Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                       E. Rescorla
Request for Comments: 8816                                       Mozilla
Category: Informational                                      J. Peterson
ISSN: 2070-1721                                                  Neustar
                                                          February 2021


Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR) Out-of-Band Architecture and
                              Use Cases

Abstract

  The Personal Assertion Token (PASSporT) format defines a token that
  can be carried by signaling protocols, including SIP, to
  cryptographically attest the identity of callers.  However, not all
  telephone calls use Internet signaling protocols, and some calls use
  them for only part of their signaling path, while some cannot
  reliably deliver SIP header fields end-to-end.  This document
  describes use cases that require the delivery of PASSporT objects
  outside of the signaling path, and defines architectures and
  semantics to provide this functionality.

Status of This Memo

  This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
  published for informational purposes.

  This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
  (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
  received public review and has been approved for publication by the
  Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
  approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet
  Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.

  Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
  and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
  https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8816.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
  document authors.  All rights reserved.

  This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
  Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
  (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
  publication of this document.  Please review these documents
  carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
  to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
  include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
  the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
  described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

  1.  Introduction
  2.  Terminology
  3.  Operating Environments
  4.  Dataflows
  5.  Use Cases
    5.1.  Case 1: VoIP to PSTN Call
    5.2.  Case 2: Two Smart PSTN Endpoints
    5.3.  Case 3: PSTN to VoIP Call
    5.4.  Case 4: Gateway Out-of-Band
    5.5.  Case 5: Enterprise Call Center
  6.  Storing and Retrieving PASSporTs
    6.1.  Storage
    6.2.  Retrieval
  7.  Solution Architecture
    7.1.  Credentials and Phone Numbers
    7.2.  Call Flow
    7.3.  Security Analysis
    7.4.  Substitution Attacks
    7.5.  Rate Control for CPS Storage
  8.  Authentication and Verification Service Behavior for
          Out-of-Band
    8.1.  Authentication Service (AS)
    8.2.  Verification Service (VS)
    8.3.  Gateway Placement Services
  9.  Example HTTPS Interface to the CPS
  10. CPS Discovery
  11. Encryption Key Lookup
  12. IANA Considerations
  13. Privacy Considerations
  14. Security Considerations
  15. Informative References
  Acknowledgments
  Authors' Addresses

1.  Introduction

  The STIR problem statement [RFC7340] describes widespread problems
  enabled by impersonation in the telephone network, including illegal
  robocalling, voicemail hacking, and swatting.  As telephone services
  are increasingly migrating onto the Internet, and using Voice over IP
  (VoIP) protocols such as SIP [RFC3261], it is necessary for these
  protocols to support stronger identity mechanisms to prevent
  impersonation.  For example, [RFC8224] defines a SIP Identity header
  field capable of carrying PASSporT objects [RFC8225] in SIP as a
  means to cryptographically attest that the originator of a telephone
  call is authorized to use the calling party number (or, for native
  SIP cases, SIP URI) associated with the originator of the call.

  Not all telephone calls use SIP today, however, and even those that
  do use SIP do not always carry SIP signaling end-to-end.  Calls from
  telephone numbers still routinely traverse the Public Switched
  Telephone Network (PSTN) at some point.  Broadly, calls fall into one
  of three categories:

  1.  One or both of the endpoints is actually a PSTN endpoint.

  2.  Both of the endpoints are non-PSTN (SIP, Jingle, etc.) but the
      call transits the PSTN at some point.

  3.  Non-PSTN calls that do not transit the PSTN at all (such as
      native SIP end-to-end calls).

  The first two categories represent the majority of telephone calls
  associated with problems like illegal robocalling: many robocalls
  today originate on the Internet but terminate at PSTN endpoints.
  However, the core network elements that operate the PSTN are legacy
  devices that are unlikely to be upgradable at this point to support
  an in-band authentication system.  As such, those devices largely
  cannot be modified to pass signatures originating on the Internet --
  or indeed any in-band signaling data -- intact.  Even if fields for
  tunneling arbitrary data can be found in traditional PSTN signaling,
  in some cases legacy elements would strip the signatures from those
  fields; in others, they might damage them to the point where they
  cannot be verified.  For those first two categories above, any in-
  band authentication scheme does not seem practical in the current
  environment.

  While the core network of the PSTN remains fixed, the endpoints of
  the telephone network are becoming increasingly programmable and
  sophisticated.  Landline "plain old telephone service" deployments,
  especially in the developed world, are shrinking, and increasingly
  being replaced by three classes of intelligent devices: smart phones,
  IP Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs), and terminal adapters.  All three
  are general purpose computers, and typically all three have Internet
  access as well as access to the PSTN; they may be used for
  residential, mobile, or enterprise telephone services.  Additionally,
  various kinds of gateways increasingly front for deployments of
  legacy PBX and PSTN switches.  All of this provides a potential
  avenue for building an authentication system that implements stronger
  identity while leaving PSTN systems intact.

  This capability also provides an ideal transitional technology while
  in-band STIR adoption is ramping up.  It permits early adopters to
  use the technology even when intervening network elements are not yet
  STIR-aware, and through various kinds of gateways, it may allow
  providers with a significant PSTN investment to still secure their
  calls with STIR.

  The techniques described in this document therefore build on the
  PASSporT [RFC8225] mechanism and the work of [RFC8224] to describe a
  way that a PASSporT object created in the originating network of a
  call can reach the terminating network even when it cannot be carried
  end-to-end in-band in the call signaling.  This relies on a new
  service defined in this document called a Call Placement Service
  (CPS) that permits the PASSporT object to be stored during call
  processing and retrieved for verification purposes.

  Potential implementors should note that this document merely defines
  the operating environments in which this out-of-band STIR mechanism
  is intended to operate.  It provides use cases, gives a broad
  description of the components, and a potential solution architecture.
  Various environments may have their own security requirements: a
  public deployment of out-of-band STIR faces far greater challenges
  than a constrained intra-network deployment.  To flesh out the
  storage and retrieval of PASSporTs in the CPS within this context,
  this document includes a strawman protocol suitable for that purpose.
  Deploying this framework in any given environment would require
  additional specification outside the scope of this document.

2.  Terminology

  The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
  "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
  "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
  14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
  capitals, as shown here.

3.  Operating Environments

  This section describes the environments in which the proposed out-of-
  band STIR mechanism is intended to operate.  In the simplest setting,
  Alice calls Bob, and her call is routed through some set of gateways
  and/or the PSTN that do not support end-to-end delivery of STIR.
  Both Alice and Bob have smart devices that can access the Internet
  (perhaps enterprise devices, or even end-user ones), but they do not
  have a clear telephone signaling connection between them: Alice
  cannot inject any data into signaling that Bob can read, with the
  exception of the asserted destination and origination E.164 numbers.
  The calling party number might originate from her own device or from
  the network.  These numbers are effectively the only data that can be
  used for coordination between the endpoints.

