Authors:
(1) Diwen Xue, University of Michigan;
(2) Reethika Ramesh, University of Michigan;
(3) Arham Jain, University of Michigan;
(4) Arham Jain, Merit Network, Inc.;
(5) J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan;
(6) Jedidiah R. Crandall, Arizona State University/Breakpointing Bad;
(7) Roya Ensaf, University of Michigan. Table of Links Abstract and 1 Introduction 2 Background & Related Work 3 Challenges in Real-world VPN Detection 4 Adversary Model and Deployment 5 Ethics, Privacy, and Responsible Disclosure 6 Identifying Fingerprintable Features and 6.1 Opcode-based Fingerprinting 6.2 ACK-based Fingerprinting 6.3 Active Server Fingerprinting 6.4 Constructing Filters and Probers 7 Fine-tuning for Deployment and 7.1 ACK Fingerprint Thresholds 7.2 Choice of Observation Window N 7.3 Effects of Packet Loss 7.4 Server Churn for Asynchronous Probing 7.5 Probe UDP and Obfuscated OpenVPN Servers 8 Real-world Deployment Setup 9 Evaluation & Findings and 9.1 Results for control VPN flows 9.2 Results for all flows 10 Discussion and Mitigations 11 Conclusion 12 Acknowledgement and References Appendix 6 Identifying Fingerprintable Features In this section, we identify three features that fingerprint OpenVPN, exploiting byte pattern, packet length, and server behaviors, respectively. 6.1 Opcode-based Fingerprinting As shown in Figure 3, each OpenVPN packet has a header of 24 bits in TCP mode or 8 bits in UDP mode, which is not part of the encrypted payload. Each OpenVPN header starts with an opcode that specifies the message type of the current packet and a key ID that refers to a (new) TLS session. The opcode field can take over 10 defined values, corresponding to message types transmitted during different communication stages. A typical OpenVPN session starts with the client sending a Client Reset packet. The server then responds with a Server Reset packet, and a TLS handshake follows. OpenVPN packets that carry TLS ciphertexts have P_Control as their message type. Since OpenVPN can run over UDP but has to provide a reliable channel for TLS, each P_Control packet is explicitly acknowledged by P_ACK packets. Finally, actual payloads are transmitted as P_Data packets. Figure 1 illustrates this packet exchange with opcode annotations. A packet field taking a fixed number of values can be easy to fingerprint and has been exploited before against other protocols [1]. We fingerprint OpenVPN’s handshake sequence by analyzing each opcode byte for the first N packets of a flow (the threshold N is explored in Section 7.2). Algorithm 1 shows the process of opcode fingerprinting, with Opcode referring to the sequence of N opcode values found in the first N packets of a given flow. Briefly, the filter flags a flow if the number of different opcodes observed accords with the protocol and the Client and Server Resets are not seen once the handshake is completed. Previous work and existing open-source DPIs [23, 29, 37, 75] considered statically matching opcode values and packet sizes based on the protocol specification. In contrast, we propose to dynamically capture the variation in opcode values that reflects the establishment of OpenVPN sessions. Notably, our heuristics do not require exact matching of opcode values or packet length (e.g., do not require the third byte of the first packet to be 0x38), thereby ensuring it works effectively against XOR-obfuscated flows. The XOR obfuscation masks packet payloads to ensure that the opcode bytes are altered. Notably, according to the specification [36], when it reverses the packet as one of the obfuscation steps, it excludes the first character of the buffer (where the opcode byte is located) from reversal, as shown in Figure 4. As such, the opcode byte is always XOR-ed with the same byte of the XOR key, and the same opcodes would be mapped to the same value after obfuscation. This behavior is preserved when Tunnelblick (a number of unique opcodes seen so far, our heuristics are more flexible and target various XOR-based obfuscations of OpenVPN. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Diwen Xue, University of Michigan; (2) Reethika Ramesh, University of Michigan; (3) Arham Jain, University of Michigan; (4) Arham Jain, Merit Network, Inc.; (5) J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan; (6) Jedidiah R. Crandall, Arizona State University/Breakpointing Bad; (7) Roya Ensaf, University of Michigan. Authors: Authors: (1) Diwen Xue, University of Michigan; (2) Reethika Ramesh, University of Michigan; (3) Arham Jain, University of Michigan; (4) Arham Jain, Merit Network, Inc.; (5) J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan; (6) Jedidiah R. Crandall, Arizona State University/Breakpointing Bad; (7) Roya Ensaf, University of Michigan. Table of Links Abstract and 1 Introduction Abstract and 1 Introduction 2 Background & Related Work 2 Background & Related Work 3 Challenges in Real-world VPN Detection 3 Challenges in Real-world VPN Detection 4 Adversary Model and Deployment 4 Adversary Model and Deployment 5 Ethics, Privacy, and Responsible Disclosure 5 Ethics, Privacy, and Responsible Disclosure 6 Identifying Fingerprintable Features and 6.1 Opcode-based Fingerprinting 6 Identifying Fingerprintable Features and 6.1 Opcode-based