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what it should be, or it can even send another Access-Challenge.
2.2. Interoperation with PAP and CHAP
For PAP, the NAS takes the PAP ID and password and sends them in an
Access-Request packet as the User-Name and User-Password. The NAS MAY
include the Attributes Service-Type = Framed-User and Framed-Protocol
= PPP as a hint to the RADIUS server that PPP service is expected.
For CHAP, the NAS generates a random challenge (preferably 16 octets)
and sends it to the user, who returns a CHAP response along with a
CHAP ID and CHAP username. The NAS then sends an Access-Request
packet to the RADIUS server with the CHAP username as the User-Name
and with the CHAP ID and CHAP response as the CHAP-Password
(Attribute 3). The random challenge can either be included in the
CHAP-Challenge attribute or, if it is 16 octets long, it can be
placed in the Request Authenticator field of the Access-Request
packet. The NAS MAY include the Attributes Service-Type = Framed-
User and Framed-Protocol = PPP as a hint to the RADIUS server that
PPP service is expected.
The RADIUS server looks up a password based on the User-Name,
encrypts the challenge using MD5 on the CHAP ID octet, that password,
and the CHAP challenge (from the CHAP-Challenge attribute if present,
otherwise from the Request Authenticator), and compares that result
to the CHAP-Password. If they match, the server sends back an
Access-Accept, otherwise it sends back an Access-Reject.
If the RADIUS server is unable to perform the requested
authentication it should return an Access-Reject. For example, CHAP
requires that the user's password be available in cleartext to the
server so that it can encrypt the CHAP challenge and compare that to
the CHAP response. If the password is not available in cleartext to
the RADIUS server then the server MUST send an Access-Reject to the
client.
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RFC 2058 RADIUS January 1997
2.3. Why UDP?
A frequently asked question is why RADIUS uses UDP instead of TCP as
a transport protocol. UDP was chosen for strictly technical reasons.
There are a number of issues which must be understood. RADIUS is a
transaction based protocol which has several interesting
characteristics:
1. If the request to a primary Authentication server fails, a
secondary server must be queried.
To meet this requirement, a copy of the request must be kept
above the transport layer to allow for alternate transmission.
This means that retransmission timers are still required.
2. The timing requirements of this particular protocol are
significantly different than TCP provides.
At one extreme, RADIUS does not require a "responsive" detection
of lost data. The user is willing to wait several seconds for
the authentication to complete. The generally aggressive TCP
retransmission (based on average round trip time) is not
required, nor is the acknowledgement overhead of TCP.
At the other extreme, the user is not willing to wait several
minutes for authentication. Therefore the reliable delivery of
TCP data two minutes later is not useful. The faster use of an
alternate server allows the user to gain access before giving
up.
3. The stateless nature of this protocol simplifies the use of UDP.
Clients and servers come and go. Systems are rebooted, or are
power cycled independently. Generally this does not cause a
problem and with creative timeouts and detection of lost TCP
connections, code can be written to handle anomalous events.
UDP however completely eliminates any of this special handling.
Each client and server can open their UDP transport just once
and leave it open through all types of failure events on the
network.
4. UDP simplifies the server implementation.
In the earliest implementations of RADIUS, the server was single
threaded. This means that a single request was received,
processed, and returned. This was found to be unmanageable in
environments where the back-end security mechanism took real
Rigney, et. al. Informational [Page 8]
RFC 2058 RADIUS January 1997
time (1 or more seconds). The server request queue would fill
and in environments where hundreds of people were being
authenticated every minute, the request turn-around time
increased to longer that users were willing to wait (this was
especially severe when a specific lookup in a database or over
DNS took 30 or more seconds). The obvious solution was to make
the server multi-threaded. Achieving this was simple with UDP.
Separate processes were spawned to serve each request and these
processes could respond directly to the client NAS with a simple
UDP packet to the original transport of the client.
It's not all a panacea. As noted, using UDP requires one thing which
is built into TCP: with UDP we must artificially manage
retransmission timers to the same server, although they don't require
the same attention to timing provided by TCP. This one penalty is a
small price to pay for the advantages of UDP in this protocol.
Without TCP we would still probably be using tin cans connected by
string. But for this particular protocol, UDP is a better choice.
3. Packet Format
Exactly one RADIUS packet is encapsulated in the UDP Data field [2],
where the UDP Destination Port field indicates 1812 (decimal).
When a reply is generated, the source and destination ports are
reversed.
A summary of the RADIUS data format is shown below. The fields are
transmitted from left to right.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Code | Identifier | Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| Authenticator |
| |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Attributes ...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Rigney, et. al. Informational [Page 9]
RFC 2058 RADIUS January 1997
Code
The Code field is one octet, and identifies the type of RADIUS
packet. When a packet is received with an invalid Code field, it is
silently discarded.
RADIUS Codes (decimal) are assigned as follows:
1 Access-Request
2 Access-Accept
3 Access-Reject
4 Accounting-Request
5 Accounting-Response
11 Access-Challenge
12 Status-Server (experimental)
13 Status-Client (experimental)
255 Reserved
Codes 4 and 5 will be covered in the RADIUS Accounting document [9],
and are not further mentioned here. Codes 12 and 13 are reserved for
possible use, but are not further mentioned here.