                              +---------+
                             /           \
                         +---             +---+
    +----------+        /                      \        +----------+
    |          |       |        Gateways        |       |          |
    |   Alice  |<----->|         and/or         |<----->|    Bob   |
    | (caller) |       |          PSTN          |       | (callee) |
    +----------+        \                      /        +----------+
                         +---             +---+
                             \           /
                              +---------+

  In a more complicated setting, Alice and/or Bob may not have a smart
  or programmable device, but instead just a traditional telephone.
  However, one or both of them are behind a STIR-aware gateway that can
  participate in out-of-band coordination, as shown below:

                             +---------+
                            /           \
                        +---             +---+
  +----------+  +--+   /                      \   +--+  +----------+
  |          |  |  |  |        Gateways        |  |  |  |          |
  |   Alice  |<-|GW|->|         and/or         |<-|GW|->|    Bob   |
  | (caller) |  |  |  |          PSTN          |  |  |  | (callee) |
  +----------+  +--+   \                      /   +--+  +----------+
                        +---             +---+
                            \           /
                             +---------+

  In such a case, Alice might have an analog (e.g., PSTN) connection to
  her gateway or switch that is responsible for her identity.
  Similarly, the gateway would verify Alice's identity, generate the
  right calling party number information, and provide that number to
  Bob using ordinary Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) mechanisms.

4.  Dataflows

  Because in these operating environments, endpoints cannot pass
  cryptographic information to one another directly through signaling,
  any solution must involve some rendezvous mechanism to allow
  endpoints to communicate.  We call this rendezvous service a Call
  Placement Service (CPS), a service where a record of call placement,
  in this case a PASSporT, can be stored for future retrieval.  In
  principle, this service could communicate any information, but
  minimally we expect it to include a full-form PASSporT that attests
  the caller, callee, and the time of the call.  The callee can use the
  existence of a PASSporT for a given incoming call as rough validation
  of the asserted origin of that call.  (See Section 11 for limitations
  of this design.)

  This architecture does not mandate that any particular sort of entity
  operate a CPS or mandate any means to discover a CPS.  A CPS could be
  run internally within a network or made publicly available.  One or
  more CPSes could be run by a carrier, as repositories for PASSporTs
  for calls sent to its customers, or a CPS could be built into an
  enterprise PBX or even a smartphone.  To the degree possible, it is
  specified here generically as an idea that may have applicability to
  a variety of STIR deployments.

  There are roughly two plausible dataflow architectures for the CPS:

  1.  The callee registers with the CPS.  When the caller wishes to
      place a call to the callee, it sends the PASSporT to the CPS,
      which immediately forwards it to the callee.

  2.  The caller stores the PASSporT with the CPS at the time of call
      placement.  When the callee receives the call, it contacts the
      CPS and retrieves the PASSporT.

  While the first architecture is roughly isomorphic to current VoIP
  protocols, it shares their drawbacks.  Specifically, the callee must
  maintain a full-time connection to the CPS to serve as a notification
  channel.  This comes with the usual networking costs to the callee
  and is especially problematic for mobile endpoints.  Indeed, if the
  endpoints had the capabilities to implement such an architecture,
  they could surely just use SIP or some other protocol to set up a
  secure session; even if the media were going through the traditional
  PSTN, a "shadow" SIP session could convey the PASSporT.  Thus, we
  focus on the second architecture in which the PSTN incoming call
  serves as the notification channel, and the callee can then contact
  the CPS to retrieve the PASSporT.  In specialized environments, for
  example, a call center that receives a large volume of incoming calls
  that originated in the PSTN, the notification channel approach might
  be viable.

5.  Use Cases

  The following are the motivating use cases for this mechanism.  Bear
  in mind that, just as in [RFC8224], there may be multiple Identity
  header fields in a single SIP INVITE, so there may be multiple
  PASSporTs in this out-of-band mechanism associated with a single
  call.  For example, a SIP user agent might create a PASSporT for a
  call with an end-user credential, and as the call exits the
  originating administrative domain, the network authentication service
  might create its own PASSporT for the same call.  As such, these use
  cases may overlap in the processing of a single call.

5.1.  Case 1: VoIP to PSTN Call

  A call originates in a SIP environment in a STIR-aware administrative
  domain.  The local authentication service for that administrative
  domain creates a PASSporT that is carried in band in the call per
  [RFC8224].  The call is routed out of the originating administrative
  domain and reaches a gateway to the PSTN.  Eventually, the call will
  terminate on a mobile smartphone that supports this out-of-band
  mechanism.

  In this use case, the originating authentication service can store
  the PASSporT with the appropriate CPS (per the practices of
  Section 10) for the target telephone number as a fallback in case SIP
  signaling will not reach end-to-end.  When the destination mobile
  smartphone receives the call over the PSTN, it consults the CPS and
  discovers a PASSporT from the originating telephone number waiting
  for it.  It uses this PASSporT to verify the calling party number.

5.2.  Case 2: Two Smart PSTN Endpoints

  A call originates with an enterprise PBX that has both Internet
  access and a built-in gateway to the PSTN, which communicates through
  traditional telephone signaling protocols.  The PBX immediately
  routes the call to the PSTN, but before it does, it provisions a
  PASSporT on the CPS associated with the target telephone number.

  After normal PSTN routing, the call lands on a smart mobile handset
  that supports the STIR out-of-band mechanism.  It queries the
  appropriate CPS over the Internet to determine if a call has been
  placed to it by a STIR-aware device.  It finds the PASSporT
  provisioned by the enterprise PBX and uses it to verify the calling
  party number.

5.3.  Case 3: PSTN to VoIP Call

  A call originates with an enterprise PBX that has both Internet
  access and a built-in gateway to the PSTN.  It will immediately route
  the call to the PSTN, but before it does, it provisions a PASSporT
  with the CPS associated with the target telephone number.  However,
  it turns out that the call will eventually route through the PSTN to
  an Internet gateway, which will translate this into a SIP call and
  deliver it to an administrative domain with a STIR verification
  service.

  In this case, there are two subcases for how the PASSporT might be
  retrieved.  In subcase 1, the Internet gateway that receives the call
  from the PSTN could query the appropriate CPS to determine if the
  original caller created and provisioned a PASSporT for this call.  If
  so, it can retrieve the PASSporT and, when it creates a SIP INVITE
  for this call, add a corresponding Identity header field per
  [RFC8224].  When the SIP INVITE reaches the destination
  administrative domain, it will be able to verify the PASSporT
  normally.  Note that to avoid discrepancies with the Date header
  field value, only a full-form PASSporT should be used for this
  purpose.  In subcase 2, the gateway does not retrieve the PASSporT
  itself, but instead the verification service at the destination
  administrative domain does so.  Subcase 1 would perhaps be valuable
  for deployments where the destination administrative domain supports
  in-band STIR but not out-of-band STIR.

5.4.  Case 4: Gateway Out-of-Band

  A call originates in the SIP world in a STIR-aware administrative
  domain.  The local authentication service for that administrative
  domain creates a PASSporT that is carried in band in the call per
  [RFC8224].  The call is routed out of the originating administrative
  domain and eventually reaches a gateway to the PSTN.