Fingerprinting 6.2 ACK-based Fingerprinting 6.2 ACK-based Fingerprinting 6.3 Active Server Fingerprinting 6.3 Active Server Fingerprinting 6.4 Constructing Filters and Probers 6.4 Constructing Filters and Probers 7 Fine-tuning for Deployment and 7.1 ACK Fingerprint Thresholds 7 Fine-tuning for Deployment and 7.1 ACK Fingerprint Thresholds 7.2 Choice of Observation Window N 7.2 Choice of Observation Window N 7.3 Effects of Packet Loss 7.3 Effects of Packet Loss 7.4 Server Churn for Asynchronous Probing 7.4 Server Churn for Asynchronous Probing 7.5 Probe UDP and Obfuscated OpenVPN Servers 7.5 Probe UDP and Obfuscated OpenVPN Servers 8 Real-world Deployment Setup 8 Real-world Deployment Setup 9 Evaluation & Findings and 9.1 Results for control VPN flows 9 Evaluation & Findings and 9.1 Results for control VPN flows 9.2 Results for all flows 9.2 Results for all flows 10 Discussion and Mitigations 10 Discussion and Mitigations 11 Conclusion 11 Conclusion 12 Acknowledgement and References 12 Acknowledgement and References Appendix Appendix 6 Identifying Fingerprintable Features In this section, we identify three features that fingerprint OpenVPN, exploiting byte pattern, packet length, and server behaviors, respectively. 6.1 Opcode-based Fingerprinting As shown in Figure 3, each OpenVPN packet has a header of 24 bits in TCP mode or 8 bits in UDP mode, which is not part of the encrypted payload. Each OpenVPN header starts with an opcode that specifies the message type of the current packet and a key ID that refers to a (new) TLS session. The opcode field can take over 10 defined values, corresponding to message types transmitted during different communication stages. A typical OpenVPN session starts with the client sending a Client Reset packet. The server then responds with a Server Reset packet, and a TLS handshake follows. OpenVPN packets that carry TLS ciphertexts have P_Control as their message type. Since OpenVPN can run over UDP but has to provide a reliable channel for TLS, each P_Control packet is explicitly acknowledged by P_ACK packets. Finally, actual payloads are transmitted as P_Data packets. Figure 1 illustrates this packet exchange with opcode annotations. A packet field taking a fixed number of values can be easy to fingerprint and has been exploited before against other protocols [1]. We fingerprint OpenVPN’s handshake sequence by analyzing each opcode byte for the first N packets of a flow (the threshold N is explored in Section 7.2). Algorithm 1 shows the process of opcode fingerprinting, with Opcode referring to the sequence of N opcode values found in the first N packets of a given flow. Briefly, the filter flags a flow if the number of different opcodes observed accords with the protocol and the Client and Server Resets are not seen once the handshake is completed. Previous work and existing open-source DPIs [23, 29, 37, 75] considered statically matching opcode values and packet sizes based on the protocol specification. In contrast, we propose to dynamically capture the variation in opcode values that reflects the establishment of OpenVPN sessions. Notably, our heuristics do not require exact matching of opcode values or packet length (e.g., do not require the third byte of the first packet to be 0x38), thereby ensuring it works effectively against XOR-obfuscated flows. The XOR obfuscation masks packet payloads to ensure that the opcode bytes are altered. Notably, according to the specification [36], when it reverses the packet as one of the obfuscation steps, it excludes the first character of the buffer (where the opcode byte is located) from reversal, as shown in Figure 4. As such, the opcode byte is always XOR-ed with the same byte of the XOR key, and the same opcodes would be mapped to the same value after obfuscation. This behavior is preserved when Tunnelblick (a number of unique opcodes seen so far, our heuristics are more flexible and target various XOR-based obfuscations of OpenVPN. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

Part of HackerNoon's growing list of open-source research papers, promoting free access to academic material.

Unveiling OpenVPN: Fingerprinting with ACK Patterns and Timing Analysis

Ethical Challenges in VPN Traffic Analysis: Privacy and Responsible Disclosure

VirtualMachine.Tech

Too Long; Didn't Read

CTA: Download the FREE AI Productivity Shift report

Identifying Fingerprintable Features and Opcode-based Fingerprinting

About Author

Comments

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN

Related Stories

Untitled Story

OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting: Appendix

Windows Sticky Keys Exploit: The War Veteran That Never Dies

06/02/2018: Biggest Stories in the Cryptosphere

0-Days are on the Rise and that Means a Lot More Work for SOC Teams

Time Bombs Inside Software: 0-Day Log4Shell is Just the Tip of The Iceberg

OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting: Appendix

Windows Sticky Keys Exploit: The War Veteran That Never Dies

06/02/2018: Biggest Stories in the Cryptosphere

0-Days are on the Rise and that Means a Lot More Work for SOC Teams

Time Bombs Inside Software: 0-Day Log4Shell is Just the Tip of The Iceberg

Light-Mode

Classic

Newspaper

Dark-Mode

Neon Noir

Minty

HN StartUps