RFC 4681
TLS User Mapping Extension
Okay bestie, RFC 4681 is the TLS User Mapping Extension 💖 It's a Standards Track doc from the Network Working Group, written by S. Santesson, A. Medvinsky and J. Ball at Microsoft, dated October 2006 🎀 It updates RFC 4346. There's no Obsoletes line in its header. Let's get into it 🦋
Status of This Memo ✨
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. 💅
Copyright Notice 🌸
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract 💜
Okay so the big idea: this document specifies a TLS extension that lets clients send generic user mapping hints in a supplemental data handshake message defined in RFC 4680. One such mapping hint is defined in an informative section, the UpnDomainHint, which may be used by a server to locate a user in a directory database. Other mapping hints may be defined in other documents in the future. It's giving extensible 🧚
Table of Contents 🍓
1. Introduction ....................................................2
1.1. Terminology ................................................2
1.2. Design Considerations ......................................2
2. User Mapping Extension ..........................................3
3. User Mapping Handshake Exchange .................................3
4. Message Flow ....................................................5
5. Security Considerations .........................................6
6. UPN Domain Hint (Informative) ...................................7
7. IANA Considerations .............................................8
8. Normative References ............................................9
9. Acknowledgements ................................................91. Introduction ✨
This doc has a normative part and an informative part. Sections 2-5 are normative. Section 6 is informative. 🫶
This specification defines a TLS extension and a payload for the SupplementalData handshake message, defined in RFC 4680 [N6], to accommodate mapping of users to their user accounts when using TLS client authentication as the authentication method.
The new TLS extension (user_mapping) is sent in the client hello message. Per convention defined in RFC 4366 [N4], the server places the same extension (user_mapping) in the server hello message, to inform the client that the server understands this extension. If the server does not understand the extension, it will respond with a server hello omitting this extension, and the client will proceed as normal, ignoring the extension, and not include the UserMappingDataList data in the TLS handshake. 🙈
If the new extension is understood, the client will inject UserMappingDataList data in the SupplementalData handshake message prior to the Client's Certificate message. The server will then parse this message, extracting the client's domain, and store it in the context for use when mapping the certificate to the user's directory account. ✨
No other modifications to the protocol are required. The messages are detailed in the following sections. 💅
1.1. Terminology 🎀
Here's the key word list, kept exactly as the spec wrote it, because implementers rely on every single one 🫶
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 RFC 2119 [N1].
The syntax for the TLS User Mapping extension is defined using the TLS Presentation Language, which is specified in Section 4 of [N2]. 🌈
1.2. Design Considerations 🦋
The reason the mapping data itself is not placed in the extension portion of the client hello is to prevent broadcasting this information to servers that don't understand the extension. 💖
2. User Mapping Extension 🍓
A new extension type (user_mapping(6)) is added to the Extension used in both the client hello and server hello messages. The extension type is specified as follows.
enum {
user_mapping(6), (65535)
} ExtensionType;The "extension_data" field of this extension SHALL contain "UserMappingTypeList" with a list of supported hint types where:
struct {
UserMappingType user_mapping_types<1..2^8-1>;
} UserMappingTypeList;Enumeration of hint types (user_mapping_types) defined in this document is provided in Section 3.
The list of user_mapping_types included in a client hello SHALL signal the hint types supported by the client. The list of user_mapping_types included in the server hello SHALL signal the hint types preferred by the server.
If none of the hint types listed by the client is supported by the server, the server SHALL omit the user_mapping extension in the server hello.
When the user_mapping extension is included in the server hello, the list of hint types in "UserMappingTypeList" SHALL be either equal to, or a subset of, the list provided by the client. 🔥
3. User Mapping Handshake Exchange 💜
The underlying structure of the SupplementalData handshake message, used to carry information defined in this section, is defined in RFC 4680 [N6].