  In this case, the originating authentication service does not support
  the out-of-band mechanism, so instead the gateway to the PSTN
  extracts the PASSporT from the SIP request and provisions it to the
  CPS.  (When the call reaches the gateway to the PSTN, the gateway
  might first check the CPS to see if a PASSporT object had already
  been provisioned for this call, and only provision a PASSporT if none
  is present).

  Ultimately, the call may terminate on the PSTN or be routed back to a
  SIP environment.  In the former case, perhaps the destination
  endpoint queries the CPS to retrieve the PASSporT provisioned by the
  first gateway.  If the call ultimately returns to a SIP environment,
  it might be the gateway from the PSTN back to the Internet that
  retrieves the PASSporT from the CPS and attaches it to the new SIP
  INVITE it creates, or it might be the terminating administrative
  domain's verification service that checks the CPS when an INVITE
  arrives with no Identity header field.  Either way, the PASSporT can
  survive the gap in SIP coverage caused by the PSTN leg of the call.

5.5.  Case 5: Enterprise Call Center

  A call originates from a mobile user, and a STIR authentication
  service operated by their carrier creates a PASSporT for the call.
  As the carrier forwards the call via SIP, it attaches the PASSporT to
  the SIP call with an Identity header field.  As a fallback in case
  the call will not go end-to-end over SIP, the carrier also stores the
  PASSporT in a CPS.

  The call is then routed over SIP for a time, before it transitions to
  the PSTN and ultimately is handled by a legacy PBX at a high-volume
  call center.  The call center supports the out-of-band service, and
  has a high-volume interface to a CPS to retrieve PASSporTs for
  incoming calls; agents at the call center use a general purpose
  computer to manage inbound calls and can receive STIR notifications
  through it.  When the PASSporT arrives at the CPS, it is sent through
  a subscription/notification interface to a system that can correlate
  incoming calls with valid PASSporTs.  The call center agent sees that
  a valid call from the originating number has arrived.

6.  Storing and Retrieving PASSporTs

  The use cases show a variety of entities accessing the CPS to store
  and retrieve PASSporTs.  The question of how the CPS authorizes the
  storage and retrieval of PASSporTs is thus a key design decision in
  the architecture.  The STIR architecture assumes that service
  providers and, in some cases, end-user devices will have credentials
  suitable for attesting authority over telephone numbers per
  [RFC8226].  These credentials provide the most obvious way that a CPS
  can authorize the storage and retrieval of PASSporTs.  However, as
  use cases 3, 4, and 5 in Section 5 show, it may sometimes make sense
  for the entity storing or retrieving PASSporTs to be an intermediary
  rather than a device associated with either the originating or
  terminating side of a call; those intermediaries often would not have
  access to STIR credentials covering the telephone numbers in
  question.  Requiring authorization based on a credential to store
  PASSporTs is therefore undesirable, though potentially acceptable if
  sufficient steps are taken to mitigate any privacy risk of leaking
  data.

  It is an explicit design goal of this mechanism to minimize the
  potential privacy exposure of using a CPS.  Ideally, the out-of-band
  mechanism should not result in a worse privacy situation than in-band
  STIR [RFC8224]: for in-band, we might say that a SIP entity is
  authorized to receive a PASSporT if it is an intermediate or final
  target of the routing of a SIP request.  As the originator of a call
  cannot necessarily predict the routing path a call will follow, an
  out-of-band mechanism could conceivably even improve on the privacy
  story.

  Broadly, the architecture recommended here thus is one focused on
  permitting any entity to store encrypted PASSporTs at the CPS,
  indexed under the called number.  PASSporTs will be encrypted with a
  public key associated with the called number, so these PASSporTs may
  safely be retrieved by any entity because only holders of the
  corresponding private key will be able to decrypt the PASSporT.  This
  also prevents the CPS itself from learning the contents of PASSporTs,
  and thus metadata about calls in progress, which makes the CPS a less
  attractive target for pervasive monitoring (see [RFC7258]).  As a
  first step, transport-level security can provide confidentiality from
  eavesdroppers for both the storing and retrieval of PASSporTs.  To
  bolster the privacy story, to prevent denial-of-service flooding of
  the CPS, and to complicate traffic analysis, a few additional
  mechanisms are also recommended below.

6.1.  Storage

  There are a few dimensions to authorizing the storage of PASSporTs.
  Encrypting PASSporTs prior to storage entails that a CPS has no way
  to tell if a PASSporT is valid; it simply conveys encrypted blocks
  that it cannot access itself and can make no authorization decision
  based on the PASSporT contents.  There is certainly no prospect for
  the CPS to verify the PASSporTs itself.

  Note that this architecture requires clients that store PASSporTs to
  have access to an encryption key associated with the intended called
  party to be used to encrypt the PASSporT.  Discovering this key
  requires the existence of a key lookup service (see Section 11),
  depending on how the CPS is architected; however, some kind of key
  store or repository could be implemented adjacent to it and perhaps
  even incorporated into its operation.  Key discovery is made more
  complicated by the fact that there can potentially be multiple
  entities that have authority over a telephone number: a carrier, a
  reseller, an enterprise, and an end user might all have credentials
  permitting them to attest that they are allowed to originate calls
  from a number, say.  PASSporTs for out-of-band use therefore might
  need to be encrypted with multiple keys in the hopes that one will be
  decipherable by the relying party.

  Again, the most obvious way to authorize storage is to require the
  originator to authenticate themselves to the CPS with their STIR
  credential.  However, since the call is indexed at the CPS under the
  called number, this can weaken the privacy story of the architecture,
  as it reveals to the CPS both the identity of the caller and the
  callee.  Moreover, it does not work for the gateway use cases
  described above; to support those use cases, we must effectively
  allow any entity to store PASSporTs at a CPS.  This does not degrade
  the anti-impersonation security of STIR, because entities who do not
  possess the necessary credentials to sign the PASSporT will not be
  able to create PASSporTs that will be treated as valid by verifiers.
  In this architecture, it does not matter whether the CPS received a
  PASSporT from the authentication service that created it or from an
  intermediary gateway downstream in the routing path as in case 4
  above.  However, if literally anyone can store PASSporTs in the CPS,
  an attacker could easily flood the CPS with millions of bogus
  PASSporTs indexed under a calling number, and thereby prevent the
  called party from finding a valid PASSporT for an incoming call
  buried in a haystack of fake entries.

  The solution architecture must therefore include some sort of traffic
  control system to prevent flooding.  Preferably, this should not
  require authenticating the source, as this will reveal to the CPS
  both the source and destination of traffic.  A potential solution is
  discussed below in Section 7.5.

6.2.  Retrieval

  For retrieval of PASSporTs, this architecture assumes that clients
  will contact the CPS through some sort of polling or notification
  interface to receive all current PASSporTs for calls destined to a
  particular telephone number, or block of numbers.