Identifier
The Identifier field is one octet, and aids in matching requests and
replies.
Length
The Length field is two octets. It indicates the length of the
packet including the Code, Identifier, Length, Authenticator and
Attribute fields. Octets outside the range of the Length field
should be treated as padding and should be ignored on reception. If
the packet is shorter than the Length field indicates, it should be
silently discarded. The minimum length is 20 and maximum length is
4096.
Authenticator
The Authenticator field is sixteen (16) octets. The most significant
octet is transmitted first. This value is used to authenticate the
reply from the RADIUS server, and is used in the password hiding
algorithm.
Rigney, et. al. Informational [Page 10]
RFC 2058 RADIUS January 1997
Request Authenticator
In Access-Request Packets, the Authenticator value is a 16 octet
random number, called the Request Authenticator. The value SHOULD be
unpredictable and unique over the lifetime of a secret (the password
shared between the client and the RADIUS server), since repetition of
a request value in conjunction with the same secret would permit an
attacker to reply with a previously intercepted response. Since it
is expected that the same secret MAY be used to authenticate with
servers in disparate geographic regions, the Request Authenticator
field SHOULD exhibit global and temporal uniqueness.
The Request Authenticator value in an Access-Request packet SHOULD
also be unpredictable, lest an attacker trick a server into
responding to a predicted future request, and then use the response
to masquerade as that server to a future Access-Request.
Although protocols such as RADIUS are incapable of protecting against
theft of an authenticated session via realtime active wiretapping
attacks, generation of unique unpredictable requests can protect
against a wide range of active attacks against authentication.
The NAS and RADIUS server share a secret. That shared secret
followed by the Request Authenticator is put through a one-way MD5
hash to create a 16 octet digest value which is xored with the
password entered by the user, and the xored result placed in the
User-Password attribute in the Access-Request packet. See the entry
for User-Password in the section on Attributes for a more detailed
description.
Response Authenticator
The value of the Authenticator field in Access-Accept, Access-
Reject, and Access-Challenge packets is called the Response
Authenticator, and contains a one-way MD5 hash calculated over a
stream of octets consisting of: the RADIUS packet, beginning with
the Code field, including the Identifier, the Length, the Request
Authenticator field from the Access-Request packet, and the
response Attributes, followed by the shared secret. That is,
ResponseAuth = MD5(Code+ID+Length+RequestAuth+Attributes+Secret)
where + denotes concatenation.
Administrative Note
The secret (password shared between the client and the RADIUS server)
SHOULD be at least as large and unguessable as a well-chosen
password. It is preferred that the secret be at least 16 octets.
This is to ensure a sufficiently large range for the secret to
Rigney, et. al. Informational [Page 11]
RFC 2058 RADIUS January 1997
provide protection against exhaustive search attacks. A RADIUS
server SHOULD use the source IP address of the RADIUS UDP packet to
decide which shared secret to use, so that RADIUS requests can be
proxied.
When using a forwarding proxy, the proxy must be able to alter the
packet as it passes through in each direction - when the proxy
forwards the request, the proxy can add a Proxy-State Attribute, and
when the proxy forwards a response, it removes the Proxy-State
Attribute. Since Access-Accept and Access-Reject replies are
authenticated on the entire packet contents, the stripping of the
Proxy-State attribute would invalidate the signature in the packet -
so the proxy has to re-sign it.
Further details of RADIUS proxy implementation are outside the scope
of this document.
Attributes
Many Attributes may have multiple instances, in such a case the order
of Attributes of the same Type SHOULD be preserved. The order of
Attributes of different Types is not required to be preserved.
In the section below on "Attributes" where the text refers to which
packets an attribute is allowed in, only packets with Codes 1, 2, 3
and 11 and attributes defined in this document are covered in this
document. A summary table is provided at the end of the "Attributes"
section. To determine which Attributes are allowed in packets with
codes 4 and 5 refer to the RADIUS Accounting document [9].
4. Packet Types
The RADIUS Packet type is determined by the Code field in the first
octet of the Packet.
4.1. Access-Request
Description
Access-Request packets are sent to a RADIUS server, and convey
information used to determine whether a user is allowed access to a
specific NAS, and any special services requested for that user. An
implementation wishing to authenticate a user MUST transmit a
RADIUS packet with the Code field set to 1 (Access-Request).
Upon receipt of an Access-Request from a valid client, an
appropriate reply MUST be transmitted.
Rigney, et. al. Informational [Page 12]
RFC 2058 RADIUS January 1997
An Access-Request MUST contain a User-Name attribute. It SHOULD
contain either a NAS-IP-Address attribute or NAS-Identifier
attribute (or both, although that is not recommended). It MUST
contain either a User-Password attribute or CHAP-Password
attribute. It SHOULD contain a NAS-Port or NAS-Port-Type attribute
or both unless the type of access being requested does not involve
a port or the NAS does not distinguish among its ports.
An Access-Request MAY contain additional attributes as a hint to
the server, but the server is not required to honor the hint.
When a User-Password is present, it is hidden using a method based
on the RSA Message Digest Algorithm MD5 [1].
A summary of the Access-Request packet format is shown below. The
fields are transmitted from left to right.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Code | Identifier | Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| Request Authenticator |
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