Trusted Network Connect (TNC)
Summary
This feature provides Trusted Network Connect(TNC) framework that can be used to assess and verify clients' posture (or integrity measurements or configuration) and its compliance to a predefined policy with existing network access control (NAC) solutions.
Owner
Name: Avesh Agarwal
Email: avagarwa@redhat.com
Current status
Targeted release: Fedora 19
Last updated: 1/24/2013
Percentage of completion: 50%
Detailed Description
Traditionally network access control (NAC) has lacked the ability in its decision making to assess endpoint's security posture and its compliance to enterprise policies. (For example, a network might want to grant only limited access to clients that have exploitable browser plugins installed.) This lack of assessment may leave an enterprise's network vulnerable to malicious attacks. Trusted Computing Group (TCG) (and IETF too) has defined an open architecture called Trusted network connect (TNC) (IETF's Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA)) to fill this gap. TNC, as part of its architectural components, includes integrity measurement collectors (IMCs) and TNC client at endpoint and integrity measurement verifiers (IMVs) and TNC server at enterprise network side communicating over NAC solutions such as EAP with 802.1X to evaluate and verify the security posture of the endpoint against the enterprise policies before allowing network access. For this, TCG has released transport (IF-T), session (IF-TNCCS) and messaging (IF-M) standards which are open and interoperable. TNC architecture by virtue of it's IF-M protocol can leverage NIST's SCAP's (OpenSCAP) automated security aspects for measurement collection, verification and remediation. In addition, TCG has defined IF-PTS and PTS protocol specifications to integrate platform trust services (PTS) with TNC for TPM based attestation of integrity measurements. PTS protocol defines messaging payloads to be used over IF-M protocol.
This feature includes the aforementioned functionalities and aims to provide an end-to-end network based client assessment, verification and remediation.
Benefit to Fedora
System and network administrators using fedora can now utilize the potential of open and interoperable TNC protocols over existing NAC solutions. It helps them reduce the possibility of allowing a vulnerable client accessing their network.
Scope
This feature involves following packages as of now: tncfhh, openpts, wpa_supplicant, freeradius, tpm_tools, trousers, NetworkManager
Goals
TNC client and server functionality: TCG's IF-TNCCS 1.1 and IETF RFC 5793
Integrity measurements collector (IMC) and verifier (IMV) messaging protocol functionality: IF-M 1.2 and IETF RFC 5792
Implementation of Local IMC and IMV interfaces: IF-IMC 1.2, IF-IMV 1.2
A development library for building custom IMCc and IMVs.
OpenSCAP based IMC and IMV that follow IF-IMC, IF-IMV and IF-M specifications.
PTS protocol (PTS-IMC and PTS-IMV) functionality and its integration (IF-PTS) with platform trust services for TPM based attestation of integrity measurements.
Support with NetworkManager.
How To Test
Configure wpa_supplicant at client and Freeradius at server.
Configure 802.lX managed switch.
Configure tnc.
Configure policies at IMC (provided or custom built) client and IMV (provided or custom built) at server.
Start network access.
Observe if network access is allowed or not.
If not, remediate the system, and try again.
User Experience
Users should be able to see if their system is in compliance to their network's predfined policy and are able to gain access to the network. If their system is not compliant, they should remediate it before trying to access the network again.
Dependencies
This feature requires EAP-TNC support with wpa_supplicant and freeradius.
Contingency Plan
Although, this feature works on top of wpa_supplicant and can be used with NM, this does not require any changes in wpa_supplicant currently, so wont impact any existing functionality, and other packages part of this feature are stand alone in themselves. In summary, this feature does not change any part of the current networking stack, so won't break any existing networking functionality. If a user does not use this feature, there is no impact on other functionalities.
Documentation
http://people.redhat.com/avagarwa/files/tnc-details.pdf
http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/developers/trusted_network_connect/specifications
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5209
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5793
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5792
http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/resources/tcg_attestation_pts_protocol_binding_to_tnc_ifm
Release Notes
Fedora 19 offers support for Trusted Network Connect protocols to be used with 802.1X framework. OpenSCAP based client (IMC) and server (IMV) plugins are provided to leverage SCAP based measurements collection, verification, and remediation. It offers PTS protocol functionality for TPM based attestation of integrity measurements. It also includes some basic prototype IMCs and IMVs and provides a development library to build custom IMCs and IMVs.
Comments and Discussion
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