  As PASSporTs stored at the CPS are encrypted with a key belonging to
  the intended destination, the CPS can safely allow anyone to download
  PASSporTs for a called number without much fear of compromising
  private information about calls in progress -- provided that the CPS
  always returns at least one encrypted blob in response to a request,
  even if there was no call in progress.  Otherwise, entities could
  poll the CPS constantly, or eavesdrop on traffic, to learn whether or
  not calls were in progress.  The CPS MUST generate at least one
  unique and plausible encrypted response to all retrieval requests,
  and these dummy encrypted PASSporTs MUST NOT be repeated for later
  calls.  An encryption scheme needs to be carefully chosen to make
  messages look indistinguishable from random when encrypted, so that
  information about the called party is not discoverable from
  legitimate encrypted PASSporTs.

  Because the entity placing a call may discover multiple keys
  associated with the called party number, multiple valid PASSporTs may
  be stored in the CPS.  A particular called party who retrieves
  PASSporTs from the CPS may have access to only one of those keys.
  Thus, the presence of one or more PASSporTs that the called party
  cannot decrypt -- which would be indistinguishable from the "dummy"
  PASSporTs created by the CPS when no calls are in progress - does not
  entail that there is no call in progress.  A retriever likely will
  need to decrypt all PASSporTs retrieved from the CPS, and may find
  only one that is valid.

  In order to prevent the CPS from learning the numbers that a callee
  controls, callees might also request PASSporTs for numbers that they
  do not own, that they have no hope of decrypting.  Implementations
  could even allow a callee to request PASSporTs for a range or prefix
  of numbers: a trade-off where that callee is willing to sift through
  bulk quantities of undecryptable PASSporTs for the sake of hiding
  from the CPS which numbers it controls.

  Note that in out-of-band call forwarding cases, special behavior is
  required to manage the relationship between PASSporTs using the
  diversion extension [PASSPORT-DIVERT].  The originating
  authentication service encrypts the initial PASSporT with the public
  encryption key of the intended destination, but once a call is
  forwarded, it may go to a destination that does not possess the
  corresponding private key and thus could not decrypt the original
  PASSporT.  This requires the retargeting entity to generate encrypted
  PASSporTs that show a secure chain of diversion: a retargeting storer
  SHOULD use the "div-o" PASSporT type, with its "opt" extension, as
  specified in [PASSPORT-DIVERT], in order to nest the original
  PASSporT within the encrypted diversion PASSporT.

7.  Solution Architecture

  In this section, we discuss a high-level architecture for providing
  the service described in the previous sections.  This discussion is
  deliberately sketchy, focusing on broad concepts and skipping over
  details.  The intent here is merely to provide an overall
  architecture, not an implementable specification.  A more concrete
  example of how this might be specified is given in Section 9.

7.1.  Credentials and Phone Numbers

  We start from the premise of the STIR problem statement [RFC7340]
  that phone numbers can be associated with credentials that can be
  used to attest ownership of numbers.  For purposes of exposition, we
  will assume that ownership is associated with the endpoint (e.g., a
  smartphone), but it might well be associated with a provider or
  gateway acting for the endpoint instead.  It might be the case that
  multiple entities are able to act for a given number, provided that
  they have the appropriate authority.  [RFC8226] describes a
  credential system suitable for this purpose; the question of how an
  entity is determined to have control of a given number is out of
  scope for this document.

7.2.  Call Flow

  An overview of the basic calling and verification process is shown
  below.  In this diagram, we assume that Alice has the number
  +1.111.555.1111 and Bob has the number +2.222.555.2222.

  Alice                    Call Placement Service                  Bob
  --------------------------------------------------------------------

  Store Encrypted PASSporT for 2.222.555.2222 ->

  Call from 1.111.555.1111 ------------------------------------------>


                                   <-------------- Request PASSporT(s)
                                    for 2.222.555.2222

                                   Obtain Encrypted PASSporT -------->
                                      (2.222.555.2222, 1.111.555.1111)

                                    [Ring phone with verified callerid
                                                     = 1.111.555.1111]

  When Alice wishes to make a call to Bob, she contacts the CPS and
  stores an encrypted PASSporT on the CPS indexed under Bob's number.
  The CPS then awaits retrievals for that number.

  When Alice places the call, Bob's phone would usually ring and
  display Alice's number (+1.111.555.1111), which is informed by the
  existing PSTN mechanisms for relaying a calling party number (e.g.,
  the Calling Party's Number (CIN) field of the Initial Address Message
  (IAM)).  Instead, Bob's phone transparently contacts the CPS and
  requests any current PASSporTs for calls to his number.  The CPS
  responds with any such PASSporTs (or dummy PASSporTs if no relevant
  ones are currently stored).  If such a PASSporT exists, and the
  verification service in Bob's phone decrypts it using his private
  key, validates it, then Bob's phone can present the calling party
  number information as valid.  Otherwise, the call is unverifiable.
  Note that this does not necessarily mean that the call is bogus;
  because we expect incremental deployment, many legitimate calls will
  be unverifiable.

7.3.  Security Analysis

  The primary attack we seek to prevent is an attacker convincing the
  callee that a given call is from some other caller C.  There are two
  scenarios to be concerned with:

  1.  The attacker wishes to impersonate a target when no call from
      that target is in progress.

  2.  The attacker wishes to substitute himself for an existing call
      setup.

  If an attacker can inject fake PASSporTs into the CPS or in the
  communication from the CPS to the callee, he can mount either attack.
  As PASSporTs should be digitally signed by an appropriate authority
  for the number and verified by the callee (see Section 7.1), this
  should not arise in ordinary operations.  Any attacker who is aware
  of calls in progress can attempt to mount a race to substitute
  themselves as described in Section 7.4.  For privacy and robustness
  reasons, using TLS [RFC8446] on the originating side when storing the
  PASSporT at the CPS is RECOMMENDED.

  The entire system depends on the security of the credential
  infrastructure.  If the authentication credentials for a given number
  are compromised, then an attacker can impersonate calls from that
  number.  However, that is no different from in-band STIR [RFC8224].

  A secondary attack we must also prevent is denial-of-service against
  the CPS, which requires some form of rate control solution that will
  not degrade the privacy properties of the architecture.

7.4.  Substitution Attacks

  All that the receipt of the PASSporT from the CPS proves to the
  called party is that Alice is trying to call Bob (or at least was as
  of very recently) -- it does not prove that any particular incoming
  call is from Alice.  Consider the scenario in which we have a service
  that provides an automatic callback to a user-provided number.  In
  that case, the attacker can try to arrange for a false caller-id
  value, as shown below:

   Attacker            Callback Service           CPS               Bob
   --------------------------------------------------------------------
   Place call to Bob ---------->
    (from 111.555.1111)
                               Store PASSporT for
                               CS:Bob ------------->

   Call from Attacker (forged CS caller-id info)  -------------------->

                               Call from CS ------------------------> X


                                                  <-- Retrieve PASSporT
                                                             for CS:Bob

                          PASSporT for CS:Bob ------------------------>

                                           [Ring phone with callerid =
                                              111.555.1111]

  In order to mount this attack, the attacker contacts the Callback
  Service (CS) and provides it with Bob's number.  This causes the CS
  to initiate a call to Bob. As before, the CS contacts the CPS to
  insert an appropriate PASSporT and then initiates a call to Bob.
  Because it is a valid CS injecting the PASSporT, none of the security
  checks mentioned above help.  However, the attacker simultaneously
  initiates a call to Bob using forged caller-id information
  corresponding to the CS.  If he wins the race with the CS, then Bob's
  phone will attempt to verify the attacker's call (and succeed since
  they are indistinguishable), and the CS's call will go to busy/voice
  mail/call waiting.

