IEEE 802.1AE (also known as MACsec) is a network security standard that operates at the

medium access control In IEEE 802 LAN/MAN standards, the medium access control (MAC, also called media access control) sublayer is the layer that controls the hardware responsible for interaction with the wired, optical or wireless transmission medium. The MAC sublay ...

layer and defines connectionless data confidentiality and integrity for media access independent protocols. It is standardized by the

IEEE 802.1 IEEE 802.1 is a working group of the IEEE 802 project of the IEEE Standards Association. It is concerned with: * 802 LAN/MAN architecture * internetworking among 802 LANs, MANs and wide area networks * 802 Link Security * 802 overall network manage ...

working group.

Details

Key management and the establishment of secure associations is outside the scope of 802.1AE, but is specified by 802.1X-2010. The 802.1AE standard specifies the implementation of a ''MAC Security Entities'' (SecY) that can be thought of as part of the stations attached to the same LAN, providing secure MAC service to the client. The standard defines * MACsec frame format, which is similar to the

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

frame, but includes additional fields: ** ''Security Tag'', which is an extension of the

EtherType EtherType is a two-Octet (computing), octet field in an Ethernet frame. It is used to indicate which Communications protocol, protocol is Encapsulation (networking), encapsulated in the payload of the frame and is used at the receiving end by th ...

Message authentication code In cryptography, a message authentication code (MAC), sometimes known as a ''tag'', is a short piece of information used for authenticating a message. In other words, to confirm that the message came from the stated sender (its authenticity) and ...

(''ICV'') * Secure ''Connectivity Associations'' that represent groups of stations connected via unidirectional ''Secure Channels'' * ''Security Associations'' within each secure channel. Each association uses its own key (SAK). More than one association is permitted within the channel for the purpose of key change without traffic interruption (standard requires devices to support at least two) * A default

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode ...

suite of GCM-AES-128 (Galois/Counter Mode of

Advanced Encryption Standard The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael (), is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. AES is a variant ...

cipher with 128-bit key) ** GCM-AES-256 using a 256 bit key was added to the standard 5 years later. Security tag inside each frame in addition to

includes: * association number within the channel * packet number to provide unique initialization vector for encryption and authentication algorithms as well as protection against replay attack * optional LAN-wide secure channel identifier (not required on point-to-point links). The IEEE 802.1AE (MACsec) standard specifies a set of protocols to meet the security requirements for protecting data traversing Ethernet LANs. MACsec allows unauthorised LAN connections to be identified and excluded from communication within the network. In common with

IPsec In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in ...

and

TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...

, MACsec defines a security infrastructure to provide data confidentiality,

data integrity Data integrity is the maintenance of, and the assurance of, data accuracy and consistency over its entire life-cycle and is a critical aspect to the design, implementation, and usage of any system that stores, processes, or retrieves data. The ter ...

and

data origin authentication In information security, message authentication or data origin authentication is a property that a message has not been modified while in transit (data integrity) and that the receiving party can verify the source of the message. Message authentica ...

. By assuring that a frame comes from the station that claimed to send it, MACSec can mitigate attacks on Layer 2 protocols. Publishing history: * 2006 – Original publication (802.1AE-2006) * 2011 – 802.1AEbn amendment adds the option to use 256 bit keys to the standard. (802.1AEbn-2011) * 2013 – 802.1AEbw amendment defines GCM-AES-XPN-128 and GCM-AES-XPN-256 cipher suites in order to extend the packet number to 64 bits. (802.1AEbw-2013) * 2017 – 802.1AEcg amendment specifies Ethernet Data Encryption devices. (802.1AEcg-2017) * 2018 – 802.1AE-2018

References

External links

802.1AE-2018

MACsec Toolkit
- A source code toolkit implementation of IEEE 802.1X-2010 (MACsec control plane) and IEEE802.1AE (MACsec data plane) {{IEEE standards IEEE 802 Cryptography standards Networking standards Link protocols

Details

See also

References

External links