HTTPS Protocol

Applications of TCP/IP network

Xiaolan Tang
 An example of online transaction

HTTP request
Amy Web server
HTTP response www.taobao.com

 Without encryption, an intruder may obtain the payment information,

and pay with Amy’s card

 Without integrity check, an intruder may modify Amy’s order to

make her buy 10 times of the products that she needs

 Without the server authentication, the website Amy is visiting may

be a phishing website that steals Amy’s money or information

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 Question

When you use online shopping or banking,

what protocol is in the URL?

HTTPS, e.g., https://www.taobao.com/

HTTP + SSL

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 Outline
1. Secure socket layer (SSL)
2. A simplified version of SSL
3. Details in SSL
4. SSL certificate

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 Secure socket layer (SSL)
 Secure socket layer (SSL)
 Originally specified in the 1990s by Netscape
 The first widely used protocol for securing online transactions
 A secure TCP protocol for HTTP and other applications
 Encryption, integrity, and server and client authentication

 Transport layer security (TLS)

 In 2015, TLS replaced SSL 3.0
 In 2018, TLS 3.0 is released (the current version)

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 SSL in TCP/IP protocol suite
Application
program
SSL socket Application layer
Application
SSL sub layer
program
TCP socket TCP socket

TCP TCP

IP IP

TCP API TCP enhanced with SSL

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 Outline
1. Secure socket layer (SSL)
2. A simplified version of SSL
3. Details in SSL
4. SSL certificate

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 A simplified version of SSL

Bob
Amy a server with private
key, public key, and
certificate

Three phrases of SSL

 Handshake
 Key calculation
 Data transfer

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 1. Handshake

What Amy (client) should do

 Create a TCP connection with Bob

 Verify whether Bob is a real Bob (server authentication)
 Send a Master Secret (MS) to Bob
 Used to generate the symmetric keys for the session between
Amy and Bob

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 1. Handshake (continued)
Bob
Amy a server with private
key, public key, and
certificate
Create TCP
connection

Verify Bob
Calculate and
send MS
Get MS by decrypting
EMS with KA-
time time

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 2. Key calculation

For Amy (client) and Bob (server), it is more secure to use

different keys than a unique secret MS
 EA: a key to encrypt the data from Amy to Bob
 MA: a MAC (Message Authentication Code) secret to check the
integrity of data from Amy to Bob
 EB: a key to encrypt the data from Bob to Amy
 MB: a MAC secret to check the integrity of data from Bob to Amy

Amy and Bob both generate four keys (EA, MA, EB, MB)
from the master secret MS

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 3. Data transfer

What to encrypt and when to check integrity?

TCP byte stream is divided into several data

fragments, encrypt “data fragment + MAC”

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 3. Data transfer (continued)

data

data data
MAC MAC
fragment fragment

record encrypted record encrypted

header data and MAC header data and MAC
Record Record

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 3. Data transfer (continued)

Amy Bob

Jack, a man in the middle,

insert, delete or replace TCP segments

Attack: Jack reverses the order of two segments by changing

sequence numbers (each encapsulates one record)
 Bob: TCP layer cannot detect, passes two records to SSL
 SSL decrypts the records, and uses MAC to check integrity
 SSL passes byte stream to application layer; error is detected!

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 3. Data transfer (continued)

Amy Bob

Jack, a man in the middle,

insert, delete or replace TCP segments

Solution: a new sequence number

 Amy has a sequence number, initialized with 0
 After sending a SSL record, add 1 to the seq num
 MAC = hash (data, MA, seq num)
 Bob uses seq num to compute MAC and check integrity

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 SSL record
SSL record protocol

type version length data MAC

Encrypt with EX
 NOT encrypt: type, version, length
 type: a handshake message or application message,
SSL connection closure
 version: SSL version
 length: the receiver extracts SSL record from TCP byte stream

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 Outline
1. Secure socket layer (SSL)
2. A simplified version of SSL
3. Details in SSL
4. SSL certificate