  In order to prevent a passive attacker from using traffic analysis or
  similar means to learn precisely when a call is placed, it is
  essential that the connection between the caller and the CPS be
  encrypted as recommended above.  Authentication services could store
  dummy PASSporTs at the CPS at random intervals in order to make it
  more difficult for an eavesdropper to use traffic analysis to
  determine that a call was about to be placed.

  Note that in a SIP environment, the callee might notice that there
  were multiple INVITEs and thus detect this attack, but in some PSTN
  interworking scenarios, or highly intermediated networks, only one
  call setup attempt will reach the target.  Also note that the success
  of this substitution attack depends on the attacker landing their
  call within the narrow window that the PASSporT is retained in the
  CPS, so shortening that window will reduce the opportunity for the
  attack.  Finally, smart endpoints could implement some sort of state
  coordination to ensure that both sides believe the call is in
  progress, though methods of supporting that are outside the scope of
  this document.

7.5.  Rate Control for CPS Storage

  In order to prevent the flooding of a CPS with bogus PASSporTs, we
  propose the use of "blind signatures" (see [RFC5636]).  A sender will
  initially authenticate to the CPS using its STIR credentials and
  acquire a signed token from the CPS that will be presented later when
  storing a PASSporT.  The flow looks as follows:

      Sender                                 CPS

      Authenticate to CPS --------------------->
      Blinded(K_temp) ------------------------->
      <------------- Sign(K_cps, Blinded(K_temp))
      [Disconnect]


      Sign(K_cps, K_temp)
      Sign(K_temp, E(K_receiver, PASSporT)) --->

  At an initial time when no call is yet in progress, a potential
  client connects to the CPS, authenticates, and sends a blinded
  version of a freshly generated public key.  The CPS returns a signed
  version of that blinded key.  The sender can then unblind the key and
  get a signature on K_temp from the CPS.

  Then later, when a client wants to store a PASSporT, it connects to
  the CPS anonymously (preferably over a network connection that cannot
  be correlated with the token acquisition) and sends both the signed
  K_temp and its own signature over the encrypted PASSporT.  The CPS
  verifies both signatures and, if they verify, stores the encrypted
  passport (discarding the signatures).

  This design lets the CPS rate limit how many PASSporTs a given sender
  can store just by counting how many times K_temp appears; perhaps CPS
  policy might reject storage attempts and require acquisition of a new
  K_temp after storing more than a certain number of PASSporTs indexed
  under the same destination number in a short interval.  This does
  not, of course, allow the CPS to tell when bogus data is being
  provisioned by an attacker, simply the rate at which data is being
  provisioned.  Potentially, feedback mechanisms could be developed
  that would allow the called parties to tell the CPS when they are
  receiving unusual or bogus PASSporTs.

  This architecture also assumes that the CPS will age out PASSporTs.
  A CPS SHOULD NOT keep any stored PASSporT for longer than the
  recommended freshness policy for the "iat" value as described in
  [RFC8224] (i.e., sixty seconds) unless some local policy for a CPS
  deployment requires a longer or shorter interval.  Any reduction in
  this window makes substitution attacks (see Section 7.4) harder to
  mount, but making the window too small might conceivably age
  PASSporTs out while a heavily redirected call is still alerting.

  An alternative potential approach to blind signatures would be the
  use of verifiable oblivious pseudorandom functions (VOPRFs, per
  [PRIVACY-PASS]), which may prove faster.

8.  Authentication and Verification Service Behavior for Out-of-Band

  [RFC8224] defines an authentication service and a verification
  service as functions that act in the context of SIP requests and
  responses.  This specification thus provides a more generic
  description of authentication service and verification service
  behavior that might or might not involve any SIP transactions, but
  depends only on placing a request for communications from an
  originating identity to one or more destination identities.

8.1.  Authentication Service (AS)

  Out-of-band authentication services perform steps similar to those
  defined in [RFC8224] with some exceptions:

  Step 1: The authentication service MUST determine whether it is
  authoritative for the identity of the originator of the request, that
  is, the identity it will populate in the "orig" claim of the
  PASSporT.  It can do so only if it possesses the private key of one
  or more credentials that can be used to sign for that identity, be it
  a domain or a telephone number or some other identifier.  For
  example, the authentication service could hold the private key
  associated with a STIR certificate [RFC8225].

  Step 2: The authentication service MUST determine that the originator
  of communications can claim the originating identity.  This is a
  policy decision made by the authentication service that depends on
  its relationship to the originator.  For an out-of-band application
  built into the calling device, for example, this is the same check
  performed in Step 1: does the calling device hold a private key, one
  corresponding to a STIR certificate, that can sign for the
  originating identity?

  Step 3: The authentication service MUST acquire the public encryption
  key of the destination, which will be used to encrypt the PASSporT
  (see Section 11).  It MUST also discover (see Section 10) the CPS
  associated with the destination.  The authentication service may
  already have the encryption key and destination CPS cached, or may
  need to query a service to acquire the key.  Note that per
  Section 7.5, the authentication service may also need to acquire a
  token for PASSporT storage from the CPS upon CPS discovery.  It is
  anticipated that the discovery mechanism (see Section 10) used to
  find the appropriate CPS will also find the proper key server for the
  public key of the destination.  In some cases, a destination may have
  multiple public encryption keys associated with it.  In that case,
  the authentication service MUST collect all of those keys.

  Step 4: The authentication service MUST create the PASSporT object.
  This includes acquiring the system time to populate the "iat" claim,
  and populating the "orig" and "dest" claims as described in
  [RFC8225].  The authentication service MUST then encrypt the
  PASSporT.  If in Step 3 the authentication service discovered
  multiple public keys for the destination, it MUST create one
  encrypted copy for each public key it discovered.

  Finally, the authentication service stores the encrypted PASSporT(s)
  at the CPS discovered in Step 3.  Only after that is completed should
  any call be initiated.  Note that a call might be initiated over SIP,
  and the authentication service would place the same PASSporT in the
  Identity header field value of the SIP request -- though SIP would
  carry a cleartext version rather than an encrypted version sent to
  the CPS.  In that case, out-of-band would serve as a fallback
  mechanism if the request was not conveyed over SIP end-to-end.  Also,
  note that the authentication service MAY use a compact form of the
  PASSporT for a SIP request, whereas the version stored at the CPS
  MUST always be a full-form PASSporT.

8.2.  Verification Service (VS)

  When a call arrives, an out-of-band verification service performs
  steps similar to those defined in [RFC8224] with some exceptions:

  Step 1: The verification service contacts the CPS and requests all
  current PASSporTs for its destination number; or alternatively it may
  receive PASSporTs through a push interface from the CPS in some
  deployments.  The verification service MUST then decrypt all
  PASSporTs using its private key.  Some PASSporTs may not be
  decryptable for any number of reasons: they may be intended for a
  different verification service, or they may be "dummy" values
  inserted by the CPS for privacy purposes.  The next few steps will
  narrow down the set of PASSporTs that the verification service will
  examine from that initial decryptable set.

