One of the pillars of the 10G platform is security. Simplicity, integrity, confidentiality and availability are all different aspects of Cable’s 10G security platform. In this work, we want to talk about the integrity (authentication) enhancements, that have been developing for the next generation of DOCSIS® networks, and how they update the security profiles of cable broadband services.

DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications) defines how networks and devices are created to provide broadband for the cable industry and its customers. Specifically, DOCSIS comprises a set of technical documents that are at the core of the cable broadband services. CableLabs manufacturers for the cable industry, and cable broadband operators continuously collaborate to improve their efficiency, reliability and security.

With regards to security, DOCSIS networks have pioneered the use of public key cryptography on a mass scale – the DOCSIS Public Key Infrastructure (PKIs) are among the largest PKIs in the world with half billion active certificates issued and actively used every day around the world.

Following, we introduce a brief history of DOCSIS security and look into the limitations of the current authorization framework and subsequently provide a description of the security properties introduced with the new version of the authorization (and authentication) framework which addresses current limitations.

A Journey Through DOCSIS Security

The DOCSIS protocol, which is used in cable’s network to provide connectivity and services to users, has undergone a series of security-related updates in its latest version DOCSIS 4.0, to help meet the 10G platform requirements.

In the first DOCSIS 1.0 specification, the radio frequency (RF) interface included three security specifications: Security System, Removable Security Module and Baseline Privacy Interface. Combined, the Security System plus the Removable Security Module Specification became Full Security (FS).

Soon after the adoption of public key cryptography that occurred in the authorization process, the cable industry realized that a secure way to authenticate devices was needed; a DOCSIS PKI was established for DOCSIS 1.1-3.0 devices to provide cable modems with verifiable identities.

With the DOCSIS 3.0 specification, the major security feature was the ability to perform the authentication and encryption earlier in the device registration process, thus providing protection for important configuration and setup data (e.g., the configuration file for the CM or the DHCP traffic) that was otherwise not protected. The new feature was called Early Authorization and Encryption (EAE), it allows to start Baseline Privacy Interface Plus (BPI) even before the device is provisioned with IP connectivity.

The DOCSIS 3.1 specifications created a new Public Key Infrastructure *(PKI) to handle the authentication needs for the new class of devices. This new PKI introduced several improvements over the original PKI when it comes to cryptography – a newer set of algorithms and increased key sizes were the major changes over the legacy PKI. The same new PKI that is used today to secure DOCSIS 3.1 devices will also provide the certificates for the newer DOCSIS 4.0 ones.

The DOCSIS 4.0 version of the specification introduces, among the numerous innovations, an improved authentication framework (BPI Plus V2) that addresses the current limitations of BPI Plus and implements new security properties such as full algorithm agility, Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), Mutual Message Authentication (MMA or MA) and Downgrade Attacks Protection.

Baseline Privacy Plus V1 and Its Limitations

In DOCSIS 1.0-3.1 specifications, when Baseline Privacy Plus (BPI+ V1) is enabled, the CMTS directly authorizes a CM by providing it with an Authorization Key, which is then used to derive all the authorization and encryption key material. These secrets are then used to secure the communication between the CM and the CMTS. In this security model, the CMTS is assumed trusted and its identity is not validated.

Figure 1: BPI Plus Authorization Exchange

The design of BPI+ V1 dates back more than just few years and in this period of time, the security and cryptography landscapes have drastically changed;  especially in regards to cryptography. At the time when BPI+ was designed, the crypto community was set on the use of the RSA public key algorithm, while today, the use of elliptic-curve cryptography and ECDSA signing algorithm is predominant because of its efficiency, especially when RSA 3072 or larger keys are required.

A missing feature in BPI+ is the lack of authentication for the authorization messages. In particular, CMs and CMTS-es are not required to authenticate (i.e., sign) their own messages, making them vulnerable to unauthorized manipulation.

In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion around authentication and how to make sure that compromises of long-term credentials (e.g., the private key associated with an X.509 certificate) do not provide access to all the sessions from that user in the clear (i.e., enables the decryption of all recorded sessions by breaking a single key) – because BPI+ V1 directly encrypts the Authorization Key by using the RSA public key that is in the CM’s device certificate, it does not support Perfect Forward Secrecy.