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 SSL handshake
SSL handshake protocol

1. The client sends a list of encryption algorithms (cipher suites) that it

supports and client nonce (a random value) to the server
2. The server selects one symmetric encryption algorithm (e.g., AES),
one public-key algorithm (e.g., RSA with a specific length of key),
and one MAC algorithm. It sends the choice, the certificate and
server nonce to the client
3. The client verifies the certificate, extracts the public key of the server,
and generates a Pre-Master Secret (PMS). PMS is encrypted with
the server’s public key and sent to the server

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 SSL handshake (continued)

4. The client and the server calculate the Master Secret (MS) from
PMS, respectively, and then get two encryption keys and two
MAC secrets from MS. After this, all the messages between
client and server are encrypted and authenticated

5. The client sends a MAC for all the handshake messages

6. The server sends a MAC for all the handshake messages

Protect the handshake messages from modification

e.g., An attacker eavesdrops and modifies the encryption algorithm list in Step 1

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 Why to use the random nonce?

1. Jack sniffs all the messages between Amy and Bob

2. The next day, Jack sends the same messages to Bob by pretending
to be Amy
 Without the nonce, Bob sends the same responses. All the
messages pass the integrity check. Bob thinks Amy made a new
order for the same thing with that in the previous day.
 With the nonce, the keys in the two days are different, and the SSL
records from Jack will fail the integrity check.

Nonce: prevent “connection replay attack”;

Sequence number: prevent insertion, deletion and replacement of TCP segments

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 SSL connection closure

Amy Bob

 Amy closes the TCP connection by sending TCP FIN segment

 Truncation attack: Jack (a man in the middle) sends TCP FIN to close
SSL connection between Amy and Bob too early
 Solution: type field in SSL record
 Type field is not encrypted, but the receiver authenticates it with MAC
MAC = MAC(data, Mx, seq num, type)

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 Some implementations of SSL

 OpenSSL (http://www.openssl.org/)
 A free, open-source implementation of SSL

 Apache-SSL (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/ssl/index.html)
 A secure Webserver, based on Apache and OpenSSL

 SSLeay (http://www.ssleay.org/)
 A free implementation of Netscape’s Secure Socket Layer

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 Outline
1. Secure socket layer (SSL)
2. A simplified version of SSL
3. Details in SSL
4. SSL certificate

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 SSL certificate

 A key pair: a public and a private key

 Goal: establish an encrypted connection
 The public key is made public by distributing it widely; the private
key is always kept secret
 Data encrypted with the public key can be decrypted only with
the private key, and vice versa
 Contain the “subject,” the identity of the certificate/website owner

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 SSL certificate (continued)

 How to get a SSL certificate

 Create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on your server,
including a private key and public key
 Send the CSR data file containing the public key to the SSL
Certificate issuer (called a Certificate Authority or CA)
 The CA uses the CSR file to create a data structure to match
your private key without compromising the key itself

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 SSL certificate (continued)

 How to install a SSL certificate

 Install the SSL certificate on your server
 Install an intermediate certificate that ensures the credibility of
your SSL certificate by tying it to your CA’s root certificate
 The installing and testing of SSL certificate may be different for
different servers

Root Intermediate Server

certificate certificate certificate

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 Summary

HTTPS = HTTP + SSL/TLS

 Secure socket layer (SSL)

 Encryption  Details in SSL
 Integrity  SSL handshake
 Authentication  SSL connection closure
 A simplified version of SSL  Implementations of SSL
 Handshake  SSL certificate
 Key calculation  A public and private key pair
 Data transfer  How to get and install it
 SSL record

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 Questions

1. Tell the difference between HTTP and HTTPS protocols.

2. What are SSL and TLS?
3. What are the four keys for a client-server session by using SSL?
And how to get these keys?
4. What fields in SSL record are encrypted?

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 Thanks!

工科类 20 号
教师：唐晓岚

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