HOW THE DISTRIBUTION HANDSHAKE WORKS
------------------------------------
This document describes the distribution handshake introduced in
the R6 release of Erlang/OTP.
GENERAL
-------
The TCP/IP distribution uses a handshake which expects a
connection based protocol, i.e. the protocol does not include
any authentication after the handshake procedure.
This is not entirely safe, as it is vulnerable against takeover
attacks, but it is a tradeoff between fair safety and performance.
The cookies are never sent in cleartext and the handshake procedure
expects the client (called A) to be the first one to prove that it can
generate a sufficient digest. The digest is generated with the
MD5 message digest algorithm and the challenges are expected to be very
random numbers.
DEFINITIONS
-----------
A challenge is a 32 bit integer number in big endian order. Below the function
gen_challenge() returns a random 32 bit integer used as a challenge.
A digest is a (16 bytes) MD5 hash of [the Challenge (as text) concatenated
with the cookie (as text)]. Below, the function gen_digest(Challenge, Cookie)
generates a digest as described above.
An out_cookie is the cookie used in outgoing communication to a certain node,
so that A's out_cookie for B should correspond with B's in_cookie for A and
the other way around. A's out_cookie for B and A's in_cookie for B need *NOT*
be the same. Below the function out_cookie(Node) returns the current
node's out_cookie for Node.
An in_cookie is the cookie expected to be used by another node when
communicating with us, so that A's in_cookie for B corresponds with B's
out_cookie for A. Below the function in_cookie(Node) returns the current
node's in_cookie for Node.
The cookies are text strings that can be viewed as passwords.
Every message in the handshake starts with a 16 bit big endian integer
which contains the length of the message (not counting the two initial bytes).
In erlang this corresponds to the gen_tcp option {packet, 2}. Note that after
the handshake, the distribution switches to 4 byte packet headers.
THE HANDSHAKE IN DETAIL
-----------------------
Imagine two nodes, node A, which initiates the handshake and node B, which
accepts the connection.
1) connect/accept: A connects to B via TCP/IP and B accepts the connection.
2) send_name/receive_name: A sends an initial identification to B.
B receives the message. The message looks
like this (every "square" being one byte and the packet header removed):
+---+--------+--------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-...-+-----+
|'n'|Version0|Version1|Flag0|Flag1|Flag2|Flag3|Name0|Name1| ... |NameN|
+---+--------+--------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-... +-----+
The 'n' is just a message tag,
Version0 & Version1 is the distribution version selected by node A,
based on information from EPMD. (16 bit big endian)
Flag0 ... Flag3 are capability flags, the capabilities defined in dist.hrl.
(32 bit big endian)
Name0 ... NameN is the full nodename of A, as a string of bytes (the
packet length denotes how long it is).
3) recv_status/send_status: B sends a status message to A, which indicates
if the connection is allowed. Four different status codes are defined:
ok: The handshake will continue.
ok_simultaneous: The handshake will continue, but A is informed that B
has another ongoing connection attempt that will be
shut down (simultaneous connect where A's name is
greater than B's name, compared literally),
nok: The handshake will not continue, as B already has an ongoing handshake
which it itself has initiated. (simultaneous connect where B's name is
greater than A's)
not_allowed: The connection is disallowed for some (unspecified) security
reason.
alive: A connection to the node is already active, which either means
that node A is confused or that the TCP connection breakdown
of a previous node with this name has not yet reached node B.
See 3B below.
This is the format of the status message:
+---+-------+-------+-...-+-------+
|'s'|Status0|Status1| ... |StatusN|
+---+-------+-------+-...-+-------+
's' is the message tag
Status0 ... StatusN is the status as a string (not terminated)
3B) send_status/recv_status: If status was 'alive', node A will answer with
another status message containing either 'true' which means that the
connection should continue (The old connection from this node is broken), or
'false', which simply means that the connection should be closed, the
connection attempt was a mistake.
4) recv_challenge/send_challenge: If the status was 'ok' or 'ok_simultaneous',
The handshake continues with B sending A another message, the challenge.
The challenge contains the same type of information as the "name" message
initially sent from A to B, with the addition of a 32 bit challenge:
+---+--------+--------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+---
|'n'|Version0|Version1|Flag0|Flag1|Flag2|Flag3|Chal0|Chal1|Chal2|Chal3|
+---+--------+--------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+---
------+-----+-...-+-----+
Name0|Name1| ... |NameN|
------+-----+-... +-----+
Where Chal0 ... Chal3 is the challenge as a 32 bit big endian integer
and the other fields are B's version, flags and full nodename.
5) send_challenge_reply/recv_challenge_reply: Now A has generated
a digest and its own challenge. Those are sent together in a package
to B:
+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-...-+------+
|'r'|Chal0|Chal1|Chal2|Chal3|Dige0|Dige1|Dige2|Dige3| ... |Dige15|
+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-...-+------+
Where 'r' is the tag, Chal0 ... Chal3 is A's challenge for B to handle and
Dige0 ... Dige15 is the digest that A constructed from the challenge B sent
in the previous step.
6) recv_challenge_ack/send_challenge_ack: B checks that the digest received
from A is correct and generates a digest from the challenge received from
A. The digest is then sent to A. The message looks like this:
+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+-...-+------+
|'a'|Dige0|Dige1|Dige2|Dige3| ... |Dige15|
+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+-...-+------+
Where 'a' is the tag and Dige0 ... Dige15 is the digest calculated by B
for A's challenge.
7) A checks the digest from B and the connection is up.
SEMIGRAPHIC VIEW
----------------
A (initiator) B (acceptor)
TCP connect ----------------------------------------->
TCP accept
send_name ----------------------------------------->
recv_name
<---------------------------------------- send_status
recv_status
(if status was 'alive'
send_status - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ->
recv_status)
ChB = gen_challenge()
(ChB)
<---------------------------------------- send_challenge
recv_challenge
ChA = gen_challenge(),
OCA = out_cookie(B),
DiA = gen_digest(ChB,OCA)
(ChA, DiA)
send_challenge_reply -------------------------------->
recv_challenge_reply
ICB = in_cookie(A),
check:
DiA == gen_digest
(ChB, ICB) ?
- if OK:
OCB = out_cookie(A),
DiB = gen_digest
(DiB) (ChA, OCB)
<----------------------------------------- send_challenge_ack
recv_challenge_ack DONE
ICA = in_cookie(B), - else
check: CLOSE
DiB == gen_digest(ChA,ICA) ?
- if OK
DONE
- else
CLOSE
THE CURRENTLY DEFINED FLAGS
---------------------------
Currently the following capability flags are defined:
%% The node should be published and part of the global namespace
-define(DFLAG_PUBLISHED,1).
%% The node implements an atom cache
-define(DFLAG_ATOM_CACHE,2).
%% The node implements extended (3 * 32 bits) references
-define(DFLAG_EXTENDED_REFERENCES,4).
%% The node implements distributed process monitoring.
-define(DFLAG_DIST_MONITOR,8).
%% The node uses separate tag for fun's (lambdas) in the distribution protocol.
-define(DFLAG_FUN_TAGS,16).
An R6 erlang node implements all of the above, while a C or Java node only
implements DFLAG_EXTENDED_REFERENCES.
Last modified 1999-11-08 -- Patrik Nyblom, OTP