To address these issues, the cable industry worked on a new version of its authorization protocol, namely BPI Plus Version 2. With this update, a protection mechanism was required to prevent downgrade attacks, where attackers to force the use of the older, and possibly weaker, version of the protocol. In order to address this possible issue, the DOCSIS community decided that a specific protection mechanism was needed and introduced the Trust On First Use (TOFU) mechanism to address it.

The New Baseline Privacy Plus V2

The DOCSIS 4.0 specification introduces a new version of the authentication framework, namely Baseline Privacy Plus Version 2, that addresses the limitations of BPI+ V1 by providing support for the identified new security needs. Following is a summary of the new security properties provided by BPI+ V2 and how they address the current limitations:

• Message Authentication. BPI+ V2 Authorization messages are fully authenticated. For CMs this means that they need to digitally sign the Authorization Requests messages, thus eliminating the possibility for an attacker to substitute the CM certificate with another one. For CMTS-es, BPI+ V2 requires them to authenticate their own Authorization Reply messages this change adds an explicit authentication step to the current authorization mechanism. While recognizing the need for deploying mutual message authentication, DOCSIS 4.0 specification allows for a transitioning period where devices are still allowed to use BPI+ V1. The main reason for this choice is related to the new requirements imposed on DOCSIS networks that are now required to procure and renew their DOCSIS credentials when enabling BPI+ V2 (Mutual Authentication).
• Perfect Forward Secrecy. Differently from BPI+ V1, the new authentication framework requires both parties to participate in the derivation of the Authorization Key from authenticated public parameters. In particular, the introduction of Message Authentication on both sides of the communication (i.e., the CM and the CMTS) enables BPI+ V2 to use the Elliptic-Curves Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral (ECDHE) algorithm instead of the CMTS directly generating and encrypting the key for the different CMs.Because of the authentication on the Authorization messages, the use of ECDHE is safe against MITM attacks.
• Algorithm Agility. As the advancement in classical and quantum computing provides users with incredible computational power at their fingertips, it also provides the same ever-increasing capabilities to malicious users. BPI+ V2 removes the protocol dependencies on specific public-key algorithms that are present in BPI+ V1. , By introducing the use of the standard CMS format for message authentication (i.e., signatures) combined with the use of ECDHE, DOCSIS 4.0 security protocol effectively decouples the public key algorithm used in the X.509 certificates from the key exchange algorithm. This enables the use of new public key algorithms when needed for security or operational needs.
• Downgrade Attacks Protection. A new Trust On First Use (TOFU) mechanism is introduced to provide protection against downgrade attacks – although the principles behind TOFU mechanisms are not new, its use to protect against downgrade attacks is. It leverages the security parameters used during a first successful authorization as a baseline for future ones, unless indicated otherwise. By establishing the minimum required version of the authentication protocol, DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems actively prevent unauthorized use of a weaker version of the DOCSIS authentication framework (BPI+).  During the transitioning period for the adoption of the new version of the protocol, cable operators can allow “planned” downgrades – for example, when a node split occurs or when a faulty equipment is replaced and BPI+ V2 is not enabled there. In other words, a successfully validated CMTS can set, on the CM, the allowed minimum version (and other CM-CMTS binding parameters) to be used for subsequent authentications.

Future Work

In this work we provided a short history of DOCSIS security and reviewed the limitations of the current authorization framework. As CMTS functionality moves into the untrusted domain, these limitations could potentially be translated into security threats, especially in new distributed architectures like Remote PHY. Although in their final stage of approval, the proposed changes to the DOCSIS 4.0 are currently being addressed in the Security Working Group.

Member organizations and DOCSIS equipment vendors are always encouraged to participate in our DOCSIS working groups – if you qualify, please contact us and participate in our weekly DOCSIS 4.0 security meeting where these, and other security-related topics, are addressed.

If you are interested in discovering even more details about DOCSIS 4.0 and 10G security, please feel free to contact us to receive more in-depth and updated information.