  Step 2: The verification service MUST determine if any "ppt"
  extensions in the PASSporTs are unsupported.  It takes only the set
  of supported PASSporTs and applies the next step to them.

  Step 3: The verification service MUST determine if there is an
  overlap between the calling party number presented in call signaling
  and the "orig" field of any decrypted PASSporTs.  It takes the set of
  matching PASSporTs and applies the next step to them.

  Step 4: The verification service MUST determine if the credentials
  that signed each PASSporT are valid, and if the verification service
  trusts the CA that issued the credentials.  It takes the set of
  trusted PASSporTs to the next step.

  Step 5: The verification service MUST check the freshness of the
  "iat" claim of each PASSporT.  The exact interval of time that
  determines freshness is left to local policy.  It takes the set of
  fresh PASSporTs to the next step.

  Step 6: The verification service MUST check the validity of the
  signature over each PASSporT, as described in [RFC8225].

  Finally, the verification service will end up with one or more valid
  PASSporTs corresponding to the call it has received.  In keeping with
  baseline STIR, this document does not dictate any particular
  treatment of calls that have valid PASSporTs associated with them;
  the handling of the call after the verification process depends on
  how the verification service is implemented and on local policy.
  However, it is anticipated that local policies could involve making
  different forwarding decisions in intermediary implementations, or
  changing how the user is alerted or how identity is rendered in user
  agent implementations.

8.3.  Gateway Placement Services

  The STIR out-of-band mechanism also supports the presence of gateway
  placement services, which do not create PASSporTs themselves, but
  instead take PASSporTs out of signaling protocols and store them at a
  CPS before gatewaying to a protocol that cannot carry PASSporTs
  itself.  For example, a SIP gateway that sends calls to the PSTN
  could receive a call with an Identity header field, extract a
  PASSporT from the Identity header field, and store that PASSporT at a
  CPS.

  To place a PASSporT at a CPS, a gateway MUST perform Step 3 of
  Section 8.1 above: that is, it must discover the CPS and public key
  associated with the destination of the call, and may need to acquire
  a PASSporT storage token (see Section 6.1).  Per Step 3 of
  Section 8.1, this may entail discovering several keys.  The gateway
  then collects the in-band PASSporT(s) from the in-band signaling,
  encrypts the PASSporT(s), and stores them at the CPS.

  A similar service could be performed by a gateway that retrieves
  PASSporTs from a CPS and inserts them into signaling protocols that
  support carrying PASSporTs in-band.  This behavior may be defined by
  future specifications.

9.  Example HTTPS Interface to the CPS

  As a rough example, we show a CPS implementation here that uses a
  Representational State Transfer (REST) API [REST] to store and
  retrieve objects at the CPS.  The calling party stores the PASSporT
  at the CPS prior to initiating the call; the PASSporT is stored at a
  location at the CPS that corresponds to the called number.  Note that
  it is possible for multiple parties to be calling a number at the
  same time, and that for called numbers such as large call centers,
  many PASSporTs could legitimately be stored simultaneously, and it
  might prove difficult to correlate these with incoming calls.

  Assume that an authentication service has created the following
  PASSporT for a call to the telephone number 2.222.555.2222 (note that
  these are dummy values):

     eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6InBhc3Nwb3J0IiwieDV1IjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9
     jZXJ0LmV4YW1wbGUub3JnL3Bhc3Nwb3J0LmNlciJ9.eyJkZXN0Ijp7InRuIjpbI
     jIyMjI1NTUyMjIyIl19LCJpYXQiOiIxNTgzMjUxODEwIiwib3JpZyI6eyJ0biI6
     IjExMTE1NTUxMTExIn19.pnij4IlLHoR4vxID0u3CT1e9Hq4xLngZUTv45Vbxmd
     3IVyZug4KOSa378yfP4x6twY0KTdiDypsereS438ZHaQ

  Through some discovery mechanism (see Section 10), the authentication
  service discovers the network location of a web service that acts as
  the CPS for 2.222.555.2222.  Through the same mechanism, we will say
  that it has also discovered one public encryption key for that
  destination.  It uses that encryption key to encrypt the PASSporT,
  resulting in the encrypted PASSporT:

     rlWuoTpvBvWSHmV1AvVfVaE5pPV6VaOup3Ajo3W0VvjvrQI1VwbvnUE0pUZ6Yl9w
     MKW0YzI4LJ1joTHho3WaY3Oup3Ajo3W0YzAypvW9rlWxMKA0Vwc7VaIlnFV6JlWm
     nKN6LJkcL2INMKuuoKOfMF5wo20vKK0fVzyuqPV6VwR0AQZlZQtmAQHvYPWipzyaV
     wc7VaEhVwbvZGVkAGH1AGRlZGVvsK0ed3cwG1ubEjnxRTwUPaJFjHafuq0-mW6S1
     IBtSJFwUOe8Dwcwyx-pcSLcSLfbwAPcGmB3DsCBypxTnF6uRpx7j

  Having concluded the numbered steps in Section 8.1, including
  acquiring any token (per Section 6.1) needed to store the PASSporT at
  the CPS, the authentication service then stores the encrypted
  PASSporT:

     POST /cps/2.222.555.2222/ppts HTTP/1.1
     Host: cps.example.com
     Content-Type: application/passport

     rlWuoTpvBvWSHmV1AvVfVaE5pPV6VaOup3Ajo3W0VvjvrQI1VwbvnUE0pUZ6Yl9w
     MKW0YzI4LJ1joTHho3WaY3Oup3Ajo3W0YzAypvW9rlWxMKA0Vwc7VaIlnFV6JlWm
     nKN6LJkcL2INMKuuoKOfMF5wo20vKK0fVzyuqPV6VwR0AQZlZQtmAQHvYPWipzyaV
     wc7VaEhVwbvZGVkAGH1AGRlZGVvsK0ed3cwG1ubEjnxRTwUPaJFjHafuq0-mW6S1
     IBtSJFwUOe8Dwcwyx-pcSLcSLfbwAPcGmB3DsCBypxTnF6uRpx7j

  The web service assigns a new location for this encrypted PASSporT in
  the collection, returning a 201 OK with the location of
  /cps/2.222.222.2222/ppts/ppt1.  Now the authentication service can
  place the call, which may be signaled by various protocols.  Once the
  call arrives at the terminating side, a verification service contacts
  its CPS to ask for the set of incoming calls for its telephone number
  (2.222.222.2222).

