" alert and terminate this procedure.
-
Otherwise, the I-th extension of ClientHelloOuter has type E. Copy it to the EncodedClientHelloInner and increment I.
-
This document draws extensively from ideas in {{?I-D.kazuho-protected-sni}}, but is a much more limited mechanism because it depends on the DNS for the protection of the ECH key. Richard Barnes, Christian Huitema, Patrick McManus, Matthew Prince, Nick Sullivan, Martin Thomson, and David Benjamin also provided important ideas and contributions.
RFC Editor's Note: Please remove this section prior to publication of a final version of this document.
Issue and pull request numbers are listed with a leading octothorp.
- Keep-alive
- Add CCS2022 reference and summary (#539)
- Keep-alive
- Editorial improvements
-
Abort on duplicate OuterExtensions (#514)
-
Improve EncodedClientHelloInner definition (#503)
-
Clarify retry configuration usage (#498)
-
Expand on config_id generation implications (#491)
-
Server-side acceptance signal extension GREASE (#481)
-
Refactor overview, client implementation, and middlebox sections (#480, #478, #475, #508)
-
Editorial iprovements (#485, #488, #490, #495, #496, #499, #500, #501, #504, #505, #507, #510, #511)
-
Move ClientHello padding to the encoding (#443)
-
Align codepoints (#464)
-
Relax OuterExtensions checks for alignment with RFC8446 (#467)
-
Clarify HRR acceptance and rejection logic (#470)
-
Editorial improvements (#468, #465, #462, #461)
-
Make HRR confirmation and ECH acceptance explicit (#422, #423)
-
Relax computation of the acceptance signal (#420, #449)
-
Simplify ClientHelloOuterAAD generation (#438, #442)
-
Allow empty enc in ECHClientHello (#444)
-
Authenticate ECHClientHello extensions position in ClientHelloOuterAAD (#410)
-
Allow clients to send a dummy PSK and early_data in ClientHelloOuter when applicable (#414, #415)
-
Compress ECHConfigContents (#409)
-
Validate ECHConfig.contents.public_name (#413, #456)
-
Validate ClientHelloInner contents (#411)
-
Note split-mode challenges for HRR (#418)
-
Editorial improvements (#428, #432, #439, #445, #458, #455)
-
Finalize HPKE dependency (#390)
-
Move from client-computed to server-chosen, one-byte config identifier (#376, #381)
-
Rename ECHConfigs to ECHConfigList (#391)
-
Clarify some security and privacy properties (#385, #383)