From Fedora Project Wiki

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 asses endpoint's security posture and its compliance to enterprise policies. 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

Goals

TNC client and server functionality: TCG's IF-TNCCS 1.1 and IETF RFC 5973

Integrity measurements collector (IMC) and verifier (IMV) messaging protocol functionality: IF-M 1.2 and IETF RFC 5972

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.

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

None.

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

http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/resources/tnc_and_scap_an_integrated_solution_for_automating_security

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