     GET /cps/2.222.555.2222/ppts
     Host: cps.example.com

  This returns to the verification service a list of the PASSporTs
  currently in the collection, which currently consists of only
  /cps/2.222.222.2222/ppts/ppt1.  The verification service then sends a
  new GET for /cps/2.222.555.2222/ppts/ppt1/ which yields:

     HTTP/1.1 200 OK
     Content-Type: application/passport
     Link: <https://cps.example.com/cps/2.222.555.2222/ppts>

     rlWuoTpvBvWSHmV1AvVfVaE5pPV6VaOup3Ajo3W0VvjvrQI1VwbvnUE0pUZ6Yl9w
     MKW0YzI4LJ1joTHho3WaY3Oup3Ajo3W0YzAypvW9rlWxMKA0Vwc7VaIlnFV6JlWm
     nKN6LJkcL2INMKuuoKOfMF5wo20vKK0fVzyuqPV6VwR0AQZlZQtmAQHvYPWipzyaV
     wc7VaEhVwbvZGVkAGH1AGRlZGVvsK0ed3cwG1ubEjnxRTwUPaJFjHafuq0-mW6S1
     IBtSJFwUOe8Dwcwyx-pcSLcSLfbwAPcGmB3DsCBypxTnF6uRpx7j

  That concludes Step 1 of Section 8.2; the verification service then
  goes on to the next step, processing that PASSporT through its
  various checks.  A complete protocol description for CPS interactions
  is left to future work.

10.  CPS Discovery

  In order for the two ends of the out-of-band dataflow to coordinate,
  they must agree on a way to discover a CPS and retrieve PASSporT
  objects from it based solely on the rendezvous information available:
  the calling party number and the called number.  Because the storage
  of PASSporTs in this architecture is indexed by the called party
  number, it makes sense to discover a CPS based on the called party
  number as well.  There are a number of potential service discovery
  mechanisms that could be used for this purpose.  The means of service
  discovery may vary by use case.

  Although the discussion above is written largely in terms of a single
  CPS, having a significant fraction of all telephone calls result in
  storing and retrieving PASSporTs at a single monolithic CPS has
  obvious scaling problems, and would as well allow the CPS to gather
  metadata about a very wide set of callers and callees.  These issues
  can be alleviated by operational models with a federated CPS; any
  service discovery mechanism for out-of-band STIR should enable
  federation of the CPS function.  Likely models include ones where a
  carrier operates one or more CPS instances on behalf of its
  customers, an enterprise runs a CPS instance on behalf of its PBX
  users, or a third-party service provider offers a CPS as a cloud
  service.

  Some service discovery possibilities under consideration include the
  following:

     For some deployments in closed (e.g., intra-network) environments,
     the CPS location can simply be provisioned in implementations,
     obviating the need for a discovery protocol.

     If a credential lookup service is already available (see
     Section 11), the CPS location can also be recorded in the callee's
     credentials; an extension to [RFC8226] could, for example, provide
     a link to the location of the CPS where PASSporTs should be stored
     for a destination.

     There exist a number of common directory systems that might be
     used to translate telephone numbers into the URIs of a CPS.  ENUM
     [RFC6116] is commonly implemented, though no "golden root" central
     ENUM administration exists that could be easily reused today to
     help the endpoints discover a common CPS.  Other protocols
     associated with queries for telephone numbers, such as the
     Telephone-Related Information (TeRI) protocol [MODERN-TERI], could
     also serve for this application.

     Another possibility is to use a single distributed service for
     this function.  Verification Involving PSTN Reachability (VIPR)
     [VIPR-OVERVIEW] proposed a REsource LOcation And Discovery
     (RELOAD) [RFC6940] usage for telephone numbers to help direct
     calls to enterprises on the Internet.  It would be possible to
     describe a similar RELOAD usage to identify the CPS where calls
     for a particular telephone number should be stored.  One advantage
     that the STIR architecture has over VIPR is that it assumes a
     credential system that proves authority over telephone numbers;
     those credentials could be used to determine whether or not a CPS
     could legitimately claim to be the proper store for a given
     telephone number.

  This document does not prescribe any single way to do service
  discovery for a CPS; it is envisioned that initial deployments will
  provision the location of the CPS at the authentication service and
  verification service.

11.  Encryption Key Lookup

  In order to encrypt a PASSporT (see Section 6.1), the caller needs
  access to the callee's public encryption key.  Note that because STIR
  uses the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for
  signing PASSporTs, the public key used to verify PASSporTs is not
  suitable for this function, and thus the encryption key must be
  discovered separately.  This requires some sort of directory/lookup
  system.

  Some initial STIR deployments have fielded certificate repositories
  so that verification services can acquire the signing credentials for
  PASSporTs, which are linked through a URI in the "x5u" element of the
  PASSporT.  These certificate repositories could clearly be repurposed
  for allowing authentication services to download the public
  encryption key for the called party -- provided they can be
  discovered by calling parties.  This document does not specify any
  particular discovery scheme, but instead offers some general guidance
  about potential approaches.

  It is a desirable property that the public encryption key for a given
  party be linked to their STIR credential.  An Elliptic Curve
  Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) [RFC7748] public-private key pair might be
  generated for a subcert [TLS-SUBCERTS] of the STIR credential.  That
  subcert could be looked up along with the STIR credential of the
  called party.  Further details of this subcert, and the exact lookup
  mechanism involved, are deferred for future protocol work.

  Obviously, if there is a single central database that the caller and
  callee each access in real time to download the other's keys, then
  this represents a real privacy risk, as the central key database
  learns about each call.  A number of mechanisms are potentially
  available to mitigate this:

     Have endpoints pre-fetch keys for potential counterparties (e.g.,
     their address book or the entire database).

     Have caching servers in the user's network that proxy their
     fetches and thus conceal the relationship between the user and the
     keys they are fetching.

  Clearly, there is a privacy/timeliness trade-off in that getting up-
  to-date knowledge about credential validity requires contacting the
  credential directory in real-time (e.g., via the Online Certificate
  Status Protocol (OCSP) [RFC6960]).  This is somewhat mitigated for
  the caller's credentials in that he can get short-term credentials
  right before placing a call which only reveals his calling rate, but
  not who he is calling.  Alternately, the CPS can verify the caller's
  credentials via OCSP, though of course this requires the callee to
  trust the CPS's verification.  This approach does not work as well
  for the callee's credentials, but the risk there is more modest since
  an attacker would need to both have the callee's credentials and
  regularly poll the database for every potential caller.

  We consider the exact best point in the trade-off space to be an open
  issue.

12.  IANA Considerations

  This document has no IANA actions.

13.  Privacy Considerations

  Delivering PASSporTs out-of-band offers a different set of privacy
  properties than traditional in-band STIR.  In-band operations convey
  PASSporTs as headers in SIP messages in cleartext, which any
  forwarding intermediaries can potentially inspect.  By contrast, out-
  of-band STIR stores these PASSporTs at a service after encrypting
  them as described in Section 6, effectively creating a path between
  the authentication and verification service in which the CPS is the
  sole intermediary, but the CPS cannot read the PASSporTs.
  Potentially, out-of-band PASSporT delivery could thus improve on the
  privacy story of STIR.

  The principle actors in the operation of out-of-band are the AS, VS,
  and CPS.  The AS and VS functions differ from baseline behavior
  [RFC8224], in that they interact with a CPS over a non-SIP interface,
  of which the REST interface in Section 9 serves as an example.  Some
  out-of-band deployments may also require a discovery service for the
  CPS itself (Section 10) and/or encryption keys (Section 11).  Even
  with encrypted PASSporTs, the network interactions by which the AS
  and VS interact with the CPS, and to a lesser extent any discovery
  services, thus create potential opportunities for data leakage about
  calling and called parties.

