RadSec

Article summary

RadSec is a protocol for transporting RADIUS datagrams over TCP and TLS. The RADIUS protocol is a widely deployed authentication and authorization protocol. The supplementary RADIUS Accounting specification also provides accounting mechanisms, thus delivering a full AAA protocol solution. However, RADIUS has two substantial shortcomings. Essentially all data is sent "in the clear", which has privacy implications. MAC addresses and user names can be leaked, and users can potentially be geolocated. The data which is obfuscated is protected via "ad hoc" constructions which use the MD5 algorithm, which has been proven to be insecure. All packet authentication is also based on MD5. In order to address these privacy and security issues, the "RADIUS Extensions" working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specified TLS transport for RADIUS, as RADIUS/TLS in . TCP port 2083 has been assigned to RADSEC. The use of RadSec goes back to preliminary vendor implementations. The standard name for RADIUS over TLS as defined in is RADIUS/TLS. There is also RADIUS/DTLS which was defined in . The main focus of RADIUS/TLS is to provide a means to secure the communication between RADIUS peers on the transport layer.…

Key claims

No claims recorded.

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

No sources recorded.