[cifs-protocol] Session keys are not always 16 bytes long

Hongwei Sun hongweis at microsoft.com
Thu Aug 7 22:10:03 GMT 2008


Hi, Andrew,



   In our last conference call, we talked about your question regarding which of the numerous keys Kerberos produce is considered the 'SMB session key'.  I had discussions with the product team to find what or how should be documented.   You mentioned that you would like to see the document to specify which GSSAPI call returns the session key.   They would like to have a little more background information, which you already talked about a little bit during our conversation.  I just want to confirm so I can pass it accurately to product team.



    What do you mean by GSSAPI with CFX ? Do you mean the mechanism conforming to RFC 4121 ?

    What implementation are you using  for GSSAPI with CFX in Vista  ?   Is it Heimdal's implementation ?

    What is your expectation about how this detail should be included in the document ?  Do you expect it to associate with specific GSSAPI calls?



   I hope that with the information we can have a resolution soon.  Thanks for your patience.


Thanks

----------------------------------------------------------
Hongwei  Sun - Support Escalation Engineer
DSC Protocol  Team, Microsoft
hongweis at microsoft.com
Tel:  469-7757027 x 57027
-----------------------------------------------------------






-----Original Message-----
From: cifs-protocol-bounces+hongweis=microsoft.com at cifs.org [mailto:cifs-protocol-bounces+hongweis=microsoft.com at cifs.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Bartlett
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 12:58 AM
To: Interoperability Documentation Help
Cc: pfif at tridgell.net; cifs-protocol at samba.org
Subject: [cifs-protocol] Session keys are not always 16 bytes long



I'm looking for correction assistance regarding SMB session keys.



Our tests show that the session keys, referred consistently in MS-SMB and MS-SAMR as 16 byte quantities are not a simple as they are made out to be.



For example, a Windows Vista SP1 client using GSSAPI with CFX will negotiate an AES session key with Samba4.  This is 32 bytes long, and all 32 bytes are required to satisfy the SMB signing between Vista SP1 and Samba4.  (despite MS-SMB 4.3 talking about a 16 bytes key).

Similarly, our tests have shown that for DES kerberos, an 8 byte key is used.



However, further in on the domain join, Samr password set operations are made.  There similarly we have observed 8 bytes kerberos keys in the past, but testing shows that for the 32 byte key from the Vista join, the key must be truncated to 16 bytes.  (See MS-SAMR 3.1.2.2).



Please correct the documentation to clearly specify when the variable-length key is used (perhaps make it clear that it is usually, but not always 16 bytes), and when a truncated key is used.



Furthermore, please clarify the linkage between MS-SAMR, MS-SMB and MS-KILE regarding session keys.  I can't find a clear reference as to which of the numerous keys kerberos produces is considered the 'SMB session key'.  Is it not possible to include section numbers in the document cross-references?



Thanks,



Andrew Bartlett

--

Andrew Bartlett

http://samba.org/~abartlet/

Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org

Samba Developer, Red Hat Inc.
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