  The process of storing and retrieving PASSporTs at a CPS can itself
  reveal information about calls being placed.  The mechanism takes
  care not to require that the AS authenticate itself to the CPS,
  relying instead on a blind signature mechanism for flood control
  prevention.  Section 7.4 discusses the practice of storing "dummy"
  PASSporTs at random intervals to thwart traffic analysis, and as
  Section 8.2 notes, a CPS is required to return a dummy PASSporT even
  if there is no PASSporT indexed for that calling number, which
  similarly enables the retrieval side to randomly request PASSporTs
  when there are no calls in progress.  Note that the caller's IP
  address itself leaks information about the caller.  Proxying the
  storage of the CPS through some third party could help prevent this
  attack.  It might also be possible to use a more sophisticated system
  such as Riposte [RIPOSTE].  These measures can help to mitigate
  information disclosure in the system.  In implementations that
  require service discovery (see Section 10), perhaps through key
  discovery (Section 11), similar measures could be used to make sure
  that service discovery does not itself disclose information about
  calls.

  Ultimately, this document only provides a framework for future
  implementation of out-of-band systems, and the privacy properties of
  a given implementation will depend on architectural assumptions made
  in those environments.  More closed systems for intranet operations
  may adopt a weaker security posture but otherwise mitigate the risks
  of information disclosure, whereas more open environments will
  require careful implementation of the practices described here.

  For general privacy risks associated with the operations of STIR,
  also see the privacy considerations covered in Section 11 of
  [RFC8224].

14.  Security Considerations

  This entire document is about security, but the detailed security
  properties will vary depending on how the framework is applied and
  deployed.  General guidance for dealing with the most obvious
  security challenges posed by this framework is given in Sections 7.3
  and 7.4, along proposed solutions for problems like denial-of-service
  attacks or traffic analysis against the CPS.

  Although there are considerable security challenges associated with
  widespread deployment of a public CPS, those must be weighed against
  the potential usefulness of a service that delivers a STIR assurance
  without requiring the passage of end-to-end SIP.  Ultimately, the
  security properties of this mechanism are at least comparable to in-
  band STIR: the substitution attack documented in Section 7.4 could be
  implemented by any in-band SIP intermediary or eavesdropper who
  happened to see the PASSporT in transit, say, and launched its own
  call with a copy of that PASSporT to race against the original to the
  destination.

15.  Informative References

  [MODERN-TERI]
             Peterson, J., "An Architecture and Information Model for
             Telephone-Related Information (TeRI)", Work in Progress,
             Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-modern-teri-00, 2 July 2018,
             <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-modern-teri-00>.

  [PASSPORT-DIVERT]
             Peterson, J., "PASSporT Extension for Diverted Calls",
             Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-stir-
             passport-divert-09, 13 July 2020,
             <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-stir-passport-
             divert-09>.

  [PRIVACY-PASS]
             Davidson, A. and N. Sullivan, "The Privacy Pass Protocol",
             Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-privacy-pass-00, 3
             November 2019,
             <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-privacy-pass-00>.

  [REST]     Fielding, R., "Architectural Styles and the Design of
             Network-based Software Architectures, Chapter 5:
             Representational State Transfer", Ph.D.
             Dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 2010.

  [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
             Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

  [RFC3261]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
             A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
             Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC3261, June 2002,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3261>.

  [RFC5636]  Park, S., Park, H., Won, Y., Lee, J., and S. Kent,
             "Traceable Anonymous Certificate", RFC 5636,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC5636, August 2009,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5636>.

  [RFC6116]  Bradner, S., Conroy, L., and K. Fujiwara, "The E.164 to
             Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Dynamic Delegation
             Discovery System (DDDS) Application (ENUM)", RFC 6116,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC6116, March 2011,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6116>.

  [RFC6940]  Jennings, C., Lowekamp, B., Ed., Rescorla, E., Baset, S.,
             and H. Schulzrinne, "REsource LOcation And Discovery
             (RELOAD) Base Protocol", RFC 6940, DOI 10.17487/RFC6940,
             January 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6940>.

  [RFC6960]  Santesson, S., Myers, M., Ankney, R., Malpani, A.,
             Galperin, S., and C. Adams, "X.509 Internet Public Key
             Infrastructure Online Certificate Status Protocol - OCSP",
             RFC 6960, DOI 10.17487/RFC6960, June 2013,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6960>.

  [RFC7258]  Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
             Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
             2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.

  [RFC7340]  Peterson, J., Schulzrinne, H., and H. Tschofenig, "Secure
             Telephone Identity Problem Statement and Requirements",
             RFC 7340, DOI 10.17487/RFC7340, September 2014,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7340>.

  [RFC7748]  Langley, A., Hamburg, M., and S. Turner, "Elliptic Curves
             for Security", RFC 7748, DOI 10.17487/RFC7748, January
             2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7748>.

  [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
             2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
             May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

  [RFC8224]  Peterson, J., Jennings, C., Rescorla, E., and C. Wendt,
             "Authenticated Identity Management in the Session
             Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 8224,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC8224, February 2018,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8224>.

  [RFC8225]  Wendt, C. and J. Peterson, "PASSporT: Personal Assertion
             Token", RFC 8225, DOI 10.17487/RFC8225, February 2018,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8225>.

  [RFC8226]  Peterson, J. and S. Turner, "Secure Telephone Identity
             Credentials: Certificates", RFC 8226,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC8226, February 2018,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8226>.

  [RFC8446]  Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
             Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.

  [RIPOSTE]  Corrigan-Gibbs, H., Boneh, D., and D. Mazières, "Riposte:
             An Anonymous Messaging System Handling Millions of Users",
             May 2015, <https://people.csail.mit.edu/henrycg/pubs/
             oakland15riposte/>.

  [TLS-SUBCERTS]
             Barnes, R., Iyengar, S., Sullivan, N., and E. Rescorla,
             "Delegated Credentials for TLS", Work in Progress,
             Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-tls-subcerts-10, 24 January
             2021,
             <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-subcerts-10>.

  [VIPR-OVERVIEW]
             Barnes, M., Jennings, C., Rosenberg, J., and M. Petit-
             Huguenin, "Verification Involving PSTN Reachability:
             Requirements and Architecture Overview", Work in Progress,
             Internet-Draft, draft-jennings-vipr-overview-06, 9
             December 2013, <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-
             jennings-vipr-overview-06>.

Acknowledgments

  The ideas in this document came out of discussions with Richard
  Barnes and Cullen Jennings.  We'd also like to thank Russ Housley,
  Chris Wendt, Eric Burger, Mary Barnes, Ben Campbell, Ted Huang,
  Jonathan Rosenberg, and Robert Sparks for helpful suggestions.

Authors' Addresses

  Eric Rescorla
  Mozilla

  Email: [email protected]


  Jon Peterson
  Neustar, Inc.
  1800 Sutter St Suite 570
  Concord, CA 94520
  United States of America

  Email: [email protected]