A new SupplementalDataType [N6] is defined to accommodate communication of generic user mapping data. See RFC 2246 (TLS 1.0) [N2] and RFC 4346 (TLS 1.1) [N3] for other handshake types. 🧚
The information in this data type carries one or more unauthenticated hints, UserMappingDataList, inserted by the client side. Upon receipt and successful completion of the TLS handshake, the server MAY use this hint to locate the user's account from which user information and credentials MAY be retrieved to support authentication based on the client certificate. 👑
struct {
SupplementalDataType supp_data_type;
uint16 supp_data_length;
select(SupplementalDataType) {
case user_mapping_data: UserMappingDataList;
}
} SupplementalDataEntry;
enum {
user_mapping_data(0), (65535)
} SupplementalDataType;The user_mapping_data(0) enumeration results in a new supplemental data type UserMappingDataList with the following structure:
enum {
(255)
} UserMappingType;
struct {
UserMappingType user_mapping_version;
uint16 user_mapping_length;
select(UserMappingType) { }
} UserMappingData;
struct{
UserMappingData user_mapping_data_list<1..2^16-1>;
}UserMappingDataList;user_mapping_length: this field is the length (in bytes) of the data selected by UserMappingType. 📏
The UserMappingData structure contains a single mapping of type UserMappingType. This structure can be leveraged to define new types of user mapping hints in the future. The UserMappingDataList MAY carry multiple hints; it is defined as a vector of UserMappingData structures. 🌸
No preference is given to the order in which hints are specified in this vector. If the client sends more than one hint, then the Server SHOULD use the applicable mapping supported by the server. 🍓
Implementations MAY support the UPN domain hint as specified in Section 6 of this document. Implementations MAY also support other user mapping types as they are defined. Definitions of standards-track user mapping types must include a discussion of internationalization considerations. 🌈
4. Message Flow 🦋
In order to negotiate sending user mapping data to a server in accordance with this specification, clients MUST include an extension of type "user_mapping" in the (extended) client hello, which SHALL contain a list of supported hint types. 💖
Servers that receive an extended client hello containing a "user_mapping" extension MAY indicate that they are willing to accept user mapping data by including an extension of type "user_mapping" in the (extended) server hello, which SHALL contain a list of preferred hint types.
After negotiation of the use of user mapping has been successfully completed (by exchanging hello messages including "user_mapping" extensions), clients MAY send a "SupplementalData" message containing the "UserMappingDataList" before the "Certificate" message. The message flow is illustrated in Figure 1 below. ✨
Client Server
ClientHello
/* with user_mapping ext */ -------->
ServerHello
/* with user-mapping ext */
Certificate*
ServerKeyExchange*
CertificateRequest*
<-------- ServerHelloDone
SupplementalData
/* with UserMappingDataList */
Certificate*
ClientKeyExchange
CertificateVerify*
[ChangeCipherSpec]
Finished -------->
[ChangeCipherSpec]
<-------- Finished
Application Data <-------> Application Data* Indicates optional or situation-dependent messages that are not always sent according to RFC 2246 [N2] and RFC 4346 [N3].
Figure 1. Message Flow with User Mapping Data 🎀
The server MUST expect and gracefully handle the case where the client chooses not to send any supplementalData handshake message even after successful negotiation of extensions. The client MAY at its own discretion decide that the user mapping hint it initially intended to send no longer is relevant for this session. One such reason could be that the server certificate fails to meet certain requirements. 🙈
5. Security Considerations 🔥
⚠️ Bestie, this section is seriously important. Read it twice 💀
The user mapping hint sent in the UserMappingDataList is unauthenticated data that MUST NOT be treated as a trusted identifier. Authentication of the user represented by that user mapping hint MUST rely solely on validation of the client certificate. One way to do this is to use the user mapping hint to locate and extract a certificate of the claimed user from the trusted directory and subsequently match this certificate against the validated client certificate from the TLS handshake. 🚨
As the client is the initiator of this TLS extension, it needs to determine when it is appropriate to send the User Mapping Information. It may not be prudent to broadcast a user mapping hint to just any server at any time. 👀
To avoid superfluously sending user mapping hints, clients SHOULD only send this information if it recognizes the server as a legitimate recipient. Recognition of the server can be done in many ways. One way to do this could be to recognize the name and address of the server. 💅
In some cases, the user mapping hint may itself be regarded as sensitive. In such cases, the double handshake technique described in [N6] can be used to provide protection for the user mapping hint information. 🫶
