Implicit IV for Counter-based Ciphers in IPsec

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in .

Counter-based AES modes of operation such as AES-CTR (), AES-CCM (), and AES-GCM () require the specification of an nonce for each ESP packet. The same applies for ChaCha20-Poly1305 (. Currently this nonce is sent in each ESP packet (). This practice is designated in this document as "explicit nonce". In some context, such as IoT, it may be preferable to avoid carrying the extra bytes associated to the IV and instead generate it locally on each peer. The local generation of the nonce is designated in this document as "implicit IV". The size of this nonce depends on the specific algorithm, but all of the algorithms mentioned above take an 8-octet nonce. This document defines how to compute the nonce locally when it is implicit. It also specifies how peers agree with the Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2 - ) on using an implicit IV versus an explicit IV. This document limits its scope to the algorithms mentioned above. Other algorithms with similar properties may later be defined to use this extension. This document does not consider AES-CBC ()as AES-CBC requires the IV to be unpredictable. Deriving it directly from the packet counter as described below is insecure.

IoT: Internet of Things IV: Initialization Vector. Although security requirements vary, the common usage of this term implies that the value is unpredictable. Nonce: a fixed-size octet string used only once. This is similar to IV, except that in common usage there is no implication of non-predictability.

With the algorithms listed in , the 8 byte nonce MUST NOT repeat. The binding between a ESP packet and its nonce is provided using the Sequence Number or the Extended Sequence Number. and represent the IV with a regular 4-byte Sequence Number and with an 8-byte Extended Sequence Number respectively.

Sequence Number: the 4 byte Sequence Number carried in the ESP packet. Zero: a 4 byte array with all bits set to zero.

Extended Sequence Number: the 8 byte Extended Sequence Number of the Security Association. The 4 byte low order bytes are carried in the ESP packet.

An initiator supporting this feature SHOULD propose implicit IV for all relevant algorithms. To facilitate backward compatibility with non-supporting peers the initiator SHOULD also include those same algorithms without IIV. This may require extra transforms.

The rules of SA payload processing ensure that the responder will never send an SA payload containing the IIV indicator to an initiator that does not support IIV.

Nonce generation for these algorithms has not been explicitly defined. It has been left to the implementation as long as certain security requirements are met. This document provides an explicit and normative way to generate IVs. The mechanism described in this document meets the IV security requirements of all relevant algorithms.

AES-CTR, AES-CCM, AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 are likely to implement the implicit IV described in this document. This section limits assignment of new code points to the recommended suites provided in and , thus the new Transform Type 1 - Encryption Algorithm Transform IDs are as defined below: ENCR_AES-CCM_8_IIV ENCR_AES-GCM_16_IIV ENCR_CHACHA20-POLY1305_IIV