6. UPN Domain Hint (Informative) 🎀
okay so this section is informative, which means it's a friendly description and not a rule book 🧚 It covers one user mapping hint type, the one for Domain Name hints and User Principal Name hints. Other hint types might show up in other docs later, so this isn't the only hint in town ✨
The User Principal Name (UPN) is giving "who am I in the directory" energy 💅 It's a name that points to a user's entry in a directory, shaped like userName@domainName. Microsoft traditionally relied on that name being baked into the client certificate when you logged on to a domain account. ngl that has some real drawbacks 😭 It blocks certificates that don't have a UPN at all, and you end up reissuing certs (or making a bunch of them) every time accounts change or new ones get created. With the TLS extension plus this hint type, one certificate can map to one or more of a user's accounts, and the cert doesn't need a proprietary UPN. Iconic 👑
The domain_name field MAY be used when you only need the domain info. Think about a user who has accounts in multiple domains with the same user name, where that user name is already known from somewhere else, like the client certificate 🌸 When you also need the user name, the user_principal_name field MAY be used to show both the username and the domain name. If both fields are there, the server can use whichever one it wants 💜
Here's how the structures look:
enum {
upn_domain_hint(64), (255)
} UserMappingType;
struct {
opaque user_principal_name<0..2^16-1>;
opaque domain_name<0..2^16-1>;
} UpnDomainHint;
struct {
UserMappingType user_mapping_version;
uint16 user_mapping_length;
select(UserMappingType) {
case upn_domain_hint: UpnDomainHint;
}
} UserMappingData;The user_principal_name field, when it's specified, SHALL be of the form "user@domain". Here "user" is a UTF-8 encoded Unicode string that does not contain the "@" character, and "domain" is a domain name that meets the requirements in the next paragraph 🦋
The domain_name field, when it's specified, SHALL contain a domain name [N5] in the usual text form. That means one or more domain labels separated by ".", where each label starts and ends with an alphanumeric character and can also contain "-" characters 🍓 This field is an "IDN-unaware domain name slot" as defined in RFC 3490 [N7], so domain names with non-ASCII characters have to be processed as described in RFC 3490 before they get stored here 🌈
The UpnDomainHint MUST at least contain a non-empty user_principal_name or a non-empty domain_name. The UpnDomainHint MAY contain both user_principal_name and domain_name. Don't skip this one, bestie 🫶
7. IANA Considerations 📋
IANA has taken the following actions, and they're all about making sure the right things get registered 💖
- Created an entry,
user_mapping(6), in the existing registry for ExtensionType (defined in RFC 4366 [N4]). - Created an entry,
user_mapping_data(0), in the new registry for SupplementalDataType (defined in RFC 4680). - Established a registry for TLS UserMappingType values. The first entry in the registry is
upn_domain_hint(64). TLS UserMappingType values in the inclusive range 0-63 (decimal) are assigned via RFC 2434 [N8] Standards Action. Values from the inclusive range 64-223 (decimal) are assigned via RFC 2434 Specification Required. Values from the inclusive range 224-255 (decimal) are reserved for RFC 2434 Private Use 🔥
8. Normative References 📚
Here are the references this spec leans on, all listed in full 💅
[N1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[N2] Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0", RFC
2246, January 1999.
[N3] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.1", RFC 4346, April 2006.
[N4] Blake-Wilson, S., Nystrom, M., Hopwood, D., Mikkelsen, J., and
T. Wright, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions", RFC
4366, April 2006.
[N5] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities", STD
13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
[N6] Santesson, S., "TLS Handshake Message for Supplemental Data",
RFC 4680, October 2006.
[N7] Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello,
"Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)", RFC
3490, March 2003.
[N8] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA
Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434, October
1998.9. Acknowledgements 🫶
The authors give a huge shoutout to Russ Housley, Eric Resocorla, and Paul Leach for their substantial contributions 💜
Authors' Addresses 🧚
Stefan Santesson
Microsoft
Finlandsgatan 30
164 93 KISTA
Sweden
EMail: stefans@microsoft.com
Ari Medvinsky
Microsoft
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
USA
EMail: arimed@microsoft.com
Joshua Ball
Microsoft
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
USA
EMail: joshball@microsoft.comFull Copyright Statement ⚖️
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
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📦 where this page comes from
- ietf: rfc4681 2006-10
- 💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms